Memories

Because memories are constructed, not recorded, when we remember events we don’t reproduce exact replicas of those events.

Illusions demonstrate that our perception of the world around us may be influenced by our prior knowledge.

I follow you

"I, I follow"
"I follow you, deep sea baby..."

Music

"Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason. "
― Albert Camus

E havia luar e mar e a solidão, ó Álvaro.

Encostei-me para trás na cadeira de convés e fechei os olhos,
E o meu destino apareceu-me na alma como um precipício.
A minha vida passada misturou-se com a futura,
E houve no meio um ruído do salão de fumo,
Onde, aos meus ouvidos, acabara a partida de xadrez.

Ah, balouçado
Na sensação das ondas,
Ah, embalado
Na idéia tão confortável de hoje ainda não ser amanhã,
De pelo menos neste momento não ter responsabilidades nenhumas,
De não ter personalidade propriamente, mas sentir-me ali,
Em cima da cadeira como um livro que a sueca ali deixasse.

Ah, afundado
Num torpor da imaginação, sem dúvida um pouco sono,
Irrequieto tão sossegadamente,
Tão análogo de repente à criança que fui outrora
Quando brincava na quinta e não sabia álgebra,
Nem as outras álgebras com x e y's de sentimento.

Ah, todo eu anseio
Por esse momento sem importância nenhuma
Na minha vida,
Ah, todo eu anseio por esse momento, como por outros análogos...
Aqueles momentos em que não tive importância nenhuma,
Aqueles em que compreendi todo o vácuo da existência sem inteligência para o compreender
E havia luar e mar e a solidão, ó Álvaro.

- Álvaro de Campos

A Walk in Alfama

Um Astronauta no Museu do Oriente

Il Conformista

A memorable quote from Bernando Bertolucci's 'Il Conformista':

Marcello: You see, the origin of my father's mental illness isn't venereal. That can be medically confirmed.
Giulia's Mother: By the way, my little girl has had the mumps, scarlet fever, and German measles.
Marcello: They're all very moral maladies.

A rainy day in Lisbon...

Norilsk

"It's a landscape out of a science fiction film. Mile after mile of industrial plants, some of it rusting and discarded, but most of it operating as is evident from the trails of smoke rising from countless chimney stacks. Ore-dressing plants, smelters, refineries, power stations and goodness knows what. I try and do a quick count of the bigger complexes but give up when I realise there are far more here than Norilsk Nickel officially lists. Between them run pipes, elevated slurry chutes, power lines and railway tracks. Lakes of ominously dark liquid lie all around"
- Andy Home, "Siberian Dreams"

[photo by Windle Pons]

Andrew Bird playing 'Giant of Illinois' live at the Civic Opera House, Chicago

The giant of Illinois
died from a blister on his toe
after walking all day through the first winter snow

throwing bits of stale bread
to the last speckled doves
he never even felt his shoes filled with blood

delirious with pain, his bedroom walls began to glow
and he felt himself soaring up through falling snow
and the sky was a woman's arms

a boy with a club foot
had sat next to him in school
once upon a summer's day
they went wandering through the woods

they spotted a sleeping swan
on the banks of a muddy stream
and they stormed it with rocks
till it collapsed in the reeds

they lay out on the grass
full of chocolate and lemonade
but underneath it all the giant was afraid
the sky was a woman's arms

20 years ago. Goodbye Lenin.

(photo by Reuters)

Mikhail Lermontov, poet of the Caucasus
Writer, poet and painter. Born in 1814 and died in 1841, in a duel at the foot of the Mashuk mountain.
He once said tha the trouble with Russia was not that some people were suffering but that an immense number of people were suffering without realizing it.
I am not sure when Lermontov said those words, but they are still valid now, as they were back in the XIX century.
Tsar Nicholas I is reported to have reacted to Lermontov's death with the following words: "A dog's death for a dog". No wonder why.

Indie Folk Sounds #2 - Emily Jane White
"Wild Tigers I Have Known" is included in the Dark Undercoat album.

Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space
Directly from the Soviet Archives. This is Valentina Tereshkova, minutes before being launched aboard Vostok-6 as the first woman in space, June 16 1963. The photo is a cover of the book "Propaganda: Photographs from Soviet Archives by Mark Holborn".

In 1963, Valentina married Andrian Nikolayev, another Russian cosmonaut. Their daughter, Elena Andrianovna, became an object of medical curiosity for being the first child born from parents that have both travelled into space.

Valentina Tereshkova won the International Women of the Year Association's "Woman of the Century" award in 2000.

Indie Folk Sounds #1 - Marisa Nadler
This is the first of a series of posts on Indie Folk Sounds.
For the first post I chose this hypnotic-psychedelic live version of Marisa Nadler's Fifty Five Falls. Enjoy!

Courage
We know what trembles on the scales,
and what we must steel ourselves to face.
The bravest hour strikes on our clocks:
may courage not abandon us!
Let bullets kill us—we are not afraid,
nor are we bitter, though our housetops fall.
We will preserve you, Russian speech,
from servitude in foreign chains,
keep you alive, great Russian word,
fit for the songs of our children's children,
pure on their tongues, and free.

Anna Akhmatova, 1942



A good selection of bi-lingual poems by Anna Akhmatova can be found on this page. Translations by Andrey Kneller.

"If you could say it with words, there would be no reason to paint"
Edward Hooper

Sarah Palin in Hong Kong
It is a mistery to me why an organization such as CLSA, one of Asia’s leading brokerage and investment groups, invites someone like Sarah Palin to its investors conference, last week in Hong Kong. Sarah Palin broke a two-month silence period and both the Washington Post and NY Times were fairly positive about her speech. Robert Fisk has a different but interesting view on this speech event. Read Robert Fisk article from The Independent here.