Religion

Joni Mitchell

Chris Jefferies — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:36:00 GMT

Last night Aurora and I went to see Joni Mitchell. She’s was speaking at the Commonwealth Club a few blocks from where I work. The event was scheduled to coincide with the anniversary of Earth Day. We were surprised to see our friend, Nancy Carroll, atending with a friend of hers.

Instead of being a straight interview, it started out with Joni talking about her world view and how she thinks we, as humans, have gone wrong. At first, she seemed to be a little overwhelmed with the 'big ideas' and with the depth of the subject, but she had some notes to keep her on track and had apparently given considerable thought about what she wanted to say. Her first statement:

“To love nature in this time is to be in terrible pain.“

She described a poignant display of our world condition as seen on the side of the Hard Rock Cafe in Los Angeles where there is a ticker or continuous counter that shows the growing world population juxtaposed with the number of trees being cut down.

She thinks it all went wrong with Plato and western 'logic' or intellect and the focus on western justice which lacks sense. On a poster board, she drew a diagram with a large circle marking North, South, East, and West. These points represented:

North as intellect
South as feeling
East as clarity
West as sense

She thinks that we, in the west, have focused too much on intellect and clarity and have lost our ability to feel and sense. Because we seem to focus too much on intellect and clarity we are, as a result, working with 'half a deck'. What was needed, she said, is a balance and called this balance the “Apple mind“.

She draws her world view from various philosophies including Buddhism, Jungian theory, Nietzsche, and Native American culture.

Her talk was interlaced with anecdotes about her recording career, Larry Klein, and "Iron Eyes" Cody (who is known as the Tear Indian in the famous Earth Day ad from 1971). She was asked to read a letter, purported to be from Chief Seattle, which is included in the liner notes of her most recent album, The Beginning Of Survival.

Some other interesting things we learned about Joni:

She thinks of herself primarily as a painter
She started smoking when she was nine years old and would ride her bicycle out into the country and spend quite time, enjoying nature and her little bag of tobacco.
She was asked who she was interested in musically and she said responded without hesitation, “No one!“
She doesn't listen to music very much and has very esoteric tastes; needs a high level of originality... There was a term she used that I can't recall now. (Update 04.25.2005: Nancy Carroll has reminded me; Joni said she needed a “high degree of divinity and originality“ in the music she listens to.)

Some other interesting links:

Interview by Elvis Costello from the November 2005 Vanity Fair magazine:
http://www.jmdl.com/library/print.cfm?id=1182

Discussion, from ’97 about one of my favorite songs, Sweet Bird:
http://www.jmdl.com/th-sweetbird.cfm

They recorded the talk and I think you might be able to catch it at this location:
http://www.commonwealthclub.org/broadcast/index.html

Have a happy day of superstition...

Chris Jefferies — Fri, 29 Oct 2004 02:40:00 GMT

Jumano Forums

Chris Jefferies — Fri, 16 Jul 2004 14:30:00 GMT

I've set up a web forum for discussion threads at: http://www.jumano.com/Forums

Please visit the forums and start up or join a discussion.

Sunday Morning in Bed...

Chris Jefferies — Thu, 15 Jul 2004 16:16:00 GMT

Darn, I was getting away with this one for years... Now they've caught up with me.

Fahrenheit 9/11 - in their own words

Chris Jefferies — Sat, 26 Jun 2004 15:28:00 GMT

Aurora and I saw Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 last night. While I can't confirm all of the facts presented in the film (who can?) I can say, that what you see is George Bush and his administration officials presenting the case for Michael Moore in their own words. Sure, the quotes might have been taken out of context, but the quotes nevertheless stand on their own. Like George, saying to a group of supporters, “This is an impressive crowd, the 'haves' and the 'have mores'. Some people call you the elite, I call you my base.“.

One of the things I learned, and was quite shocked by, was the treatment of black representatives who went to the senate to protest the disenfranchisement of black voters right after the 2000 election. The resolutions, required a singnature from at least one senator, and not one senator stepped forward. Not one. Pathetic.

The last moment in the film points out the slow witted Bush stumbling over a common saying, and should leave all viewers with a resolve to do whatever they can to help voters understand that we need George out of the whitehouse.

Here's a link to the trailer for the movie: http://www.fahrenheit911.com/trailer/windows/large.php

I urge all of my friends to see this movie. Soon!

It had to happen...

Chris Jefferies — Fri, 21 May 2004 11:28:00 GMT

The iconification of the torture images... These are apparently showing up in transit stations in New York.

Century City - New TV Series is coming

Chris Jefferies — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 00:42:00 GMT

“Legal drama set in Los Angeles around the firm of Constable, Crane and Montero in 2030 that will speculate on how the legal system will change by then.”

I think this show poses a very interesting approach to the socialization of the American “viewing audience“. Imagine the enlightened future where gay marriages are common, women's choice is honored, equal education is a right and the repression of religious fundamentalism is long past... What moral legal issues will we have to deal with?

We'll sit in our 2004 living rooms and see our present future possibility and realize that our current issues pale in the face of the loss of personal privacy and human genetic engineering fiascoes.

I hope the program lives up to it's potential...

