Ummm, Maybe We Should Pay Attention...

Bonzers in Mexico..Many moons ago

courtesy of www.bonzer5.com - the campbell bros

you know these guys have been right on forever when they pair Nina Simone with this footage...wow!!!!

Carver Skateboards - For the fun...

Especially amidst these crazy times we are living in, we all need to remember to simply have some fun. Check it out...

Chris Martin at the Corcoran Museum of Art

Keith Olbermann on the "Occupy" Protests...

more on Mark Bradford...

Bradford’s career looks like an ongoing tussle between the impulse to answer the call of identity politics — to express and draw attention to political and personal injustices — and to reject that call. His works, at their best, transcend it. They are like palimpsests, quietly radiating meanings, emotions, and no end of visual satisfactions.

Steve Jobs Wisdom

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
-Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The rebels. The troublemakers. The ones who see things differently. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.”
- Steve Jobs

Because It Is Right...

"Cowardice asks the question: is it safe? Expediency asks the question: is it political? Vanity asks the question: is it popular? But conscience asks the question: is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor political, nor popular - but one must take it simply because it is right." Martin Luther King, Jr

Russell Simmons speaks with Michael Moore on Wall Street

Old Man, Red Light King...words worth pondering...

Do we forsake the elders, and if so, which ones? How do we gleen the wisdom from those gone before us?

A Moveable Feast - Hemingway

This book is forever a treasure of a lost time and place...

Design We Like

Julian Schnabel did the interior of the Grammercy Park Hotel in NYC. This is one of my favorite pics. Love all the use of natural wood. Gives it a bit of a rustic but still classic feel...Well done...

Hand Made Still Exists!!!!!

Cy Fish Handplane - All Yew from www.KORDUROY.tv on Vimeo.

Nice to see that simplicity can bring connection with the ocean...

Mark Bradford and Anonymous Walls on the Streets of Los Angeles

A month or so ago, I was checking out the "hot galleries" of Los Angeles, specifically those located in the Culver City area. While I am sure I saw art of all technical, philosophical, social, and visual natures in these galleries on that day, it was perhaps what I saw outside the galleries as I was walking back to my car that had the most impact. Call me crazy, but here I had just witnessed some of the "hottest" art in some of the "hottest" galleries in Los Angeles and yet when I spied this "wall art" near my car, I found it to be as compelling as anything I had just witnessed in the "sanctioned dominions" of artistic culture. I was moved by the freedom, the rawness, the spontaneity, and the rather utter lack of care that this wall piece expressed. As seen above, I reference it in comparison to a compelling piece by the esteemed Los Angeles artist, Mark Bradford. In no way am I trying to take anything away from the Bradford piece for I find Mark Bradford to be one of the more original and thought provoking artists of the day, not just here in Los Angeles, but the world over. But I use his piece here as a reference point. How is it that Bradford (the lower piece of the two above), in my opinion rightly so, has gained the notoriety that he has while this "anonymous" artist (top piece above)goes on without even a mention? How is it that the "corporate" art world has constructed itself so as to define what is "real" art, and what is perhaps only the markings of a deviant being? Given the right location, I can easily see this street art being successfully exhibited so as to provoke compelling discussion just as the Bradford piece has done. And yet, one artist is flourishing while who know what has become of the other artist, or even if that wall was the work of one person? The point is is that how often does the average joe, with no art historical training, view both pieces, listen to the various blurbs on the attributes of Bradford, and then look at the street art and have the confidence to deem that work just as valid, or just as compelling or, shall I say even beautiful?

Sure, one may say that the street art hearkens back to a more referential nature of 1980's "neo-expressionism" the likes of Schnabel, Basquiat, etc, but can one not say that could be equally true of the Bradford piece if we were to take into account that it has referential ties to the "new geo" movement also of the 1980's? And regardless of either argument, who is the one who 'metes out" whether one piece sits higher than the other on the ridiculous ladder of hierarchical art status?

I guess what I am trying to get at is that too often the average person who walks into a gallery easily feels intimidated by the heavy and reverential like silence of most nearly all art galleries, and therefore in their blameless naivete, will too often give too much weight to what hangs on a fancy gallery wall, in comparison to what may be existing on the public streets surrounding those very same galleries. And yet as a seasoned viewer of gallery shows across the nation and abroad, I say with great confidence that the general person without an art background needs to somehow know that random anonymous art on a nameless wall may be just as savvy as that that exists in the "sanctioned" formal gallery space. And until this is rectified, if it ever happens at all, the viewing of art will sadly still be akin to the ranking of the status quo and who may be the current celebrities or top corporations of a given year...That is not the way art is suppossed to work at its core. It is only the human capacity for construction of subjective heirarchies (read as gallerists desire to hype a piece so as to gain possible fame and fortune) that keeps art at a distance from the very public the gallery artist may be attempting to reach...

Camus

I am certainly no authority on the works of Camus, but I have read his journals and most of his writings, with more attention to "The Stranger" and "The Plague". Although these were written over 50 years ago, I wonder if these are still relevant, and if so, are they worth commenting on especially in these current times of unrest and insecurity the world over. In "The Stranger", Camus' lead character, Meursault, appears to lack empathy for those he comes into contact with. He sees life as "godless", "absurd", and without meaning, and thus finds justification for his self serving actions. His character is one of the most well known literary characters of the past 75 years, and I must ask why? Could it be that Camus was even, "before his time", and was using his lead character not only as a foil for certain general human traits, but as a metaphor for the larger weapons or voices of state power in his time? For surely, we all are familiar with the notion of a unit/team/nation only being as strong as its' weakest link, and therefore, I pose the idea that perhaps in presenting Mersault to the world, Camus was using him to comment on the apathy and general lack of interest or power that the weakest links in his society may have had. And if this may be posited as perhaps true, then could it not be said that we may draw a parallel between the character Mersault and the rank and file of so many of us who currently feel relatively helpless and therefore apathetic to the national and world economic mess, political dissillusionments, and enigmatic nature of the two primary countries we now devote so much of our war effort towards? And therefore, if any of this is even remotely possibly true, does not it stand that the works of Camus are just as relevant today as they were over 50 years ago? And if this is so, and we are simultaneously watching the closing of bookstores across the nation (Borders being the latest, themselves having killed off countless mom and pop bookshops)and the general decline of the reading of the written word, then is not it now as important as ever that works like Camus' "the Stranger" be not forgotten in this daily deluge of internet tech magic that seems to overide so quickly so much of past history as we have known it? What I mean is that we, as a culture are now seemingly so obsessed with the "magic" of the iPhone, the iPad, the immediate gratification that our technology brings us, that we neglect to heed the important voices of the past that, in fact, are desperately relevant to the current times we are living in? And therefore, should we not be more wary of the "bells and whistles" of some of our modern technology, which may simply be acting as a smoke and mirror show to simply keep us apathetic towards some of the more "humanistic" attentions that need paying attention to in the here and now?

Russell Jacoby

Back in the late 1980's, fresh out of college and ready to change the world, I read a book by Russell Jacoby, The Last Intellectuals, that still haunts me nearly twenty five years later...In it, he forsook the idea of the university as the premier "ivory tower" of learning, and went back to earlier days when common men and women spent more time chatting about the affairs of the world not only in the higher halls of learning, but on country porches, local coffee houses and diners, and the like. He mourned the fact that serious discussion of important ideas, news, and events had increasingly taken place most often only in the domains of the colleges and universities across the nation. He argued that in fact, part of our strength as a nation had historically been that more of the general populace, both the college educated and those even far less so were all more involved in the daily dialogue of what was transpiring in the towns, nation, and world they lived in.

Now of course, as I was a youngster with very little experience outside the college confines, I ate up his words like a marathon runner who was deeply in need of fuel for the journey ahead. I was sure that change was fast, right around the corner, and that all it took was a little group interaction. Being the young idealist, I was sure that others cared just as much as I did about the history of ideas and culture, and that without attention to those ideas of the past that we all would not move forward in manners in accordance to our higher callings as humans populating the prescious planet Earth. Boy was I wrong... Ouch...

And so it is in ode to this original young idealist spirit, and the writings among others, of Russell Jacoby, that in these current times of so much vast change, insecurity, and economic, political, geopolitical and cultural "unknowing" that I seek out to you, my unknown populace to see if one small voice may indeed be the mere tinder to start a fire from which unknown energies may be revealed. The future has not been written, and thus remains to be seen. I invite you to join me on this journey into explorations of culture, politics, diplomacy, economics, technology, war and peace, and how it may all affect where we all will end up...

Maybe He Knows Something We Don't?