December 28, 2008
December 24, 2008
Christmas Music: O Holy Night - Pick Your Favorite Version
Here are a few versions of one of my favorite Christmas songs. I've been compiling this list for a while:
Aretha Franklin & Billy Preston
Charlotte Church & Placido Domingo
Placido Domingo, José Carreras and Diana Ross
Brain McKnight and Jessica Simpson
My favorite? Andy Williams, until we get a version from Steel Pulse!
December 19, 2008
Why Music?
What appetite drives the proliferation of music to the point where the average American teenager spends 1½-2½ hours a day—an eighth of his waking life—listening to it?
My answer - Steel Pulse's Chant a Psalm:
November 10, 2008
Farewell Mama Afrika: Miriam Makeba Passes On
The Soweto Blues = The Worldwide Blues...
R.I.P. Mama Afrika. She died in Castel Volturno, near Caserta, Italy, of a heart attack, shortly after taking part in a concert organized to support writer Roberto Saviano in his stand against the Camorra, a mafia-like organisation
See also this stirring rendition of N'Kosi Sikeleli Africa:
October 14, 2008
Age and Classical Music
"Popular conception says the arts' supporters are graying and shriveling. But it may be that as the crowd's individuals change, its age doesn't."
Personally, I'd still rather listen to Steel Pulse.
May 21, 2008
Video: Amy Tan on creativity
Does death stimulate creativity? There's something in that - just ask Steve Jobs.
October 21, 2007
Chindogu anyone?
Being stalked? Just go ahead and camouflage yourself as a Coke machine.
Martin Fackler's NYTimes article Fearing Crime, Japanese Wear the Hiding Place gives us a look at the peculiar world of Japanese innovation.
Writes Fackler:
[Japan is] home to a prolific subculture of individual inventors, whose ideas range from practical to bizarre. Inventors say a tradition of tinkering and building has made Japan welcoming to experimental ideas, no matter how eccentric.
“Japanese society won’t just laugh, so inventors are not afraid to try new things,” said Takumi Hirai, chairman of Japan’s largest association of individual inventors, the 10,000-member Hatsumeigakkai.
In fact, Japan produces so many unusual inventions that it even has a word for them: chindogu, or “queer tools.”
A chindogu manifesto is available online for all you budding inventors. The ten tenets are:
1. A Chindogu cannot be for real use.
2. A Chindogu must exist.
3. Inherent in every Chindogu is the spirit of anarchy.
4. Chindogu are tools for everyday life.
5. Chindogu are not for sale.
6. Humor must not be the sole reason for creating Chindogu.
7. Chindogu are not propaganda.
8. Chindogu are never taboo.
9. Chindogu cannot be patented.
10. Chindogu are without prejudice.
And here are a few examples of chindogu from the King of Chindogu - Kenji Kawakami.
Finally, here's more from the International Chindogu Society. Check out the "portable zebra crossing" >>
March 4, 2007
The Best Spice Blog on the Web
And the award goes to Spicelines.com - the best spice blog on the web!
Move over Victoria Beckham! The authentic spice girl is Courtenay Beinhorn Dunk.
She describes herself as an "obsessive cook, style fanatic, avid traveler, reluctant writer, food photographer when the light is right..." Judge for yourself by visiting the Spiceline archives >>
Wait, there's more. Spices, you see, are part of our global heritage.
Says Dunk:
"The more I traveled, the more I noticed that spices and their flavors are global. It’s the local tastes that are different.
"When I ate fish head curry in Singapore I could taste the earthiness of the cumin that flavors carrot salad in Morocco and tomatillo salsa in Mexico. In Paris at Ze Kitchen Galerie, William Ledeuil used flowery Tahitian vanilla to bring out the sea-sweet taste of perfectly fresh sea bass. In the West we think of cinnamon as a dessert spice, yet at La Maison Bleue in Fez, it was the dominant spice in a savory 14th century lamb and couscous dish."
Wow.
Check out:
- Aurora's Chicken Enchiladas in Tomatillo Sauce with Garlic and Cumin
- Salt, Salt Everywhere: The Five Salts You Really Need
- Great Reads: Climbing the Mango Trees, a Spicy Memoir of India
There's even fiction like this bit - SpiceTales: Claire's Dream
Whew!
I've been so buried lately, that I hadn't notice that Courtenay has actually answered my request for "butter chicken"... the recipe I've been experimenting with for over seven years now. I'll try it this weekend! Thanks, Courtenay!! :-)
December 9, 2005
The Legislators of Mankind?