Tuesday, March 16, 9PM ET/PT
A young boy’s father wants the right to use the boy’s genetic embryo clone to develop a baby who could donate a portion of his liver to save him. The firm also takes on the case of a boy band that is suing its lead singer for not adhering to his contract to keep up his physical appearance.

Additional episode airs Saturday, March 20, 10PM ET/PT.
The firm argues that a young man with a bionic eye, who is being barred from playing baseball, should not be considered enhanced, but rather, disabled. Meanwhile, a couple must redefine their marital contract regarding the "family" they pledged they'd never have.

Update - 05.05.2004: Show was cancelled. Dolt!

Kyra Nijinsky - She Dances Alone

Chris Jefferies — Wed, 28 Jan 2004 21:43:00 GMT

In the Spring of 1981, I read a book by Colin Wilson titled “The Outsider“. It covers the lives of Hemmingway, Dostoevsky, and Vaslav Nijinsky, as well as Van Gogh, T. E. Lawrence, and philosophers such as Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. Primarily Wilson was trying to put together a new existentialism by showing examples of those who think deeply, don't fit in, and search to find meaning in the world. Gary Sebastian gave me the book and when I finished it, I started in to “The Dairy of Vaslav Nijinsky“. I was consumed by the heights of Nijinsky's artistic achievement and the depths of his despair. It was a time that I was evaluating my life and I related strongly to the concepts captured in “The Outsider“.

At the time, I worked at Dolby Laboratories in downtown San Francisco. One day I had driven to work (I usually caught the bus) and had parked the car in a lot across the street from the office. I had to leave the office early that day and went to the lot, gave them my ticket and waited for my car to be puzzled out of the maze of cars.

As I stood waiting, 2 elderly women arrived, gave their ticket to the attendant and waited with me. One of the women was holding a painting and I remarked that I found it very interesting. She told me that it was a painting that she had done of her father who was a dancer. The other woman then chimed in and told me that her friend was Kyra Nijinsky, daughter of the world famous Vaslav Nijinsky.

I stood, stunned.

Everything I had been reading, everything I had thought about Vaslav, and all my admiration came flooding out as I stood next to his daughter; someone who had actually known him, his greatness, his tragedy.

This looks similar to the painting that Kyra held the day I met her.

“If you like this one, I have more you can see. I'm in the phone book.“, she said as I stammered for something meaningful to say. At that moment, my car arrived. I indicated to her that I might call and said goodbye.

That evening I decided to follow up on her offer, looked up her number (sure enough in the public phone book) and called her. I was hoping to take Elena to see her and her art and even though I didn't think Elena would appreciate the relevance of Kyra I hoped that later in life she might remember the encounter with fondness.

Kyra seemed surprised that I had actually called and immediately started to back out of the offer she had made. She proceeded to describe that she had recently joined a convent of a community of nuns and that she wasn't allowed to have men in her apartment. She also went on and on about how messy her apartment was and that she was in the process of hiring someone to organize her art and papers. I assured her that my intentions were honorable and that I was simply following up on the offer she had made earlier in the day. I offered her MY phone number and asked that, if she changed her mind, I would still like to come over with my daughter and see her paintings. She took down my number and said goodbye.

About 10 minutes later the phone rang. When I answered, it was Kyra calling me back. “If you'd like to buy a painting, I might be able to make an exception...”, she said.

I indicated that I was unable to afford any of her work and so she politely said goodbye and hung up. That was the last time I ever talked to her. I think she died in 1998.

Later, I found a movie, produced by Bud Cort titled “She Dances Alone”. It is a quasi-documentary styled piece in which Bud attempts to corral Kyra into doing some interviews and Kyra spins off in different directions doing whatever whim comes to her. It is an exercise in documentary frustration.

There's a site that is dedicated to belly dancing, yoga and Kyra's art. Go figure:
http://www.maganabaptiste.com/

Kyra in 1935

Vaslav Nijinsky

Computers - like the Old Testament God

Chris Jefferies — Thu, 22 Jan 2004 16:54:00 GMT

Terence, a co-worker of mine, said he heard a quote about computers and programming:

Q: How are computers like the Old Testament God?

A: “There are lots of rules, and they're very unforgiving...”

Gondwanaland

Chris Jefferies — Sun, 18 Jan 2004 11:47:00 GMT

I saw a bumber sticker on a car in Berkeley yesterday:

Reunite Gondwanaland

Updated: 01.19.2004
For those of you who don't know what Gondwanaland is:

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=Gondwanaland+geography
http://www.palaeos.com/Earth/Geography/Gondwana.htm

One of the most enduring features of our planet, Gondwana (or Gondwanaland) was a composite continent, made up of South America, Africa, Antarctica, India, and Australia, and even at one time included Florida and part of southwest Europe.

Gondwanaland is named after the Upper Paleozoic and Mesozoic formations of the Gondwana district of central India, which display a number of shared geologic features (the "Gondwana beds"). In the late nineteenth century, on the basis of comparative geological evidence, the Austrian geologist, Edward Suess, suggested that the continents of Africa, South America, Australia and India were once part of a single supercontinent, which he called "Gondwanaland".

Science tells us that the Continents of Australia, India, South America, Africa, and Antarctica, existed together as a separate landmass as long as 650 million years ago. And as these continents only began to break up some 130 million years ago, this great supercontinent had a life of around 520 million years; making it perhaps the most important geological structure of the last billion years.