Fangela

Here is a wonderful song by Luke Temple’s new group, Here We Go Magic: “Fangela.” It reminds me of Paul Simon’s world music, and really makes me wish I still had a radio show!

Expression

“All true feeling is in reality untranslatable. To express it is to betray it. But to translate it is to dissimulate it. True expression hides what it makes manifest.”           —Antonin Artaud

There’s an interesting fragmented essay by Rick Moody concerning Artaud in The Believer. Small gripe: I don’t agree with his calling the absurdist or scatological humor in Beckett and others “juvenile.” Such a dismissal is wrongheaded. Just because it actually makes you laugh out loud doesn’t mean it’s juvenile and thus unworthy or embarrassing. It means it’s funny.

Basement Jaxx – “Raindrops”

Death is not the End

Here’s a fantastic essay in the Point Magazine concerning the misunderstanding of David Foster Wallace’s ambitions and achievements as an artist.

Beckett

“Bluer scarcely than white of egg the eyes stare into the space before them, namely the fulness of the great deep and its unchanging calm.”

—Samuel Beckett, Malone Dies

Real Love

Here’s Regina Spektor, angel that she is, covering John Lennon’s “Real Love.”

Dark Night of the Soul

Head over to NPR to hear the new Sparklehorse/Danger Mouse collaboration, Dark Night of the Soul, featuring a host of great guest vocalists including Julian Casablancas and Iggy Pop. This might be the best post-Beatles album I’ve ever heard, and I mean that as a big compliment. The only bad news: it’s not getting a proper release because of ongoing legal issues with EMI. It will be released as a 100-page booklet with photographs by David Lynch (!) as well as a blank CD-R to be used as you wish (wink wink).

Salinger Says

“Do you know what I was smiling at? You wrote down that you were a writer by profession. It sounded to me like the loveliest euphemism I had ever heard. When was writing ever your profession? It’s never been anything but your religion. Never. I’m a little overexcited now. Since it is your religion, do you know what you will be asked when you die? But let me tell you first what you won’t be asked. You won’t be asked if you were working on a wonderful, moving piece of writing when you died. You won’t be asked if it was long or short, sad or funny, published or unpublished. You won’t be asked if you were in good or bad form while you were working on it. You won’t even be asked if it was the one piece of writing you would have been working on if you had known your time would be up when it was finished—I think only poor Soren K. will get asked that. I’m so sure you’ll only get asked two questions. Were most of your stars out? Were you busy writing your heart out? If only you knew how easy it would be for you to say yes to both questions.”

—J.D. Salinger, Seymour: An Introduction

Supernova

This is some quality pop music right here: “Supernova” – Mr. Hudson featuring Kanye West. Definitely very radio-friendly, but I dig it.

Henry Miller

“Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music – the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.”   

“One of the reasons why so few of us ever act, instead of react, is because we are continually stifling our deepest impulses.”

“And what is the potential man, after all? Is he not the sum of all that is human? Divine, in other words?”

“If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having.”
—-Henry Miller

Paris Review interview