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Bellyfish

Since there are less treats on the touring blog, i’m post-dating this post to give you something to look at. This is the video for Bellyfish, a big production in “rock video style”, directed by Robert Cuffley with lots of components by my name is scot, the artist who did the album cover for spine and who was a huge influence on the whole album. That’s one of his installations that i’m writhing around in, and i believe some of his bandages are on my arm. The girl is Wynn, one of my piano students at the time. A good player and a good sport too. I can’t remember where we got the baby pigeon.

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kundera in the new yorker

good morning! i have awoken in berlin, after a sound sleep, and have lingered an astonishing hour over breakfast. this is one of the pleasures of travelling, the unexpected pockets of time. as usual, i have stockpiled some new yorkers for travelling (the magazine, not the dynamic people) and wanted to draw your attention to an article about novelists by milan kundera. this is a great piece of writing about the relationship of a writer to her work. it is in the october 9 edition, if you can find it take a look. here is a sentence that gave me pause: “This is the novelist’s curse: his honesty is bound to the vile stake of his megalomania.” and here is a paragraph that made me laugh out loud in the hotel cafe:

I was nineteen when, in my home town, a young academic gave a public lecture; it was during the first months of the Communist revolution, and, bowing to the spirit of the time, he talked about the social responsibility of art. After the conference, there was a discussion; what I remember is the poet Josef Kainar (a man of Blatny´s generation, also long dead now), who, in response to the scholar´s talk, told this anecdote: A little boy takes his blind grandmother for a walk. They are strolling down a street, and from time to time the little boy says, “Grandma, watch out – a root!” Thinking she is on a forest trail, the old woman keeps jumping. Passersby scold the little boy: “Son, you´re treating your grandmother so badly!” And the boy says, “She´s my grandma! I´ll treat her anyway I want!” And Kainar finishes, “That´s me, that´s how I am about my poetry.”

-Milan Kundera in the New Yorker, Oct 9 2006 Continue reading kundera in the new yorker