The Drivers

I love this:

Mesmerizing Video

The image changes and moves into something anthropomorphic and stunning.

Enjoy!


Check out the artist Matt Pyke here.

Also the "Creator's Project" here.

Argo Echoes

I saw Argo yesterday.   Excellent and riveting film.   Gripping and very very sad.  

I thought of my Iranian friends, the green movement of 2009, the hatred, the fear - the sense that in over 30 years nothing has changed.   I felt like I was 14 again.  Even the Warner Brother logo was the old one from those years.  I remember when those six were on the news.  I remember those yellow ribbons - the first yellow ribbons.  I remember writing an essay about the hostage crisis.  I remember exactly where I was when I heard the news that the hostages had been released 20 minutes after Reagan was inaugurated.   I remember when the Iran Contra scandal broke and with it the rumors that Reagan had illegally and treasonously negotiated with Iran for their release after his election, to secure his election.   And in return he'd sell them weapons to fund his illegal war in Central America.  

Nearly my entire conscious political life has been influenced, if not animated, by tensions with and within the Middle East - 3 wars, terrorist attacks, 9/11.

I wept during the film and after.

Here is a fascinating interview with Tony Mendez, a quiet hero, with Fareed Zakaria last week ----

A Sculpture Of Rain

From a terminal at the airport in Singapore.  Maybe someday I will get to see in person.

"Embrace" - A Video of Longing

This moves me.   it's unique, expressive and, for me, reflective of how pain, pain's darkness binds and constrains.

EMBRACE from Ashley Rae Pearsall on Vimeo.

A City Within a City Within a Country Within A Country!

In honor of the start of the London Olympics, enjoy this short video on the history of the City of London.

Perspective of Time

The part about Italy is really funny.   And about how video games affects how we should be teaching.  And about our understanding of consequences.

Morgan Freeman Discusses His Fibromyalgia

Esquire features an lengthy interview with Morgan Freeman, This Earth That Holds Me Fast Will Find Me Breath.

Here is the money quote, emphasis added:

Every so often he grabs his left shoulder and winces. It hurts when he walks, when he sits still, when he rises from his couch, and when he missteps in a damp meadow. More than hurts. It seems a kind of agony, though he never mentions it. There are times when he cannot help but show this, the fallout from a car accident four years ago, in which the car he was driving flipped and rolled, leaving Freeman and a friend to be pulled from the car using the Jaws of Life. Despite surgery to repair nerve damage, he was stuck with a useless left hand. It is stiffly gripped by a compression glove most of the time to ensure that blood doesn't pool there. It is a clamp, his pain, an icy shot up a relatively useless limb. He doesn't like to show it, but there are times when he cannot help but lose himself to a world-ending grimace. It's such a large gesture, so outside the general demeanor of the man, that it feels as if he's acting. 

"It's the fibromyalgia," he says when asked. "Up and down the arm. That's where it gets so bad. Excruciating." 

This means Morgan Freeman can't pilot jets the way he used to, a hobby he took up at sixty-five. He can no longer sail as well. There was a time when he would sail by himself to the Caribbean and hide out for two, three weeks at a time. "It was complete isolation," he says. "It was the best way for me to find quiet, how I found time to read." No more. He can't trust himself on one arm. He can't drive, not a stick anyway, not the way he used to — which is to say fast, wide open, dedicated to what the car can do. And he can't ride horses as much, though once he rode every day.

He never mentions any of it as a loss, though how could it be anything else? He never hints around about the unfairness of it. "There is a point to changes like these. I have to move on to other things, to other conceptions of myself. I play golf. I still work. And I can be pretty happy just walking the land."

My mom would have appreciated this revelation.

Oh La La! An Exciting Photographer in NYC

Christa Meola is another photographer; Natasha Lakos developed her visual identity as well.  

Christa is based in New York City, and I've already contacted her about doing my photos.  

She is writing a book on how to look great naked, which I just love love love.   She specializes in boudoir photography.  

I also loved and watched the interview she did with Nate, the creator of Sticky Albums which gave me a bunch of great ideas for my own new business.  I've corresponded with him about my ideas, and I can hardly wait to get started.

And to have some sexy pictures taken!    

I Heart NY

Over the weekend I rewatched the Sex and the City episode, I Heart NY.

This video is another homage to my other favorite city

Love this British LOVE Magazine

I don't know what exactly this British magazine is for but I do know it's very cool!

check it out here - LOVE.

Shadow Stories

Who didn't do this as a kid?  Create puppet stories with the shadows of hands on the wall.

But this is just amazing.  I've never seen anything like it.

Fantastic Flying Books!

Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore.   Now available.  It's just AWESOME!

And it won the Academy Award for best animated short!

It's all about how books and stories can heal and be curative.   My life philosophy!

Enjoy this.  You are in for a treat.

Snow Circles

Wow!  so beautiful.  And really makes me miss cross country skiing in Vermont.

Snow Circles from Beauregard, Steamboat Aerials on Vimeo.

