June 12, 2013
June 10, 2013
“Being attentive to the needs of others might not be the point of life, but it is the work of life. It can be messy, and painful, and almost impossibly difficult. But it is not something we give. It is what we get in exchange for having to die.”
June 4, 2013
Aleksandra Mir - The Meaning of Flowers
The Meaning of Flowers is a print project by Aleksandra Mir produced in Palermo, Sicily, in the summer of 2006. Drawing upon the fact that flowers are classically imbued with a specific set of semantic meanings, many of them idealistic and hopeful, Mir has edited and revised the botanical code in a more socially relevant fashion. The new meanings suggest insecurity, doubt, fatigue, betrayal and reconciliation—symptoms and elements that comprise the majority of romantic relationships. Combining both ‘high’ and ‘low’ fine-art techniques, such as that of the elegant letterpress that recalls old world civility and the pressed fruit and vegetables from local markets that hearken back to kindergarten art activities, a completely new and idiosyncratic type of botanical print is created.
June 3, 2013
May 24, 2013
Camille Seaman (via but does it float)
May 23, 2013
Japanese Exhibition Poster: Oscar Niemeyer 1997 Japan. Ikko Tanaka. 1997
Boards of Canada - Reach for the Dead
Officially getting pretty excited for the new BoC album. Sounds like they’re getting back to the more complex, synthetic beats of Music Has The Right To Children, as opposed to the more straightforward rock-ish drums of everything since then. I always thought they did that kind of beat programming uniquely well — like Autechre filtered through some sort of weird organic decomposition process, plus the occasional bongo — and was bummed that they ditched it so quickly. Also the Moroder-esque arpeggio going on in this song is a new direction for them; less analog 80’s, more digital. Stoked.
April 25, 2013
Serge Gainsbourg & Brigitte Bardot - Bonnie And Clyde
Man, this song. I heard it for the first time on this week’s Mad Men, liked it, thought maybe it was Gainsbourg and also felt like I’ve completely failed at this music listening thing to be only hearing it now, via a TV show no less. Or maybe it’s just that stumbling on something new, music-related and fantastic via completely unpersonalized mass media (as opposed to hyper-curated content drips like Twitter, Rdio or This Is My Jam) feels pretty unfamiliar at this point, and my age.
Or maybe I’m just a snob who thinks he’s cooler than the snobby TV show he’s watching, and isn’t.
Anyway, I was mostly just excited because it’s great, and I’m glad I found it, and I’m surprised it has a music video, and here is the music video.
Also, the majestic, crescendo-that-never-ends vibe of this reminds me of the tail-end of Deerhunter’s “Desire Lines” — right about here to be exact. If I still played records in public I would totally mix the former into the latter. And those would be 10 totally sublime minutes.
April 24, 2013
Daredevil water skiers ride a foamy wake through a rock tunnel off St. George’s Bay, Beirut, Lebanon, April 1958. Photograph by Thomas J. Abercrombie, National Geographic
April 22, 2013
“In the moment an emotion is expressed or an event reported on, I don’t quite feel the emotion or the event; the names for things partially and temporarily replace their actuality. The need for this relief may explain the desperate quality of my and perhaps your online reading, and of much that is written online or said into TV cameras. Language in the utterance is some escape from what it says. But then the world that is not bits or syllables resumes its undeflected course.”
April 3, 2013
March 19, 2013
“The painful and inevitable struggle remains to create in a childlike and openhearted manner, but to be un-wistful and cruel when judging one’s creation.”
March 18, 2013
“BGM 3” by Hirokazu “Hip” Tanaka [I think] (From “Mario Paint” [1992])
The best SNES tune.
Are we sure Boards of Canada didn’t write this? Cause you totally could’ve fooled me. #toadstandingalone
