It begins like this, the thinnest edge of another world appears in a humdrum street, the greater sky begins to break through, too bright for your earth-simple eyes, angels, small as bees on the wing, unnoticed by all but the mad, the old, and the very young, whiz through scenes of mundane atrocity, taking quick unarguable witness.

Radio Sonidera
Like the spontaneous music of the original Jamaican reggae DJs of the 1970s, the process of making la música sonidera is an intrinsic part of its identity. It is created by charismatic DJs, the sonideros, such as Posada's mentor, famed veteran DJ Ramón Rojo-- Sonido La Changa. The sonideros perform in Mexican cities, especially in Mexico City's teeming colonias, as peripheral neighborhoods are known, and increasingly in U.S. cities.
Posada says much of his playlist is recordings of sonideros' concerts. The DJs interact with the audience as they speak over tunes, rhyming, cracking jokes or intoning fans' names. A danceable cumbia or salsa track is mixed with other sounds, everything from electronica to rap. On-air, Posada himself plays the role of sonidero.
The concerts are often burned onto CDs as they are performed. After the show, the CDs are sold "like tortillas, except more expensive," Posada says. In turn, the recordings are copied and re-copied by fans.
The quick digital dissemination of the music, in a musical subculture that has little use for copyrights, means sonideros can even facilitate transnational communication. A DJ in Mexico will often give a "shout out" to an audience member's relative living in Los Angeles or another U.S. city. As he lays down the tracks, the DJ will sometimes say, appropriating an expression often used in a derogatory way: "This one's going out mojado-style, (wetback-style), across the border."
—Macelo Ballve/ Pacific News Service Dec.19.03

EasyRGB is an inspiration.

link *.* marchdesign

Origami life of the Buddha

Happy 60th Birthday
Keith Richards
Living Proof

Kshitigarbha (Chijang), the Guardian of the Earth

Sculpture
Browse by type of artwork
Korean Art
LACMA protectorate
________

Miroku, the Bodhisasttva of the Future
Kaikei
MFA Boston

William Maxwell, nearing 90

Every now and then, in my waking moments, and especially when I am in the country, I stand and look hard at everything.

—lengthy excerpt and heartfelt praise at Danger Blog! Dec.16.03

Many links and justifiably so, to J. M Coetzee's Nobel Lecture

By The Road

When I moved to Montana from New York, I’d thought I was going back to some earlier and better version of America, to an Ansel Adams photograph suspended in time. Of course, Montana isn’t like that, nor (as far as I know) is anywhere else. Nowadays, the particular nuttiness of the age surges everywhere instantly, like a magnetic field. Sometimes half the drop-offs at local U-Haul rental places come from California, and whenever upheaval happens there—an earthquake, a riot—the number of refugees seems to go up. A lot of people in Montana aren’t so much living there as they are not living somewhere else.

—Ian Frazier/The New Yorker Dec.15.03
second page link malfunction at the moment

Paradise Engineering

A pretty much somewhat androgynous portrait of Jeff Bridges by I.V. Passmore who purports to be his friend.
Alexander Passmore,
sharing the same site, is an accomplished artist in his own right.
the watercolor index is long and filled with impressive works in that difficult medium

The legs are crunchy and fibrous, the head contains soft white meat and the abdomen is filled with...

—VitaminQ Dec.06.03

—
Gelada thumbs are more opposite their fingers than in any other Old World primate - they have the most highly developed precision grip, due to their need to pluck grass for food. Researchers have theorized that early hominids were also small object feeders, similar to geladas...

Gelada Facts
Mindy's Memory Primate Sanctuary
"Although we answer the need of primates released from research facilities, the majority of our rescued monkeys are from abuse, neglect or abandonment by the private pet sector. Therefore, the sanctuary does not support the idea of exotics as pets."

link vitaminq

three previously unknown hymns of Sir Edward Elgar discovered by the rock musician Manfred Mann.

from Come In, Kansas City. Kansas City, Come In, Please.

...the wide rivers are so fine no one crosses them:
they unroll like sheets of Reynolds Wrap before it's slathered with apple crumb betty pie.
The good folk camp on the banks like trees
and watch the shining republic of desire...

