D Faces,
Recently we checked out the psychedelic poster exhibit at D.A.M., which we recommend to you. In front of a set of posters by Lee Conklin was this descriptor of his work, "What begins as the letter D might, upon inspection, morph into a bird...then two birds...and end up as a face."
This weekend starts with Geeks Who Drink Trivia on Thursday, May 16th, followed by a the neo-jazz of Vision Jazz at 8:30pm for all of you jazz lovers. $5.
Friday night the Jagtones are back at 7pm-10pm with their take on dance music from 50's-80's. This is a benefit for Judi's House (providing hope and healing to grieving children). $10. After Jagtones, at 10:30pm we have the sweet Italian pop/Tropical/Jungle music of Calvin Locklear. $5.
Saturday at 4pm we have Wendy Woo in for the Music Train Family concert series. $7/$3 kids. Then at 8pm we have the acapella of FACE. $12/$8 students. And at at 10:30pm we have Tempa and The Tantrums. $5. Have you felt the love of Tempa in the form of music? Can't wait. Also check out the sweet poster on Tempa's myspace page.
Baby got back,
D tail
Extra Credit: Walter Pater wrote a book of art and poetry criticism in the mid 19th century called "The Renaissance" which went on to become very influential. The book is poetically written, almost a poem in its own right. Here's the book's inspiring conclusion:
"Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive to us, --for that moment only. Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end. A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to seen in them by the finest senses? How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy?
To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. In a sense it might even be said that our failure is to form habits: for, after all, habit is relative to a stereotyped world, and meantime it is only the roughness of the eye that makes two persons, things, situations, seem alike. While all melts under our feet, we may well grasp at any exquisite passion, or any contribution to knowledge that seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a moment, or any stirring of the sense, strange dyes, strange colours, and curious odours, or work of the artist's hands, or the face of one's friend. Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us, and in the very brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing on their ways, is, on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep before evening. With this sense of the splendour of our experience and of its awful brevity, gathering all we are into one desperate effort to see and touch, we shall hardly have time to make theories about the things we see and touch. What we have to do is to be for ever curiously testing new opinions and courting new impressions, never acquiescing in a facile orthodoxy.
Some spend their interval in listlessness, some in high passion, the wisest, at least among "the children of the world", in art and song. For our one chance lies in expanding that interval, in getting as many pulsations as possible into the given time. Great passions may give us a quickened sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love, the various forms of enthusiastic activity, disinterested or otherwise, which comes naturally to many of us. Only be sure it is passion --that it does yield you this fruit of a quickened, multiplied consciousness. Of such wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for its own sake, has most. For art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments' sake."
1868
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Thursday, April 2, 2009
early April, 09
D ears,
Hmm, just noticed that the letter D is the shape of an ear, a new discovery in this six year long exploration of the letter D these d-mails have encouraged. Has ever a single letter been more pondered than it has here? Well, why not. Somebody should. That is our purpose here. Why the letter D? Because it looks like an ear, of course, and what is better than an ear? My what big ears you have! The better to hear you with, my dear.
This Friday night we have some great bands to hear with your D. At 10ish we have the nouveau rock and roll of Meniskus. This terrific band is a barrage of music, strange heavy rhythms and guitars with a tinge of middle-eastern flavor, really pretty hard to describe, but an experience well worth having. Sound Rabbit plays before them and this is super solid and fun band from Boulder, with infectious Jack Johnson-like grooves. Both bands have played the D before and we're thrilled to have them back. Opening the night at 7pm is a new songwriter to our stage, Eric Forsyth. $5
Saturday we celebrate Tartan Day at the D Note, featuring the bombastic bagpipe driven highland rock and roll of Angus Mohr, a band we have come to love. We will have Scottish events all day: Noon, Music by An Shee Eilee, 1:00 Music by Skean Dubh, 2:00 Highland Dance by Rocky Mountain Highlands Dancers, 6:30 Surprise lead-in to Angus Mohr, 7:30 Ceilidh - music by Angus Mohr. $15 after 6pm. We will try to tape all of the music on Saturday for posterity. It'll be a scotch tape. Ba dum dum.
Yes, and no,
D mouth (see, cause the D also looks like a mouth, if you turn your head to the side.)
Extra Credit: Last month Sylvia Plath's son Nicholas Hughes killed himself 46 years after his mother did. There's a beautiful and devastating poem by Sylvia to Nicholas, foreshadowing his death from half a century ago. You can read it here for extra extra credit. But, for the sake of April, let us have another poem this week, one written by Nicholas's father Ted Hughes, to Sylvia, shortly before he died in '98. The first lines of Chaucer's old English translate, basically, to "when April showers pierce the drought of March to the root".
Chaucer
‘Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote . . .’
At the top of your voice, where you swayed on the top of a stile,
Your arms raised – somewhat for balance, somewhat
To hold the reins of the straining attention
Of your imagined audience – you declaimed Chaucer
To a field of cows. And the Spring sky had done it
With its flying laundry, and the new emerald
Of the thorns, the hawthorn, the blackthorn.
And one of those bumpers of champagne
You snatched unpredictably from pure spirit.
Your voice went over the fields towards Grantchester.
It must have sounded lost. But the cows
Watched, then approached: they appreciated Chaucer.
You went on and on. Here were reasons
To recite Chaucer. Then came the Wyf of Bath,
Your favourite character in all literature.
You were rapt. And the cows were enthralled.
They shoved and jostled shoulders, making a ring,
To gaze into your face, with occasional snorts
Of exclamation, renewed their astounded attention,
Ears angling to catch every inflection,
Keeping their awed six feet of reverence
Away from you. You just could not believe it.
And you could not stop. What would happen
If you were to stop? Would they attack you,
Scared by the shock of silence, or wanting more – ?
So you had to go on. You went on –
And twenty cows stayed with you hypnotized.
How did you stop? I can’t remember
You stopping. I imagine they reeled away –
Rolling eyes, as if driven from their fodder.
I imagine I shooed them away. But
Your sostenuto rendering of Chaucer
Was already perpetual. What followed
Found my attention too full
And had to go back into oblivion.
Hmm, just noticed that the letter D is the shape of an ear, a new discovery in this six year long exploration of the letter D these d-mails have encouraged. Has ever a single letter been more pondered than it has here? Well, why not. Somebody should. That is our purpose here. Why the letter D? Because it looks like an ear, of course, and what is better than an ear? My what big ears you have! The better to hear you with, my dear.
This Friday night we have some great bands to hear with your D. At 10ish we have the nouveau rock and roll of Meniskus. This terrific band is a barrage of music, strange heavy rhythms and guitars with a tinge of middle-eastern flavor, really pretty hard to describe, but an experience well worth having. Sound Rabbit plays before them and this is super solid and fun band from Boulder, with infectious Jack Johnson-like grooves. Both bands have played the D before and we're thrilled to have them back. Opening the night at 7pm is a new songwriter to our stage, Eric Forsyth. $5
Saturday we celebrate Tartan Day at the D Note, featuring the bombastic bagpipe driven highland rock and roll of Angus Mohr, a band we have come to love. We will have Scottish events all day: Noon, Music by An Shee Eilee, 1:00 Music by Skean Dubh, 2:00 Highland Dance by Rocky Mountain Highlands Dancers, 6:30 Surprise lead-in to Angus Mohr, 7:30 Ceilidh - music by Angus Mohr. $15 after 6pm. We will try to tape all of the music on Saturday for posterity. It'll be a scotch tape. Ba dum dum.
Yes, and no,
D mouth (see, cause the D also looks like a mouth, if you turn your head to the side.)
Extra Credit: Last month Sylvia Plath's son Nicholas Hughes killed himself 46 years after his mother did. There's a beautiful and devastating poem by Sylvia to Nicholas, foreshadowing his death from half a century ago. You can read it here for extra extra credit. But, for the sake of April, let us have another poem this week, one written by Nicholas's father Ted Hughes, to Sylvia, shortly before he died in '98. The first lines of Chaucer's old English translate, basically, to "when April showers pierce the drought of March to the root".
Chaucer
‘Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote . . .’
At the top of your voice, where you swayed on the top of a stile,
Your arms raised – somewhat for balance, somewhat
To hold the reins of the straining attention
Of your imagined audience – you declaimed Chaucer
To a field of cows. And the Spring sky had done it
With its flying laundry, and the new emerald
Of the thorns, the hawthorn, the blackthorn.
And one of those bumpers of champagne
You snatched unpredictably from pure spirit.
Your voice went over the fields towards Grantchester.
It must have sounded lost. But the cows
Watched, then approached: they appreciated Chaucer.
You went on and on. Here were reasons
To recite Chaucer. Then came the Wyf of Bath,
Your favourite character in all literature.
You were rapt. And the cows were enthralled.
They shoved and jostled shoulders, making a ring,
To gaze into your face, with occasional snorts
Of exclamation, renewed their astounded attention,
Ears angling to catch every inflection,
Keeping their awed six feet of reverence
Away from you. You just could not believe it.
And you could not stop. What would happen
If you were to stop? Would they attack you,
Scared by the shock of silence, or wanting more – ?
So you had to go on. You went on –
And twenty cows stayed with you hypnotized.
How did you stop? I can’t remember
You stopping. I imagine they reeled away –
Rolling eyes, as if driven from their fodder.
I imagine I shooed them away. But
Your sostenuto rendering of Chaucer
Was already perpetual. What followed
Found my attention too full
And had to go back into oblivion.
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