Derek Donahue found all of the tautologies —phrases in which the same thing is said twice —from the great, gritty HBO series The Wire and supercut them into one video. When we wrote a few down, they seemed more like some seriously ‘street’, existential koans: succinct paradoxical statements used for meditation in Buddhism. Here are our favorites, ESPECIALLY the rather cosmic ones at the bottom. They can be reshuffled to form curiously illuminating poems.
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(Video link here.) If you look closely, you’ll see Jimi Hendrix in the backline of Buddy & Stacy doing “Shotgun” on a 1965 Night Train Television Show: a curiously invigorating Monday morning wakeup. In just a few years, Hendrix came a LONG way to his wild, passionate, loud, bluesy, no-holds-barred, pushng-all-limits, seriously-amplified music,
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At Under the Sun we stumbled on this reminder of the many objects around us that can be used to make music. Type in Found Objects Music into YouTube’s Search and you’ll find A LOT of interesting improvisations. Here’s a favorite, with a great beat for Monday morning, and a long list of found objects…
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(Video link here.) Here’s our second inspiring video of kids dancing to Eddy Kenzo‘s new song, Jambole. Play it full screen and LOUD. The music will get you dancing. And the kids are a testament to the INFINITE number of MOVES YOU CAN MAKE! (Dig that little girl in the pink dress!) Pure JOY. Listen…
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(Video link HERE.) We discovered performance artist Nick Cave recently and are smitten. As one YouTube commenter wrote: “imagine a world where people wore these to work … lol that would colour up our lives a little”. It’s not just the joy the his Sound Suits evoke; we’re inspired by how the first Sound Suit…
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(Video link HERE.) Fast Forward* performing his Works for Mixed Metals seems like a perfect way to start the week. In a paint can factory in London in the summer of 1988, a young Fast shows us the music you can make with different metal objects, from paint cans to pipes. For us, the perfect morning…
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(Video link Here.) Suzanne Shaker sent us this wondrous video of K.D. Lang singing Hallelujah. We love many things about it: beyond the astonishing rich and forthright voice, and a song of pure joy is Lang singing barefoot before thousands. And when they regale her with praise, she bows long, deeply-moved, expressing the Hallelujah she just sang. According to…
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We recently reread the New York Times’ tribute to Meredith Monk, who celebrates 50+ years as an avant garde performance artist, vocalist composer, vocalist, dancer, choreographer, director and filmmaker. Fifty years!!! “I’ve been in fashion, out of fashion. I just keep trucking along. It’s an inner necessity to work, and that’s not going to change. I…
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Throughout the day, we’ve been shifting our mood by listening to this astonishing find we stumbled on at Internet Archive: the complete rehearsals for the summer ’87 tour when Bob Dylan sang with the Grateful Dead. It’s full of gems. Click here to choose what you want to hear on the Archives playlist. Or just…
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We find this wondrous water drumming song to be a perfect uplift; it’s from the Banks Islands, part of the northern Vanuatu in the Indian Ocean. Thirty-five seconds in and you will leap for joy. Of course we love that these women are hanging out together hip-deep in water, using IT as their instrument. And…
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(Video link HERE.) We know nothing of how Turkish musician, Görkem Şen came to create the Yaybahar, his rather magical acoustic instrument made of fretted strings, coiled springs and frame drums. He plays it with a bow or a wrapped mallet or just his fingers, switching between them like a dancer to create hypnotic, crazy-beautiful and unexpected sounds. It’s…
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Since we first wrote about the mysterious mechanical vibration that shakes us awake at night, we’ve tried endless fixes to no avail and at times, have despaired of finding a solution. But amidst this difficulty have come many unexpected gifts, in the form of strangers reaching out to help, and research leading to rich layers…
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Walking in the park the other day, we saw a young woman lying in a huge pile of brightly-colored leaves…half buried really, resting; she looked relaxed and content. Around her three little girls were all happily making things out of leaves. And we thought LEAVES. What a beautiful material-for-making things all around us. That got…
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(Video link here.) In 2005, Mark Johnson was walking in Santa Monica, California, when he heard Roger Ridley singing “Stand By Me” with stunning soul and conviction. Mark asked, “With a voice like yours, why are you singing on the streets?” Roger replied, “Man I’m in the Joy business, I come out to be with…
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Chris Eldredge recently sent this crazy-beautiful song by Abbey Lincoln (below). “These magic words in a magic book” seem perfect for re-entry to Improvised Life after the challenges of the past few weeks. Lincoln’s lyrics could be Improvised Life’s anthem and are a fine way to enter a Monday morning.
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To coincide with Sunday’s massive world-wide Climate Change March, Neil Young wrote an anthem and has made it free to stream. Whose gonna stand up? Another essential question. You can listen here or stream it at Soundcloud. Thanks Holton!
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(Video link HERE.) …perfect music for getting going on a Monday morning, as well as people dancing, leaping and gliding around in the most wonderful way (until the dark end). You can jump in anywhere to get a hit of LEAP energy. Not content to just click one link, we can’t help but follow trails. The…
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We know a number of people taking “stay-cations”, enjoying the city as though they were visiting it anew, filling themselves up with wonderful art, food, happenings, and not dealing with traveling for one reason for another. We’re going to do the same in a week or so, just so we can WANDER, without a…
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(Video link HERE.) We love Eddy Kenzo’s joyful “Sitya Loss” (“I’m not afraid of losing”), featuring a group of boys and a girl performing on a dirt road in Uganda. After hunting for the lyrics (which are in Swahili), we found this interpretation from youtuber jerzeykid2006able: “In life we do not have to fear losses because we…
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