listening

CHVRCHES, The Bones Of What You Believe

Air, Talkie Walkie

Reigning Sound, Love and Curses

mesmerizing

inspiring

meditative color from Oakes Oakes.

Synchronized Field (Japanese Paper), 2012

Unified Field (contracting), 2012

Ocean Texture 2, 2010

THESE ARE PAINTINGS. mind = blown.

inspiring

recently, a new exhibition, titled ENERGY THAT IS ALL AROUND opened at the Walter and McBean galleries at SFAI. it's an incredibly comprehensive exhibition of Mission School art, with works by Barry McGee, Margaret Kilgallen, Chris Johanson, Ruby Neri and Alicia McCarthy. i went to the opening on 12 september, and it was, in a word, joyous. there were so many people in attendance, there was live music, and exuberant, relevant art. it has been awhile since i felt the surge of energy (no pun intended) that ENERGY THAT IS ALL AROUND produced. i encourage anyone in the SF bay area to check it out. you have until december 14. there is a slew of events in conjunction with the exhibition, which you can check out, here.

big shout-out to the curator, Natasha Boas, and the assistant curator Nicole Crescenzi with whom i worked at the Museum of Craft and Folk Art.

exciting

quite looking forward to the new album from Arcade Fire, Reflektor, and let's put bets on how many new songs they'll play at the concert after SNL this Saturday.

their "video" for the title song is pretty epic - you become a part of the video. meta. do it, here.

the tracklist for Reflektor is as follows:

"Vol. I"
"Reflektor"
"We Exist"
"Flashbulb Eyes"
"Here Comes The Night Time"
"Normal Person"
"You Already Know"
"Joan of Arc"

"Vol. II"
"Here Comes The Night Time II"
"Awful Sound (Oh, Eurydice)"
"It's Never Over (Oh Orpheus)"
"Porno"
"Afterlife"
"Supersymmetry"

obsessing

please please please can i have those falsies?!

i tend to be on the nerdy side, and i love The Hunger Games. when Laughing Squid posted about the costume designer, Trish Summerville, creating her OWN FASHION LINE, i almost peed my pants. IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL. i'm sure i won't be able to afford any of it, but it's fine, just reading all of the articles they have up on the site, and seeing all.the.beautiful.photos is enough for me. what's also amazing? they're featuring avant garde designers on the site. ENDLESS SOURCE OF INSPIRATION! AND, LOOK, LOOK, REVIEWS OF NYFW CAPITOL STYLE. stop. this might just be the perfect website ever. here's more:

inspiring

Sandworm

Sandworm, detail

Sandworm, detail

The Oystermen

the work of Marco Casagrande.

listening

the week before last, i was walking to work and decided to pull up an old This American Life episode. i've been doing this a lot in the past few months - especially in light of their 500th episode, i want to make sure i've listened to them all. i found two i hadn't had the heart to listen to - the two recorded after the events of 9.11. two weekends ago, i was at my parents lake house sitting by the fire and talking with my dad about 9.11 completely out of the blue. maybe we felt it looming, like it always does, around the last gasp of summer, during the weeks of back-to-school (my mother is a teacher - i live back-to-school vicariously through her every year.) or maybe it's just coincidence. either way, i find these two episodes of This American Life like a balm i didn't know i needed and/or wanted. so, on this, the twelfth anniversary, i urge you to listen to them. i found the second particularly prescient - it's like it could have been recorded yesterday or tomorrow, or a week from now, or three months ago. which i suppose makes me anxious?

193: Stories of Loss
*editors note: not the best to listen to on your way to work - gut-wrenching and heart-breaking

194: Before and After

watching

i watched Crips and Bloods: Made in America by documentarian Stacy Peralta (Dogtown and Z Boys, Riding Giants) recently, and it is a phenomenal documentary. outlining the genesis of the two most notorious gangs in American history, the Crips and the Bloods, the film does an excellent job in explaining the institutional and casual racism that ushered in a whole generation of gangbangers. in a very incomplete nutshell, after the Watts riots and during the civil rights movement, community organizations like the Black Panthers helped stifle gang activity in the area. however, J. Edgar Hoover, the police, and the "white establishment" put targets on the backs of such community organizations, leading to the assassination or incarceration of many of the leaders of such movements. this left a whole generation of black males disenfranchised and left to fend for themselves. when you give someone absolutely no hope of getting out of the situation they have been placed in (and make no mistake, the were purposefully placed there, just look at the way LA county was divided to keep "undesirables" out of white neighborhoods) their only option is to implode on themselves and the community around them.

for anyone who is interested in the historical context of how these gang wars were started, it's a fascinating and enthralling documentary. Peralta interviews current and past gang members, as well as members of the "first generation" of "clubs" (precursor to the modern gang.) i think the hardest part is knowing how little is being done to give resources to the communities - resources that are so desperately needed. you truly can tell a lot about American society when we blame people for acting in the only way they know how to, and give them no options otherwise. i also don't think it is sympathetic to gangs, but is trying to understand all of the mitigating factors that lead these communities to where they are today. i'd be extremely interested to see an update, particularly about the influx of the Mexican gangs into south central. if anyone knows of a documentary about that, please leave it in the comments.