Thinking about those who think or had thought that they are thinking

I read the preface to Hesse's Steppenwolf last night and came across this eloquent passage:

"Most men will not swim before they are able to.' Is that not witty? Naturally, they won't swim! They are born for the solid earth, not for the water. And naturally they won't think. They are made for life, not for thought. Yes, and he who thinks, what's more, he who makes thought his business, he may go far in it, but he has bartered the solid earth for the water all the same, and one day he will drown."

Perhaps what turns me on the most about Hesse's work, is the unity in which each piece encompasses. Each sentence, paragraph and chapter, an entity in itself, systematically working together to meet an objective of oneness. Sheer beauty!

Wilmington's Independent Film Festival

Cucalorus is approaching! Run away, Run away!...

NC Films

Here is the official site for filming in North Carolina, the state that brought you The Last of the Mohicans and Evil Dead II.

Bruce Haack: King of Techno

A look into the underground world of Bruce Haack, a genius whose work continues to garner recognition over time. The homespun musician couldn't have done it without the support of family, friends and the neighborhood kids Bruce called his ‘Starchildren’, all of whom validate his legacy. In addition, various musicians such as Beck, Money Mark (Beastie Boys) and Mouse on Mars have joined in today showing worldwide support by contributing to the recent Haack Tribute Album. Packed with mind blowing visuals, wild music and far out stories, this documentary takes the viewer on a fieldtrip through time; for the King of Techno is coming from the past and into the future...

Black Mountain College

One day down at Black Mountain College David Tudor was eating his lunch. A student came over to his table and began asking him questions. David Tudor went on eating his lunch. The student kept on asking questions. Finally David Tudor looked at him and said, "If you don't know, why do you ask?"

- John Cage, Faculty 1948, 1952, 1953 Summer Sessions

"What! You are giving up your Queen? Sheer madness!"

THE MODERN WORD

Clinton sleeps on floor so elder Bush can have bed

NEW YORK (AP) -- On their tour of tsunami damage in Southeast Asia, former President Bill Clinton once allowed his predecessor, former President George H.W. Bush, to sleep on the plane's only bed while he stretched out on the floor.
The government plane in which the presidents toured the disaster area had one large bedroom and another room with tables and seats, according to an interview with Bush in this week's Newsweek.
Bush, 80, said Clinton offered ahead of time to give the older former president the bedroom so he could lie flat and avoid paining his body. Clinton, 58, decided to play cards in the other room that night.
The next morning, Bush said he peeked in and saw Clinton sound asleep on the plane's floor.
"We could have switched places, each getting half a night on the bed, but he deferred to me. That was a very courteous thing, very thoughtful, and that meant a great deal to me," Bush said.
Bush said he and Clinton are not close, but have been compatible on the tour, partly because Clinton respects his age.

Note to Self: make sure you're in the COMPOSE mode when posting. Ahhhhhhhh!

Beck, Beth Orton, Hank III: Southlander

This is one of those wickedly cool movies that you never run across while perusing the dribble at zee 'ol Blockbuster. No marketing, no hype, no $$$... just good people making good music, and a damn cool film.

Cast includes:
RORY COCHRANE, BETH ORTON, ROSS HARRIS, LAWRENCE HILTON JACOBS, BECK HANSEN, GREGG HENRY, HANK WILLIAMS III, RICHARD EDSON, IONE SKYE, MEGHAN GALLAGHER, LAURA PREPON, ELLIOTT SMITH

"Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence."
-Robert Fripp

Generation Jumping

Someone once told me that people tend to be more like their grandparents than their parents. This seemed absurd to me at first because it seemed that a person would grow up trying to emulate those who had raised them - the parents. Well, upon greater reflection, it dawned on me the extraordinarily complex dynamic that is growing up. Maybe children do mimic their parents for a while, but then comes the teenage revolution. Parents become outdated, behind the times. What changed? Hormones, status, responsibility? A perfectly utopian world is turned upside down. Sitting in front of the television - vegging as placid as the open ocean - is replaced with worry, doubt and depression. Tumbling into a dark abyss, one is all but lossed to a world foreign to their fledgling eyes.
In these uncertain times, the question crosses my mind whether or not we, as individuals, are not microcosms of the world at large. Does life not ebb and flow like the tides? Do our emotions not erupt on occasion spilling over into the sea of languid tranquility? Raised by one generation, but resembling another? I certainly don't have a definitive answer. However, with the feeling that history is repeating itself, I can only wait for a time when the world reflects the placid temper of one with the time to ponder such thoughts.

Asheville Global Report

"...striving to bring you a weekly newspaper that consistently covers news and perspectives that are left out of the corporate media."

The Fog of War

I happily do not have cable (or any television reception for that matter) so I was unable to watch the Academy Awards tonight. However, I did watch what I believe to be the best documentary of the year, or even decade, The Fog of War. After watching this enthralling film, it dawned on me that it was not even nominated for "Best Documentary." Not that it really matters, but I would like to know why. Does anyone know? I believe it should have been in the running, but could be mistaken. Errol Morris directing, Philip Glass on score, and Robert S. McNamara as conductor (in a non-musical sense of course). Politics aside, this movie is great. I just wonder if anyone agrees with me?

Ah ha... Google to the recue! Logically, it didn't win this year... because it won last year. I would erase the previous paragraph, but I would like to maintain my emphasis on the quality that is last year's best documentary film.

Taking in account this new mental cinematic paradigm, I would like to congratulate this year's winner, which I unfortunately did not see. Super-size Me was, however, also a spectacular film, which I did see.

So, in conclusion, watch The Fog of War, because it's good, and good people like good things... I think Socra-Plato said that. So do it!

Flicker Film Festival

Flicker is a rolling film festival, begun in 1994, to showcase movies shot on film. Bi-monthly screenings are held at the Cat's Cradle in Carrboro, North Carolina. And... it's free.

Not only is this a great venue to see films, but it is also a place where aspiring film-makers can have their own stuff shown. So get up, get out, and film something!

Random Activity

1.Grab the nearest book.
2.Open the book to page 123.
3.Find the fifth sentence.
4.Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5.Don’t search around and look for the “coolest” book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.

Page 123 for me actually turns out to be a bibliographical reference, but here it is anyway...

[68] Rousseau, Discourse sur l'origine d'inegalite (cf. Condillac, Grammaire, p.27 note 1).

from The Order of Things, by Michel Foucault

idea via http://scrutinyhooligans.blogspot.com/

Away with biographies and histories, and libraries and museums! Let the dead eat the dead. Let us living ones dance about the rim of the crater, a last expiring dance. But a dance!

Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

Artist Censored for "Love"

"It's a sad day in America when an artist goes to jail for reproducing a Michelangelo painting on the side of his art studio," - ACLU Legal Director Michael J. Steinberg

Local Detroit artist, Ed (Gonzo) Stross, has been arrested for painting a depiction of Michaelangelo's "Creation of Man" on the side wall of his own studio. In it is illustrated a bare-chested Eve and the word "Love." Stross was given permission to create the work with the stipulations that he not depict genitalia or letters. Last I recall, breasts were not considered genitalia. So what does that leave?

Philosophy Talk

The program that questions everything......except your intelligence.

http://www.philosophytalk.org/

Past Episodes include discussions on topics such as:
Who Owns Ideas?
Markets and Morality
Patriotism versus Cosmopolitanism
Drug Legalization
Marriage and the State
Has Science Replaced Religion?
Bush's doctrine of preemptive self-defense

Farewell to Dr. Gonzo: Hunter S. Thompson has left the Building

"America... just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable."

-Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005)

A new word is like a fresh seed sewn on the ground of the discussion.

—Ludwig Wittgenstein in Culture and Value

Charlotte: Creative Class Capital of the South

Creative Loafing's Sam Boykin has hit the nail on the head. Charlotte has great potential, if it only refuses to bow to those forces that are destroying cities across the nation. It's about time we starting pushing the envelope on this McWorld of ours.

