Friday, September 30, 2005

Quotes: Simplicity

"If I had more time, I would write a shorter letter." Pascal (mathemetician)
Came across this in The Art of Project Management that we have been taking excerpts from to discuss in our staff meetings.

Books (Comics): TinTin in India


Keiko sent me this article about the release of Hindi TinTin videos in India. Yaay for TinTin - my childhood favorite. It is so neat to see the TinTin covers with Devnagri script.

Thursday, September 29, 2005

Poetry: Reading list

Just got through reading:
CK Williams - Repair (Excellent. Almost every poem has to do with repair - emotional, mental, physical)
Poetry Magazine - Sept issue (The first three poems were by CK Williams, so I picked it up. Read a great essay in it too. Convinced me to subscribe. Quality poetry.)
Just started:
Vijay Seshadri - The Long Meadows (He wrote the poem in the New Yorker 9/11 issue and I have been meaning to read more of his work. Enjoying it so far.)
On the shelf:
Jeet Thayil - English (I think I saw an excellent interview Thayil did of Seshadri and so thought I would get his book.)
Vandana Khanna - Train to Agra (Not sure how I found this one, but wanted to read an Indian American poet won a first book prize. Get a sense for where I can possibly find a niche for getting my work published.)
Charles Wright - Black Zodiac (I remember reading a poem by Wright in Pushcart Prize in the mid-nineties and being blown away by how long, full and rich it was. Inspired me to write my Lawrence to NYC poem. Saw this book in Davis and picked it up.)
Aimee Nezhukumatathil - Miracle Fruit (Recently submitted to Tupelo Press and saw this book on their website. I was smitten by her poems - sensual, physical. Can't wait to read more.)

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Poetry: Tupelo Press - letter from editor


WOW! I submitted my manuscript to Tupelo Press a few weeks ago and got this very encouraging letter from the editor. I am very excited. Fuel!!

Saffron and Blue is a compelling first manuscript. I was especially taken with the vivid language and seriousness of purpose tinged with human fallbilities demonstrated in poems like Return, Cadence, His Passing (brilliant last line), and The Beach on Sunday. But really, there are many other fine poems, and it is clear you're a gifted at this thing you love. Thanks so much for sending it to our open reading period. Your poems gave me great pleasure.
Unfortunately, I'm not able to take your manuscript at this point, but I urge you to resubmit the manuscript to our Dorset Prize and/or the next first book competition. If you remind me at that time, your manuscript will automatically pass beyond the first round of readings.
In other words, please let me see the manuscript again.
Sincerely yours,
Jeffrey Levine

Quotes: Stay Hungry! Stay Foolish!

Stay Hungry! Stay Foolish!
Steve Jobs at 2005 Stanford commencement
I think I got the stay hungry part some of the time but not enough of the stay foolish.

Monday, September 26, 2005

Music: ACL Fest Day 3 (9/25)


A scorcher of a day. 105, no wind and lots of dust. At least it was not humid. And I made my daily stop at Barton Springs which made a huge difference - cooled off, cleaned off.

Doves - They became on of my fave bands a couple years ago with their masterpiece - Lost Souls - a gem of a mood piece. Their live show did not disappoint. The drummer had this curious tic of raising his eyebrows every other beat - funny to see.

Arcade Fire - Another highly anticipated indie favorite. An energetic and enjoyable set of songs with the crowd singing along on most of them.

Wilco - When I saw them last year, I was moved - the songs pulling out emotions that had been overlaid with weeks of apathy. This year it did not have the same impact - I am in a different emotional place. Jeff Tweedy was a lot more talkative and was truly happy to be playing at the festival. It was refreshing to see. This year the standout song was Spiders (Kidsmoke) which was suprising since I don't like this song a whole lot - too much rambling and repetition - but it was so much more focused.

Coldplay - At the risk of gushing and damaging my puffed-up indie cred, I will say that this show was awesome. Chris Martin pushed all the right buttons. He is a great performer and the crowd loved him. This was an arena-concert worthy performance. I sang along to every song like so many others around me. I realize now that their new album is built for arena concerts. The first two were softer, more complex.

