[The MP3s available here are for sampling purposes only. Please support the artists by buying their albums. If you are the artist or label rep and don't want an MP3 featured, please email me]
My reason for living this month is to promote Noah Baumbach’s latest film, Greenberg. Few have seen it around these parts and that is just wrong. I’ve caught it twice in the theater and bought the soundtrack and some of Baumbach’s earlier films, even sought out certain Mumblecore films which Greenberg has some tenuous ties to (mostly through the casting of Greta Gerwig and Mark Duplass). Suffice it to say, I am a fan. The soundtrack does exactly what I want a soundtrack to do, embody the spirit of the film while mixing a bit of the old with the new. Although not quite up to my favorite soundtrack of last year, Away We Go, Greenberg’s has been steadily growing on me through constant replay on my ipod. The bulk of the tracks are by James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem, his minimalist vibe is perfectly mellow and befitting of the slacker Greenberg. These are interspersed amongst some nicely repurposed classic songs from Albert Hammond and Steve Miller Band that almost appear written for the character in a strange way, and then of course you gotta have your Duran Duran coke music.
Have a listen.
People – James Murphy
1. People – James Murphy
Jet Airliner – Steve Miller Band
2. Jet Airliner -Steve Miller Band
Strange – Galaxie 500
1. Strange – Galaxie 500
[The MP3s available here are for sampling purposes only. Please support the artists by buying their albums and going to their shows. If you are the artist or label rep and don't want an MP3 featured, please email me]
Behold I give unto you a playlist two millennia in the making…
The mixtaping of the New Testament. Here you shall find no hymns, nor celestial choirs, but rather the artful repurposing of the popular towards some relevant theme therein writ. My original intent was to make a playlist so devastatingly profound that it would make non-believers convert, but I soon reconciled the fact that this was not to be. The final product is a mixed bag of tones and musical styles which lean somewhat precariously towards the whimsical. Go figure. Despite the shifts, there is, I think, a coherent narrative running through the lyrics… Jesus came down, fought the injustice of the world, made an impact, died and was reborn. The apocalypse is captured in the final song, and everything past, present and future comes to a close.
1. Here’s Your Future – The Thermals
1. Here’s Your Future – The Thermals
2. Indefinable – Essie Jain (The Nativity)
2. Indefinable – Essie Jain
3. The Body’s Only Rental – Katie Dill (Sermon on the Mount)
3. The Body’s Only Rental – Katie Dill
4. Eraser (XXXchange mix) – Thom Yorke (Temptation of Jesus by Satan)
34. Eraser (XXXchange mix) – Thom Yorke
5. 4 Minute Warning – Radiohead (Agony in the Garden)
5. 4 Minute Warning – Radiohead
6. Boogie Street – Leonard Cohen (Judas Kiss)
6. Boogie Street – Leonard Cohen
7. Love your Enemies – William Burroughs
7. Love your Enemies – William Burroughs
8. Gotta Work – Amerie (The Passions)
8. Gotta Work – Amerie
9. Singing to the Thieves – Lazarus (Jesus Crucified with Two Thieves)
9. Singing to the Thieves – Lazarus
10. Heathen (The Rays) – David Bowie (The Ascension)
10. Heathen (The Rays) – David Bowie
11. Sisters of Mercy – Beth Orton (The Spreading of the Word)
11. Sisters of Mercy – Beth Orton
12. The Past is a Grotesque Animal – Of Montreal (The Apocalypse)
12. The Past is a Grotesque Animal – Of Montreal
Recently, I picked up Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. I figured a story about a nine year old boy walking around New York City on and around the events of September 11th had at the very least great dramatic potential, and perhaps at the most something very important to say, so I took the chance. Then I read the book. It is the difference between talking about emotion in the abstract and actually feeling emotion, what at first seemed a good idea evolved into a concern for my ability to speak coherently on something that has genuinely affected me. My preconception of the novel was that it would keep a certain distance from the emotional impact of the events of September 11th because they were being filtered through the eyes of a nine year old boy, that the child’s naivety would offer a suitable access point to the tragedy that we as the readers could in some safe way relive and perhaps reinterpret the tragedy as only a child could do. But, in the words of the novel’s protagonist, Oskar Schell, I am left with very heavy boots. Foer has not in any way diffused the emotional impact of ‘the worst day’ through the comedic foil of Oskar’s imagination – which runs rampant with an intensity only a nine year old could maintain – but rather has made it all the more human and tragic through this sidelong glance.
