sebastian speaks

future games

2011-12-16T06:19:00.001-08:00

Mr Arthur, from 1964

Plant Tunes

2011-12-15T10:52:00.001-08:00

terry time

2011-12-15T10:49:00.001-08:00

blame this man for "frampton comes alive"

2011-12-13T07:27:00.001-08:00

paul yandell

2011-12-01T06:10:00.001-08:00

The great guitarist and Chet Atkins protege Paul Yandell passed away last week. Not as many folks know his name as Chet obviously, but he was the guitarist on many of the Louvin Brothers' biggest records, which is how I became familiar with his immaculate playing. I tried to find a video of him and Chet dueling it out but most of them won't allow embedding. So I am posting this medley someone made a few years back for Paul's birthday.

talk turkey

2011-11-24T06:49:00.000-08:00

Worth remembering....

baris manco

2011-11-07T09:36:00.001-08:00

game of the century

2011-11-05T07:53:00.000-07:00

My brethren in Tuscaloosa are getting all hot and bothered about some sort of somethin' going down tonight. One thing I know is...a lot of people with Louisiana driver's licenses are getting arrested today and Dreamland will run out of ribs. Here's another "game of the century" we may have forgotten...

ouch my brain hurts

2011-09-22T10:51:00.000-07:00

happy birthday Possum

2011-09-12T15:33:00.000-07:00

someone made this um...tribute to the george jones classic. fitting birthday wishes for the man who once attempted to drive to the liquor store on a lawn mower.

flowers of the forest

2011-09-05T14:39:00.000-07:00

This is a really haunting version of the traditional Scottish ballad by Dick Gaughan. I have been obsessed the last day or so with the Fairport's version on "Full House". This was the song played at Sandy Denny's funeral.

JA Brown

2011-09-05T14:32:00.000-07:00

This would have been my grandad Army Brown's 98th birthday. He spent most of his twenties and thirties gigging around the South in a swing band back during the Depression. One of his bandmates and best friends was Sidney Chilton, Alex's dad. I wrote "Ponotoc" on my last album for my grandad; he was one of the first people to take me out and buy records and explained all the different instruments in the symphony orchestra. And whenever we had family reunions the evenings would end with Army sipping scotch and playing endless medlies of Tin Pan classics. Along with my father, he is one of the central reasons why I ended up devoting most of my life to music.

big bottom

2011-09-04T07:41:00.001-07:00

Noted bass gospel singer and Elvis backup vocalist JD Sumner....Good way to start your Sunday

desert groovin

2011-08-25T22:03:00.000-07:00

spike drivers

2011-08-25T22:01:00.000-07:00

with ted lucas on guitar....sweet sounds and thanks to steve gunn for hipping me to this clip!

they still got it...

2011-08-11T07:48:00.000-07:00

saw these guys last night at the Basement, wasn't quite sure what to expect but damn they rocked with the swagger and frenzy of a bunch of twenty year olds. Pretty damn impressive...

the marriage counselor

2011-07-14T15:44:00.000-07:00

powers boothe vs levar burton

whoah

2011-07-02T07:40:00.000-07:00

i have been pretty lazy about this blog lately. but that will be changing. as long as i find videos like this....

get your beam on

2011-05-18T09:02:00.000-07:00

been away for too long

2011-05-16T14:51:00.001-07:00

more soon....

phil ochs

2011-03-27T18:56:00.000-07:00

weird student film looking stuff?

georgia on my mind

2011-03-08T16:16:00.001-08:00

more sublime harmonies...

harmonies of the spheres

2011-03-08T06:45:00.001-08:00

i need to practice more

2011-03-08T06:36:00.000-08:00

Maybe things like free speech, television, the internet, and eating are overrated when it comes to guitar skills.

The Man

2011-02-24T22:22:00.002-08:00

Good Lord I have been slacking here. I promise to be more active!

The Man

2011-02-24T22:22:00.001-08:00

Good Lord I have been slacking here. I promise to be more active!

albert brooks retires

2011-02-05T10:33:00.000-08:00

i think all of us can sympathize...

Tidewater English

2011-01-05T10:27:00.000-08:00

This is the aural equivalent of a color shift, a glimpse of the rainbow spectrum of the transition of English to American accents. Tidewater English, the peculiar dialect spoken along the Chesapeake Bay in pockets in Maryland and Virginia, sounds to me like the true median meeting point between West Country English and the "Old South" variety of the Southern Accent.

The Story of English

2011-01-03T18:32:00.001-08:00

An excerpt from one of the tv series that had a huge formative influence on me...

