The white cracker who wrote the national anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word “free” to a note so high that nobody could reach it. That was deliberate. Nothing on earth sounds less like freedom to me. (Tony Kushner, Angels In America)
Fuck “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The all-time best “patriotic song” is Woody [...]
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(Click on the paintings for larger versions. More about the paintings: Waterhouse, Dali.)
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It could be said that the typical World Wide Web surfer today, sitting alone in front of a PC screen, is increasingly a monad with no direct windows onto reality, encountering only virtual simulacra, and yet immersed more than ever in a global [...]
Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring caused a riot when it was premiered in Paris in 1913, partly due to the dissonant music but also because of Vaslav Nijinsky’s unorthodox choreography. In 1987 the Joffrey Ballet attempted to reconstruct the choreography, costumes and sets from notes, drawings and the personal reminiscences of the original dancers [...]
It’s the twelfth day of Christmas. Here’s the fourth movement of Drumming by minimalist composer Steve Reich.
Oh, David Lee Roth. How I envied you, with your high notes and high kicks and endless supply of leggy, busty sexual partners.
My very favorite thing on the whole internet (statement may be false by the time you read this) is this youtube video of you in “Running with the Devil,” with the vocal track [...]
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Why the Apocalypse is a Bad Model for Understanding the Future
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“Libera Me” [6th movement of the Requiem in D minor by Gabriel Fauré, 1877. Daniel Barenboim, conductor. 5.9 Mb file. Translation] [Deleted]
Wikipedia article on “Mozart and Freemasonry”
Claude Debussy, Grand Master of the Priory of Sion
How the Illuminati influenced Beethoven
A painting of Beethoven as a David Icke-ian, Illuminati lizard man
I was going to do a post about “Revolution 9″ by the Beatles, but 2008 ends in a few hours, and since this waning year is the centenary of French composer Olivier Messiaen I wanted to get this post in under the wire.
I first heard Messiaen’s most famous work, Quatuor pour la fin du temps (in [...]
Sancto Iohannes Coltranus,
ora pro nobis peccatoribus
nunc et in hora mortis nostræ.
Amen.
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A clarinet quartet playing themes from Super Mario Bros.:
A bassoon quartet playing themes from Super Mario World and Super Mario Bros.: