(Video link here.) When our mind starts running hot like a machine overworking – fast and full of ideas and writing and deadlines – we welcome ways to slow down. This little film does the work of meditating, chilling us out while connecting us to a broader view of the life we are living. (The lovely music is “Aerial” by Moby, who allows free use of his music for independent film makers at MobyGratis.com - yay Moby!).
“This is a year-long time-lapse study of the sky. A camera installed on the roof of the Exploratorium museum in San Francisco captured an image of the sky every 10 seconds. From these images, I created a mosaic of time-lapse movies, each showing a single day. The days are arranged in chronological order. My intent was to reveal the patterns of light and weather over the course of a year.”
We always love hearing about where artists find their inspiration, and though this video of Leonard Cohen runs a little long, he has much to say about the process of cultivating an authentic “voice”. At about 5:26, he tells the story of how he went from fumbling around on the guitar to really “finding his song.” (You can also simply read the transcript here; start about 6 paragraphs down when he talks about Garcia Lorca.) Cohen recalls visiting his mother in Montreal and happening upon a young Spanish flamenco guitar player. He convinced the guitarist to give him lessons, and the young man showed up at Cohen’s home for three consecutive days. For three days they worked on the same six-chord progression, and Cohen, though he still couldn’t play as beautifully as the guitarist, finally had the building blocks of a song.
The story ends with tragedy, when the guitar player did not show up on the fourth day and Cohen learned that the young man had committed suicide. The guitarist’s few lessons would prove to have great impact on Cohen: the six chords he was taught that summer went on to be the foundation of all of his songs. (And there are many songs.)
For us, it is a key lesson in improvising: read more…
(Video link here.) In 1964, the great Anthony Quinn, then 49, knocked everyone out with the famous scene in the movie Zorba the Greek where he teaches an uptight Englishman how to dance after his business enterprise goes bust. It remains one of the most life-affirming moments in screen history. You can feel the sun and the sea air, and pure joy. We grew up with it, and with the lovely, alive music of composer Mikos Theodorakis.
We’d forgotten about it until the other day, when a reader sent us a video of Quinn, age 84 – two years before he died – dancing the sirtaki from Zorba the Greek, in a sweet reunion with the composer, his dear old friend. There is a stunning amount of love in it. read more…
(Video link here.) After we posted a video of Bjork frolicking in her “bell dress”, we got an email from a reader alerting us to the “sonic fabric” designed by Alyce Santoro. It’s a fabric made from polyester thread and audiocassette tape recorded with intricate collages of sound so that it is, literally, woven with sound. This video tells the story of Santoro’s inspiration and process in making this wild stuff; it’s an interesting, curiously relaxing inside-look at the unexpected connections and associations that carried her along, as one idea led to another to another…
Meanwhile, here’s a 1 minute video of musician Jon Fishman wearing and playing his sonic fabric dress… read more…
A while back, our friend Fast Forward showed us images of his recent trip to Hong Kong; many are annotated in true Fastian (or is it Forward-ian?) style, which show HIS unique way of seeing things, as an experimental/culinarian composer/artist . Beat-up drums full of something – cooking oil, perhaps – become “percussion instruments” in his eyes. We especially love these potentially chic “seaweed scarves” read more…
(Video link here.) Here’s a glimpse of the interactive iPAD app that Björk recently created to be part of her recent album, as she tries to give create ever more dimensions in her music. Its introduction, narrated by David Attenborough, is a strange combination of beautiful, inspiring and ever-so-slightly hokey, in a good way. We like what she’s trying to do and the sentiment behind it…especially the idea of our selves as gateways:
Forget the size of the human body. Remember that you are a gateway between universal and the microscopic, the unseen forces that stir the depths of your innermost being and nature who embraces you and all that there is.
One of our favorite pieces by experimental composer Fast Forward is this zen wonder, created by Fast holding a drum in the rain. (Video link here.) We asked him how it came about:
Not far from my house is a fantastic riverbed rock quarry. The acoustics down there are incredible. One day, my friend and I went to play there and on came a rain shower…a frame drum played by the heavens…
Boy, is THAT living in the moment, making the most of what is on hand!
(Video link here.) We were really sad to hear of Amy Winehouse’s passing at the age of 27. We were aware of her wild descent in the corner of our consciousness, through tabloid headlines mainly. When we read the news of her death, we found ourselves watching one YouTube video after another, trying to piece together her story. Over seven or so years of videos, the change from her early appearances at the age of twenty to later concerts is startling, as she gradually morphed from patently ladylike to crazily beehived and tattooed, as she became thinner and thinner. We saw, in hindsight, a person crashing and burning. The constant in all the videos was a look in her eyes, a mix of fear and uncertainty and…what?
In an interview, Winehouse said the lyrics she wrote were autobiographical. The haunting refrain from You Know I’m No Good is one we’ve heard echoed by many people we’ve known, who’ve struggled with addiction of various kinds, or fought simply to live in the world being themselves: to just BE without tearing themselves down: read more…
A couple of months ago, we received an interesting comment thanking us for a quote we posted from John Cage’s A Year from Monday: “Even though I have 2 copies of this book, knew JC and spent 30 years performing his music, it was still great to see”. It was signed ‘Fast Forward’. Well of course we followed the trail.
We found ourselves on the website of a prolific New York city-based experimental composer who favors non-traditional percussion instruments made of…ANYTHING, from industrial paint cans to metal staircases (“basically one big piece of sonorous metal”). We instantly fell in love with Musique a la Mode in which all instruments were made from common kitchen items: pots, pans, bowls, cutlery, tools, food…(favorite moments: 1:40 mins where the spatulas seem to have a life of their own…2:45 a whisk in a metal sauce container….5:45 music made from pasta). We find ourselves running the video while we work just to listen to Fast’s music in the background.
Fast performs all over the world, created music for many of Merce Cunningham‘s event works, is the mastermind behind a participatory performance experience Feeding Frenzy (involving 5 cooks and 5 musicians, 5 waiters and an audience), teaches, photographs, makes art, and always, music. But what knocked us out, in addition to all this, was read more…
We recently came back from our second memorial this year in the town of Helvetia, in the West Virginia Appalachians. It was a party, really, to celebrate the big fat life of our friend Eleanor Mailloux, who passed away recently at the age of 94. Out in the meadow next to her house, two make-shift cookers were going, grilling spatchcocked chickens and corn, and a 20-foot table held huge bowls of Eleanor’s favorite foods. Beer from her grandson Willie’s brewery flowed alongside homemade wine her friends had brought. Music blared at just the right pitch.
Often in Helvetia after a family has buried a loved one, the community puts on a covered-dish supper, and a square dance may follow, as it did for our friend Rogers McAvoy. Dancing and stomping and swinging and drinking out on the porch of the community hall helped Rogers’ friends to find read more…
We were sad to hear that Clarence Clemons, legendary saxaphonist in Springsteen’s E Street band, passed away. He’s left an legacy of great riffs in the world and in our collective psyches, including this one from Jungleland.
The story of how he and Springsteen met is some kind of amazing, about how two people can catalyze each other to create. From yesterday’s New York Times: read more…
No sooner than we published our post about Steven Hawking than we came across a great post on Neatorama about 5 musicians who had serious injuries that they were told – or they assumed – would end their career, from Django Reinhardt to The Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia and Chet Baker. They all figured out a unique solution t their big constraint, and continued playing professionally.
They all defied conceptions of “disabled”. They were definitely – differently – ”abled”…
Many were inspired by Django Reinhardt, whose 3rd and 4th fingers on his left hand were paralyzed in an accident; he figured out how to play cords with just two fingers. Most share one essential: having a friend or family joining with them in finding the way, or a role model like Django, whose outside-the-box thinking inspired their own. Read the story here.
