Hall of mirrors: remaking reality in a camera-obsessed world
The wonderful Maria Bustillos on being “all absorbed in the greed of seeing” in the 21st century (and don’t miss the fantastic illustrations from Steve Kim):
There are over five and a half billion cell phones in the world, nearly all equipped with cameras: an orgy of recording of life as it passes. Our age has seen an explosion of this peculiarly human activity — recording activity — on a scale scarcely comprehensible even by those who’ve lived through it. What changes has this revolution wrought, not only in how we see the world, but how we live in it?
#960: big bill broonzy - worried man blues, hey hey, how you want it done (delton michigan, 1957)
may your august days be as pure and warm and huge as the sound of big bill broonzy’s guitar strings, may your hats and guitars match as well as his, and if your august nights are as cool and true and right as his voice your summer will end beautifully.
Tim Carmody (via ayjay)Orson Welles was always embarrassed by Rosebud. “It’s a gimmick, really,” he told interviewers, “and rather dollar book Freud.” The mystery of “the great man’s last words” was, like the reporter Thompson charged with solving it, “a piece of machinery” designed to lead the audience through the fragmented plot.
The solution to the mystery is supposed to be that we, like Kane’s friends, lovers, and confidantes, discover that “the great man” is actually hollow inside. There is nothing there — no lost love, no moral truths, no imparted wisdom. “Rosebud” is just a missing piece in the jigsaw puzzle. It has no special value other than that it is missing. Kane the man, like Kane the film, is what Borges called it: a labyrinth without a center.
(via ayjay)
The figure came into focus. It rose, and stretched, and where before it had looked like a small child that had folded itself into a ball, now I could see it was someone fairly tall with the physique of a tennis player, all arms and legs and elbows. A curtain of dark and uncombed hair hung around his face, hiding everything but his eyes. It looked like he was stoned. It looked like he was asleep. It looked like he was the most wide-awake person in the history of the world. All of the above. Each time I replay the scene in my mind, it’s different. And each time it’s true. He was wearing a frayed white shirt and jeans and boots and a black corduroy jacket that seemed a size too large. I don’t usually pay much attention to clothes, but my first thought was … where can I get a black corduroy jacket?
Paris Review – Things Behind the Sun, Brian Cullma
On Nick Drake.
What you’re hearing is the way 20th century technology tunneled through a 19th century network; what you’re hearing is how a network designed to send the noises made by your muscles as they pushed around air came to transmit anything, or the almost-anything that can be coded in 0s and 1s.Alexis Madrigal - The Mechanics and Meaning of That Ol’ Dial-Up Modem Sound - The Atlantic
Watch this: ‘Three Point Landing’ supercut
Debuted at ROFLCon!
You may not know Duncan Robson by name, but you probably know his work. Duncan created the excellent and very popular “Let’s Enhance” video, which is a so-called “Supercut” compilation video.
(Source: youtube.com)
Peter Gabriel - Here Comes The Flood (by Symphonyofflowers)
But as a genre, the American action film featured hallmark stars (Schwarzenegger! Stallone! Willis!) and identifiable tropes (kill villain; make pun about method in which you killed villain), and it produced at least one bona fide masterpiece, “Die Hard.” (If you can’t get behind “Die Hard” as a great American movie, then I’d argue that you hate greatness, movies and America.) And the action movie carried, briefly, as all good genre movies do, the cultural weight of metaphorical significance. Action films meant something.How the American Action Movie Went Kablooey - NYTimes.com
We’re looking for original reporting, authoritative editorials, and long-form journalism.
(Source: thisistheverge)