(Photo from ACL website)

Music: ACL Fest Day 2 (9/24)


Built to Spill - 2:30 in the afternoon and the crowd was thin, but BTS played an incredible show. Most of the songs were from the last two albums. In addition to Doug Martsch on guitar, there were two other guitarists. Tight, shredding solos. BTS is a solid indie rock bet - under the guitar heavy shambling are great melodies and a tight rhythm section.

What Made Milwaukee Famous - A last minute addition to the festival after another band did not make it. What luck for local Austinites - WMMF. I have been following them for over a year and really enjoy the unique pop-rock of their self-relased cd - Trying to Never Catch Up. This is their big break (I hope). The opened for Arcade Fire on Friday at the Stubbs aftershow. They split the bill on a taping for the ACL TV show with Franz Ferdinand (!) on Saturday. They played a good show - nervous but they were enjoying themselves.

Bloc Party - Highly anticipated show. What a stylish crew! And Kele Okereke is such a charismatic lead. He made up for a not so tight show - the crowd loved him. They got better towards the end. Does their music not translate that well live or were they just not warmed up?

(Photo from ACL Website)

Music: ACL Fest Day 1 (9/23)


Spoon - Started off ACL this year with a tight show by Britt Daniel and his band. I have been enjoying Gimme Fiction the more I listen to it.

Allman Brothers - A bit of nostalgia for me. I used to have a tape of the Brothers & Sisters album and listened to it quite a bit in college. A very good show (when they were not doing too much guitar solo noodling). A good blend of southern rock, r&b and blues.

Lyle Lovett - I watched part of this show. Lyle is such a unique character. His perfect coif, dry quips and lyrical Texas swing.

(Photo from ACL website)

Saturday, September 24, 2005

Music: Built To Spill Live


An ACL Aftershow at La Zona Rosa. I was too exhausted from ACL Day 2 to really enjoy this show. I was super close to the stage and my ears were throbbing the next day. Note to self - bring earplugs or stand further back. A very different set from what they played at ACL. They played more of their longer songs from Perfect From Now On and songs from earlier albums that I am not as familiar with. Dough Martsch looks like an assistant professor of Slavic languages. He does not look like a rock star. Very unassuming - sings with his eyes closed. He set up his own gear. The three guitar attack was amazing to see up close. They closed the set with an amazing version of While My Guitar Gently Weeps.
(Photo from BTS website)

Friday, September 23, 2005

Technology: Using Google Earth for Katrina

An Austinite Jason Bollenbacher used aerial photos of Katrina and overlayed them on Google Earth. These images were used by both rescuers and evacuees. A perfect example of the beneficial use of technology.
Full article

Thursday, September 22, 2005

Music: Thievery Corp Live


Thievery Corporation live @ Stubbs.
Great music, great people watching. Music: A veritable buffet of musical genres - reggae, dub, salsa, samba - peppered with good beats. Crowd - a smattering of Indie Kids with their arty t-shirts and disshevelled hair, a clump of jam band enthusiasts with their self stitched skirts, dreads and free-from dancing, and a bunch of clean cut, perfumend and colonged lounge bar regulars with their leather wrist bands, tight designer jeans and shiny white teeth. Yes, it was a feast for the ears as well as eyes. At the end of the show I went to Magnolia and had a Martian Landscape. Perfect!

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Music: New CD - American Analog Set


Got the new AmAnSet CD and have heard about half of it. The first three songs are great - soft drone with the vibraphones plinking beautiful sounds in the back of the mix. This music reminds me of my nature - a man of routine with a heightened awareness of the slight changes in pattern and texture.

Poetry: Why poetry - William Carlos Williams


It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.

- William Carlos Williams; from Asphodel, that Greeny Flower

"...poetry can make our daily existence mean more to us. It can cut through all the distractions and busyness and help us to seize our lives, to be more completely in them."

I got this in a mailing from Poetry magazine. I picked one up after ages when I was in Davis. I am going to subscribe. Top quality poetry and an engaging Letters to the Editor section.

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Design: Defunker t-shirts


Defunker - yummy t-shirts by individual t-shirt designers.

