...but i feel the need to publish it for the indie street cred.
Reflektor is basically the album that Karl Blau has been attempting to make for years, if only he would be willing to trade in his low-fi organic hippiedom for big-budget stadium-rock production. But let's get one thing straight: it's not because he couldn't. Because he could. Anyone can mix carribean rhythms with indie dance rock. But just try mixing dub with Tchiaikovsky. Point proven. The man's got soul, is a genius, but, well, just knows how to keep it real. Maybe too real, sure, but that's for another day.
Monday, November 25, 2013
Friday, November 22, 2013
advent plans
you've got about a week to get your advent plans together.
personally, i think i'm going to try piper this year.
you should probably listen to this new song mixed in with all your other christmas favorites. just listen to it a few more times than you will eddie money's 'everybody loves christmas.' in this house, that will be often.
the kindle version of the advent guide we put together a few years ago will be 99 cents starting tomorrow, 1.99 starting tuesday, back up to 'normal retail price' next saturday. so if you've been scared of being ripped off in past seasons, you know what to do.
my brain is a scary place to be, unlike eddie money's christmas hits i'd recommend limiting your exposure, but if you like taking risks or are unusually desperate this advent season, use the advent label here to see a long string of reflections, scripture, unusual music selections and other sources of inspiration that have accumulated through the years.
but first, happy thanksgiving.
personally, i think i'm going to try piper this year.
you should probably listen to this new song mixed in with all your other christmas favorites. just listen to it a few more times than you will eddie money's 'everybody loves christmas.' in this house, that will be often.
the kindle version of the advent guide we put together a few years ago will be 99 cents starting tomorrow, 1.99 starting tuesday, back up to 'normal retail price' next saturday. so if you've been scared of being ripped off in past seasons, you know what to do.
my brain is a scary place to be, unlike eddie money's christmas hits i'd recommend limiting your exposure, but if you like taking risks or are unusually desperate this advent season, use the advent label here to see a long string of reflections, scripture, unusual music selections and other sources of inspiration that have accumulated through the years.
but first, happy thanksgiving.
Monday, November 18, 2013
papa, what's graffiti ?
the kid and i have been inspired by graffiti lately. it makes me a badly distracted driver, especially on the A86.
i do my best to make it clear that it's a bad thing, against the rules, unless you get permission.
but when you get permission, it can be a really, really good thing.
LeMoDuLeDeZeeR X Les Bains-Douches_Immersion 2013
but practice makes perfect, of course, and therein lies the problem. don't worry, i haven't shown him this yet.
i do my best to make it clear that it's a bad thing, against the rules, unless you get permission.
but when you get permission, it can be a really, really good thing.
LeMoDuLeDeZeeR X Les Bains-Douches_Immersion 2013
but practice makes perfect, of course, and therein lies the problem. don't worry, i haven't shown him this yet.
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
tu nous entends ?
et ça y est, c'est le moment de laisser le foot à côté et réinscrire notre fils au cours de gymnastique.
skip to 1:40 if you're bored.
and it's also time to take my brother to grenoble.
skip to 1:40 if you're bored.
and it's also time to take my brother to grenoble.
Tuesday, November 05, 2013
harlem nocture
The metro doors closed and a man who had slipped in began playing the song on his sax. It took just a few seconds to recognize and all of a sudden I was no longer in the Paris metro, but on a high school auditorium stage, swinging hard in the background with our award-winning saxophonist wailing up front.
The version in the metro and the versions on YouTube tell me there are a lot of mediocre versions out there, but the one in my mind remains the best-ever-of-all-time-hands-down. We were all incredibly proud of Travis--who doubled as the sax player in our ska band--but we were just as proud to be a part, to play along. Because when we played, we were no longer on a high school auditorium stage, but on the nighttime streets of Harlem.
The version in the metro and the versions on YouTube tell me there are a lot of mediocre versions out there, but the one in my mind remains the best-ever-of-all-time-hands-down. We were all incredibly proud of Travis--who doubled as the sax player in our ska band--but we were just as proud to be a part, to play along. Because when we played, we were no longer on a high school auditorium stage, but on the nighttime streets of Harlem.
Monday, November 04, 2013
Sunday, October 20, 2013
emo's not dead
I could watch this from someone else's shoes and see plenty that's weird, maybe even lame. Pushing strange buttons, pretentious guitar plucking, auto-tune, that late 90s Hot Topic bracelet. Not to mention the jibberish lyrics.
But from my own shoes? There's something wonderfully youthful about this, energetic, angsty, interesting, passionate. The spirit of it! Takes me back to my emo days, and I'm surprisingly just fine with that. Especially the two-beat triplets. Especially. the two. beat. triplets.
Tuesday, October 08, 2013
Prodigious !
A favorite French director making his first English film set in America? How did I not know about this before 2 days ago??
Wednesday, October 02, 2013
reflections on eternity
"If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it you don't feel at home there? Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not always been, or would not always be, purely aquatic creatures? Notice how we are perpetually surprised at Time. ('How time flies! Fancy John being grown-up & married! I can hardly believe it!') In heaven's name, why? Unless, indeed, there is something in us which is not temporal."
-CS Lewis
"In a golden summer when our love was young Davy and I had sat on a stone wall near Glenmerle and talked about unpressured time--time to sit on stone walls, time to see beauty, time to stare as long as sheep and cows. At my father's club, sitting before the fire, we had spoken of 'moments made eternity', meaning what are called timeless moments, moments precisely without the pressure of time--moments that might be called, indeed, timeful moments. Or time-free moments. And we had clearly understood that the pressure of time was our nearly inescapable awareness of an approaching terminus--the bell about to ring, the holidy about to end, the going down from Oxford forseen. We had dreamed of Grey Goose as a way to escape the pressure of time, though no one escapes entirely. Life itself is pressured by death, the final terminus. Socrates refused to delay his own death for a few more hours: perhaps he knew that those few hours under the pressure of time would be worth little...
...I saw with immense clarity that we had always been harried by time. All our dreams had come true: the schooner Grey Goose under the wind, the far islands of Hawaii in the dark-blue rolling Pacific, the spires of Oxford. But all the fulfillments were somehow, it seemed to me, incomplete, temporary, hurried. We wished to know, to savour, to sink in--into the heart of the experience--to possess it wholly. But there was never enough time; something still eluded us....We shall come back, we said, and find it. But there wasn't time enough to go back, way leading on to way. And if we had gone back, there wouldn't have been time enough then, either, for ahead there would be a terminus. Always...
...If, indeed, we all have a kind of appetite for eternity, we have allowed ourselves to be caught up in a society that frustrates our longing at every turn. Half our inventions are advertised to save time--the washing machine, the fast car, the jet flight--but for what? Never were people more harried by time: by watches, by buzzers, by time clocks, by precise schedules, by the beginning of the programme...
...And yet, time is our natural environment. We live in time as we live in the air we breathe. And we love the air--who has not taken deep breaths of pure, fresh country air, just for the pleasure of it? How strange that we cannot love time. It spoils our loveliest moments. Nothing quite comes up to expectations because of it. We alone: animals, so far as we can see, are unaware of time, untroubled. Time is their natural environment. Why do we sense that it is not ours?...
...It suggests that we have not always been or will not always be purely temporal creatures. It suggests that we were created for eternity. Not only are we harried by time, we seem unable, despite a thousand generations, even to get used to it. We are always amazed by it--how fast it goes, how slowly it goes, how much of it is gone. Where, we cry, has the time gone? We aren't adapted to it, not at home in it. If that is so, it may appear as proof, or at least a powerful suggestion, that eternity exists and is our home...
...It appeared to me that I had longed for timelessness--eternity--all my days. Golden streets and compulsory harp lessons may lack appeal--but timelessness? And total persons? Heaven is, indeed, home."
-Sheldon Vanauken, excerpts from A Severe Mercy
-----
my teammate and i pretended like we knew what we were doing today and went to visit a locale with the owner of the rental agency and the owner of the property. there was a long string of good-natured and funny jokes at the expense of the two stupid young christians trying to start a church with said property. for example, it was suggested we sign a lease for the duration of eternity. frankly, the idea tempted me.
-----
when all we ever hear are the tired refrains of never having enough time, it's stunning, curious, and strangely refreshing to hear someone sing the simple words: "we have time."
and who better to deliver the words than the duo who's driving goal has often been to play their music as slowly as possible, as if they do indeed have all the time in the world? and if all this too is a reflection on eternity, could it be said that slow-core is inherently and particularly a christian genre?
deep beneath the surface of the earth
so many bodies waiting for the word
when every child and mother will return
forever
we'll have time
-CS Lewis
"In a golden summer when our love was young Davy and I had sat on a stone wall near Glenmerle and talked about unpressured time--time to sit on stone walls, time to see beauty, time to stare as long as sheep and cows. At my father's club, sitting before the fire, we had spoken of 'moments made eternity', meaning what are called timeless moments, moments precisely without the pressure of time--moments that might be called, indeed, timeful moments. Or time-free moments. And we had clearly understood that the pressure of time was our nearly inescapable awareness of an approaching terminus--the bell about to ring, the holidy about to end, the going down from Oxford forseen. We had dreamed of Grey Goose as a way to escape the pressure of time, though no one escapes entirely. Life itself is pressured by death, the final terminus. Socrates refused to delay his own death for a few more hours: perhaps he knew that those few hours under the pressure of time would be worth little...