—Cal Bedient
Poetry Daily
Dec.14.03

Scudding before a Heavy Westerly Gale off the Cape, Lat. 44 deg.
Augustus Earle
Traveler's Art
NLA

Elizabeth Durack 1915 - 2000

REBECCA HOSACK: Yes. I think that she had extraordinary experiences with Aboriginal people as a young girl. I mean she used to tell me that she would sometimes the Aboriginals on the station would say, 'Come with me'. And they would go - she would go walking for three weeks not knowing when she was going to come back. I think as an older woman she - and as an artist - starting extrapolating from those experiences. And I think the persona of Eddie Burrup freed her up.
—
MATT PEACOCK: Did you discuss this with her at all?

REBECCA HOSACK: Oh, I mean we talked about it a lot. And I think part of the reason of doing the show we both felt that it was important to open the debate. But there should be a debate that's honest. It shouldn't be vicious. It shouldn't be rebarbative. If you are not going to be cross with her for crossing gender barriers - which no one is - you know, perhaps why should we be cross with her crossing race barriers? She did have a lot of experience, genuine experience, perhaps more than many white people I know - most white people I know - with Aboriginal people.

Australian Broadcast Company interview

The Art of Eddie Burrup
__



Children's lives
Beyond the Picket Fence
National Library of Australia Online Exhibitions
__________

from a search for Ruby Lindsay



who died in the Spanish Influenza epidemic following World War 1, at the age of 22.
She came from an artistic family.

Saraswati
Flying Squirrel
Ardhanarishvara

from the somewhat scammy and unprovenanced Exotic India 'One Stop Shop for Indian Arts'
also:
Sahasrara Chakra
Shennong, the Chinese Deity of Medicine

Fear and Trembling

Ω{I thought Amélie Nothomb was a lot more popular than she seems to be from a google search. In english I mean. She's pretty renowned in the francophone world.
Fear and Trembling is a tight little ship, like a bath toy, like something when you were alone in there you might rub yourself with, other times just float it along through the bubbles and waves, and it's like that brightness too of the bath, the intimate brightness and skin of vulnerability but the doors are closed and you're alone. It's not masturbatory but it has that inversion, that sensual turning in.
Because it takes place in Japan I wonder if that's why it reminds me of Banana Yoshimoto's novels. Or its size, it's a small thing, like Kitchen and Lizard. It has that sense of deeply maintained control too, steadiness of realization.
It's a sweet book. I read it right through quite happily.
Nothomb is also affiliated with the firmly androgynous Robert, or Princesse Robert, a French music person of great feminine beauty but seemingly masculine gender. I can't respond to his music, which I've only encountered so far on his web site, because it will only play on the two main music applications, Real and Windows, neither of which work for me.}

I am a voyager and a seaman; that is a liar and a stupid fellow, in the eyes of that class of indolent haughty writers, who in their closets reason in infinitum on the world and its inhabitants, and with an air of superiority, confine nature within the limits of their own invention

In 1774, the first Polynesian to visit London travelled to England with the crew of Captain Cook's second Pacific voyage and became an overnight sensation. Seen as a living example of the 'Noble Savage', Omai as he was known, was discussed by scientists and philosophers, celebrated in all the best circles and written about in everything from poetry to pornography. He proved a lightning rod for European anxieties regarding imperialism, civilisation and the true nature of mankind.

Cook & Omai: The Cult of the South Seas Nov. .03
National Library of Australia

Jonathon Delacour on Donald Richie’s Ozu:
The other—equally important though less obvious—characteristic of the Ozu film is its emphasis on existential choice. It’s difficult to conceive of anything more at odds with contemporary Western society’s willingness to concoct excuses for all kinds of bad behavior than the notion that you are what you do, and nothing more nor less; the sum total of your choices, your actions, is the sum total of yourself.

Those of us who agree with Richie that “there is no immutable inner reality, no inner person, no soul” could do infinitely worse than follow a morality based on an appreciation of the transient beauty of everyday life and the need to accept responsibility for both our choices and the consequences that flow from them.