Rock & Roll Farm

Thursday! May 29 2003 // 12:04 pm // permalink

never going to finish

the purpose of music is to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences
Gita Sarabhai (Indian singer & tabla player)

everything in the world has its own spirit which can be released by setting it into vibration
Oskar Fischinger (film maker)

the responsibility of the artist is to imitate nature in her manner of operation
Ananda Coomaraswamy (philosopher / art historian / indologist)

our artists no longer try to put us in touch with God and the eternal, but with the infinity of our own archives
James Flint (journalist / novelist)

i’ve been working and reworking, and re-reworking a post centered around these quotations jeremy sent me. the problem is, it seems there are three voices pointing in one direction, and a fourth taking an opposing stance. this worries me, because my instinct is to choose a side. but the more i read them, i think that this opposition is exactly what i feel every time i set out to make music - or anything, really. there is always a tug toward the spiritual, and simultaneous pulling from… well, i’ve never really been sure of what it is on the other side. reason? vanity? it’s obvious to me that my scales are tipped toward the mysterious and divine, but i haven’t been able to fully articulate why - or more importantly, why not the other way. in any case, i’m going to continue retooling the post i’ve got started, and sometime soon put it up here. until then, i’d love to hear any thoughts you have. or, you could just send me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. i’m really hungry today.

Saturday! May 24 2003 // 11:35 am // permalink

why?

i was at jeremy’s house for band practice, and i was um…using his bathroom. all of a sudden, something slid under the door and hit my foot. it was a popsicle stick. i think i made some sort of sound of alarm, and jeremy said something like “it’s okay, just read it” through the door. so i um, finished what i was doing, and picked it up and it had something written on it in felt-tip pen. it was a spoof of those corny jokes they put on popsicle sticks. this is what it said:

why is it called a tongue depressor?

is it depressed? why would you make it sad?

i think i laughed for a good 15 minutes. i still laugh every time i think about it. *sigh*

Thursday! May 22 2003 // 10:41 am // permalink

ted lindsay

Wednesday! May 21 2003 // 11:40 am // permalink

sharkey keen

according to the Australian Heritage Fleet, 1874 barque The James Craig is one of four operational barques from the 19th Century still capable of sailing. It is part of a “community based non-profit organisation, the Australian Heritage Fleet … dedicated to the preservation of Australia’s and, particularly, Sydney’s maritime heritage.”

at the Fleet’s website you can read crewmember memoirs, and ferret through stats and articles about all the ships in the fleet. one such memoir, is that of james craig crewmember in the 1920s, john “sharkey” keen, “There is no sky in this. It is all foam and heaving water-salt water and some roll.”

Tuesday! May 20 2003 // 10:57 am // permalink

fine tooth, if you please

i’ve become accustomed to the nine or ten bus drivers i see regularly now. there’s the quiet young jamaican woman, the pock-marked twenty-something latino man, and if i catch my second bus in the morning at the right time, i kid you not, Grizzly Adams drives me the rest of the way to work. today, i had the Hair Police again (he told my he was getting me a comb for christmas). he wagged his finger at me and said with a huge grin “just wait till christmas!” i see him regularly enough that i’ve come to expect some kind of messy hair related comment as soon as i step on the bus. i don’t know if i find this infuriating or charming. i usually try to make it to the back of the bus before either feeling takes up much real estate in my psyche and i can jam my face in my reading material and forget all about it.