Roma Journeys

The photographer Joakim Eskildsen has an incredible show at Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center about the Roma people, spanning many countries. A few pictures from this incredible compilation can be found on his website, and I urge you to take a moment and riffle through them.

Tricky Linguistics

A great example of the absurdly hilarious comedic style that Fry & Laurie excel at.

"Hold the news-reader's nose squarely, waiter, or friendly milk will countermand my trousers".... a unique child delivered to a unique mother

Gelliant Gutfright

Between imagination and desire, between reality and ambition, between what is known and what is feared, between purpose and despair, between sense and shite, between the outer world and the inner world, that straddles the curtain between what we know and what we think we suspect, hangs a dark veil that waves gently between the beckoning finger drawing us into the world of what could be and what never couldn't be possible to have dreamt; or do they? Perhaps it isn't. Maybe we were only dreaming. Perhaps the answers could be found in that other realm, that lies between the boundary of the heart and the sweaty laundry room of the imagination, where the only rhythms are the smiles of the forgotten winter and the incessant beating of the human thigh that we call fear...

"When your knight is a perilous yo-yo eaten by Destiny's right hand." Stephen Fry's narration is fantastic.

"Memo to Bush on Darfur"

Nicholas Kristof has written a great article on what steps the Bush administration should take toward tackling the situation in Darfur. A great read that stands solidly sober in a teeming sea of indignation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/10/opinion/10kristof.html?ex=1365566400&en=a3d65fc4bc87211e&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Googly Eyes Gardener

I try not to post videos of no consequence, but I found this one hilarious:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/16417/saturday-night-live-googly-eyes-gardener#s-p1-st-i0

Sage Wohns, the Rakuten Warrior

I'd like to bring to everyone's attention Sage's profile on page 11 (if you're going by the web viewing application, or page 9 if you're going by the magazine) of the May edition of J-Life.

One can immediately tell by his sinister stance and dangerously stylish suit that his presence in Japan is hazardous to the well-being of the Japanese nation. If it wasn't for his mystifyingly cabalistic look that says, "I may be dangerous, but man I look good in this suit," in a monastic sort of way, but with a touch of dash, I would notify the authorities forthwith.

Posthumous Poet

O here is my left hand and here is my right hand,
And I on myself cast up as on a desert island,
In my right hand a dagger and on my left hand a ring,
And from under my feet the earth falling.

O here is my beginning, and here is my ending,
And at my bedside the armoured day standing,
Saying, Rise up, my lost one, and begone
Into reality as into a prison.

- Sylvia Townsend Warner


Claire Harman's discussion of Warner's love poetry in "The Guardian"

Tibet protests

Critical Review or Loving Fantasy

The following is the most outrageous review of... well I'll let you guess until you get to the end. Hint: think 19th century piano virtuoso.

After the concert, he stands there like a conqueror on the field of battle, like a hero in the lists; vanquished pianos lie about him, broken strings flutter as trophies and flags of truce, frightened instruments flee in their terror into distant corners, the hearers look at each other in mute astonishment as after a storm from a clear sky, as after thunder and lightning mingled with a shower of blossoms and buds and dazzling rainbows; and he the Prometheus, who creates a form from every note, a magnetizer who conjures the electric fluid from every key, a gnome, an amiable monster, who now treats his beloved, the piano, tenderly, then tyranically; caresses, pouts, scolds, strikes, drags by the hair, and then, all the more fervently, with all the fire and glow of love, throws his arms around her with a shout, and away with her through all space; he stands there, bowing his head, leaning languidly on a chair, with a strange smile, like an exclamation mark after the outburst of universal admiration: this is Franz Liszt!

Old critical reviews of Prokofiev and his work

Here is New York Times music critic James Gibbons Huneker's opinion (from a 1918 issue) of Prokofiev's first piano concerto:

The First Piano Concerto of Prokofiev was in one movement, but compounded of many rhythms and recondite noises...The first descending figure -- it is hardly a theme -- is persistently affirmed in various nontonalities by the orchestra, the piano all the while shrieking, groaning, howling, fighting back, and in several instances it seemed to rear and bite the hand that chastised it...There were moments when the piano and orchestra made sounds that evoked not only the downfall of empires, but also of fine crockery, the fragments flying in all directions. He may be the Cossack Chopin for the next generation -- this tall, calm young man. The diabolic smiles press upon you as his huge hands, the hands of a musical primate, tear up trees and plow the soil. That fetching, old expression, 'Hell to pay and no pitch hot,' applies to Prokofiev: only he owns his Hades and has the necessary pitch in abundance.

And now an excerpt from "Musical America" about the 1916 premiere of Prokofiev's Scythian Suite in St. Petersburg:

Crashing Siberias, volcano hell, Krakatoa, sea-bottom crawlers. Incomprehensible? So is Prokofiev. A splendid tribute was paid to his Scythian Suite in Petrograd by Glazunov. The poor tortured classicist walked out of the hall during the performance of the work. No one walked out of Aeolian Hall, but several respectable pianists ran out.