Another great short film by the cold water surfing company, Finisterre. Féileacán - (And the Lost Weekend) has that dreamy, relaxed, easy-going and openness to wonder and adventure that makes an excellent road trip. Check it out!
Martin Scorsese: Tisch Salute
I went looking for inspiration today and came across this wonderful and highly entertaining speech by Martin Scorsese that he gave to the Tisch School of the Arts, NYU, graduates in 2014.
A master storyteller speaking about his own time at Tisch; the journey to become a film maker; the ups and downs of following his passion, and keeping that spark of creativity alive.
Enjoy!
The Colour in Anything
Okay—I'm not a James Blake fan, but his new album release this week, The Colour in Anything took me by surprise—it's quite gorgeous. I was especially interested to discover Frank Ocean was one of Blake's collaborators—I'm definitely a fan of his music!
Here's the video for the song, I Need a Forest Fire with Bon Iver.
A Moon Shaped Pool
Love it!!!!! Radiohead's new album—A Moon Shaped Pool. So worth the wait! Truly incredible. Beautiful. Magic.
Just keep wanting to listen to it, which says it all.
small stories: it's so dark
Image: Sonja Braas, The Passage, Week 38, 2011
it’s so dark
I’ve put the lights on
to illuminate the sudden gloom
of thoughts and feelings
my eyes shuttering
it’s so dark
a sudden stripping of the light
by clouds weighing heavy
so I can’t see the sky
and it’s only morning
the day descending
and already I sense the night
so close
yet above
this smother of grey
there is still the sun
© Angela Jooste
Radiohead: Burn the Witch
Totally unexpected—yet it's been in the air that something was up with Radiohead going offline—but last night just checking out my IG feed and there's this funny image of wooden people—actually scary looking wooden people in masks about to burn a girl tied to a tree—and I double check and it's Radiohead's sneak preview of their new song!
So—ominous and exciting—here's the video for Burn the Witch.
The Bard
Artwork: Shakespeare psychedelia by @akajimmyc
It's Shakespeare's birthday and 400 years since his death.
It also happens to be my mum's birthday, so I've never forgotten this significant date! My way to celebrate is to turn to Shakespeare's words, which truly immortalise him. Here is my favourite sonnet, which strangely (speaking about immortals) I revisited the other night when watching Jim Jarmusch's wonderful vampire film, Only Lovers Left Alive. Although Jarmusch sneakily attributes this sonnet to Christopher Marlowe—a vampire played by John Hurt—because well, Shakespeare was simply a dunderheaded foil for Marlowe to get his work out there! Would have been great if Jarmusch had actually made Shakespeare into a vampire...(I'm a sucker—pun intended—for a great vampire story!)
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when alterations finds
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken.
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be
taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
(source: William Shakespeare: Complete Works, RSC, edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen, 2007)
PJ Harvey: The Hope Six Demolition Project
So excited about the soon to be released (April 15) PJ Harvey album, The Hope Six Demolition Project! Here's an amazing song from the album, The Wheel.
eL Seed: Perception
I love this street art project by eL Seed. Titled Perception in Cairo, in eL Seed’s words:
“In my new project ‘Perception’ I am questioning the level of judgment and misconception society can unconsciously have upon a community based on their differences. In the neighborhood of Manshiyat Nasr in Cairo, the Coptic community of Zaraeeb collects the trash of the city for decades and developed the most efficient and highly profitable recycling system on a global level. Still, the place is perceived as dirty, marginalized and segregated. To bring light on this community, with my team and the help of the local community, I created an anamorphic piece that covers almost 50 buildings only visible from a certain point of the Moqattam Mountain. The piece of art uses the words of Saint Athanasius of Alexandria, a Coptic Bishop from the 3rd century, that said: ‘Anyone who wants to see the sunlight clearly needs to wipe his eye first.’‘إن أراد أحد أن يبصر نور الشمس، فإن عليه أن يمسح عينيه’The Zaraeeb community welcomed my team and I as we were family. It was one of the most amazing human experience I have ever had. They are generous, honest and strong people. They have been given the name of Zabaleen (the garbage people), but this is not how they call themselves. They don’t live in the garbage but from the garbage; and not their garbage, but the garbage of the whole city. They are the one who clean the city of Cairo.”
Check out his site: http://elseed-art.com
Artwork: eL Seed, Perception, Cairo
small stories: laid bare
Artwork: Auguste Rodin, Danaid, 1889
laid bare
unstitched and
incomplete
in the cradle
of your
lap
© Angela Jooste
A Yoshitomo Nara Day
a snarly, twisty, frustrating kind of day—a set of fangs would have been great...(grrrrr!)
Bright Star
Jane Campion’s film, Bright Star is exquisite.
The love story of poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne is told with grace, honesty, humour and an emotional intensity that had me enthralled from the first time I saw it. And every time I’ve watched it since, the ending still has a gut wrenching power that reduces me to tears.
As Fanny comments in the film, the beginning of Keats’ poem, Endymion is “quite perfect”, and I find these lines express something of my feelings about this film:
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Love: the word
Artwork: eLSeed (@elseed), love you mum, 2012
Thinking about the word—love. One word in English to express so much.
So, following that train of thought—this is from one of my favourite novels, Ahdaf Soueif’s, Map of Love, the many ways “love” finds its expression in Arabic:
“Hubb’ is love, ‘ishq’ is love that twines two people together, ‘shaghaf’ is love that nests in the chambers of the heart, ‘hayam’ is love that wanders the earth, ‘teeh’ is love in which you lose yourself, ‘walah’ is love that carries sorrow within it, ‘sababah’ is love that exudes from your pores, ‘hawa’ is love that shares its name with ‘air’ and with ‘falling’, ‘gharam’ is love that is willing to pay the price.”
A Yoshitomo Nara Day
Trying to focus, but I'm travelling in my mind...
Four Tet + Jamie xx + Romy = Seesaw
I've been a fan of Four Tet since I heard the album, There is Love in You. Gorgeous. So, happy start to the day when on my IG feed, a post from Four Tet (Kieran!), of a remix of Seesaw with Jamie xx and Romy (the xx). Check it out.
free fall
Sometimes, you just fall.
Tom Dosland's recent free fall on the big, big wave, Jaws (Peahi, Hawaii), is hard to watch. But he made it without being injured, although his board got shredded.
Big wave surfers amaze me with the risks they're prepared to take.
Toni Morrison: in between the words
Just read a wonderful interview with Toni Morrison in The Paris Review on 'The Art of Fiction' (no.134). Here's just one of her observations on writing:
“The difficulty for me in writing—among the difficulties—is to write language that can work quietly on a page for a reader who doesn't hear anything. Now for that, one has to work carefully with what is in between the words. What is not said. Which is measure, which is rhythm, and so on. So, it is what you don't write that frequently gives what you do write its power.”
small stories: if my heart
If my heart
was enough
I'd reel
you in
© Angela Jooste
Nobody Really Cares...
Love this—thanks Courtney Barnett!
Paris
Jimi Hendrix: “ When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know Peace.”