Oskar is a formidable character who, yes, bears similarities to Huck Finn and Holden Caulfield insomuch as they too were formidable and they too perceived the world from the pocket wisdom of youth. But Oskar is also unique, an exceptionally gifted child who has grafted a piecemeal mythology of the world that excels his years in sophistication. Though he may need to google various historical namedrops other characters inform him of, what Oskar shines at is his understanding of the root value of things, and by way of his incessant ‘inventing’ he strives to correct the failings of the world so that they fit this vision. The spirit of the enlightenment is alive and well in him, and though he shares some of Holden’s pessimism towards society, Oskar maintains a buoyant determination that is both inspiring yet hopelessly insufficient considering the gravity of the tragedy he is fighting against. In a way it is much like Don Quixote, the impossible dreamer who also eventually succumbs to reality. Many characters in ‘Extremely Close’ try to protect Oskar from the harsh realities but it is to no avail, Foer’s prose remain adamant this pain should sear. Read More
[The MP3s available here are for sampling purposes only. Please support the artists by buying their albums and going to their shows. If you are the artist or label rep and don't want an MP3 featured, please email me]
Occasionaly a lyricist is able to pen in a sparse collection of words something so profoundly moving that it rivals the narrative punch of drawn-out novels and scripts. Something immediately compelling is parcelled into a few choice words and a sudden clarity of understanding overwhelms. The universe for that moment is resting on each verse, the music accentuating every pause and intonation. Part wonder at the craftmanship of each phrase, part immersion in the storytelling, the following songs are testaments to the range of great lyrics I consider worth commemorating in this playlist. A song like Nick Cave’s Darker with the Day is a baroque feast of words that teeter into sublimely evocative storytelling vignettes, whereas a song like Cat Steven’s Father and Son rests at the other end of the spectrum, succinct and composed in its competing voices. And, of course, there is my favorite song lyrical or otherwise, Leonard Cohen’s ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’, which includes these sorrowful verses:
I hear that your building your little house deep in the desert, your living for nothing now, hope you are keeping some kind of record… and you treated my woman to a flake of your life, and when she came back she was nobody’s wife.
1) Nick Cave – Darker with the Day (the last song of the phenomenal achievement ‘No More Shall We Part’… ‘a gilled jesus shivering on a fisherman’s hook’)
1) Nick Cave – Darker with the Day
2) Leonard Cohen – Famous Blue Raincoat (crystalline perfection, to shatter and reassemble and shatter again, the eternal ache)
2) Leonard Cohen – Famous Blue Raincoat
3) Cat Stevens – Father and Son (ah youth, ain’t it the truth)
3) Cat Stevens – Father and Son
4) Junip – Ghost of Tom Joad (ok, this should be by Bruce Springsteen, but as I do not own that version in mp3 format, this stunning cover will suffice. ‘welcome to the new world order’)
4) Junip – Ghost of Tom Joad
5) Bob Dylan – Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall (the song that made Allen Ginsberg tear up reminiscing about in Scorsese’s ‘No Direction Home’ documentary. I normally do not approve of ‘list’ songs, but this is truly the distillation of something bigger than us all, a damn near way of life)
5) Bob Dylan – Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall
6) Will Oldham – I See a Darkness (Johnny Cash does a haunting cover of this that you can listen to on my Don Quixote playlist, but Oldham gives the right chill factor to these perfectly chosen words)
6) Will Oldham – I See a Darkness
7) Tim Buckley – Song to the Siren (‘long floatin’ on shipless oceans/ I did all my best to smile/ til your singin eyes and fingers/ drew me loving to your isle’ ‘nuf said)
7) Tim Buckley – Song to the Siren
8 Tom Waits – Time (very hard to choose one example of Tom Waits talents, but this is a favorite of mine from Rain Dogs, even though the more obvious choice would be Ol’ 55)
8 Tom Waits – Time
9) Vic Chesnutt – See You Around (best end song to a playlist ever, in addition to the great lyrics. Vic kicks your ass around with his verbiage, such a brilliant little song and it captures so much of my personality in the process I had to include it)
9) Vic Chesnutt – See You Around
To those younger than me and more in tune with the zeitgeist than I, allow me this indulgence, let me for a minute or two suppose I actually discovered Girl Talk, that this isn’t an admission of obsolescence on my part, but that I really am on the cutting edge of music.
