getting emotional.

have you ever seen a truly evocative piece of art? that is, a two dimensional, three dimensional or unexplainable piece that throws you into confusion and appreciation. today, at the institute of contemporary art, i saw an unapologetically controversial piece of art. ron mueck sculpts the nude human form in compromising and vulnerable stances; pregnant, emaciated, etc. his brand of controversy is not found in the ride of a breast but the touches of detail--body wrinkles, veins, pubic hair, and perspiration--that confuse what we perceive to be unreal. the photo below is an example of his work.

obama.

question: do white people love barack obama because he is light-skin?

ethiopian fancy.

ethiopian fancy

"medium-bodied coffee that is tangy and pungent with a lingering floral, almost perfumy aroma."

untitled.

dreadlocks.

i stopped combing my mind so my thoughts could lock.
i'm tired of tryin' to understand.
perceptions are mangled, matted, & knotted anyway.
--saul williams//five senses

songfacts.

ever wondered about that biggie sample or joni mitchell's inspiration? check out songfacts.com. this site provides anecdotes for thousands of songs.

1) jill scott's a long walk was recorded in 1 take
2) the baby cooing in aaliyah's are you that somebody? is the sound of aaliyah's 18 month old voice dubbed from a home video

ethnomusicology.

brown university: graduate program in ethnomusicology

ethnomusicology, according to a brown grad student i met over dinner, is the study of music as it relates to identity, historical change, political consciousness and commerce. he is currently studying northeastern country music artists. more generally, his speciality is forms of music that tie an individual to a location--that is, bluegrass, blues, and country.

romeo + juliet.

black television reached its peak in the early nineties ironically amid reagan aftermath, recession, & rodney king. there was the cosby show, a different world, 227, & amen. of them, my most loved has always been a different world--a situation comedy about college students at the fictious historical black college, hillman. started as a cosby show spinoff, a different world followed cosby in the coveted 8:30 slot on thursday nights. it stayed among the top 5 rated shows for 3-4 consecutive years. during my childhood, i taped every single episode. for the last 4 days, i have managed to watch nearly all of them.

in one episode, young freshmen, lena james (played by jada pinkett), is given the task of reciting shakespearean dialogue for an english lit class. instead, lena, the resident 'round the way girl, chooses to infuse her own brand of baltimore dialogue into the assignment. (aside: tupac guest starred on the show playing lena's hometown boyfriend--in reality, the two were high school friends). here is her character's translation with the original:

shakespeare (1594)

oh gentle romeo

if thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully;

or if thou think i am too quickly won

i'll frown and be perverse, and say thee nay

but thou wilt woo; but else not for the world

in truth, fair montague, i am too fond

a different world (1992)

oh sweet thang romeo

if you think i'm all that, then step to me correctly

but if you think i'm a skeeze

i'll be dissin' & dismissin' then you'll be working overtime gettin' me back

so stop perpetrating

& let's get this party started because baby you know i love you

calendar girl.

six of india's top fashion photographers snapped photos of the country's foremost supermodel, yana gupta, for a lee jeans calendar spread. the above photo is one of my favorites. other favorites include june (a cocaine-inspired fairy tale photo), march ( a gothic ode to frida kahlo), and february (a likely digitized photo). if you scroll across the question mark and notebook icons, there are photos of behind the scenes shots.

ugly tourism.

nothing pains me more than classically formulaic, hopelessly ridiculous tourist photography. the photos are childish, cheesy, & a waste of everyone's god damn time. why childish, you ask? well, a grown adult should not need "proof" of his presence in greece, china, australia, or any foreign land. to that notion i say, grow up. this "style" of photography is cheesy in that it brands someone as "tourist." further, one's presence in a picture effectively destroys what is happily "foreign" in a photograph. nothing can ruin the essence of a picture like a northface jacket, oakley sunglasses, reef sandals, or anything else distinctly american. and lastly, no one wishes for their eyes to glaze as they look through photos of you smiling awkwardly before a camera. let me be clear: these photos are uninspired, irritating, and boring. there is a time and a place to be tacky. just please, not every photograph in the album. further, there is a difference between a photograph of a group and a photograph of people obstructing my view of the real attraction. see the photograph below:

("the girls" in front of the parthenon--sooo hott right now!)

why travel halfway 'round the world only to force a tacky smile in front of a national monument? more generally, why would one allow their experience abroad to be mediated by a digital LCD panel? the objective of tourist photography should be to capture an image as you remembered it--that is, from your particular vantage point as a traveler. this way, the photograph is well-thought and attached to a memory of your travels.

addendum: i do not know these girls.

go 'head.

wind your waistline to the bass line
slow it down now, get the beat right.

kissing jesus.

nerve.com writer, lisa gabriele, begins her tongue-in-cheek piece on her catholic experience with, "one of my first crushes was on jesus." she continues, "the catholic church is soaked in sexual imagery. mary is never without her virginal moniker, everyone's on their knees, wine flows freely, and Jesus is tongued and swallowed on a weekly basis." admittedly, her commentary is acidic & ruthless, but smart & well-timed. as an aside, she talks about altar boys and molestation. for the record, i am neither here nor there on that issue.

my feelings toward catholicism are strong. for one, i maintain that catholicism is an example of man's interference with faith. two, i believe that one should speak directly to his god & not through intermediaries. and three, the priesthood is nothing more than religiously codified classism. by establishing a religious heirarchy, the implication is that catholicism can only be digested in one, rigid form. my opinions notwithstanding, i did attend catholic mass in barcelona last year. and i swear to you--an impish 20 something year old woman hit on me.

nonetheless, i've been knocking around thesis topics. my latest topic idea deals with something along the lines of subversive images of the madonna.

russell.

my 20th birthday was amazing. thanks to russell graney, i am the proud owner of this record player.

metroblogging.

for your entertainment & enjoyment, i present to you metroblogging. bloggers from manila to montreal, new york to new orleans post about their experiences in their respective cities. pay close attention to the digital picture reel at the top of each blog. each reel contains small, barely decipherable pics of iconic images from the city.

mary and babe (1982).

outside mather house amid a heap of trash, i found a philip-lorca dicorcia reprint (18 x 24) from the museum of modern art. the photograph is entitled mary and babe (1982). the original is estimated at $20,000. please check out a larger image here. this photograph will be hanging on my wall next school year in all its glory.

i adore this photograph. i found it matted, framed, and scratched in such a way that added character. dicorcia has made a career of photographing higly-stylized images of people most often in urban settings. look closely at the fine points--the eighties glamour magazine, her nearly nude top, pat benatar black-lined eyes, and the records atop the television. what i adore most are the 70s influences in this early 80s photograph--that is, the television, the mod chair turned on its side, and the faux wood walls. this is not high life, but fashionable nonetheless.

this photograph asks questions. is she fully clothed? is he disrobing? is there sexual tension? did she just give him head? according to one art historica, "to dicorcia, truth is simply a cousin of veracity, not its master."

the sensuality in the photograph cannot be overlooked. i immediately thought "sex." i googled the image to reveal thoughtful commentary on the shot. but, i also found a number of porno sites using the photograph's likeness to sell $19.95 packages for unlimited porno downloads.

get off the internet.

it feels so eighties
or early nineties
to be political.

-- le tigre//get off the internet

do the right thing.

no one does it like spike.

spike lee has a way of blending the artistic, the abstract, and the real to make a point. he is in-your-face & unapologetically political--sometimes to a fault. his politics--unfortunately-- have a way of undercutting his vision. the beauty of lee is that "no one sits on the fence" in regard to his films. call him tacky, call him oversensitive, call him extreme. i think he's amazing.

i had the pleasure of watching lee's do the right thing (1989), his third film that ebert heralded as "the most controversial film of the year." this film is set in bedford-stuyvesant in the summer of '89--think public enemy, gold chains, air jordans, and former mayor ed koch. the film spans 24 hours on the hottest day of the year. the streets are colored vibrant reds & oranges and one omnious grafitti mural reads "bed-stuy: do or die."

the film tackles police brutality in the new york during the late eighties. sadly, police brutality goes back much further than king, louima, or diallo. before them, there was anthony baez, eleanor bumpers, and the horrific killings in howard beach.

at the same time, lee takes on the tawana brawley rape case. tawana brawley--a black new york teen--accused white police officers of holding her captive, raping her, and writing racial slurs across her bare body. in once scene of the film, a brick wall reads, "tawana told the truth!" come to find out brawley lied about the entire story (i suspect lee knew of the hoax when placing the grafitti tag in the film). check out the tawana brawley hoax.

do the right thing examines a community and the racial tensions between african-americans, italian-americans, and koreans. the characters have colorful names like mookie, radio raheem, buggin' out, and mother-sister. radio raheem blasts public enemy's fight the power from his eighties style stereo. i thought a lot about this film--that is, its colors, dialogue, dutch angles, and deliberateness. in listening to the dvd commentary, i found that everything lee does is intentional and pointed. he pays great attention to theatrics and details.

one last thing, one of my favorite actors is john turturro, who plays pino in this film (by the way, the other actor is michael rappaport) . he has starred in jungle fever, 13 conversations about 1 thing, and she hate me. turturro is a brillant character actor--subtle and understated. turturro has starred in more lee movies (8 films) than any other actor. for whatever reason, lee uses the same actors time and time again--he has his own repertory theatre.

this film comes highly recommended.

lucifer runs between my legs.

modernity meets catholicism, greenwich village, 1960s

political semantics.

i believe our language reveals for more about our ideas & thoughts then we would care to acknowledge. for example, "same sex marriage" and "gay marriage" are not one in the same, linguistically speaking. to the degree that is humanly possible, "same-sex" is far more objective. gay implies knowledge of one's sexual practices and perhaps judgement of said person based upon those sexual practices. listen closely, individuals on the right are far more inclined to use the term "gay marriage" or "homosexual marriage." this linguistic twist is problematic because it, in a political context, posits that marriage somehow "belongs" to heterosexuals.

similarly, never ever use terms such as "reverse discrimination" or "white slavery." discrimination is discrimination. slavery is slavery. black people in the diaspora do not have a monopoly on sociopolitical disenfranchisement. to speak using these terms, would, however, suggest otherwise.

cuba libre.

scene: 1950s, havana grammar school
characters: teacher & cuban children
narrator: senora havell, one of the few teacher who affected me

teacher: if you are hungry, close your eyes & pray to god for apples
children: please god, bring us apples
no apples
teacher: if you are hungry, close your eyes & pray to castro for apples
children: please castro, bring us apples
an apple is placed next to each pair of praying hand

TRUE STORY.

nonetheless, there is a twisted sort of beauty in sordid politics. the picture, below, is beautiful. the flag, the balconies, the stream of light, the horizon. i've heard that havana is beautifully dated. one tourist writer says, "what i loved most about cuba was the feeling that you were living in a museum stuck in the 1950s." my eyes are set on cuba. that's where i want to go.

12"

i've been in the imaginary market for a record player. realistically, a record player is not conducive to a college dorm room. well, actually, i want this record player. it's bulky but oh-so beautiful. a record player is most certainly a future "must-have." i want a record player because of the record store--dingy, corner stores that smell like dust and vinyl.

today, i read an article entitled "deep cover" in vibe. quite fittingly, the title is likely a reference to deep throat, the fbi agent whose identity was recently revealed. nonetheless, the article begins:

The covers of hip hop and R&B albums are often as striking and signifying as the music itself. Whether sketched out by hand or Photoshopped on a Mac, these images set the tone for what pulsates in the grooves and resides in the hearts and souls of the artist themselves. You can download your music, but you can't digitize an album cover's visceral immediacy. Back in the day, LP record jackets were a vivid cardboard window into a musician's life and art, an opportunity to experience another facet of their expression.

here, amy linden (the piece's author), is going for the gut. she is trying to sell music purchasing/listening as an experience that is not to be missed. she's reaching, she's illustrative, i'm feeling it.