Spinozablue: An Eclectic Journal of the Arts

Posted on: May 17, 2009

Comments (0)

Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous. 2000

The only true cur­rency in this bank­rupt world is what you share with some­one else when you’re uncool.

– Lester Bangs

Almost Famous is Cameron Crowe’s love song to an era, the end of that era (1973), and a back to the future call to what comes next. His film is both highly per­sonal for him and for any­one who lost/​​loses them­selves in music, grew up with that immer­sion, or dreams of a life of free­dom and aban­don on the road. I loved it when I first saw it in a the­ater 9 years ago, and again when I watched it on DVD a cou­ple of nights ago. In fact, I liked it even more this time around.

Based in part on Crowe’s own expe­ri­ence writ­ing for The Rolling Stone as a…

[More...]

Posted on: May 14, 2009

Comments (2)

Ella Fitzger­ald. Photo by Carl Van Vechten. 1940

First to see. Like Bil­lie Hol­i­day and Benny Good­man. 1933. Debut to beat the band. To be there. To be not square there. Ella singing scat with Dizzy in the 40s. Using her voice like a horn, play­ing with it, like a mad cat run­ning up and down a tree. Run­ning up and down and all over town.

Bil­lie wrote a lot of songs. A lot of peo­ple don’t know that. Or care. They just want to hear her sing. And, maybe feel like they’re cool for lik­ing her, know­ing about her. Yeah, it’s cool if you’re hip with­out push­ing it. A Zen thing. A Taoist dream thing. Like, you gotta float and move fast while you’re stand­ing still. You gotta be strong as you’re bend­ing with the melody again and again. You gotta flow with the wave…

[More...]

Posted on: May 10, 2009

Comments (0)

Athena and Her­a­cles, by Douris. 480  –  470 BC.

Peer­ing into the moun­tain
The uni­ver­sal­ity of spir­its
Spir­its
For tens of thou­sands of years

Peer­ing into the cave

It’s all there
All there is
It has been that way
Again and again

For thou­sands of decades
With new incar­na­tions
Every now and then
Here and there

What makes us so sure
Ours in the only one?

[More...]

Posted on: May 9, 2009

Comments (0)

Yves Tanguy’s Indef­i­nite Divis­i­bilty. 1943

For those of you north of the bor­der, for those of you plan­ning to take a trip to Canada soon, Desi Di Nardo has a poetic treat in store. On Wednes­day, May 13th, she will be hold­ing a workshop/​​reading at 7:00pm.

The loca­tion is:

The McNally Robin­son Bookstore

Don Mills Road at Lawrence Avenue East
12 Marie Labatte Road
Toronto, Ontario
M3C 3R6

[More...]