Ali Akbar Sadeghi-Zal and Simorgh

2010-12-24T09:02:00.000-08:00

WIseman does it again

2010-12-22T06:35:00.000-08:00

Saw Frederick Wiseman's latest documentary "Boxing Gym" last night and it reminded me of just what a national treasure he is. He manages to make documentaries that rely solely on brilliant editing and patient observance, no need for didactic narration, intrusive "mood" music, strategically arranged interviews, or mish-mash collages of stock footage. Documentaries are by far my favorite form of film, and Wiseman has been the quiet master for the better part of half a century. I love Ophuls, but he makes himself part of the story, (much like his avowed disciple Michael Moore). I remain spellbound by Errol Morris, but after "The Thin Blue Line" he felt the need to rely on the ultra-stylized approach.
Wiseman should be as well known as the Maysles Brothers but he has chosen to remain largely in the shadows, continually making sublime portraits of everyday life in America, sometimes disturbing, sometimes humorous, but always searingly honest.

Women in Iran

2010-12-22T06:32:00.000-08:00

My friend Maxime uploaded this interesting video on women in Iran, obviously pre 1979. Wish I could understand!

Cymatics

2010-12-09T13:22:00.000-08:00

Been away for awhile. Not really hibernating but not spending a lot of time on the computer. What better way to come back to the forum than with these films demonstrating the magic of sound?

Beirut

2010-10-26T07:54:00.001-07:00

whoops apocalypse (part 3)

2010-10-23T07:14:00.000-07:00

I hope that if there winds up being only three people left on Earth they start a band.

BBC doc on the "alchemists of sound"

2010-10-19T21:11:00.000-07:00

WOW! From 2003. I am only posting the first segment here but I can't wait to watch all of them...

New Realities

2010-10-19T21:09:00.001-07:00

I am not going to pretend that I was able to digest all of this upon my first viewing but I am going to give it another try. My Father sent this to me the other day. It brings together some of my favorite topics: ancient history, linguistics, extra terrestrial life, and metaphysics.

R.D. Laing-The Lighter Side

2010-10-02T16:22:00.000-07:00

"Long before a thermonuclear war can come about, we have had to lay waste our own sanity. We begin with the children. It is imperative to catch them in time. Without the most thorough and rapid brainwashing their dirty minds would see through our dirty tricks. Children are not yet fools, but we shall turn them into imbeciles like ourselves, with high I.Q.s if possible.
From the moment of birth, when the Stone Age baby confronts the twentieth-century mother, the baby is subjected to these forces of violence, called love, as its mother and father, and their parents and their parents before them, have been. These forces are mainly concerned with destroying most of its potentialities, and on the whole this enterprise is successful."

Shatner does Esperanto

2010-10-02T16:09:00.000-07:00

The 1961 sci-fi film "Incubus" is the only movie I know of to be shot entirely in Esperanto. At the very least, it is the only Esperanto language flick that William Shatner ever did.

Lingua Ignota

2010-10-02T14:43:00.000-07:00

On tour, I just had the privilege of some much needed reading time and I was able to breeze through Arika Okrent's highly entertaining "In the Land of Invented Languages". She spends long chapters on the curiously durable Esperanto, the bizarre but beautiful Blissymbolics, and the befuddling Loglan.
The first "invented" language though, was the work of Hildegard of Bingen, the noted Medieval Christian mystic. Meaning "Unknown Language" in Latin, Hildegard devised a vocabulary of about 1000 words, and a corresponding unique orthography of her own invention. With terms like "phazur" (grandfather) and "scirizin" (son), the language almost appears to be a mixture of Latin and German with a bit of Basque.
There has been speculation as to the possibility that Hildegard had designed the language for Utopian purposes, much as 19th century language inventors such as Esperanto's Zamenhof. But the stronger likelihood is that she intended it to be a sort of secret language, perhaps for divine communication.

Ma'Aloula

2010-09-25T17:27:00.000-07:00

This picturesque village, a little over an hour's drive from Damascus, is one of the last villages on earth where Aramaic is spoken. While not a dead language per se, Aramaic is largely a liturgical tongue used by Arab Christians, although at the time of Christ it was the lingua franca of much of the Levant. The convent holds the remains of the early Christian saint Thecla, who was a contemporary of Paul.

Somali Vintage pop part 2

2010-09-17T18:59:00.000-07:00

Love the drummer's Vistalite set....