In the House of My Fear

Written from the shore of sanity, the book dives fearlessly back into the Rimbaudian hells and the Blakean ecstasies and brings back what is almost the account of the '60s we so long bemoaned the lack of. I say "almost" because the '60s were as unique as fingerprints when you fail to describe them, but as communal as a sauna when you recall. Joel Agee writes uniquely, succeeds communally, and leaves the mystery still calling.

- Andrei Codrescu

It's still Winter

Yesterday winter seemed far off, but today... today sleet pellets ricochet!

Gracias Anonymoses

Thanks to Anonymoses for enlightening me on the finer points of blogging. It's slow going, but I'm starting to make fascinating discoveries (fascinating to me, old hat to most). Anyhow... things are coming along.

MIT for Everyone

Lovers of knowledge everywhere should check out MIT's Open Course Work site. Now the masses can access years worth of the university's academic information: syllabi, assignments, lecture notes, etc. One can learn, for free, from this beacon of academia. You don't get credit, but that's not really the point. This is a resource not to be neglected... www.ocw.mit.edu

Bloggers are Good People

Who would have thought? Well, everyone I guess. Laudit! I applaud citizens of the blogosphere for their revolutionary spirit and their intellectual tenacity. After years of battling the malaise of "mainstream cyberspace," it is great to witness the rebirth of discourse.

"Think, Wait, and Fast,"... Not in America

Days and nights blur on this wild rollercoaster of life. Fast food, fast times. America is ailing from a brain-drain... and not just of engineers and mathematicians! If citizens would step back and realize the uncontrollable voracity of the human appetite (polyvocally), the balance of power in this country would shift. Right and Left-brains United! Should people reflect on the virtues of patience and thought, as told by Hesse's Siddhartha, the chaos might possibly recede into sanity.

Thus Spake Siddhartha

Most people, so I have been told, read Hesse's classic Siddhartha in high school. I, however, did not and am very glad that I did not. Not that it is not good. In fact, it is nothing short of revolutionary in my opinion. The finer points of this culture-blending ouvre would have gone without notice in my adolescence, but having been shat upon quite a number of times by now, Hesse speaks loud and clear to me.

The Desire to Create

What is it that drives a person to create? Where does the desire for originality, and beauty, arise from? Is it out of vanity or selfishness, or, is it out a deeper humanism?

"Creation" - an emblematic word describing both science and art, poetry and religion. It is here that seems the most logical place to begin. How is it that civilization has accrued such a trove of knowledge? Theories, facts, opinions, systems, novels, and, yes, blogs. In this coagulate of stuff, there is beauty, and even wisdom.

Alcuin: Educator of the Carolingian Renaissance

Alcuin (734-804) was the head of Charlemagne's cultural reinvigoration of the west. As lead educator and propogandist for the emperor, Alcuin encouraged literacy and learning in a time of relative stagnation. While not considered an original thinker himself, Alcuin is respected for his support of a broad education, i.e. the seven liberal arts. A staunch churchman, steeped in christian idealism, he would end his days as abbot of the abbey of St. Martin of Tours in France.

Map of Charlemagne's Empire

Eyes on Darfur

As the international community rallies to the aid of the wave-ravaged nations of south Asia, it is important to remember the many crises that afflict the world today. There has still not been an adequate solution to the genocide taking place in Sudan.

Philanthropy does not thrive in a tunnel.

Remember those suffering in Darfur:

What You Can Do About Darfur
1. Inform Yourself About Darfur
2. Write to Your Local Newspaper
3. Write to the Members of the U.N. Security Council
4. Write to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan
5. Write to the Sudanese Government
6. Contact Your Elected Representatives
7. Donate to Humanitarian Agencies

Fearlessly We Tread into 2005

Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.
- Arthur Schopenhauer

How far will we look in 2005?

Kristen Hersh live at The Cat's Cradle

Kristin Hersh, formally of Throwing Muses and presently of 50 Foot Wave, is gracing the Triangle with her beautiful music. She will be appearing at The Cat's Cradle, in Carrboro, on February 4.

Visit http://www.throwingmusic.com/ for more info on Kristin's past, present, and future projects.