Books Come Alive at Night!

This reminds me of the Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, which is the best iPad app ever as well as a short film.  

Enjoy!  It's just a delight.

"She Went to Vassar" and So Did I

This short film was done in 1931 by a 1927 graduate of Vassar by the name of Marvin Breckinridge '27, a self-taught filmmaker.

According to the notes  -

Her first post-Vassar claim to fame was a documentary called "The Forgotten Frontier" about the Frontier Nursing Service (founded by her cousin, Mary Breckinridge). Breckinridge went on to a distinguished career in photojournalism and broadcast reporting. When World War II broke out, she became the first woman foreign correspondent to join the staff of a radio network (CBS). The original "She Goes to Vassar" was a silent film, following a freshman through the course of her first year at the college. This version was remastered with a music soundtrack in honor of Vassar's Centennial in 1961.

And it was posted up to YouTube in honor of our 150th anniversary in 2011.  

"Once" Again and Again and Again

Last night, as I typically do, I went to the NPR website to survey the day's stories and add them to my playlist.  I switch them around in order of importance, hit play, and try to fall asleep.  The monotone tenor and the interest of the stories usually serve well enough to distract me from the pain and enable me to slip into some slumber.

But last night, I was incredulous to see this story "Once" and Again: A Love Story Gets A Second Life that aired yesterday morning on Morning Edition.  It's actually a third life, but more on that in a second.

When the film was out on DVD, in 2007, a friend I have loved and admired for over twenty years told me I had to see the film, Once.   I did of course and I did like it.  But I didn't quite understand his deep affection for the film.

Edna Walsh, the Dublin playwright adapting the film for the stage said this in the NPR interview:

Her character sort of barely existed on-screen, but for me [she] was all about the light — was all about someone who could change your world and change your life, immediately," Walsh says. "There's this sort of maelstrom of sort of emotion that goes on with her."When he was called for this project, he confesses, Walsh had never seen the movie."I watched it and I thought, 'Oh right, this is It's A Wonderful Life, effectively.' You know, the story of a guy who's sort of given up on stuff, and this sort of angel arrives and casts a light over his life somehow, and the people around him."

Well, now I do understand.  And agree.

It's strange because I've been thinking of my friend a lot lately and things connected to him have been popping up all over.  In a theater, to watch a film last week, while the previews were being shown much to my surprise there was a preview for a film I'd not even heard of (rare for me) - The Swell Season.   It's a documentary about Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, and that's the second life.   I had read they had broken up; the cynic in me wasn't surprised.  But here, years later, was a non-fiction film about their lives, on tour, in the aftermath of Once's popularity.   I was surprised, heartened and pleased to tears.   I have not yet seen The Swell Season but I plan too.  Maybe later today I will go do that.

Here is the preview:




And then last night the NPR story, which illuminated for me other aspects of the appeal of the story.  I am keen to see the play in NYC.  And so then I google for the New York Times review of the Off Broadway production and to read and find out more, and here is the fourth life for the story - Even Before Off Broadway Opening Once Announces A Move To Broadway.   Was posted on the Arts Blog last night around 7 pm.

Just as the musical “Once” was about to open at New York Theater Workshop Tuesday night, the show’s commercial producers announced that it would go directly to Broadway after the Off Broadway run.Based on the 2007 movie of the same name, “Once” will begin previews at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater on Feb. 28, with opening night set for March 18.

Well, I can't wait to see it - off Broadway or on.  I very much hope I can - sometime, somehow, do so with my long and lost friend.

I remember seeing this 35 minute Tiny Desk Concert a few years back, in 2009.  Here's the description:

Fans of the musical Once will recognize its stars, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, in this enormously charming Tiny Desk Concert straight from NPR Music, in which they showed off six new songs before finishing up with "When Your Mind's Made Up." It's impossible to convey how lovely — how warm and genuine — this performance was in person, but seeing the video, which really does show them sitting behind Bob Boilen's real desk surrounded by Bob Boilen's real stuff, is really stunning. 

I agree.

And here is the video:

"I Will Find You"

I'm seeing signs all around. And having dreams. First last weekend, I saw the preview for The Swell Season, which I did not even know existed. Then this week I did an indie music mix and a song from The Swell Season album was the first up. And then this morning I go to check out Sharon Salzberg's new site and what is there but this... I will take them. They provide me comfort as I worry about a dear friend missing from my life right now....

Cool Bicycle Animation

Just because this is so cool and because my nephew is going to love it:

Classic Synchronized Swimming

On a lighter note, here is a fun video about Esther Williams. I sent this to my swim coach the other week who is so young she had no idea to whom I was referring.

Another younger friend I shared this with declared it was the creepiest thing he'd ever seen. Well, his life isn't creepy enough obviously!

I loved these movies when I was a kid. And yes when I grew up, while at Vassar, after foot surgery halted my ballet career, I joined the synchronized swimming team.

And loved it.

Here is Esther:
: