saidthewizard

[saidthewizard]

Time For A Tumblr Break

It’s been taking up - I’ve allowed it to take up - too much of my time.

I’ve noticed that at the moment, my brain is unwilling to handle more blog entries informing me that Trump is a bastard; that kittens are adorable; that the world is fucked, and so forth. I see dozens of these every day, and some of the blogs I am following post up to 150, sometimes 200 pieces of information per day. Not all of them interest me - yet I look at every one because everything we blog here is a part of who we are, and should not be met with disrespect. 

It’s just too much, though. I’m suffering from input overload and response fatigue.

So for a while, I’ll vastly reduce my presence on here. There are some wonderful people - photographers mostly - whose work I’ve been following closely because it is impressive and amazing; I hope they’ll not take it personally if for a time, I don’t re-blog or comment on their art. I just need time for myself and to focus on my own stuff. 

I’d like to take this opportunity though to thank them for broadening my understanding of photography, and for giving me many moments of insight and beauty. I hope when I return this will continue, because there’s much to see, and more to learn ... 

[saidthewizard]

A Few Months Ago ...

I posted a clip featuring saxophonist and flute player Yusef Lateef with pianist Ahmad Jamal. This was from a live gig in 2011, wenn Lateef was over 90 years of age.

Here, he is at a sprightly 69, with a strange disc which may not be to everyone's taste. This in essence is a meditation for piano and wind instruments, with Lateef on flutes and sax and also taking the piano part. Chris Salvo, Hugh Schick and Patrick Tucker on clarinet, flugelhorn and french horn respectively, join him in this exploration of dark and solitary atmospheres. There are echoes of Paul Bley and excursions into Misha Alperin territory, helping to create a haunting sense of  timelessness.

The album's title, Nocturnes (Atlantic 81977-2), seems just right for this moody work.

Yusef Lateef: flute, alto flute, tenor sax, piano Christopher Salvo: clarinet Hugh Schick: flugelhorn Patrick Tucker: french horn

TRACKS:

01. Warm Intensity 02. Estuary 03. Indefinite Expansion 04. Closed Space 05. Compassion Duration 06. Visible Particles 07. While On Earth 08. Elementary Substance 09. Soft Light 10. Life Property 11. Luminous Energy 12. Essential Element

[saidthewizard]

[saidthewizard]

St Paul’s Cathedral from Ludgate Circus,1885, by John Atkinson Grimshaw.

John Atkinson Grimshaw specialised in a distinctive type of nocturnal townscape, usually featuring gaslights, and moonlit streets and as fellow artist and friend James Abbott McNeill Whistler said of him, ‘I considered myself the inventor of Nocturnes until I saw Grimmy’s moonlit pictures.’

See More John Atkinson Grimshaw.on tqemagazine.com

[saidthewizard]

[saidthewizard]

Münsing. 2018-02-18.  Photograph by andreasgaertner #photography

[saidthewizard]

By J.T. Mills.

[saidthewizard]

By Patrice Moreau.

“L'insoutenable légèreté de l'étai” VIII

Scènes de la ville ordinaire

Saint-Jean-de-Monts, Pays de la Loire

©PTRCMR

[saidthewizard]

By Jules Falk Hunter.

Blue Monday

[saidthewizard]

[saidthewizard]

Start The Week With Music ...

... and a blatant appeal to our powers of imagination.

Music, to some extent, is always a visual experience; when the sound of music makes us close our eyes, pictures start rising from within. Beyond that, I won't go into details because everyone's life writes its own movies, its own imagery of the soul. But any tune, even the most insipid melody may, at the drop of a few bars, turn into the soundtrack for a personal drama of great depth and power.

Here's a case in point. Antonin Dvořák’s little Romance op. 11 is not the most complex of compositions. Based on the Andante from his 5th string quartet op. 9, it was written in 1877 at the request of the Provisional Theatre Orchestra in Prague, to be played at their annual concert at the Žofín Palace.

The comparison between the original chamber version and this one for violin and orchestra is interesting. Composed four years after the quartet, the Romance is a great deal more streamlined. They both talk about melancholia, dreams, the sweet sadness, perhaps, of love's labor lost; but whereas the former sounds like a somewhat rambling, self-conscious description taken from a novel, the latter is a simple, moving poem.

 - EDVARD MUNCH, Dance of Life (1900) -

This is where the imagination comes in. This piece is a waltz; a very slow, lost, sad one, but a waltz all the same. And for me, that's the key to writing my own little movie scene for it. Again, I won't go into the ins and outs; enough to say it's set on an empty, starkly illuminated stage, against the backdrop of the apocalyptic world we have created. This music, for me, has about it a lot of the unfathomable sadness we, the human species, might feel when - to paraphrase Michael Moorcock - we dance our final "Dance At The End Of Time" ...

Dvořák's Romance for violin and Orchestra in f-minor, op. 11, is played in this miraculous recording (1966, CBS 61 332) by:

Isaak Stern, violin The Philadelphia Orchestra Eugene Ormandy

[saidthewizard]

Yesterday  I re-blogged this image.

Before doing so, I actually checked - or thought I checked - on whether the exceptionally moving story accompanying it was for real.

I frequently try to find out whether something I see on tumblr can be taken at face value before I go with it. Quotes, in particular, I have learned never blindly to trust.

So what I did was, I copied the opening line of what was reported to be a quote from this Munera person, found it repeated verbatim in a book of his; stopped thinking at that point because I thought: Oh, there you go, that’s fine then, and it is the answer I was hoping for - and re-posted, complete with a well-intended comment.

Next thing I know -  I am alerted by @Jarri Mimram that the whole thing is an old hoax which has been doing the rounds since 2012. So I checked again, more thoroughly this time - and what do you know. Jarri is right. This tale of the torero seeing the light in mid-fight is a hoax, as this, among many sources, confirms.

Which is a pity because it’s such a fine story. But what really pisses me off is that I so wanted it to be true that I didn’t do a more thorough check. I owe thanks to Jarri for reminding me that it’s better to be thorough than gullible :-)

[saidthewizard]

Moulay Ismail Mausoleum.

Meknes, Morocco.

1985, ph. ©︎ Bruno Barbey.

[saidthewizard]

The defiance of life, represented in a single image by Jarri Mimram.

Paris … Prémices de printemps.

[saidthewizard]

[saidthewizard]

Alas, history does not bear out the claim, made by @antinoo5, that “humanity will always defeat barbarity”. But sometimes, in the face of barbarism, humanity will assert itself. And those are the moments when the bonds which connect all creatures prove so strong and vital that for a  moment we can shed our dangerous delusions; and miracles become possible.

[saidthewizard]