Mash-ups are old hat now, and there will be some who, even if they have not heard of Girl Talk, will sneer and scoff at what I am about to introduce as nothing more than mash-ups or worse, dj antics. You sir, would be wrong. You madam, would be wrong.
I am probably the last person to get this excited about a musician that does nothing more than sample pre-existing works, it doesn’t fit my profile, but I AM that excited. It helped that I watched a
documentary that put Girl Talk in context and made me really see the genius of what this guy pulls off.
This is the inevitable result of a mixtape culture, a remix revolution is afoot. Take a listen to a man and his laptop who is changing music by rearranging music.
Bounce That
Bounce That
Shut the Club Down
Shut the Club Down
Still Here
1. Still Here
Here’s the Thing
2. Here’s the Thing
I’m ill
I’m Ill
See Rip! A Remix Manifesto for footage of Girl Talk and a fascinating discussion on the state of the culture war between CopyRight and CopyLeft (my review of the documentary is here)
Behold the future of music, Greg Gillis, a.k.a. Girl Talk, a one man lap top wielding collage music appropriator. He is pretty famous now with the young generation but I only discovered him on the documentary Rip! A Remix Manifesto. They are the songs you know but never heard like this. Don’t call him a DJ, what he is doing is far more sophisticated, the layers run deep. The result is something I can genuinely say I’ve never experienced before, how often can you say that?
The first one is a mash-up video created by fans, mashing up video footage to go along with the mash-up music
Girl Talk- Feed The Animals “Play Your Part (Pt. 1)”
and Now the live experience plus interview
How it looks when the audience gets on stage with him
Girl Talk -gravity- #1a tiny dancer
and because I can’t get enough of this guy, his big single made into a fan video:
Girl Talk – Bounce That (Best Fan Video Ever)
I rarely buy full albums anymore, but in the span of a couple months I have bought three. As part of my recent music kick I would like to share a few tracks from each in the hopes that word will spread about how great they are. The mp3s, as usual, are for sampling purposes only, if you like what you hear, then go out and buy the music, you won’t be disappointed. If you are the artist or label rep and don’t want an MP3 featured, please email me
Regina Spektor – Far
Ever since the debut of her album Soviet Kitsch I have fallen for the goofy hamming it up vocal theatrics of Regina Spektor. Her voice is lovely, her songs carry that off the cuff performance energy, and let’s be honest, she is a beautiful woman to boot. Her last album felt too polished and deliberate, but with Far she has returned to the vocal manic departures (including dolphin sounds) that I have grown to love. Probably never going to break into mass appeal, her music is a niche pleasure, a somewhat naive and bouncy Bardot concoction that keeps summer alive.
Folding Chair
Folding Chair
Machine
Machine
Hayden – The Place Where We Lived
I have been a longtime fan of local Toronto troubadour, Hayden, ever since his grungy nineties arrival on the scene with the album Everything I Long For (one of my ten favorite albums of all time). Known mostly for his brooding and melancholic ballads about loneliness and loss, The Place Where We Lived is much of the same, though characteristic of a late country bent to his work. His song Let’s Break Up is unusually upbeat, for Hayden, and for the subject matter, but ‘Never the Lonely’ is the best gage for newcomers to the kind of wry sadness he is known for… as it begins “I’m doin’ just fine”.
