The last few days I have found myself to be incredibly lucid. I simply cannot stop thinking. My mind is constantly in overdrive. There is no way for me to turn it off. And when I am this lucid, I just can’t stop working the cognitive process that creates these endless internal digressions. Here is my story:
Filed under Digressions
Believe it or not, I am a big Dionne Warwick fan. When I was a kid, I associated Dionne with the TV show Solid Gold and then later with her Psychic Friends, but when a friend bought me Dionne Warwick Sings the Bacharack and David Songbook, I realized what great music she sang in the 60s. I think my favorite songs of hers are “Walk On By” and “Alfie”.
Filed under Digressions
A while back, I wrote about John Coltrane’s Ole. Now, I am testing to see if I can embed songs into my blog from Radio.Blog.Club. That way, I can also use music (not just videos, artwork, and pictures) to enhance the message I am trying to send through my posts.
By the way, this is my favorite Coltrane piece from the album of the same name with the incredible Eric Dolphy on flute, McCoy Tyner, Freddie Hubbard, Elvin Jones, Art Taylor and Reggie Workman.
Filed under Jazz
Japan’s BlogTV came to Madrid to spend some time with FON and to celebrate our FON One Year Anniversary Party. They came with members of our FON Japan team including Nina and Joi Ito (a FON advisor in Japan). In these videos, you get to see Joi Ito in different meetings in Madrid with Martin, Alex, many different people from FON’s Madrid office, at the FON Party, and with my friend, Anil Mello from MobuzzTV.
In a previous post, I mentioned how on February 6, 2007, FON celebrated its first anniversary with a big party at the Teatro Lara in Madrid, and I included two videos of speeches from the event. I also lamented about how my particular role in the party had still not been uploaded. Well, here is what appears to be the final video. Unfortunately, it only includes the very tail end of my speech where I come off as even dorkier than usual and am robbed of my undeserved protaganism. Fortunately, the video shows people getting down and jiggy, as well as the Spoof Video.
Filed under FON
One of my friends asked me this evening to write something “bonito” when I got home from work. Unfortunately, I am not particularly inspired just now. Nevertheless, I am quite interested in the relationship between memory and perspective — how each act of remembering is an independent experience unto itself, and how any given memory is an ongoing process that is transformed over time and is conditioned by one’s perspective (and vice versa). In other words, there are memories of memories of memories that evolve, decay, or mold into one apparently constant memory. This is much like the way that our physical exterior follows a degree of constancy of form over time, while in reality its actual cellular make-up is in continuous flux. We think of an ever-changing remembrance as one single memory just as we think of a person’s life-span as belonging to one distinct individual.
While I have been working on various pieces related to these topics, instead of posting something fairly unfinished, I decided to post these beautiful lyrics from this song by Lyle Lovett that touch on memory and perspective:
Filed under Digressions
This is one of my favorite two scenes from the film Lost in Translation where Bill Murry sings “More Than This”. My guess is that Sofia Coppolla put in the karaoke scenes as space fillers because the movie was rather short. Nevertheless, I think that the scene defines the film. I love the subtle complicity between two people who are just getting to know each other, and how at that moment (and so true always of the present), more than this, there is nothing. In any event, my other favorite one is where Murry is lying on the bed with Scarlett Johanssen and tells her, “I am not worried about you.”
Alright, time to start doing something productive with my Saturday.
Filed under Digressions
On this Saturday morning, I woke up at 8:30am, and while alternating between Amin Maalouf’s Rock of Tanois and writing in this wretched blog, I was reminded of a Saturday morning in November back in the 90s. It was a typical autumn morning in Washington, DC, and the air was crisp. I had all of the windows of my apartment open and was thoroughly cleaning the place. I am not sure whether that day has or had any significance whatsoever, but for some reason whenever I listen to Joan Armatrading, I always have the unclear memory of open windows and the DC fall in my mind.
I am certain that I had been listening to Joan Armatrading (as well as certain other music) on that day. Sometimes I remember that day as sunny, and at other times as overcast. But, generally, it is listening to Joan that reminds me of that seemingly insignificant day, whereas now I am recalling that day and being reminded of Joan Armatrading. Does that make any sense?
Filed under Digressions
Grave Error 