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John Coltrane, Transcribed to Limericks

Catching up on the past month at stuckbetweenstations (working backwards):

M.I.A., with the Radio On: Roger on how British/ Sri Lankan aural graffiti artist M.I.A. cribs lovingly from Jonathan Richman.

Das Kapital: Scot, short blurb on an incredible music video by Russian socio-economic soldier / popstar Lyapis Trubetskoy.

John Coltrane, Transcribed to Limericks: Roger’s sui-generis limerick transcription of John Coltrane’s Live at Birdland, including the bonus track available only on CD:

Afro-Blue

A fleet-fingered drummer named Mongo
Wrote a rhythm best suited for bongo
But Trane tore it asunder
Elvin thrashed through the thunder
You could hear it from Jersey to Congo.

Listening to the Water: Roger, with a New Orleans odyssey on the second anniversary of the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

Doldrums: Rock Film Redux: Scot, on the tradition of film being played behind live rock performances, emphasis on the films of Scott Hamrah and Chris Fujiwara behind the “post-rock” (sorry) jams of Boston’s Cul de Sac.

Music: Paul Desmond :: Take Ten
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Apple Locks Down the iPod

It’s never been possible to stick OS X on any old hardware – you’ve been required to buy Apple hardware for the privilege. But the iPod has not had the same locked-down connection — because the iPod’s internal database format has been transparent and readable, 3rd-party devs have been able to make iPods happy on Linux systems, and it’s been possible for tools like Senuti to grab songs off any iPod, even though Apple makes it initially appear impossible.

But the latest crop of iPods are different – their internal database structure has become opaque, resulting in a lot of pissed off Linux users – users who paid Apple good money for their iPods but are still being cut off from the ability to use their player of choice with their OS of choice. Looks like this one is going to take some serious reverse-engineering to solve, too.

I’m wondering what the real motivation for this change is — Is it Apple’s attempt to cut tools like Senuti off at the knees, and Linux users are just collateral damage? Or the other way around? I suspect the former, since I can’t really think of a reason why Apple would care if users hook iPods up to Linux.

Music: Damo Suzuki’s Network :: Bellevue Cocktail / Floating Bridge Mix
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Minuscule

Got kids? As summer fades, it’s getting dark earlier, which means evenings indoors. And for us, that means only one thing: YouTube! Kidding of course, but we did just stumble upon a large and completely amazing collection of short videos, rendered from a bug’s-eye perspective – excerpts from Thomas Szabo’s 2006 movie Minuscule:

IMDB: “You might call it a cross between Tex Avery and Microcosmos, or grassroots slapstick.” A few of the clips are available in higher resolution at the official web site, which is a gorgeous work of art on its own (though somewhat mysterious to navigate). Would like to get my hands on the original DVD, though it’s mysteriously not available through NetFlix (no surprise – seems like NetFlix doesn’t have half the stuff I search for.)

Anyway, next time you want to cuddle up with your kid(s) in front of the computer, check these out – Miles ate ’em up like peanuts.

Music: Sun Ra and the Year 2000 Myth Science Arkestra :: Prelude to a Kiss

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Baraka

Baraka0225 I am feeling at peace, and sort of speechless after having just watched Ron Fricke’s 1992 film Baraka, a follow-on to his 1983 journey Koyaanisqatsi. No words (but not silent), no script, no actors or plot. Just existential film imagery from seemingly half the countries in the world, depicting humans in all their meditative, strange, indescribably gorgeous religious splendor, juxtaposed with footage of humans in all their violent, herd-like, strange, indescribably gorgeous cultural porridge.

Baraka is, ultimately, an environmental film, but not in the way we’ve come to think of the term – it’s about the environment of our existence, our ways of being in (and with, and without) the world. There is an environmental subtext in a more traditional sense as well, but that’s not Fricke’s primary thought – it’s more about human life and the myriad ways our quest for meaning manifests.

The wisdom of making such a film without words cannot be underestimated. While there are many sequences that leave you dying to know more about what you’re seeing, any speech or text would have diluted the experience by intellectualizing something intensely experiential.

Watching Baraka had me revisiting thoughts on religion I’ve expressed over the past year. Religion is strange and arbitrary, but only because existence is strange and arbitrary. Our world is ineffable, and so therefore are our expressions of it. Religion is no more irrational than being in the world is.

I feel peaceful tonight, in a way I have not for a long time. I’ve been living in stress for months on end, feeling my nerves begin to fray, my mind atrophy as external inputs have all but ceased. Watching Baraka made me want to travel the world, open my eyes, close them, then open them again. It made me want to taste dirt, stare into the sun, kiss every human, sing Ketjak, wander through the desert, taste every food, scale the pyramids, swing from vines, paint my body, read every scripture.

I feel washed.

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Balance Bike

Balancebike Seeing more and more of these Skuut balance bikes around – kids learn to balance with their feet from the get-go, and never have to go through the training wheel stage at all. Here’s a higher-end option. Seems like such an organic, natural process to me – wish I had known about these a few years ago. Just watching kids on them makes me jealous — wonder if they make them in grown-up sizes? Should hook up with the gang at woodenbikes, maybe they have a kit? I can just see myself hurtling down Hearst Ave., trying to stop with my feet.

Music: John Fahey & Cul De Sac :: Gamelan Collage
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Kindergarten

Miles Kindergarten How does this happen? One minute they’re born, and the next they’re starting kindergarten. At the risk of sounding like a cliche’, the passage of time is blowing us away. Hard to believe Miles has already done two years of pre-school, plus the summers in-between. The K-5 we chose for him is a parent co-op, structured similarly to the preschool he was in, which means we’ll be putting in one day per week as parent participants (or, rather, Amy will be, since I’ll be at work), plus monthly meetings and plenty of weekend maintenance “parties.” In exchange, we get a level of involvement with his education second only to home schooling, get to help shape the curriculum and philosophy of the school (an arrangement that’s worked out marvelously at the pre-school), and get to go along on the tons of cool field trips the school does. Many adventures to come.

Aside: An apparent unspoken requirement of the school is to own a pair of Keen sandals – my straw count the other day turned up about 80% of the children’s feet clad in Keens, another 10% Crocs, leaving only 10% for some antiquated invention called “shoes.” Fortunately Miles was properly pre-equipped with his – the most perfect work-horse footwear for kids ever invented.

Music: Teh Zakary Thaks :: Bad Girl
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Safari’s RSS Puzzle

Every few months I get tired of Firefox chewing memory and hanging every 2-3 days, and decide to return to Safari. It’s a dilemma: Safari’s speed, elegance, and stability, or Firefox’s wealth of plugins? For now, I’m going to put speed and stability first and make Safari primary again. I can switch over when I need to do something Safari can’t do.

As long as I’m tweaking the apple cart, decided to finally check out the Safari 3 beta. Love the new in-page search, love the resizable text fields, love the speed. But the RSS reader? Unchanged, as far as I can tell. What’s going on here? Over at my O’Reilly blog I’m letting Apple have it over Safari’s anemic RSS tools:

OK, geek boys and girls, pop quiz: How do you use Safari’s built-in RSS reader as a feed aggregator? Go ahead, take a minute to figure it out. Take 5. Whatever you need. I’ve got time.

Apple – Whatever you do with RSS in Leopard, please turn up the voltage on the de-confusifizer. RSS is important technology, and consumers aren’t going to get excited about it until you simultaneously show them its power and make it simple. Isn’t that what you do best?

Music: Pete Townshend :: Forever’s No Time At All