Big Brother's Theme Park

2010-09-17T17:37:00.001-07:00

The October War museum and memorial, commemorating Syria and Israel's 1973 conflict (known in our circles as the Yom Kippur War), is a remarkable edifice of zero-context propaganda and kitsch brilliance. As befitting its stylistic dissonance, at least in comparison to the old quarter of Damascus, the memorial is pushed out to the fringes of the city. Paid for largely by the government of North Korea, the memorial boasts a series of mural paintings that are impressive in their scope and soulless in their composition, and the stern Soviet style sculptures that surround the building are much of the same. Most curious is the array of captured Israeli weaponry, simply arranged on the front lawn of the memorial like bizarre ornaments. Granted, most of the exhibits were in Arabic only, but the short film purporting to tell the story of the 1973 war was so transparent in its ideological agenda that even I could have driven a tank through it, American or Soviet made. Traveling in Vietnam I had noticed a lot of the same thing when it came to museums. When you don't have free speech and you are brought up with only a steady diet of approved propaganda, you are presented history in a way that must be comfortably digestible and simplistic. Of course, I am not sure American school children are off any better, but at least my high school history teacher didn't skip over the Trail of Tears or the Ludlow Massacre. I have my own issues with the question of Israel and the Palestinians, and I don't support any group that believes they are entitled by history or some deity to a given chunk of land. That said, I am amazed at how the old, tired dichotomy of the Arab vs Israeli is beaten into the minds of people in this part of the world. This museum presents the creation of the state of Israel much like a sudden but natural travesty, an earthquake or flood. The political complexities that led up to 1948, not to mention the Holocaust and the flood of refugees it produced, are never acknowledged in Arab propaganda, because if they were they would take a lot of teeth out of the anti-Israel side of the dialectic. If we choose to be more honest about our own histories, it's a lot harder to judge any one else's as harshly. And hopefully it would force us to be a little more empathetic. All of us have been refugees at one time or the other, and most of us have been oppressors as well.

Damascus: the Old City

2010-09-17T17:14:00.001-07:00

Damascus is a city so ancient and fabled that I almost feel as if my observations are inadequate, though they are honest. This is a place whose streets have seen thousands of years of travelers, pilgrims, invaders, holy men, merchants, scholars, and writers of every stripe. Mark Twain remarked in "Innocents Abroad" that "No recorded event has occurred in the world but Damascus was in existence to receive news of it." I'm not sure that's quite the case, but in three days of prowling the alleys of marketplaces, juice sellers, daunting mosques and serenely undisturbed churches, it did feel as if history had left much of Damascus to its own devices. The pulse of the city seemed to propel a body at once very ancient and very timeless, something that had struck me throughout my Syrian travels. Part of it was the fact that politics were a forbidden topic, and the Hafez regime has silenced not just dissent but religious activism of all kinds. Still, this governmental repression gave an ironic amount of breathing room for a fragile yet very boisterous form of cultural pluralism. On my first evening, I enjoyed a strong coffee in the shadows of the imposing Ummayad Mosque, disappearing into the throngs of Shiite pilgrims as I wound my way back to my hotel. Then as night grew later, I found refuge in a small one room tavern run by a pair of Christian brothers, chain smoking cigarettes and opening tops on long bottles of beer. The pictures of Bashar Assad and his father were everywhere to be sure, but their very ubiquity rendered them almost powerless to me, the causal traveler. Rather than a sense of Orwellian surveillance, the constant reminder of the heavy hand of the Assads engendered no more emotional response in me than would a cavalcade of suburban corporate logos, be they Starbucks or McDonald's.

Whoops Apocalypse part 2

2010-09-15T07:50:00.000-07:00

I urge everyone to see the new documentary "Countdown to Zero", which focuses on the continued danger of living in a world full of nuclear weapons. While I feel that there is little use in spending day and night worried about the possibilities of impending armageddon, it is useful to keep current geopolitical unrest (ie Iran, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea) in the context of the Nuclear Age. When one considers the list of nations that possess nuclear armaments, of which we are arguably the most prominent, a new perspective on the meaning of "rogue state" comes into focus. I don't foresee France nuking anyone in a hissyfit anytime soon, but the remaining nations on the list of the nuclear club (England, China, India, Pakistan, Russia, North Korea, and the United States) are anything but stabilizing global influences. Far from it. We are still the only nation that has used atomic weapons, and throughout the last half century the nuclear armed nations have held the rest of the world psychologically hostage with the terrible scenarios imaginable should their arsenals be employed.
Something that is touched on in chilling fashion halfway through the narrative of "Countdown to Zero" is a close call that occurred in 1995. A surveillance rocket fired into the atmosphere by American and Norwegian scientists was misconstrued by Russian radar as a first strike nuclear assault. Then Russian President Boris Yeltsin was thankfully not in a bad mood and/or drunk at the time, and even though he was in immediate communication with his military advisers, Yeltsin rightfully suspected the rocket in question was not an initial bellicose maneuver on the part of the United States.
The fact that a technical glitch could potentially trigger the end of the world is, I admit, darkly humorous. And as everything since "Strangelove" has proven, we might as well chuckle at the Apocalypse since we have very little control over who or what might launch it. So as I said, I am not losing any sleep over this stuff. But I am not going to ignore it either.

