The documentary 'Out of the Marvellous' persuades that Seamus Heaney was a great poet *and* a very nice man. And, Beowulf and Baxter.
Leonard Cohen's ever prescient and oblique notation of what's going on in the USA, the Middle East, the hood. Poetry and politics.
Dance again to Yothu Yindi's "Treaty." Treaty Yeh!
Ah, Obama: reaching for the ideal, but urging us to "act in our time," "knowing that our work will be imperfect." And a gay inaugural poet to boot.
How good is "Video Games"? The best. How good is Ai Weiwei as a dancer? How gay is pop in 2012?
The video: Lana Wachowski's funny, tender, moving speech on her transgender journey. November 20 is Transgender Day of Remembrance.
The Chinese dissident artist makes pop politics. (Embedded youtube)
Being fully middle-class with fully middle of the road tastes I occasionally listen to NPR’s All Songs Considered, which fits snugly amongst Stuff White People Like, being self-consciously mainstream alt. In the sonic arena I must be whitish as I find their selections tolerable and every now and again appealing; luck prevents me from regular […]
I recently attended a Gloriana concert where the highlight was Ariel Ramirez’ wonderful “iconic” Misa Criolla. It was just fantastic and we, the people, forced the choir into a gratifying encore of the “Gloria”. I was just sufficiently conscious to switch on my kneecam. I was familiar with this piece in a recording where the […]
On Sunday in a quiet inner city church, the Gloriana chamber choir sang Arvo Pärt’s Da pacem Domine. And I was reminded of Gorecki’s No. 3, of lying on the carpet in an apartment above Lavender Bay in Sydney, very late one night in the mid 1990s. The soprano was Dawn Upshaw. It was like […]
