Watch and Learn

Color me chastened.
Be inspired.

For the record

"If you don't use your own imagination, somebody else is going to use it for you."
Ron Sukenick

Redeeming Transmissions

Don't know how many PPIF congregants are familiar with the prophetic witness of Bill Hicks. Radiohead dedicated THE BENDS to his memory (I think I mention as much in Everyday Apocalypse). One of his quotes opens the final chapter of GATA. It's from his album, Rant in E-Minor: "Lift me up out of this illusion, Lord. Heal my perception, so that I may know only reality." Anyway, I find him crucial. Here's David Letterman repentantly relating a sad account of Hick's appearance on his show and undertaking an inspiringly awkward and deeply redemptive conversation with Bill's mother. You'll have to follow Youtube's directions to parts 2 and 3. I have the ever-loving, always-inspiring attentiveness of one Joe Nolan to thank for the heads-up concerning this excellent smidgin of television.

World Without End

...it was equally certainly a pleasant turn of the populace which gave him as sense of those normative letters the nickname Here Comes Everybody. An imposing everybody he always indeed looked, constantly the same as and equal to himself and magnificently well worthy of any and all such universalisation…from good start to happy finish the truly catholic assemblage gathered together…

"Superman exists. And he's American."

According to the Testimony of the Poets

The Song of Songs tells us that love is as strong as death, but immediately adds that jealousy is as cruel as the grave, and sexual relations in themselves appear to be inseparable, according to the testimony of the poets, from the tension of egos, the sense of ownership and possession, the panics of status.
Northrop Frye, Words With Power
image by Marc Chagall

Putting People in Faceless Categories

Come together...Right now.

April 1, 2009

Hebrew Melody

Clara Rockmore on theremin
Nadia Reisenberg on piano

United States of Unconsciousness

Disposable Heroes of the Hiphoprisy.
I saw this video at Greenbelt in '92 on a night when I'd been carrying Walker Percy's Message in a Bottle around in the hope that someone might ask me what I was reading. First spotted a favorite Marshall Mcluhan quote in the window of a Dublin bookstore not long afterward: "Anyone who thinks there's a difference between education and entertainment doesn't know the first thing about either." If, against convention, I could be allowed THREE bookends, I believe I could fit an awful lot of my adult-life squawking in-bethreen them.
Enjoy

Let Your Soul Lead the Way

I give you Afrika Bambaataa.

With Thanks As Ever To wood s lot

These days
whatever you have to say, leave
the roots on, let them
dangle

And the dirt

Just to make clear
where they come from
- Charles Olson

Failures Rise

Probably my favorite Switchfoot song.
Such words.

You can hear it too, if you're sincere.

It's just right.
I thank Mark Miller for the cue.

Words of Explanation

Well...I had a really nice Daily Show clip up (Stewart asking some questions of a Fox News anchor in view of the paradigm shift for Brand USA in the wake of the Obama victory. The dang thing got taken down. One tangent within the thread that followed seemed worth preserving. Ahna asked about the blog title and the Gibson quote, and I responded lengthily. Here tis:
ahna,

i am of course delighted that you asked. "Peer pressure is forever" is something I once heard (or read) Patty Smith say. I think she had in mind the blind conformity that sometimes gets hold of young people (stereotypically) and she was suggesting that this sad habit we have of surrendering our ability to see (or redemptively imagine) what's in front of us is a lifelong struggle. I thought it was funny and true and maybe a good title or banner to drape over the activity of this blog. The William Gibson quote is a wittily intended reminder that these are just thoughts and links asserted (I'd like to say whispered) amid the static and the noise. One reason I put it up there is to help people to receive what I post without going crazy in a "Oh! Right! So what you're REALLY SAYING is..." I suppose I'm trying to encourage people to add or respond to the drift I intend, ask questions about my drift that aren't accusations in disguise (which rhetorical questions almost always are), disagree as unheatedly as they can, OR take the time to cast a tiny bit of positive reinforcement my way. It's the blog which will pass (settle to the bottom of the sea), and I suppose I say as much to remind myself (and my kind readers) that the posts can serve the very big deal of helping them (as this collage and the collages of others often helps me) to go out and learn and gather and try to be good to people OR they (the posts) can just float on down to the bottom more or less harmlessly (i hope).
Ahna, my pal, thank you for occasioning this bit of self-reflection with the gift that is your insatiable curiosity. I believe you're helping me redeem the times.

best,

jdd

He doth prattle on

More of Geoff Little's kind attentiveness unto me...

Letting The Days Go By

I think I was 14 when I first saw this on MTV. At the time, it struck me as about the coolest thing I'd ever seen; funny and profound and moving in ways I could feel without being able to articulate exactly what I felt. Still feeling it.
Got to meet David Byrne a few weeks ago when he showed up at Grimey's, and he struck me as a kind, curious man with the vitality of someone who really believes that time is neither holding us nor is it after us. Very generous and attentive. Made me feel cool when he laughed loudly at something I said.
This feels like a good performance to post in view of the days ahead in the land of my sojourn. I dedicate it to my friend, Porkpie.

Whose Infomercial?

Culture of Life

Once one is exposed to the comprehensive wit of Wendell Berry, there is no going back. The question 'What Would Wendell Berry Do?' comes to inform all manner of decisions in our buying, selling, and doing. In a treatment that is both wide-ranging and robustly evangelical, Bonzo and Stevens bring Berry's witness to bear upon one dim-witted economy after another with an invigorating account of Berry's more magnanimous economic vision. In a constant call to look harder at the world we're in, creation is imagined not as a resource for endless plundering but rather the place where God's kingdom, the great economy, comes, offering the hospitality that sustains, our only home and our only hope.

EVERYTHING IS BROKEN

Here’s what it is: Steve Mason and Charlie Lowell (you’ll perhaps know them from such musical ventures as JARS OF CLAY), Brian Ritchey, Cary Gibson, founding performer of the Belfast-based collective called ikon, Matthew Perryman Jones, Katie Herzig, one Sarah Masen probably, Tom Wills with his moving images, and everyone else who comes. It’s called "EVERYTHING IS BROKEN. It's songs and thoughts and conversation and maybe a Bukowski poem. 7:00 to 8:30. THIS THURSDAY NIGHT...October 23. It's part of a program called "LIKE A PRAYER" that's been going on all semester (see the magnificent Todd Greene image above...click to enlarge). This is the HUMAN CONDITION component to be followed by more proclamation-ish evenings. This would be the ecclesiates section, if you like. The lamentation/confession/complaining piece of lyrical witness. The nod to the parts of the Bible (most parts?) which might not look so good inscribed on a poster with a basket-full of puppies. For a second or two, I thought we might do well to call it “Sad Songs Say So Much.” Coffee will flow. My partners in crime with whom I’m directing/emceeing the evening are Philip Hood, Andrea Thornton, and Lauren Roden. Come on out. Come with questions. How does the market serve/obstruct the possibilies of artistic witness? What are we waiting for? How is justice served when we say what we feel, not what we ought to say? When has a sad, straight-shooting song turned everything around? How did it help? Let’s talk.