Liberty Cabbage

2010-09-11T20:10:00.000-07:00

During World War One, there was a widespread movement in the United States to rebrand sauerkraut as "liberty cabbage", an attempt to shed German affectations from popular speech. This would of course be repeated some seven decades later in the course of the "Freedom Fry" affair. It's worth remembering, especially on 9/11, that propaganda can often begin as simply smug and arrogant, and very quickly proceed into bigotry.

Your moment of zen....

2010-09-10T08:53:00.000-07:00

Peter Lang on Minnesota public television, mid seventies.

Brothers from another planet

2010-09-09T23:28:00.000-07:00

My favorite group of Turkish siblings. Please tell me that the guitar player is rocking a double neck with a saz. If so, I would kill to know where to find one.

Dolly and Porter

2010-09-05T23:28:00.001-07:00

Pretty hard to top this...

happy labor day

2010-09-05T23:07:00.000-07:00

How lucky can one man get? Or to quote Cowboy Jack Clement, "When all else fails, get lucky."

God Willing and the Creek Don't Rise

2010-09-01T19:52:00.000-07:00

There is a new documentary on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina by Spike Lee with this title, and I was curious as to the origin of this very very Southern phrase. I assumed, as do a lot of folks, that it was an archaic Southern reference in regards to flooding, perhaps one of those slogans that arose in response to the historic flooding of the Mississippi River in 1927.
The phrase in fact goes back quite a ways further; back to the days when the Creek Indian nation was a primary competitor to the impending hegemony of the oncoming Anglo-American invasion of the Southeast. It is an ironic case of semantic drift, and considering the relevance it has to our newly found forgotten, it is worth recalling its very disparate origins. I am humbly reprinting the following from Knol.....

If someone says, “God willing and the Creek don’t rise” they’re looking to achieve a goal. When they use this phrase, it means that they will achieve their goal as long as there are no outside forces of which they have no control preventing them from doing just that.

Origin:

The first time this phrase was known to be in print it was written by a man named Benjamin Hawkins in the late 18th century. Hawkins was a politician in the late 18th century and early 19th century as well as an Indian diplomat. This was back in the day where American Indians and the white settlers were constantly fighting for the land in the United States. While in the south, Hawkins was requested by the President of the United States to return to Washington. In his response, he was said to write, “God willing and the Creek don’t rise.”
Benjamin Hawkins capitalized the work “Creek”. Therefore, it is deduced that what he was referring to was not a body of water at all, but instead was the Creek Indian tribe. The Creek Indians were also known as the Muscogee tribe which were located in the southeastern region of the United States (Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and Oklahoma). Since the Creek Indians were prevalent in the area where he was located, Hawkins knew that there was a great risk of the Creek Indians attacking.
This figure of speech is not only still used today, but the phrase is also in the lyrics of a 2008 song by the country music group Little Big Town. The song is called “Good Lord Willing” and the lyrics in the song say, “Good lord willing and the Creek don’t rise” instead of “God willing and the creek don’t rise”.

tony conrad-pythagoras in the park

2010-08-26T12:28:00.000-07:00

Fascinating discussion from one of the twentieth century's boldest gurus of sound....

The Incomparable Eddie Lang

2010-08-18T20:47:00.000-07:00

The Krak Des Chevaliers

2010-08-18T20:40:00.000-07:00

This castle, built in the Syrian heartland by medieval Frankish Crusaders, was thought by T.E. Lawrence to be the finest castle still standing. It was he said, "the castle of my boyhood dreams." I couldn't agree more.

Aleppo's Old City, Part 2

2010-08-17T06:47:00.000-07:00

It's hard for me to fathom that two months ago, I was traveling across southern Turkey on my way to the Syrian border. Then it was three days in Aleppo's old city, a maze of spice alleys, ancient churches, and forgotten history. This was the Middle East as it largely once was, Christians and Muslims coexisting and doing business together, signs in Arabic, Greek, and Armenian, church bells fighting for aural space with the muezzin's wail. And all of this intoxicating variety held together by the distant but firm hand of dictatorship, the Baathist rule of the Assads, which for half a century had held this vast country together. It was repression to be sure, but you were as likely to be put in jail for espousing radical Islamism as mentioning visits to "occupied Palestine", and it's sad to say that the most colorful and hospitable patchwork culture in the Levant is one with no traces of democracy. In fact, democracy would most likely put an end to the coexistence here, much as Syria's next door neighbor Iraq has learned the harsh way in recent years.
Politics in this part of the world are troubling, and so I chose to pretend that I was a wanderer in this city, discovering its charms in a time unnamed, a year unknown. So little has changed to the rhythm of this place in hundreds of years that you could pretend to be a traveler in a time less troubled, less uncertain. On my first evening, drinking local Armenian wine and eating the famed Aleppan dish of lamb kebab sauteed in a thick cherry sauce, I watched the sun retreat beneath the stones of the plaza, families milling about eating ice cream, European tourists crowding the cafes, no sign of the 21st century in sight. That was, save for the large tv in a nearby hotel bar blaring the World Cup match between England and Algeria.
Next, I moved southward, deeper into the heartland and further into the dream world of this strange land.

