Category: Assortment
Uganda’s minister of ethics and integrity, James Nsaba Buturo, who describes himself as a devout Christian, has said, “Homosexuals can forget about human rights.”
David Kato (image copyright NYT)
“Naturally, I don’t want anyone killed, but I don’t feel I had anything to do with that,” said Mr. Schmierer, who added that in Uganda he had focused on parenting skills.
the situation
I may or may not have made it plain that I recorded and performed with the Andrew D’Angelo Big Band/Jazz Orchestra/whatever this weekend, on Friday and Saturday. Friday we met at 1, recorded until 6, and played from 8-10; Saturday we met at 2 (well, 3), recorded until 6:30, played from 8 (well, 8:30) – 10. There is no way to describe it in a way that would be believable, or at least not tacky. It is a band full of love. It is an amazing experience.
I’ve been reading this book lately, A Lover’s Discourse by Roland Barthes. The premise, as far as I can tell – not that I can tell – is that love is the limit of language. Oddly enough, if I remember correctly that also the premise of Elaine Scarry‘s book The Body in Pain, except in her case it is pain that renders language null, not love. Love hurts? Anyway, the point is that one of the first things Barthes talks about is the word “adorable,” of which he says “the adorable is what is adorable.” That is, saying that someone is adorable is a failure of language, an inability to name “the specialty of [one's] desire.” Instead of saying what we really think, which is unsayable, we say someone is “cute,” or “great,” or “adorable.” In the same way, there are certain situations – aesthetically, emotionally, both, neither, whatever – that cannot be described accurately with words, or at least cannot be described using words that make any sense. So: this weekend, with this band, was amazing. That’s the best I can do, because there are no words for what actually happened.
the situation
Cross-posted from the STEIM Project Blog:
I’ve just finished an Orientation workshop at STEIM, along with Emmanuelle Gibello, Duncan Chapman, Cormac Crawley, and Ludwig Giersch. I went without any real agenda, just with a jumble of ideas that have been sitting at the back of my mind that, given my lack of skill and patience with MAX and Supercollider, I had more or less given up on. STEIM’s history of working with improvisers had me hoping that the programs they’ve developed would make sense to me. And, thankfully and perhaps unsurprisingly, both LiSa and junXion feel intuitive to me. It is really not something that can be described, or that warrants description, even. They simply feel natural. Now I feel like a number of projects, including the development of a live interactive object to augment solo trumpet performance, are actually possible. Thanks, STEIM!
What was a surprise to me, and shouldn’t have been, was the constant discussion floating around STEIM about the role of electronics as instruments. As somebody who plays an instrument for which there is no controversy – a trumpet is unquestioned as a musical instrument, as far as I can tell – these discussions are fascinating. What makes an instrument? How is virtuosity defined? How can electronics become embodied? Who cares? In most cases it seems that the idea is to justify using a “machine” – a laptop, collection of circuits, whatever – as an “instrument.” But justify to whom and against what?
First of all, have you seen one of these around?
ID card (front)
ID card (back)
For about two years now, I’ve been wanting to do something with the phrase “If you see something, say something.” It’s a phrase that I see every day, over and over again, that tells me to be suspicious of everything and everyone around me. I really hate it. I wanted to break it up, force it to say something else entirely – emasculate it, put it in drag. So it made sense to break it up into “If you see” and “something, say something.”
For about six months, I’ve been trying to figure out some way to channel my obsession with the political distribution of information into something useful. What I’ve decided to do is start an organization, ideally a loose organization of like-minded individuals, watching, researching, documenting, interacting with and/or interpreting the flow of manipulated information streaming from governments, corporations, and so on. This organization will be called (well, I guess it is called, now) the Information Department, and I figured distributing the “If you see/something, say something” cards around New York could be the first action of the Information Department. So I got 1000 of them printed. This was in November, though, and by the time they were printed I was in and out of town. I finally went to pick them up Tuesday night – but they weren’t there.
I did the Golden Circle (“so-called,” if you will) tour around Reykjavik today. It was beautiful, really: a whole slew of outrageously bad nature shots are coming your way. Anyway, for whatever reason, our narrator/expert guide kept on putting the disclaimer “so-called” in front of items that nobody would otherwise have any reason to question. I mean, perhaps certain terms can be disputed, but to introduce a topic by way of a disclaimer is really an incredible thing to do. I appreciate this. I look forward to telling someone to observe the “so-called stars.”
For instance:
1. Vikings
Vikings (illustration)
2. Hot spots
Hot spot (diagram)
3. Tectonic plates
Tectonic plates (illustration)
1. Indian Ringnecked Parakeet (Invasion)
2. Quaker parrot (Brooklyn)
3. Indian Ringnecked Parakeet (Amsterdam)
4. Quaker Parrot (Brussels)
5. Quaker Parrot (Barcelona)
Further parrots after the jump…
1.
Turtleneck (man)
2.
Turtleneck (woman, charitable cause)
3.
Turtleneck (mannequin)
4.
Turtleneck (The Situation)
5.
Turtleneck (mock)
1.
Shrimp (diagram)
2.
Shrimp (illustration)
3.
Shrimp (life cycle)
4.
Shrimp (plush)
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Jacob Wick is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization.
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