Let’s Break Up
Let’s Break Up
Never Lonely
09 Never Lonely.mp3
Away We Go Soundtrack
Not since Once has a soundtrack so consumed me and been on constant repeat on my ipod… seriously I have played this soundtrack to death, and need to stay a way from it for a bit. Filled mostly with Alexi Murdoch tracks the album keeps to a Nick Drake moodiness (Murdoch’s voice is often mistaken as Drake’s). His song ‘All My Days’ which played in the trailer for the movie is my favorite Murdoch song on the soundtrack but there are other great numbers to choose from, many of them played throughout the film (I think at least five tracks). The final scene is set against ‘Wait’, one of his more conventional indie pop songs. The real find on the album for me was The Velvet Underground’s ‘Sweet Nothin’ which somehow I have never heard before, and it is glorious.
All My Days
All My Days
Wait
Wait
[The MP3s available here are for sampling purposes only. Please support the artists by buying their albums and going to their shows. If you are the artist or label rep and don't want an MP3 featured, please email me]
Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums is a grinning fool of a book, partially autobiographical, spewing forth like a wine-induced poetry reading, all mirth and chaos, and yet, fighting through the adolescence and restless spontaneity of the piece is the aspiration for a mature spiritual enlightenment of a Buddhist nature, a clamor in pursuit of calm. Throughout the loosely strung events of the book, a gaggle of beatniks (Zen Lunatics) traverse America, climb mountains, sleep in boxcars, quibble over dogma, screw and meditate. As escpaist literature goes this entry really hits the spot, calling out to that teenager in me who still longs for the satori Suzuki talked about. One feels the joy of at least Kerouac’s kind of buddhism through his tumbling diction, that cascade of words which become descriptive/poetic/paintstrokes creating a fiery mosaic of what is in reality a fairly non-eventful series of events. He of course wrote this novel in a flow without editing as a disciplined act of spontaneity hoping to capture some of the instilled truth of his experiences through it. The effect is awesome and awe-inspiring.
In the same spirit I have cobbled together a playlist which shares the same pleasure of creation and spiritual themes of the novel. Finally I get to give some love to Cat Stevens.
01 Through a Hole – Whispertown 2000
01 Through a Hole – Whispertown 2000
02 Miles from Nowhere – Cat Stevens
02 Miles from Nowhere – Cat Stevens
03 Our Friends Appear Like the Dawn – Bodies of Water
03 Our Friends Appear Like the Dawn – Bodies of Water
04 Rickshaw – Damian Weber
04 Rickshaw – Damian Weber
05 The Biggest Thing Man Has Ever Done – Woody Guthrie
05 The Biggest Thing Man Has Ever Done – Woody Guthrie
06 Daisies – Royal City
06 Daisies – Royal City
07 Sunday Just Keeps on Rolling – Mum
07 Sunday Just Keeps on Rolling – Mum
08 Will is My Friend – Devendra Banhart
08 Will is My Friend – Devendra Banhart
[The MP3s available here are for sampling purposes only. Please support the artists by buying their albums and going to their shows. If you are the artist or label rep and don't want an MP3 featured, please email me]
The news today gets me thinking about the Dust Bowl, this looming spectre of the past that I never lived through but which I have grown to appreciate through my vicarious admiration of the works of Ford and Steinbeck. The faux-nostalgia of borrowed cinematic memories has conjured a vision of the Great Depression that feels more real to me now then my domesticated life. As part of one of the first generations in Western civilization unburdened with the hardships of war and financial instability, yet privy to the knowledge of past events, I feel the absence of burden all the more acutely as an affront to my more primal instincts. It is sad to think that in spite of the security I possess there is some additional impulse that longs for upset. Perhaps it is the pull of my biological capacities which require and are designed for more than convenience. Perhaps it is the sublime pull of aesthetics that seeks the sensation of immediacy which conflict offers. Or maybe it is that I am not as young as I used to be and all I can think of is entropy, the personal and the impersonal histories (the Great Depressions) superimposed on one another as a single running narrative.
In the last week I have become deeply disheartened with the state of the world, a sensibility I am usually able to factor out of my thoughts with little trouble – man’s frail absurdity was always something I could sidestep as I pursued my personal interests – but the vile hypocrisies of Church and State have become too boorish to ignore. I want to purge it all, and escape to a place that better suits my newly enflamed mood.
The Ghost of Tom Joad is just such a place. How I want to live inside this song, and sit beside that campfire away from the highway that is kidding no one. Both the original version by Bruce Springsteen and the recent cover by Jose Gonzales (Junip is his side project) do the trick, but if I had to choose I would go with the stark power of Jose’s rendition. I originally conceived of this post around Junip’s version but as I became more enthusiastic with the Great Depression mythology underlying it, I soon decided to make an entire playlist out of it, to flesh out the world of Tom Joad that I long to be a part of. I include the infamous final speech of John Ford’s classic ‘The Grapes of Wrath’, a speech that has yet to make it to YouTube unfortunately, so the printed word will have to suffice. A fervent idealist from a faraway reality, Tom Joad is a man of action who confronts the social injustices he sees all around him, something I admire but do not yet emulate.
01 Junip – The Ghost of Tom Joad
01 Junip – The Ghost of Tom Joad
02 Woody Guthrie – Tom Joad Part 1
02 Woody Guthrie – Tom Joad Part 1
03 Bob Dylan – Workingman’s Blues #2
03 Bob Dylan – Workingman’s Blues #2
04 Tom Waits – Time
05 Leadbelly – Midnight Special
05 Leadbelly – Midnight Special
06 Blind Willie Johnson – John the Revelator
06 Blind Willie Johnson – John the Revelator
07 Bob Dylan – Man of Constant Sorrows
07 Bob Dylan – Man of Constant Sorrows
>
Henry Fonda’s classic speech from ‘Grapes of Wrath’:
Tom Joad: I been thinking about us, too, about our people living like pigs and good rich land layin’ fallow. Or maybe one guy with a million acres and a hundred thousand farmers starvin’. And I been wonderin’ if all our folks got together and yelled -
Ma Joad: Tommy, they’d drag you out and cut you down just like they done to Casey.
Tom: They’d drag me anyways. Sooner or later they’ll get me one way or another. Till then -
Ma: Tommy, you’re not aimin’ to kill nobody.
Tom: No, Ma, not that. That ain’t it. Just, as long as I’m an outlaw anyways, maybe I can do something, just find out somethin’, just scrounge around and maybe find out what it is that’s wrong and see if they ain’t somethin’ that can be done about it. I ain’t thought it out that clear, Ma. I can’t. I don’t know enough.
Ma: How am I gonna know about ya, Tommy? They could kill ya and I’d never know. They could hurt ya. How am I gonna know?
Tom: Maybe it’s like Casey says. A fellow ain’t got a soul of his own, just little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody, then -
Ma: Then what, Tom?
Tom: Then it don’t matter. I’ll be all around in the dark. I’ll be everywhere, wherever you can look. Wherever there’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad. I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready and where people are eatin’ the stuff they raise and livin’ in the houses they build. I’ll be there, too.
Ma: I don’t understand it, Tom.
Tom: Me, neither, Ma, but – just somethin’ I been thinkin’ about.
NOTE: There are NO Spoilers in this post, its safe to read.
As much as we fans of Lost cannot seem to shut up about it, and can generally agree that what we are watching is something special and ambitious that pushes the envelope of both science fiction and suspense, most of us are well aware of the show’s flaws, and bitch about them almost as much as we heap praise. Some people watch the show for the characters and the character development, while others, like myself, are really there for the island mythology and the mechanics of the show’s storytelling. Lost is a behemoth of a show, with one of the largest casts and one of the most convoluted narratives ever attempted on broadcast television. With so many balls being juggled it is no wonder the show trips up now and then, and it is almost miraculous that it has stayed this relatively coherent considering that Lostpedia counts over a hundred different mysteries posed by the show during its five season run. The following is a gripe list, and while it is mostly directed towards Lost, the observations are often general enough to apply to similar shows (i.e., Battlestar Galactica, for how great a show it is, still resorts to some of the same tropes). I am sure I have left something out so please add in the comment thread if you see an omission, or if you plain disagree with my choices.
Please remember to add spoiler warnings to your comments when needed. Nothing in my list is spoilerific.
1. Do not inventory the living characters on the front of dvd cases
2. Do not balk at killing someone when an episode ends with character being shot in chest
3. If you are going to have so many damn characters kill some off regularly
4. Do not stagger mythology episodes amongst character driven episodes, the show should flow without interruption
5. No more self-contained episodes that transgress the logic of the bigger story or the behavior of characters thus far established
6. Never have a character who is suspicious of a character turn their back mid-conversation
7. While some degree of miscommunication is necessary to keep intrigue alive, suppose that characters gossip outside of the mandates of plot
8. No guest star names in opening credits
9. Do not wait until last second to defuse detonation
10. Dead is dead (see #2)
11. Depict appropriate amount of shock and disbelief when characters exposed to reality-altering scenarios
12. While the Giacchino score is cool and all, sometimes silence is golden
13. Rather than resort to filler episodes, linger longer on reactions (not in a soap opera way but as to let the characters breathe)
14. Despite what most everyone else thinks, the beginning of season 3 is exactly the right balance of character and mythology. Keep to that.
15. Do not create mysteries without an organic exit strategy that goes beyond staggered out reveals (as much work put into thinking up the
mysteries, twice as much effort must be made to think of how to cover your tracks at every point of the storytelling)
16. Veil yourself in familiar myths but use only as a tactic to disarm audience
17. Resist archetypes when fleshing out character, we should not be able to anticipate responses so mechanically
18. More Jack Beard though.
19. No more red shirts, the characters you have need to be characters with stakes, all else should be scenery
20. Moratorium on starting episodes with a future event and the rest of episode working from past forward to that date
[This is the third in my series of mixtapes that evoke the spirit of auteur filmmakers. I welcome suggestions for future selections. The MP3s available here are for sampling purposes only. Please support the artists by buying their albums and going to their shows. If you are the artist or label rep and don't want an MP3 featured, please email me]
At its best, a Wong Kar-Wai film reproduces the fever pitch of a music-induced daydream. A love song patters out a simple vision that plays out on a rain-soaked windowpane, story fragments form in the emotional ether that each rise of sound elicits, lyrics dipped in nostalgia drip off the song. Nothing is distinct, everything flows into one another, sound, lyric, dialogue, image all smudge together, all rested from the same sublime delight of feeling.
In order to convey Kar-Wai’s unique ear for music, I attempted to restrict myself to music that was first and foremost, musical. This was a very difficult task for me as my inclination is towards lyrics first, music second. If you listen to the songs in films like Chungking Express or Fallen Angel, or more recently with My Blueberry Nights, lyrics are rarely emphatic, it tends to be about the mood that each song conveys as it passes through. However, something like the title song in Happy Together goes against this idea, a carefully placed pronouncement of on-the-nose lyrics, yet even this is sheathed in a musical familiarity that plays on both levels; such is the brilliance of his soundtracks. I have tried to apply the same ratio in my selections, the Nouvelle Vague track being very reminiscent of Happy Together, but on the whole keeping to a softer yet familiar sound wobbling in the background, at times letting instruments murmur to one another, all trying to get at something whimsically, lost in their own pleasure. This mixtape is not so much a return to the music of Kar-Wai’s films, but the promise of something more, possessing the same general spirit but conscious of his recent venture into American landscapes, the music unabashedly American, and lacking in his international variety.
Still I like to think it belongs on the same jukebox that reappears like a ghostly portent in the Kar-Wai universe, alone and musty, wobbling out weepy love songs into the dark and grainy abyss.