The Baron Hotel, Aleppo

2010-08-12T10:46:00.000-07:00

The Baron Hotel in Aleppo was the famed terminal point of interest on the old Orient Express route. T. E. Lawrence stayed here, Agatha Christie began writing "Murder on the Orient Express" here, and in seventy something years, little has changed. The decor is wondrously faded, the antique maps and advertisements plaster the walls, and the hotel bar is apparently a must for first time visitors. I had a couple of glasses of arak and was impressed at Mr Lawrence's formidable bar tab, framed on the wall and pointed out to me with a bit of pride by the bartender. Aleppo is a time capsule for sure, but the Baron is a capsule within a capsule. Marvelous.

scenes from the old city, aleppo 6/10

2010-08-05T20:10:00.000-07:00

thessaloniki

2010-08-03T07:26:00.001-07:00

I am going to be updating my site with more photos from my Middle Eastern travels. A lot of good ones from Syria and Beirut to come in the next few days!

John Archibald Wheeler

2010-08-03T07:19:00.000-07:00

"Time is what prevents everything from happening all at once."
Probably the most famous quote by the late theoretical physicist and founder of the "black hole" concept.

Listening to Richard Brautigan

2010-07-28T08:01:00.001-07:00

Would love to hear this album....Originally slated for release on Zapple, the avant sister label of the Beatles' Apple imprint, this lp of Brautigan readings ended up coming out on Harvest.

Suzan Pitt, 1973

2010-07-24T13:13:00.000-07:00

Pitt's 1979 work "Asparagus" was often paired on the midnight movie circuit with "Eraserhead".

waylon

2010-07-22T07:28:00.000-07:00

Wow. Never saw this clip before. I am assuming it's from the Johnny Cash tv show, late sixties? Jessi is playing a vox continental, looking like a Scandinavian super model, and Waylon's looking pretty sharp as well. And that shadowy man looking like a hillbilly James Bond with the double neck Mosrite in the background is none other than my Dad's songwriting pal Billy Ray Reynolds. This is putting the "class" back in classic country.

Charles Hugh Smith

2010-07-21T14:22:00.000-07:00

http://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html

I am grateful to my father for turning me on to self published essayist Charles Hugh Smith. While he is certainly a proponent of Peak Oil theory and the oncoming of what James Kunstler has dubbed The Long Emergency, Smith is by no means a doom and gloom peddler, nor is he a lone wolf survivalist paranoid, or even a....gasp..."conspiracy theorist".
And while we are on the topic, albeit briefly, let's pause a minute and reflect on the power of that term "conspiracy theorist". I feel that the more the mainstream media flogs the term, whether it may refer to the Iran Contra scandal coverup or the rapid departure of Lebron James, the more the term loses its sting of scorn. It's not that I hear the term thrown around more frequently, maybe it's just that I am taking notice of it more lately. I feel that it is becoming a semantic analog to "creative or independent thinker", and last I checked, that was something akin to a duty of American citizenship.

monti rock on merv griffin

2010-07-19T08:12:00.001-07:00

The father of disco in an early appearance on the Merv Griffin show. Pretty daring hairdo for 1966 I think....

The Private Alphabet of JB Murry

2010-07-18T08:54:00.000-07:00

Self taught artist JB Murry (1908-1988), who spent his entire life in rural Georgia, would compose paintings in what he called "spirit script". During religious trances he would channel visions from God into strange and wonderful paintings, adorned with a private alphabet that were much the visual analog of speaking in tongues. These visions began at the age of 77, after hip surgery had forced him into retirement. His use of color is striking but it is his bizarre writing system, the "spirit script", that intrigues me the most. Like all the great spiritual trance art of American folklore, from "Oahspe" to Howard Finster, the work of Murry is both mystical and innocent, almost recalling the childhood visions of angels William Blake famously recounted.

night train to adana

2010-07-08T20:17:00.001-07:00

mostar to montenegro

2010-07-04T18:18:00.000-07:00

Tirana

2010-07-04T17:59:00.000-07:00

Happy America Day

2010-07-04T17:57:00.001-07:00

A truly great moment in America, courtesy of the ever fiery Michael Ruppert.

