Posted on: May 17, 2009
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 teenager, the movie tells the story of 15-year-old William Miller, who stumbles into a life-altering gig covering the (fictional) band, Stillwater.…
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Posted on: May 14, 2009
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 that covers you with yourself.…
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Posted on: May 10, 2009
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?
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Posted on: May 9, 2009
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
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