A single streamed version of the mixtape can be listened to here Individual tracks are beneath the seat. Read More
I am guessing most people outside of Canada have never heard of Mary Margaret O’Hara unless you really are a music nerd, in which case you will understand why she is deemed a national treasure, even though her output is virtually non-existent, her live performances even rarer, and her ‘style’ something so terribly original that most would consider her a freak of nature, or at the very least mentally unstable. I am going to be coming back to her music here now and then, I want people to know about her because she is so special. Her album, Miss America, is a masterpiece that sounds wholly original, and although Gord Downie from the Tragically Hip did a killer cover of her ‘To Cry About’ song, nothing can come close to her. The recluse from the scene, sister of actress Catherine O’Hara, notorious perfectionist, I give you Mary Margaret O’Hara:
News spread recently that Spike Lee acquired the film rights to the memoir of afro-american physicist, Dr Ronald L Mallett. Aspiring to reunite with his deceased father, Mallett made it his life long ambition to unlock the secrets of time travel. His memoirs, aptly titled Time Traveller, are his unusually lucid accounts of his personal sacrifices and scientific discoveries upon which he built his theoretical premise on how to build a time machine. Published in 2006, and leading up to a rather detailed explanation how a light-circulating time machine could feasibly operate, Mallett became an overnight celebrity with his peer-reviewed findings, getting the ball rolling for what may be this century’s greatest scientific discovery.
Anytime you put the words ‘Spike Lee’ and ‘Time Travel’ in the same byline you have my undivided attention. Much like Mallett, science fiction played a significant role in my developmental years, ever since Back to the Future the concept of time travel and its bounty of philosophical paradoxes left an indelible impression on my psyche. In his memoirs, Mallett takes great care to document the history of time travel both in science fiction and in physics. From H. G. Wells The Time Machine, to episodes of Star Trek, to even arcane examples like Frequency starring Dennis Quaid, this slim hundred-odd-page tome is short on style, but rich in content, disproportionately less of his personal life (considering how much dramatic use could have been made of it) and keeping more of the focus on the shoulders of giants that led to his discovery. The content hits that perfect stride of being scientific enough to be informative and clear enough to be grasped by the laymen. Read More
I have been debating ever since I saw Revolutionary Road whether Thomas Newman’s score was in fact a ripoff of one of my favorite Eluvium tracks. In might just be that they are both sparse piano pieces, and they do clearly deviate but I still think they are eerily similar. I have placed them side by side, let me know if I am crazy.
Eluvium – I Will Not Forget that I Have Forgotten
Thomas Newman – Revolutionary Road Score
and just for fun (this is how the song actually starts):
Eluvium – As I Drift Off
Perpetually I am drawn to the question of religion. It infiltrates everything I read, even the most blatantly atheistic of such books are fraught with some aspect of religion waiting in the margins. My initial interest in William James’ Varieties of Religious Experiences was not that it had to do with religion, nor that it was written by William James (a philosopher of some importance in his own right as part of the American Pragmatist movement) but ultimately because James was one of the rarefied thinkers Ludwig Wittgenstein was known to have acknowledged positively. Wittgenstein being the apex of my particular interests in the realm of philosophy it was only a matter of time until I encountered firsthand this great American thinker. James excels in his clarity of writing, a quality that is absent more often than not in the treatises of philosophy, Wittgenstein being one of the most notorious culprits in this regard. The book I was intending to read first was James’ WILL TO BELIEVE, I am infatuated with the power of belief and its curious ability to authenticate while circumventing reason altogether. My running thesis is that man is a species of habit and intuition shrouding itself in rhetorical airs.
In his book, THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE, James lays the groundwork for a science of religion, trying to classify the religious experiences as accurately as possible using the tools of philosophy and psychology combined. At first I was expecting this to be a harsh critique of the mysticism of religion, but in fact it affirms many of the opinions I hold on the primacy of belief. James notes that it has oft been an attempt by psychologists to interpret religious sentiment by way of its origins, as neurotic phenomena categorically discernible, but James insists that the critique needs to focus on the way its works on the whole of the person, (‘by their fruits ye shall known them, not by their roots’). In defense he writes: Read More
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