Sarajevo

2010-06-08T04:06:00.001-07:00

Night Train to Budapest

2010-06-08T03:52:00.001-07:00

JD Emmanuel

2010-05-23T12:56:00.000-07:00

Beautiful movements from Miss Fuller, beautiful sounds from Mr Emmanuel. If you haven't heard his "Wizards" album you are missing out on some of the most beautiful electronic music produced west of the Atlantic Ocean.

Danse Serpentine

2010-05-23T12:50:00.000-07:00

Some sublime movements for your sunny Sunday. Loie Fuller was one of the pioneers of modern dance, and the Lumiere brothers captured this footage in 1896.

Amazonia

2010-05-08T21:11:00.001-07:00

The first known navigation of the Amazon by an alien "explorer" was the work of Spanish conquistador Francisco de Orellana, sometime in 1541. A lieutenant of General Pizarro, the conqueror of the Inca empire, Orellana was ordered to navigate the source of the Coca river, in Eastern Ecuador. As the river continued to empty into tributaries and the men ventured further and further from supplies and the safety of the known, a mutiny threatened the expedition. Orellana forced his men onward with a tenuous prospect of finding "El Dorado" and the untold riches of fabled gold cities. Towards the end of the expedition Orellana's dwindling party was ambushed by a group of native warriors, who the men mistakenly believed to be female giants. The story of the ambush found its way back to the court of Charles I, and the name "Amazon" was bestowed upon the epic river. The Amazons were a semi-mythical race of women warriors who Herodotus described as being from the land of the Scythians and Sarmatians (near modern day Ukraine). Supposedly their name is derived from proto Indo-Iranian "ha-mazan" meaning roughly "warrior". As for Orellana, his story served as the main inspiration for Herzog's "Agguire", and his men's chance delirious encounter with what they believed to be oversize female warriors has bestowed a name upon the earth's longest river.

Hermeto's Hideaway

2010-05-06T21:49:00.000-07:00

Vidal vs Rand, 1961

2010-05-04T20:00:00.000-07:00

I certainly hope Gore Vidal pardons me for reprinting an excerpt of an article he wrote in 1961 on a certain author of long, turgid, morally reprehensible tomes. Ayn Rand has had a number of very influential acolytes, from Rush Limbaugh to Alan Greenspan, and her doctrine of "rational self interest" (a morally hollow tautology if I have ever heard one; since when was self interest not "rational"??) has helped derail decades of progressive legislation for the greater good. I doubt Rand could sense the Reagan revolution from where she yielded her strangely outraged pen, but there is more than a hint of the gleeful sociopath in her writings, rejoicing over the unfettered hand of the corporate magnate and with nothing but scorn for the unfortunate masses. Our nation is at a profound spiritual crossroads, where the very concept of the greater good and a government not only by the people but for the people is vanishing from our poisoned public dialogue. I see much of this tracing back to the ethically bankrupt literature of Rand and the dawn of the "me" era that followed.

****

Now, before I’m investigated for having taken the un-American stand that sex is a minor department of morality, let me try to show what I think is morally important. Ayn Rand is a rhetorician who writes novels I have never been able to read. She has just published a book, For the New Intellectual, subtitled The Philosophy of Ayn Rand; it is a collection of pensées and arias from her novels and it must be read to be believed. Herewith, a few excerpts from the Rand collection.

• “It was the morality of altruism that undercut American and is now destroying her.”

• “Capitalism and altruism are incompatible; they are philosophical opposites; they cannot co-exist in the same man or in the same society. Today, the conflict has reached its ultimate climax; the choice is clear-cut: either a new morality of rational self-interest, with its consequence of freedom…or the primordial morality of altruism with its consequences of slavery, etc.”

• Then from one of her arias for heldentenor: “I am done with the monster of ‘we,’ the word of serfdom, of plunder, of misery, falsehood and shame. And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: ‘I.’”

• “The first right on earth is the right of the ego. Man’s first duty is to himself.”

• “To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men.”

• “The creed of sacrifice is a morality for the immoral….”

This odd little woman is attempting to give a moral sanction to greed and self interest, and to pull it off she must at times indulge in purest Orwellian newspeak of the “freedom is slavery” sort. What interests me most about her is not the absurdity of her “philosophy,” but the size of her audience (in my campaign for the House she was the one writer people knew and talked about). She has a great attraction for simple people who are puzzled by organized society, who object to paying taxes, who dislike the “welfare” state, who feel guilt at the thought of the suffering of others but who would like to harden their hearts. For them, she has an enticing prescription: altruism is the root of all evil, self-interest is the only good, and if you’re dumb or incompetent that’s your lookout.

She is fighting two battles: the first, against the idea of the State being anything more than a police force and a judiciary to restrain people from stealing each other’s money openly. She is in legitimate company here. There is a reactionary position which has many valid attractions, among them lean, sinewy, regular-guy Barry Goldwater. But it is Miss Rand’s second battle that is the moral one. She has declared war not only on Marx but on Christ. Now, although my own enthusiasm for the various systems evolved in the names of those two figures is limited, I doubt if even the most anti-Christian free-thinker would want to deny the ethical value of Christ in the Gospels. To reject that Christ is to embark on dangerous waters indeed. For to justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil. For one thing, it is gratuitous to advise any human being to look out for himself. You can be sure that he will. It is far more difficult to persuade him to help his neighbor to build a dam or to defend a town or to give food he has accumulated to the victims of a famine. But since we must live together, dependent upon one another for many things and services, altruism is necessary to survival. To get people to do needed things is the perennial hard task of government, not to mention of religion and philosophy. That it is right to help someone less fortunate is an idea which ahs figured in most systems of conduct since the beginning of the race. We often fail. That predatory demon “I” is difficult to contain but until now we have all agreed that to help others is a right action. Now the dictionary definition of “moral” is: “concerned with the distinction between right and wrong” as in “moral law, the requirements to which right action must conform.” Though Miss Rand’s grasp of logic is uncertain, she does realize that to make even a modicum of sense she must change all the terms. Both Marx and Christ agree that in this life a right action is consideration for the welfare of others. In the one case, through a state which was to wither away, in the other through the private exercise of the moral sense. Miss Rand now tells us that what we have thought was right is really wrong. The lesson should have read: One for one and none for all.

Ayn Rand’s “philosophy” is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society. Moral values are in flux. The muddy depths are being stirred by new monsters and witches from the deep. Trolls walk the American night. Caesars are stirring in the Forum. There are storm warnings ahead. But to counter trolls and Caesars, we have such men as Lewis Mumford whose new book, The City in History, inspires. He traces the growth of communities from Neolithic to present times. He is wise. He is moral: that is, he favors right action and he believes it possible for us to make things better for us (not “me”!). He belongs to the currently unfashionable line of makers who believe that if something is wrong it can be made right, whether a faulty water main or a faulty idea. May he flourish!
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Issac Hayes believes this...

2010-04-24T09:05:00.000-07:00

Mitt Romney believes this stuff...

2010-04-24T09:03:00.001-07:00

Equinox

2010-04-24T08:44:00.000-07:00

Mind bending no budget horror classic from 1970. Not quite chicken soup for the soul, but certainly a big warm bowl of poutine.....a pile of starchy synapse silencing sedatives.

Salute the New Age

2010-04-20T20:37:00.001-07:00

Earth Day gratitiude

2010-04-19T19:51:00.000-07:00

Just finished watching the PBS "American Experience" film on the nascent environmental movement of the early to late seventies. It's hard for a person of my generation to fathom any sort of broad progressive grassroots movement meeting with any success, but the environmental movement fostered a number of legislative victories throughout the seventies. Remember, it was Nixon that ushered in the EPA, and Jimmy Carter installed solar panels on the roof of the White House. Reagan, of course tore them down.
While the Nixon and Carter eras were met with the first true energy crises in decades, encountering the cold realities of the OPEC oil embargoes, they also forced us as a nation and our leaders to deal with issues of conservation head on. Conservation and care for the land are some of the oldest virtues we posses as a nation, and it took the Environmental activists to rekindle that passion in modern popular culture. The Reagan and Bush eras set our progress back decades, but even now there is tacit acknowledgment of the urgent need to move beyond oil. And since the seventies, there has been a patchwork forest of progressive initiatives, from recycling to renewable energy technology, that are slowly becoming the national norm.
This Earth Day, we should pause and give thanks for these brave and tireless groups of men and women that not only launched the modern conservation era, but who have kept fostering it through my generation and the next.

Children's Corner

2010-04-15T12:17:00.000-07:00

I had no idea that Debussy had been influenced by American ragtime but "Golliwogg's Cakewalk", the terminal segment of his 1908 "Children's Concerto" bears unmistakable traces of the style. As a huge ragtime enthusiast, I was excited to make this discovery. Plus, nothing eases the day like a little Debussy.

