Posted on: June 29, 2010
Ukulele. Photo by Massimo Barbieri
Found this by perusing Crooked Timber. Had never heard of them and now wonder why. They are funny, talented, don’t take themselves seriously at all, and their eccentricity seems well earned. Simply put, they make us smile …
So, without further ado, I present The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain!!!
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Posted on: June 23, 2010
Leo Tolstoy, by Ilya Repin. 1887
Back to back films, biopics of great writers. Thinking about the trade offs. First, Sylvia Plath and then Leo Tolstoy. Marked contrast between the two on so many levels. Most obviously, Tolstoy lived a long life, dying at the ripe old age of 82, while Sylvia Plath took her own life at the age of 30:
Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
Both movies portray the struggle, the conflict of life against art and art against life, of sacrificing loved ones for that craft and for genius. But in “Sylvia,” the betrayal runs too deep. There is no reconciliation, no final, moving, powerful reunion, as there is with “The Last Station.”
It may…
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Posted on: June 16, 2010
Sunflowers. By Vincent Van Gogh. 1888
Nothing was as it seemed, when Van Gogh painted it. Roiling underneath the subject, flying above it, surrounding it, were his passions, his intensity, his flights into realms most of us could only guess at, if we can match him for moral imagination, or imagination period. With Van Gogh, a rose was not a rose was not a rose.
Ray Succre writes poetry along these same lines, or conjunctions, or coincidences, with a mask or two thrown in for good measure. Surreal, meant to be heard, meant to be spoken, they sing the uncanny.
Spinozablue presents two of his poems below.
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In honor of Bloomsday, I wanted to point you in the direction…
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