taking notes on gibbon’s decline and fall of the roman empire, on my ipod.

(more…)

My friend Debbie Manville has been painting commissioned portraits. She recently painted mine. This is very exciting. (THANKS DEBBIE!!). Having one’s portrait painted for a commission seems very old school; it’s also an interesting way to causally interact with the creation of art without having any real say about how it comes together. In addition, I like the nakedly commercial aspect of it. Why should we pretend that art is something its not? Anyway, here is the painting; I’m delighted with it… (p.s. you can’t really tell on the computer, but I’m laughing, not crying in the picture.)

Two white-haired women talking to each other. One says:
“Every sunday morning i thank god that i am not going to church. I really am grateful for it. I don’t have to get up, get dressed, listen to a boring sermon, and the rest of it. He’ll probably condemn to the pit of hell”

Shahzad and i are on tour, right now we are in Sweden.

1. On saturday we played at a festival in the small village of kilingi-nömme in estonia. Sunday we drove back to the capital city, tallin, to go to the ferry. as we were driving into the city, one of the people in the car recognized her bike, which had recently been stolen. It was being ridden by some big burly dude - so we went on a wild bourne identity-style manhunt/car chase! he zipped through alleys and one-way streets, but through the wileyness of our driver & some crucial information from innocent bystanders, including a group of children playing near a barn, we tracked him down. i waved my copy of “the idiot” at the man, causing him to have a moral crisis, and he ran away, leaving the bike to be returned to its rightful owner.

2. this was a conversation between our taxi driver in stockholm, and us:

taxi driver: “you are from US? I am from Bulgaria. I live here in Sweden 30 years. My wife, she’s from Mexico. I met her in Monterey Mexico at a retreat, where I went and learn to be vegetarian, meditate, and be healthy. first when i live in bulgaria, i marry a swedish woman, so i can leave bulgaria. it is also love, but also to leave bulgaria. But there is a problem with the visa and it takes 2 years for me to be able to come live with her in sweden! by the time i get there, she is in love with another man. then she wants to come back to me but there is no feeling, so no more marriage. then i travel to south america and i met a woman with two children, i feel bad for her, i marry her. but then she comes to sweden with un poco marijuana and there is some trouble, and she takes some money from my account! so when she goes back to south america, i don’t invite her to come back any more. but now i have good wife, i met her when i go on a retreat for meditation and becoming a vegetarian, and i have two kids! but i will tell you something crazy - i used to have images! at night with my eyes closed, but not asleep. conscious!”

me: “visions?”

taxi driver: “yes! visions. this is a long time ago, 25 years ago. i had visions at night and i realized i could see things. so i decided to see what the winning lottery numbers would be for the next day. i have the vision at night, and i see the correct numbers, so i take a piece of paper in my room and write them down. but when i wake up the next morning, the numbers have disappeared from the paper! but i think, it’s okay! i saw them. i have the numbers in my head and i am a winner because i have the vision. so i go to put down the numbers, from my memory. and the thing is i put them down backwards! i only made 1000 kroner, not very much money. But that is okay, but the sad thing is, after this happens, my images go dark. i cannot see the visions anymore, because i tried to use them for lottery numbers, not for good things, spiritual things. so that is why i go to the retreat, learn to be a vegetarian, meditation, healthy. i still hope that the visions come back to me.”

1. I heard this piece on the radio a couple days ago, and have now become obsessed with Tony Schwartz, who died at age 84 in June. The New York Times obit described him as an “art director; advertising executive; urban folklorist; radio host; Broadway sound designer; college professor; media theorist; author; and maker of commercials.” He had agorophobia & almost never left his neighborhood; and yet he had a collection of 30,000 field recordings, half made in the blocks around his house, and the rest sent to him by fellow collectors around the world. He has the dubious responsibility of having introduced (through his traded recordings) the original versions of “Wimoweh” to Pete Seeger, and “Day-O” to Harry Belafonte.

Schwartz also created the famous/infamous “daisy ad” for Lyndon Johnson’s reelection campaign; it is widely credited to have had a significant impact on the election, and has been criticized as ushering in the modern era of negative TV ad campaigns.

Crazy life…

His field recordings are incredible. He released a series of records on Smithsonian/Folkways (which are available on Smithsonian’s website and iTunes etc) - recordings of kids talking, sounds of the city, random recordings sent to him from around the world, man on the street interviews, and clarinetist Jimmy Giuffre in duet with Schwartz’s wife’s high-heels in a midtown office. Here is a track from one of his records, a series of vendors & barkers:

[audio:tony.mp3]

2. Theme time Radio Hour. I don’t have Sirius radio or whatever so i haven’t been able to hear Bob Dylan’s radio show, but now I & you can illegally download them all here! This is Bob & mystery lady’s intro to the first show, “Weather:”

[audio:dylan.mp3]

as i roved out from Sam Amidon on Vimeo.