Abdel Halim Hafez

2010-04-13T18:17:00.001-07:00

I am assuming this is from an old Egyptian tv broadcast. Happy spring time! I am so excited that Sublime Frequencies is dropping a double lp dose of the best of Omar Khorshid. If I am a little behind the curve on discovering that, I apologize but news travels a bit slower down here in bbq country.

Rongorongo

2010-03-25T12:05:00.000-07:00

Rongorongo is the glyph based writing system used by the ancient Rapa Nui inhabitants of Easter Island. To date the writing system is yet to be deciphered, although it is heavily documented. Rongorongo appears to be a boustrophedon, a type of writing script that is bi-directional. Rather than being read left to right, or right to left, lines of Rongorongo alternate. No other native writing system developed in Polynesia, which makes the case of Rongorongo, not to mention the other mysteries of Easter Island, all the more intriguing.

Life is love in a neon rainbow...

2010-03-18T10:08:00.000-07:00

Some humble remembrances coming soon....

Fielded, "Another Time"

2010-03-02T07:56:00.000-08:00

A new video courtesy of the fabulous Powell sisters, this is Lindsay's solo project, and Alexis directed it. Who knew suburban New Jersey provided so many haunted locales?

Merida

2010-03-02T07:28:00.001-08:00

Merida is the capital of the Yucatan province, Mexico. One of the first Spanish cities in Mexico, the cathedral in the central town square is the oldest in North America. Through a series of bizarre circumstances, my friends and I were routed through Merida in an attempt to get us back home over the weekend. Sometimes the tyranny of airline shutdowns has pleasing results for the curious traveler. I was so happy to be able to spend just one night in this beautiful town, although sadly I didn't have time to take any pictures.

Moishe Oysher

2010-02-20T08:22:00.000-08:00

Shabat Shalom.....From the classic 1937 film "The Cantor's Son", one of the milestones of American Yiddish cinema.

john whitney

2010-02-18T09:39:00.001-08:00

Louisiana Story

2010-02-17T11:19:00.000-08:00

Two excerpts from Robert Flaherty's classic 1948 film. While not a straight documentary by any means, the film is meant to chronicle the world of rural Cajuns. As with his previous films, "Nanook of the North" and "Man of Aran", Flaherty casts non-actors to essentially play themselves albeit with a loose story line. The first excerpt is in English, the second in Cajun French, without subtitles.

Spend it All

2010-02-17T11:14:00.000-08:00

An excerpt from Les Blank's classic documentary on the Cajuns of Southwest Louisiana. Blank, who has Cajun origins himself, is better known for his documentary on the making of "Fitzcarraldo", "Burden of Dreams".

Alan Lomax on Ammedee Ardoin

2010-02-17T11:08:00.000-08:00

On the bayou...

2010-02-17T11:02:00.000-08:00

"Creole" as opposed to "Cajun" refers to an ethnic group in south Louisiana with shared African-American, French, and Native American roots. True "Cajuns" would largely trace their roots back to the French Canadians that were forcibly expelled from Nova Scotia and Quebec by the British in the 18th century, and who resettled in Louisiana. As with the cuisine of the region however, everything tends to be a true mixture, and thus rural African American Creole communities spoke French until very recently. "Zydeco", a bastardization of the French "Haricot" (or "snap pea") is the traditional music of Creoles.

Buffie Sainte Marie on Sesame Street

2010-02-17T10:57:00.001-08:00

Happy mid week!

Alan Watts: Work as Play

2010-02-16T16:34:00.000-08:00

Grover Cleveland

2010-02-16T16:28:00.000-08:00

I know I am a little late on the draw here, but in honor of Presidents' Day, I nominate one of my favorite unsung Democrats: Grover Cleveland, who has the distinction of being the only President in the history of our country to serve two non-consecutive terms.

Lambchop and Vic Chesnutt-The Saturday Option

2010-01-31T09:40:00.000-08:00

Sigh....

Traveling Light

2010-01-30T15:16:00.000-08:00

Great piece about German physicist Fritz Popp:

http://www.wddty.com/human-energy-fields-fritz-albert-popp.html

In the seventies, Popp proved through a series of fascinating experiments that human beings are transmitters and receivers of photons. There has always been speculation about "auras" and radiance in people but Popp has done much to give scientific credence to the concept.

Snow day in Music City

2010-01-30T15:00:00.001-08:00

Some good snowed in listening:
William Fowler Collins-Perdition Hill Radio
Mark Fry-Dreaming With Alice
Jack Nitzsche-St Giles Cripplegate
Heldon-Allez Teia
Steve Gunn-Boerum Palace

Alucarda

2010-01-26T08:24:00.000-08:00

Gonzo bizarre vampire flick from the seventies that we never got around to watching at the Hexham compound, although Greg insisted it's a classic. Definitely want to rent it though..