“La Cienega Just Smiled” for IDY
“Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction….The chain reaction of evil—hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars—must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.”
Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength To Love, 1963.
Translation:
We love life whenever we can.
We dance and throw up a minaret or raise palm trees for the violets growing between two martyrs.
We love life whenever we can.
We steal a thread from a silk-worm to weave a sky and a fence for our journey.
We open the garden gate for the jasmine to walk into the street as a beautiful day.
We love life whenever we can.
Wherever we settle we grow fast-growing plants, wherever we settle we harvest a murdered man.
We blow into the flute the color of far away, of far away, we draw on the dust in the passage the neighing of a horse.
And we write our names in the form of stones. Lightning brighten the night for us, brighten the night a little.
We love life whenever we can.
-Mahmoud Darwish
Stunning new video for The Narcicyst’s song “Brass.”
Sun Ra - Live in East Berlin 1986
(Source: fromnowherehere.blogspot.com)
“My music is addressed to my people, especially to make them more curious about where they came from and their own identity and pride in that identity. That’s why I try to make my songs as powerful as possible, mostly just to make them curious about themselves. We don’t know anything about ourselves. We don’t even have the pride and dignity of African people. We can’t even talk about where we came from - we don’t know. It’s like a lost race. And my songs are deliberately to provoke this feeling of ‘who am I? Where did I come from? Do I really like me and why do I like me? Like you know, if I am black and beautiful - I really am and I know it and I don’t care who says what.’ That’s what my songs are about, and it is addressed to black people. Though at times, the songs, I hope that in their musical concept and in their musical form and power, that they will also live on after I die in as much as they are universal songs too.
An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times. I choose to reflect the times and the situation in which I find myself. That to me is my duty. And at this crucial time in our lives, when everything is so desperate, when every day is a matter of survival, I don’t think you can help but be involved. Young people - black and white - know this. It’s why they’re so involved in politics. We will shape and mold this country or it will not be molded and shaped at all anymore. So I don’t think you have a choice - how can you be an artist and not reflect the times? That to me is the definition of an artist.”
Nina Simone, circa 1969
via Josh Kun
Let’s face it: “Glee” is a mess. Not only is the show almost always offensive, but I’m often bored watching it. However, yesterday when I heard Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” on the radio, I realized that my impression of the song was forever changed by this version. For better or worse, when I hear it I’ll always think of Kurt and his happy, preppy, and ridiculously utopian gay-positive high school.
