Rush - Tom Sawyer

 

Electric Light Orchestra - Shangri La

 

A masterpiece: The Inner Light (Star Trek TNG)

Star Trek TNG's episode "The Inner Light" (Season 5, Episode 25 - June 1, 1992) was aired today on Heroes and Icons HD. It is a masterpiece, arguably the best Star Trek TNG episode. For the record, I paste here the plot from Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Inner_Light_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation) alongside George Harrison's "The Inner Light"

On stardate 45944.1, the Enterprise-D finishes a magnetic wave survey of the Parvenium system and finds an unknown probe. The device rapidly scans the ship and directs an energy beam at Captain Picard, who wakes up to find himself on Kataan, a non-Federation planet. A woman, Eline, tells Picard that he is Kamin, an iron weaver recovering from a fever, and that she is his wife. Picard speaks of his life on the Enterprise but Eline and their close friend Batai try to convince Picard that his memories were only dreams and incorporate him into their society as Kamin. Picard begins living his life as Kamin in his village, Ressik, having children with Eline and learning to play the flute. Kamin spends much time outdoors and with his Dobsonian telescope studying nature. As years pass, he begins to notice that the drought is caused by increased radiation from the planet's sun. He sends reports to the planet's leaders, who seem to ignore his concerns. 

On Enterprise, the crew continues attempts to revive Picard. They try to block the influence of the probe but Picard nearly dies, so they are forced to let it continue. They trace the rocket's trajectory to a system whose sun went nova 1,000 years before, rendering life extinct in the system. 

Years pass and Kamin outlives Eline and Batai. Kamin and his daughter Meribor continue their study of the drought. They find that it is not temporary; the extinction of life on the planet is inevitable. Kamin confronts a government official who privately admits to him that they already know this but keep it secret to avoid panic. The official gravely points out to Kamin that they have only recently launched artificial satellites using primitive rockets: their race simply does not possess the technology to evacuate people before their planet is rendered uninhabitable. 

One day, while playing with his grandson, Kamin is summoned by his adult children to watch the launch of a rocket, which everyone seems to know about except him. As he walks outside into the glaring nova light, Kamin sees Eline and Batai, as young as when he first saw them. They explain that he has already seen the rocket, just before he came there. Knowing that their planet was doomed, the planet's leaders placed memories of their society into a probe and launched it into space, in the hope that it would find someone who could tell others about their species. Picard realizes the context: "Oh, it's me, isn't it?", he says, "I'm the someone... I'm the one it finds", realizing that Kamin was the avatar they chose to represent their race. 

Picard wakes up on the bridge of the Enterprise to discover that while he perceived many decades to have transpired, only 25 minutes have passed. The probe terminates and is brought aboard the Enterprise. Inside, the crew finds a small box. Riker gives the box to Picard, who opens it to find Kamin's flute. Picard, now adept at the instrument, plays a melody he learned during his life as Kamin.

 

Lima OH multicultural fair (September 30, 2023)

On 9/30/2023 I really enjoyed a multicultural fair in Lima, OH, featuring Indian, Nigerian, and other cultures. 

For India, a Lima young lady danced a wonderful dance of Siva (afterwards she told us that she learned the dance online - she was from Lima OH), and a boy (I suppose less than 8 years old) presented the activities of the latest Moon landing of the India space program. 

Then a team of African American ladies (I understood they came from Chicago) performed a really professional series of amazingly athletic team dances. 

I am including some photos and recordings (two Nigerian dances) from the event. 

It was well-organized, fun, and artsy.

 

And now the two recordings (short clips):

 

Desolation Row

At the same time atemporal and in minute, humorous-to-damn-serious historical detail... the fact that this masterpiece comes from somebody who won Nobel Prize for Literature, makes perfect sense.

Blues legends - Otis Spann, Big Joe Williams, Sonny Boy Williamson, Willie Dixon, Lonnie Johnson ,Victoria Spivey, Muddy Waters, Memphis Slim et al.

Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin) shows support for Ukraine on tour (ledzepnews)

Robert Plant has been showing his support for Ukraine while on tour - https://ledzepnews.com/2022/04/11/robert-plant-has-been-showing-his-support-for-ukraine-while-on-tour/

 

Pat Metheny, Joni Mitchell, Jaco Pastorius, Michael Brecker - "Shadows And Light".

 

• Joni Mitchell - electric guitar, vocals 
• Pat Metheny - lead guitar 
• Jaco Pastorius - bass 
• Don Alias - drums 
• Lyle Mays - keyboards 
• Michael Brecker - saxophone 
• The Persuasions - backing vocals on "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" & "Shadows and Light" 
• Toller Cranston - skates 
• Andy Johns - engineer 

Shadows and Light is Joni Mitchell's 1980 double live album, recorded at the Santa Barbara County Bowl in September 1979 on the Mingus tour.

For Ukraine: Pink Floyd - Hey Hey Rise Up (feat. Andriy Khlyvnyuk of Boombox)

 

'Hey Hey Rise Up', released in support of the people of Ukraine, sees David Gilmour and Nick Mason joined by long time Pink Floyd bass player Guy Pratt and Nitin Sawhney on keyboards, all accompanying an extraordinary vocal by Andriy Khlyvnyuk of Ukrainian band Boombox. All proceeds go to Ukrainian Humanitarian Relief.

Coldplay - The Scientist

Lead singer Chris Martin wrote "The Scientist" after listening to George Harrison's All Things Must Pass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scientist_(song)

When The Levee Breaks feat. John Paul Jones | Playing For Change | Song Around The World

INTERSTELLAR for GREAT PIPE ORGAN — ABSOLUTELY EPIC!

 

Antonino Buschiazzo performs his own epic transcription from Hans Zimmer's soundtrack for INTERSTELLAR

Meet the favorite singer of Aurelia (my mother) - Amalia Rodrigues

Amalia Rodrigues was my mother's favorite singer (here in 1968 in Bucharest, Romania!)

Oscar Peterson - "Body and Soul"

Epitome of cool - Ringo Starr at 81 - Rock Around The Clock

Not Fade Away - Grateful Dead / Buddy Holly cover

Tot Zbor (IRIS)

IRIS - Tot zbor (Vol.2 - 1987)

 

 

Linkin Park / Jay-Z - Numb

$29.00 - Tom Waits

From the 1978 Blue Valentine album - 

Don Shewey of Rolling Stone found that Blue Valentine "is as solid a record as Waits has made", and that its best songs "rank high among the sentimental sagas that contain Tom Waits' strongest writing."

A human archaeology attempt - rediscovering my sister (4) on art and gender fluidity - Februarie 17, 2014

On February 17, 2014, commenting on Visconti's Ludwig, Carmen wrote on how...

• art and gender fluidity have potentiated the typical aesthetic fascination with gender transgression (trans-gender)
• the religious moral dogma of gender purity somewhat severed the spontaneity of artistic inspiration
• in art you can talk about anything, since in art everything is understood differently
• seriously ignorant on the mysteries of art, ideologue preachers caught in a moralizing mania put out diluted discourses about love, sex and marriage and place art in bed of Procrustes, demonizing gender fluidity on the grounds that the force of ambivalent suggestion can tempt man (yet the Gospel's spirit of implies that he who is not tempted will not live)
• as beauty gets closer to the ineffable essence of art, it gets accompanied by the phenomena of transgression seen as trans-gender horizon.
  

"Filmul Ludwig este o capodopera a lui Visconti si o mare reusita interpretativa a lui Helmut Berger, in rolul principal. Homosexualitatea lui Visconti si bisexualitatea lui Berger n-au nimic de-a face cu judecata de valoare artistica. In nici un caz nu o infirma. Dimpotriva, as zice, a potentat fascinatia tipic estetica a transgresiunii genurilor. Lectura biologica a transgresiunii poate potenta, dar nu este identica cu lectura suprabiologica a transgresiunii, tipic estetica. Mutatiile ,,tropice'', definitorii pentru figurile de stil, sunt un arhetip imaginar vag al mutatiei de gen sau al ambiguizarii genului. Crestinismul cu dogma sa morala a puritatii genurilor a cam retezat din temelii spontaneitatea inspiratiei artistice, asta-i sigur. Realitatea este ca in arta poti sa vorbesti despre orice, pentru ca aici totul se lasa inteles ALTFEL. Ideologia crestina grav ignoranta in ceea ce priveste misterele artei interzice acest lucru, pe motiv ca...FORTA SUGESTIEI AMBIVALENTE poate ispiti omul. Nimic mai penibil . Cine nu va fi ispitit nu va trai, afirma pe de alta parte Evanghelia. Cele mai diluate discursuri despre iubire, sex, casatorie le intilnim la prostii predicatori crestini, cei care schingiuiesc arta asezind-o in Patul lui Procust care e mania moralizatoare. Dezambiguizarea morala devenita un TIC MALADIV actioneaza aici ca o caracatita ucigasa ce a prins in tentaculele ei fiinta vie si fecunda a ambiguitatii estetice."