Political Country Music

I usually balk at 'political' music, and most political country music is racist, maybe that's why I like this track so much.

CL OSD

Christmas Lights

Pipeline

Lovin'

Madmen showed me the way

Goodfare

Books

A few highlights from my 2012 reading.

This book offers a whirlwind (but by no means complete) introduction to American photography.  The way that Dyer 'reads' images and connects them to one another was thoroughly enjoyable.  He describes his organization of the book as a follows:

to echo the possibilities of simultaneity and random juxtaposition afforded by a pile of photographs.  You rummage in the box.  You pick a photograph and then another one and the way they are combined makes you view each of them in a different way...I wish that each picture - or the verbal equivalent of a picture:  each section of text - was not forced to be surrounded by just two others.

It reads this way as well.  You could easily flip to any page at random and take something insightful out of it while it still remains valuable to read it in sequence.

Not knowing anything about Fontane or this novel, this book was a beautiful surprise for me.  I particularly loved the details, there are all these little 'left-turns' in the descriptions of places, objects and people that make everything just uncanny enough.  The book carries an atmosphere throughout that hints at pre-determinded tragedy.  But the tragedy doesn't just take place on a large scale, it is present in all of the little things, subtly weaving its way through all of the decisions and events of the book.

In the last couple of years I've been pre-occupied with the way that time works in film.  This book told me something about time that I'm still grappling with and might never completely get a hold of.  Or, maybe I got a hold of it and will just have to work hard forever to remember it.

After years, I did it.

'Then who is laughing at man, Ivan?'
'The Devil, probably.' Ivan Fyodorovich smiled, ironically.
'And does the Devil exist?'
'No, the Devil doesn't exist, either.'
'What a pity...

Refining

Outing