Friday, September 16, 2005

Music: M.I.A. Live


Tim, Theresa and I went to La Zona Rosa to see M.I.A. A short but powerful show. She is captivating, beautiful and a great vocalist. She does not just sound good on her CD - she is awesome live. The crowd was so into the show - great vibe all around.

Citizen Reza


I became a citizen today. The ceremony was at the LBJ Auditorium, UT. 354 new citizens from 74 countries. It was a moving ceremony. There was a man sitting a few rows in front of me and he was so excited! - he waved his little flag and clapped at every opportunity. I am very happy, very pleased. I came to the US on August 12, 1987 - 18 years, 1 month and 4 days ago. I feel firmly planted here - it is such a good feeling for the nester in me.
Photo with Officer John Fuentes; he did my citizenship interview/test in San Antonio on July 22nd.

Thursday, September 15, 2005

Music: New CD - Hard Fi


I read a review on Pitchfork when I was in Davis over Labor Day and had an immediate hankering. Found an inexpensive EP on half.com and now am looking forward to their CD to being released stateside. A good blend of post-punk and ska - the tunes lodged into my brain right away.

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Poetry: The poetry scene in Austin

Scott Pierce pubishes finely made chapbooks - effing press. He aslo has a blog - snapper's junk(boat)heap

And here is a quick take on the poetry scene in Austin by local poet Farid Matuk (whom I met last year at the Round Top Poetry Festival)
Fascicle - Local Poetry news
Austin - Farid Matuk
The Austin area has a couple of graduate creative writing programs through which young poets are siphoned and then expelled. I can tell you a little about the people who make this an interesting place to stay. Hoa Nguyen and Dale Smith run Skanky Possum Press and Magazine. Their reading series takes place at an independent used-book shop called 12th Street Books. Recent readers have included Stefan Hyner and Jim Koller. They also brought down the Arlington-based poet Chris Murray who has since been a frequent visitor and an insightful voice in our conversations. Nguyen also runs a workshop out of her home that has sustained and bettered the work of many interesting locals. Poet and translator Susan Briante curates a reading series called 0 to 60 that features first or second book poets and fiction writers. Using funds from the UT Austin, this series has brought in folks like Renee Gladman, Joshua Clover, and Matthea Harvey for public readings and talks about how they lied, cheated, stole, or worked in order to pay the bills and keep writing until they got teaching gigs or whatever it is they now do. Working in concert with this series is Unibrow, a collective of writers and designers Susan Briante Erin Mayes, and Vince Lozano who create beautiful, graphically innovative broadsides. Scott Pierce runs effing press and only recently folded effing magazine. Pierce concentrates on publishing beautiful chapbooks of great stuff. He'll be doing Tom Clark's new collection soon. Just today I finished reading through the last batch of poems for Borderlands #25. Borderlands is a print journal that's been carried through the last ten years or so by rotating editorial teams. This issue marks the end of my two issue co-editing tenure. My partners were Phil Pardi and Vive Griffith. We're all excited for the arrival of David Hadbawnik, a recent transplant from San Francisco who has brought with him Habenicht Press. Add to these Corrine Lee's Winnow Press and you get a sense of the publishing momentum building in the area. Now entering its fifth year, the Round Top Poetry Festival has brought in folks like Nicky Flynn and Adam Zagagewski. We're hoping to bring in Harryette Mullen and others this spring. It's also worth noting that Austin is home to senior poets Christopher Middleton, recently featured in the Chicago Review and David Wevill, neither of whom can be found drinking and smoking with us.

Poetry: Utter Reading Series

The first time I have attended this series that has been running for a couple years(?). Tonight's event at Book People featured: Farid Matuk, Susan Briante, and Moira Muldoon. It was good to be out among poets and poetry lovers. Fuel.