2005 Harold Pinter
2004 Elfriede Jelinek
2003 J.M. Coetzee
2002 Imre Kertész
2001 V.S. Naipaul
2000 Gao Xingjian
1999 Günter Grass
1998 José Saramago
1997 Dario Fo
1996 Wislawa Szymborska
1995 Seamus Heaney
1994 Kenzaburo Oe
1993 Toni Morrison
1992 Derek Walcott
1991 Nadine Gordimer
1990 Octavio Paz
1989 Camilo José Cela
1988 Naguib Mahfouz
1987 Joseph Brodsky
1986 Wole Soyinka
1985 Claude Simon
1984 Jaroslav Seifert
1983 William Golding
1982 Gabriel García Márquez
1981 Elias Canetti
1980 Czeslaw Milosz
1979 Odysseus Elytis
1978 Isaac Bashevis Singer
1977 Vicente Aleixandre
1976 Saul Bellow
1975 Eugenio Montale
1974 Eyvind Johnson, Harry Martinson
1973 Patrick White
1972 Heinrich Böll
1971 Pablo Neruda
1970 Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
1969 Samuel Beckett
1968 Yasunari Kawabata
1967 Miguel Angel Asturias
1966 Samuel Agnon, Nelly Sachs
1965 Mikhail Sholokhov
1964 Jean-Paul Sartre
1963 Giorgos Seferis
1962 John Steinbeck
1961 Ivo Andric
1960 Saint-John Perse
1959 Salvatore Quasimodo
1958 Boris Pasternak
1957 Albert Camus
1956 Juan Ramón Jiménez
1955 Halldór Laxness
1954 Ernest Hemingway
1953 Winston Churchill
1952 François Mauriac
1951 Pär Lagerkvist
1950 Bertrand Russell
1949 William Faulkner
1948 T.S. Eliot
1947 André Gide
1946 Hermann Hesse
1945 Gabriela Mistral
1944 Johannes V. Jensen
1943 The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section
1942 The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section
1941 The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section
1940 The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section
1939 Frans Eemil Sillanpää
1938 Pearl Buck
1937 Roger Martin du Gard
1936 Eugene O'Neill
1935 The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section
1934 Luigi Pirandello
1933 Ivan Bunin
1932 John Galsworthy
1931 Erik Axel Karlfeldt
1930 Sinclair Lewis
1929 Thomas Mann
1928 Sigrid Undset
1927 Henri Bergson
1926 Grazia Deledda
1925 George Bernard Shaw
1924 Wladyslaw Reymont
1923 William Butler Yeats
1922 Jacinto Benavente
1921 Anatole France
1920 Knut Hamsun
1919 Carl Spitteler
1918 The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section
1917 Karl Gjellerup, Henrik Pontoppidan
1916 Verner von Heidenstam
1915 Romain Rolland
1914 The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section
1913 Rabindranath Tagore
1912 Gerhart Hauptmann
1911 Maurice Maeterlinck
1910 Paul Heyse
1909 Selma Lagerlöf
1908 Rudolf Eucken
1907 Rudyard Kipling
1906 Giosuè Carducci
1905 Henryk Sienkiewicz
1904 Frédéric Mistral, José Echegaray
1903 Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
1902 Theodor Mommsen
1901 Sully Prudhomme
Harold Pinter's Nobel Lecture: The Pen Against the Sword
From Harold Pinter – Nobel Lecture
© THE NOBEL FOUNDATION 2005
In 1958 I wrote the following:
'There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.'
I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?
Truth in drama is forever elusive. You never quite find it but the search for it is compulsive. The search is clearly what drives the endeavour. The search is your task. More often than not you stumble upon the truth in the dark, colliding with it or just glimpsing an image or a shape which seems to correspond to the truth, often without realising that you have done so. But the real truth is that there never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.
I have often been asked how my plays come about. I cannot say. Nor can I ever sum up my plays, except to say that this is what happened. That is what they said. That is what they did.
.......
I have said earlier that the United States is now totally frank about putting its cards on the table. That is the case. Its official declared policy is now defined as 'full spectrum dominance'. That is not my term, it is theirs. 'Full spectrum dominance' means control of land, sea, air and space and all attendant resources.
The United States now occupies 702 military installations throughout the world in 132 countries, with the honourable exception of Sweden, of course. We don't quite know how they got there but they are there all right.
The United States possesses 8,000 active and operational nuclear warheads. Two thousand are on hair trigger alert, ready to be launched with 15 minutes warning. It is developing new systems of nuclear force, known as bunker busters. The British, ever cooperative, are intending to replace their own nuclear missile, Trident. Who, I wonder, are they aiming at? Osama bin Laden? You? Me? Joe Dokes? China? Paris? Who knows? What we do know is that this infantile insanity – the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons – is at the heart of present American political philosophy. We must remind ourselves that the United States is on a permanent military footing and shows no sign of relaxing it.
