Rise Industries

For a few minutes, a German art student became one of China’s ancient terracotta warriors.

This is around where we went hiking last weekend. Luckily, it was not on fire at the time, though we could see the smoke a few miles off even then.

t h e r e i s m o r e m u s i c a l t u e s d a y s

This past sunday evening, I took the subway (yes, there is a subway in LA) from Union station downtown all the way into Hollywood at Hollywood and Highland. I walked up the hill, gave the friendly folks at the Hollywood Bowl my ticket, located my seats in section N-1, and sat down with a gang of architect-camper friends. They gave me fried chicken, hummus, cheese and wine. I had also brought some wine, as is customary at the Bowl.

As I walked in, Neko Case was playing some country-pop-rockish stuff. She did that pretty well, and even had a guy with a pedal steel guitar who played some great sliding, slippery licks. That was a good start.
Then when she was done, an announcer came up to say goodbye to her and introduce the next act. Instead of a break, the whole center of the stage – including backdrop – rotated 180 degrees to reveal Ryan Adams and his band already tuned up and ready to rock. Which they proceeded to do. Now, if I ever listened to the radio, I might have heard songs from one or both of these groups. But I do not, and had not, so all the music was brand new to me, and quite satisfactory. This Adams fellow strung together elements of bare blues rock, country, a touch of Pink Floyd and the Grateful Dead (I was grateful that element was minimal) with some seriously good guitar playing, a bit of angriness, and a sense of humor. I was impressed.

But this was noting.

Next stage rotation, and a giant Texas flag was revealed. Now, these days I would normally cringe when faced with a 20 foot tall flag from the home state of our current president – but this particular Texan flag represented all that is good from that oversized state. Standing in front of it was the elder stateman of what I like to think of as the-good-country-music (well, Johnny Cash is gone you know). Willie Nelson. Arrayed about him was a fantastic band made up of family and friends, and they whipped those opening young rock-stars arses.

On his beat up, nylon (?) string acoustic guitar – run through the gritty distortion of some some bad-ass amps – he might as well have been B. B. King. And that golden voice of his has aged to perfection. Singing mainly songs I have never heard (he sped through his standard hits as if they were only there to appease the audience), he filled up that gigantic amphitheatre with some kick-ass and heartfelt sound.
His daughter pounded out some honky-tonk piano, son on the headless guitar pulled off a Stevie Ray Vaughan kind of thing – blazing away in counter-point to his dad’s heartfelt blues riffing. It was a real family affair, and a beautiful night out under the stars. So – go back over that old Willie Nelson stuff if you get a chance. Try to get beyond the radio hits, maybe even dig up a live album. That man is one of the old masters, and I am glad I got to see him do his thing in person.

Next month, Bob Dylan is in LA. I gotta get myself to that one, given that he is my hero and all, and is playing on my birthday.

Very cool concept… this guy took new images based on old postcards and made an image that looks like a strange cardboard cutout. Worth a quick look.

I think I would drive my car off the road if I caught this building doing its thing at night. Amazing. [seen at Coudal]

Interestingly (or maybe not) I have been working on a video documenting the dramatic evening lighting of the Federal Building in Westwood. Though it’s not as dramatic, or even as intentional, as the one posted above. It kind of glows with a diffuse light as you drive by it, slowly revealing the offices within. I’ll post that one up in its current, immature form when I get a chance.

Read the 9/11 report as a graphic novel, online at Slate.

(for some reason this link jumps to page 86. To go back to the start of the novel, use the table of contents on the right)

m a t h f u l m i d w e e k d ay

Pick a number.

Comments found posted to this Wulfmorgenthaler cartoon (on my daily read list) reveal the true nature of software engineers. It starts about halfway down. While you are at it, read ALL of the Wulfmorgenthaler cartoons. It will funny you.

“well, in this case, you are 0% (zero) software engineer. It is a fact, that every _real_ software engineer wears a beard. And coffee is defined as a “live liquid” for software engineer. Every software engineer dies within 48 hours without a cup of coffee.

I am really sorry to tell you that you are not a real software engineer. I am that damn sorry that I would like to offer you some of Emma´s chocolate cookies. Agree? “

Speaking of inspirational…. I listened to the Dead Kennedys on the drive to work this morning. That really gets you going. Where the hell are all the punk bands now? With all the shit we are neck deep in these days, we could use some smart, angry music out there to wise the kids up a bit. Maybe I am just out of touch, and the high school kids have got some great, angry, protest stuff they listen to while slinking around avoiding gym class – I hope so. They ought to be angry, everyone seems to be screwing up their future world pretty good these days.
Here are some lyrical selections that could be especially apt:

POTSHOT HEARD ‘ROUND THE WORLD
Hey! / Yo! / We’re the United States Marines / We know you’ve all been killing each other / For at least two thousand years / But we’re here now / To protect the family / Of Christian heroin warlords (maybe that should just be Capitalist Oil Warlords now) / Most friendly to the west / So you knock off this fighting / Or we’ll tell mom / Ever notice news / Is staged like TV wrestling shows / With Reagans and Khaddafis cast / As cartoon villains and heroes / Or those wildlife “documentaries” / Where a lion from a zoo / Kills a deer tied down ahead of time / “At the perfect camera angle” / When lemmings balk at dying for Disney / They’re just hurled off the cliff / We are gathered here today / To take photos of the president / Pretending to mourn these brave young men / Who came home from Beirut / Gift-wrapped in body bags / A truck bomb blew them to bits / We knew they were sitting ducks / We sacrificed ‘em, Aztec style / So we could use their dead meat / To cook up war fever back home / So make sure you take lots of pictures / And slant you news on our way / Just like in Wild Kingdom / We first tied down the prey / We want people boiling for revenge / In their living rooms / So we can go play shoot-em-up / Anywhere we choose / And our backers can cash in / Without the public asking questions

I recommend you either go listen to Bedtime for Democracy right now, or just read this whole page of lyrics while strumming an out of tune guitar and pounding your head against a wall.

And here – an old favorite:

WHERE DO YA DRAW THE LINE
Seems like the more I think I know / The more I find I don’t / Every answer opens up so many questions / Anarchy sounds good to me / Then someone asks, “Who’d fix the sewers?” / “Would the rednecks just play king / Of the neighborhood?” / How many liberators / Really want to be dictators / Every theory has its holes / When real life steps in / So how do we feed / And make room for / All the people crowded on our earth / And transfer all that wealth / From the rich to those who need it? / Where Do Ya Draw the Line / Where Do Ya Draw the Line / I’m not telling you / I’m asking you / Ever notice hard line radicals / Can go on star trips too / Where no one’s pure and right / Except themselves / “I’m cleansed of the system” / (‘Cept when my amp needs electric power) / Or – “The Party Line says No. / Feminists can’t wear fishnets” / You wanna help stop war? / Well, we reject your application / You crack too many jokes / And you eat meat / What better way to turn people off / Than to twist ideas for change / Into one more church / That forgets we’re all human beings / Where do ya draw the line? / In Toronto someone blew up / A cruise missile warhead plant / 10 slightly hurt, 4 million dollars damage / Why not destroy private property / When it’s used against you and me / Is that violence / – Or self-defense? / You tell me / Where Do Ya Draw the Line / I’m not telling you, I’m asking you / Where Do Ya Draw the Line / I’m not telling you, I’m asking you / Where Do You Draw the Line?

I think I am going to start a band now called Where the Fuck is Punk? If you want to join, come by my house and lets do it.

Lets talk literature for a bit.

Lately I have been revisiting novels that have shaped the way I think about things in general, philosophically speaking. I re-read T.S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men, about 100 times. Then Brave New World. I am working through Dhalgren by Samuel Delany again (I never read it until grad school, but its excellent, and I might as well have read it in high school). But these I need to revisit:

“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle. ‘That’s some catch, that Catch-22,’ he observed. ‘It’s the best there is,’ Doc Daneeka agreed.”

Yes. Perhaps its time to read Catch-22 again. Then Waiting for Godot. Then perhaps Slaughterhouse-Five:

“Throughout the novel, Billy hops back and forth in time, reliving various occasions in his life; this gives him a constant sense of stage fright, as he never knows what part of his life is coming up next. He spends time on Tralfamadore; in Dresden; numbly wading through deep snow in WWII Germany before his capture; living married in America after the war; up to the moment of his murder on Earth many years later. By the time of his murder, Billy has adopted Tralfamadorian fatalism, which has given him great personal peace; he has spread this philosophy to millions of humans and has become a popular public figure on Earth.

Billy’s fatalism appears to be grounded in reality (at least in the reality which Billy perceives); after noting that Billy had a copy of the Serenity Prayer in his office, the narrator says, “Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future.” His Tralfamadorian captors say that out of 31 inhabited planets they have visited, “only on Earth is there any talk of free will.”

After that, or even before that. Maybe at the same time and mix them all up, how about The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

“According to Kundera, “being” is full of “unbearable lightness” because each of us has only one life to live: “Einmal ist Keinmal” (“once is never”, i.e., “what happened once might as well have never happened at all”). Therefore, each life is ultimately insignificant; every decision ultimately does not matter. Since decisions do not matter, they are “light”: they do not tie us down. But at the same time, the insignificance of our decisions – our lives, or being – is unbearable. Hence, “the unbearable lightness of being.”

That one is a major influence – except my take is not that the insignificance of our lives is unbearable, but that it is the greatest freedom and joy.

That’s how you become an optimistic nihilist.

>All those quotations are from the respective Wikipedia entries.