...I saw with immense clarity that we had always been harried by time. All our dreams had come true: the schooner Grey Goose under the wind, the far islands of Hawaii in the dark-blue rolling Pacific, the spires of Oxford. But all the fulfillments were somehow, it seemed to me, incomplete, temporary, hurried. We wished to know, to savour, to sink in--into the heart of the experience--to possess it wholly. But there was never enough time; something still eluded us....We shall come back, we said, and find it. But there wasn't time enough to go back, way leading on to way. And if we had gone back, there wouldn't have been time enough then, either, for ahead there would be a terminus. Always...
...If, indeed, we all have a kind of appetite for eternity, we have allowed ourselves to be caught up in a society that frustrates our longing at every turn. Half our inventions are advertised to save time--the washing machine, the fast car, the jet flight--but for what? Never were people more harried by time: by watches, by buzzers, by time clocks, by precise schedules, by the beginning of the programme...
...And yet, time is our natural environment. We live in time as we live in the air we breathe. And we love the air--who has not taken deep breaths of pure, fresh country air, just for the pleasure of it? How strange that we cannot love time. It spoils our loveliest moments. Nothing quite comes up to expectations because of it. We alone: animals, so far as we can see, are unaware of time, untroubled. Time is their natural environment. Why do we sense that it is not ours?...
...It suggests that we have not always been or will not always be purely temporal creatures. It suggests that we were created for eternity. Not only are we harried by time, we seem unable, despite a thousand generations, even to get used to it. We are always amazed by it--how fast it goes, how slowly it goes, how much of it is gone. Where, we cry, has the time gone? We aren't adapted to it, not at home in it. If that is so, it may appear as proof, or at least a powerful suggestion, that eternity exists and is our home...
...It appeared to me that I had longed for timelessness--eternity--all my days. Golden streets and compulsory harp lessons may lack appeal--but timelessness? And total persons? Heaven is, indeed, home."
-Sheldon Vanauken, excerpts from A Severe Mercy
-----
my teammate and i pretended like we knew what we were doing today and went to visit a locale with the owner of the rental agency and the owner of the property. there was a long string of good-natured and funny jokes at the expense of the two stupid young christians trying to start a church with said property. for example, it was suggested we sign a lease for the duration of eternity. frankly, the idea tempted me.
-----
when all we ever hear are the tired refrains of never having enough time, it's stunning, curious, and strangely refreshing to hear someone sing the simple words: "we have time."
and who better to deliver the words than the duo who's driving goal has often been to play their music as slowly as possible, as if they do indeed have all the time in the world? and if all this too is a reflection on eternity, could it be said that slow-core is inherently and particularly a christian genre?
deep beneath the surface of the earth
so many bodies waiting for the word
when every child and mother will return
forever
we'll have time
Monday, September 30, 2013
This is how grown up the kid is.
1. Riding bike with two wheels.
2. Starting to learn cursive in school.
3. On a soccer team.
4. Takes showers.
5. Took his first steps towards reading Green Eggs and Ham last night.
6. Played his first ukulele chord, also last night.
7. Lost his first tooth today.
8. Spent more than 15 minutes playing outside alone with the older neighbor boys who taught him how to ride a skateboard. (They commented that he was doing very well and learning very quickly and that Americans are very strong in skateboarding.)
9. Watched the news with me tonight.
10. At the dinner table, asked very seriously if he could start calling us "Mom" and "Dad" instead of Mama and Papa, because that's what grown up boys call their parents. We gave no definitive answer, stalled by saying we'd take his request into consideration.
2. Starting to learn cursive in school.
3. On a soccer team.
4. Takes showers.
5. Took his first steps towards reading Green Eggs and Ham last night.
6. Played his first ukulele chord, also last night.
7. Lost his first tooth today.
8. Spent more than 15 minutes playing outside alone with the older neighbor boys who taught him how to ride a skateboard. (They commented that he was doing very well and learning very quickly and that Americans are very strong in skateboarding.)
9. Watched the news with me tonight.
10. At the dinner table, asked very seriously if he could start calling us "Mom" and "Dad" instead of Mama and Papa, because that's what grown up boys call their parents. We gave no definitive answer, stalled by saying we'd take his request into consideration.
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