Friday, September 09, 2005

Art: Deepest Thought on World Tour (collaborative journals)

An article from the NY Times about collaborative journals -
Deepest Thoughts on World Tour. I am going to try and start one of these journals and send it around to friends and acquaintances.
Here are two projects in progress:
Sight Unseen Journals
1000 Journals

Excerpts from article:
The practice of sending a message in a bottle has gone out of fashion, lost to the decline in ocean travel and rise of surer methods of communicating. But the impulse to reach out to strangers has not disappeared. It has lately resurfaced in the form of an elaborate type of Internet-based game.
...
Combining the worldwide reach of the Net with old-fashioned writing, drawing, pasting, wrapping and sending by conventional mail, the traveling journals are modern, loosely organized games of message in a bottle. They offer people a chance to cast out their feelings, their wisdom and their secrets, and in so doing, to ease their loneliness and reach out to worlds beyond their own."There is this belief that the Internet has killed off note keeping, and it's really not true," said Ms. Rothke, a freelance writer and writing teacher who called the combination of the Net and "a notebook floating around" "the best of both worlds."
....
"It is a relatively new phenomenon," said Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, a historian and futurist at the Institute for the Future, a research organization in Silicon Valley. Cyberspace used to be considered an alternate dimension, he said. Now, with the proliferation of cellphones, BlackBerrys and other wireless devices, that alternate dimension has begun to meld with everyday life. "It's a move away from talking about that information as separate from the physical world," Dr. Pang said.

Thursday, September 08, 2005

Zeitgeist: Seeking Justice, of Gods or the Politicians

A great article in the NY Times that gives some historical perspective on our reactions to natural disasters. Excerpts:
Recently, the philosopher Susan Neiman argued in "Evil in Modern Thought" that the Lisbon earthquake also destroyed an ancient idea that nature could itself be evil. After Lisbon, she argued, moral evil was distinguished from natural disaster. Earthquakes and floods could no longer be fitted into traditional religious theodicies.But this did not mean, of course, that theodicies faded away.
Ms. Neiman argued that for philosophers theology had been replaced by history. The fates of peoples and nations reflected other forces, and disruptions were given other forms of explanation. Hegel saw history as an evolutionary series of transformations in which destruction was as inevitable as birth. Marx believed other kinds of economic and human laws accounted for destruction and evolution. This mostly left natural disasters for the growing realm of science: if they couldn't be prevented, at least their origins could be understood.
Now though, with the prospect of thousands of dead becoming plausible with reports from New Orleans, other forms of theodicy also taking shape. Much debate is taking place about the scale of human tragedy, about procedures and planning and responsibility. And none of that should be ignored. But it is remarkable how this natural disaster has almost imperceptibly come to seem the result of human agency, as if failures in planning were almost evidence of cause, as if forces of nature were subject to human oversight. The hurricane has been humanized.
Full article

Art: Untitled (Arial Maps #1)










Flying out of Sacramento, 9/6/2005, 5:40pm

Music: New CD - Mylo


Mylo - Destroy Rock & Roll. Yummy sounding 80ish dance electronica by solo artist Mylo.

Monday, September 05, 2005

Books: The Accidental Masterpiece


A new book by the Art editor of the NY Times: The Accidental Masterpice - On the Art of Life and Vice Versa. I am looking forward to reading it and hopefully add some context to my exploration of the arts this year.
Book review.
I bought this book at the Avid Reader while I was in Davis, CA visiting Diane & David.

Friday, September 02, 2005

Art: Curators discover new worlds

The first paragraph of this art review in the NY Times - Wide Open Spaces and Between the Frames - describes so well what a good curator does:
"Like the starship Enterprise, museum curators are supposed to go where no curator has gone before. They can do this with relative ease in temporary exhibitions and also with acquisitions. But the meat of their job lies elsewhere: curators must find unexplored planets in a very familiar galaxy, the artworks in the museum's permanent collection. Like orchestra conductors working with the classical repertory, curators must discover new worlds within existing artworks and till familiar terrain for fresh interpretations."
Full article

Thursday, September 01, 2005

Design: New Lamy Studio pen



Drool. I love fountain pens and I need to add this to my collection - Lamy Studio.

Art: Street art photo blog


Street art photo-blog: Streetsy. I liked this one - comic like.
I have not been out taking pictures of street art for a while. Maybe on my trip to NoCal this weekend.