Many thousands, if not millions, of people in the United States itself are demonstrably sickened, shamed and angered by their government's actions, but as things stand they are not a coherent political force – yet. But the anxiety, uncertainty and fear which we can see growing daily in the United States is unlikely to diminish.
I know that President Bush has many extremely competent speech writers but I would like to volunteer for the job myself. I propose the following short address which he can make on television to the nation. I see him grave, hair carefully combed, serious, winning, sincere, often beguiling, sometimes employing a wry smile, curiously attractive, a man's man.
'God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. Bin Laden's God is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam's God was bad, except he didn't have one. He was a barbarian. We are not barbarians. We don't chop people's heads off. We believe in freedom. So does God. I am not a barbarian. I am the democratically elected leader of a freedom-loving democracy. We are a compassionate society. We give compassionate electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We are a great nation. I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian. He is. And he is. They all are. I possess moral authority. You see this fist? This is my moral authority. And don't you forget it.'
A writer's life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity. We don't have to weep about that. The writer makes his choice and is stuck with it. But it is true to say that you are open to all the winds, some of them icy indeed. You are out on your own, out on a limb. You find no shelter, no protection – unless you lie – in which case of course you have constructed your own protection and, it could be argued, become a politician.
I have referred to death quite a few times this evening. I shall now quote a poem of my own called 'Death'.
Where was the dead body found?
Who found the dead body?
Was the dead body dead when found?
How was the dead body found?
Who was the dead body?
Who was the father or daughter or brother
Or uncle or sister or mother or son
Of the dead and abandoned body?
Was the body dead when abandoned?
Was the body abandoned?
By whom had it been abandoned?
Was the dead body naked or dressed for a journey?
What made you declare the dead body dead?
Did you declare the dead body dead?
How well did you know the dead body?
How did you know the dead body was dead?
Did you wash the dead body
Did you close both its eyes
Did you bury the body
Did you leave it abandoned
Did you kiss the dead body
When we look into a mirror we think the image that confronts us is accurate. But move a millimetre and the image changes. We are actually looking at a never-ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror – for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us.
I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.
If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us – the dignity of man.
...
Read the whole thing and weep.
...
December 8, 2005
Fantasy News: The Great Uncyclopedia
Meaning. Meaningful. Meaningless. The news is fiction. Lies are truth. What happens when the news becomes "magical realism"? The largest post-modern mashup of thought and ideas: the Uncyclopedia.
a few samples:
- The How-To section [ see subsection: How to Make Up Quotes ]
- Attack of the 500 foot Jesus
- United States of America
- Bill Gates
What's scary is that the Uncyclopedia reminds me of the "new and improved" Nightline, now that Ted Koppel is gone. Koppel- can you believe how they've destroyed your show in so short a time? The work of decades destroyed in days.
"Ignorance is Strength!" see UnNews
"I get better news coverage watching Entertainment Tonight" - Oscar Wilde
November 24, 2005
Thomas Nast: Turkey Day 1881
November 23, 2005
Cartoon: "Diet Secrets of the Picasso Bulls"
November 14, 2005
Claude Monet: Happy Birthday!
The kids told me it was Monet's birthday today...
Springtime in Giverny- I cropped the picture for detail.
November 12, 2005
What Artists Know About Leadership
HBS Working Knowledge:
The image of artist, cast as a metaphor for those who provide acts of leadership, immediately evokes two primary responses—affirmation and resistance. Those who think of themselves as artists in the conventional sense of the word—for example, painters, sculptors, musicians, writers, architects, photographers, and some athletes and gardeners—may pick up the metaphor with ready enthusiasm, recognizing that incorporating their artist-self into their practice of leadership opens into a horizon of powerful possibilities. But those who suffered through their last required art project in school, or who hold the stereotype of an artist as nonrational, asocial, marginal, or soft—may cast a more jaundiced eye upon this metaphor.
It is highly likely, however, that the jaundiced eye belongs to someone who in some aspect of his or her professional or personal life exemplifies the power and qualities of an artist: the ability to work on an edge, in an interdependent relationship with the medium, with a capacity for creative improvisation. (Entrepreneurs and some politicians, physicians, and educators, for example, are akin to artists, seeking to bring into being what has not yet taken form.)
Hmmm.
November 4, 2005
The Landscape of Loneliness: R.C. Gorman
Farewell, American Idol.