02024-10-30 | Uncategorized
Historians of the future may yet come to describe the origins of modern governance as a cultural composite, assembled from Amer indian notions of personal liberty, African social-contract theory, free-market economics inspired by medieval Islam, and Chinese models of the nation-state (a civil service chosen by competitive exams, administering a uniform ethnolinguistic population).
In similar fashion, one could make a case that some of the very earliest Enlightenment salons were held not in Europe but in Montreal, during the 1690s. It was there that an indigenous statesman called Kandiaronk, acting as liaison between the Wendat (“Huron”) confederation and the regime of Louis XIV, sat down regularly with the French governor-general, the comte de Frontenac et de Palluau, and his deputies—including a certain Baron de Lahontan—to debate issues such as economic morality, law, sexual mores, and revealed religion. Kandiaronk was widely hailed by French observers as the most brilliant logician and wittiest debater anyone had ever met (one slightly irritated Jesuit wrote, “No one has perhaps ever exceeded him in mental capacity”), and a book based on notes from these debates later became a best seller across Europe.
Hiding in Plain Sight | Lapham’s Quarterly
From Hiding in Plain Sight – Democracy’s indigenous origins in the Americas. By David Graeber and David Wengrow. Link from Ganzeer
02024-10-29 | Uncategorized
What is this? Three balls of mochi on a stick, glazed with miso and sprinkled with walnuts. Found it at a food stand in Yoyogi park, in Tokyo, a few days ago. I can’t wait to go back and have more when I return to Tokyo in two and a half weeks.
Interesting aside… more people die in Japan each year from choking on mochi than from bears or snake bites. I will take my chances.
02024-10-12 | Uncategorized
When the war came along, I decided to use only quiet sounds. There seemed to be no truth, no good, in anything big in society. But quiet sounds were like loneliness, or love, or friendship.
— John Cage
This quote resonates with me. When times are loud and big we need to create soft and small.
These days a ton of ambient and drone music is released. That’s great but some of it sounds like the sound of a refrigerator put through a granular synth, with lots of delay added. I think there is room for a melodic sort of ambient sound, by which I mean slow and contemplative music, which I think what happened with the one guitar two – Big Cave Versions. (LINK to one of the pieces)
Now I would like to pare that down even more… Either the next album will be very quiet or upbeat or perhaps a surprise mix of the two that resembles a journey.
02024-10-02 | Uncategorized
Content Content.
I find that anger appears suddenly and noisily while happiness sneaks up steadily and quietly… like turning your back on the sea and suddenly it’s high tide and how did that happen without me witnessing it?
In my experience anger is a flash, an attack, an explosion. It arrives quickly and can disappear quickly, too. Happiness is quiet and it is in quiet moments that I become aware of it. The silent visitation of happiness. The silence of contentment. And the best part is that happiness can linger.
Sure, happiness can be noisy and celebratory and that’s the experience most people likely have. For me it’s in quiet moments where I suddenly feel that my experience feels so rich and full… and then I know, happiness did sneak up on me again.
02024-09-18 | Uncategorized
02024-05-29 | Uncategorized
Andrew Van Dam, writing for The Washington Post:
So, we looked at the data another way, measuring the gap between each person’s birth year and their ideal decade. The consistency of the resulting pattern delighted us: It shows that Americans feel nostalgia not for a specific era, but for a specific age.
The good old days when America was “great” aren’t the 1950s. They’re whatever decade you were 11, your parents knew the correct answer to any question, and you’d never heard of war crimes tribunals, microplastics or improvised explosive devices. Or when you were 15 and athletes and musicians still played hard and hadn’t sold out.
I was 11 in 1970 and I’ll be damned if the 70s weren’t the best decade ever!
