“You have to be vigilant about keeping your own fire alive.” - Tift Merritt

Someday

“Someday you’ll find the right person, and you’ll learn to have a lot more confidence in yourself. That’s what I think. So don’t settle for anything less. In this world, there are things you can only do alone, and things you can only do with somebody else. It’s important to combine the two in just the right amount.”

- Haruki Murakami

“Do you take pride in your hurt? Does it make you seem large and tragic?” - John Steinbeck, East of Eden

So Excited For Halloween

A Woman's Body

“We’ve been taught a woman’s body will cause men to sin. We’re told that if a woman shows too much of her body men will do stupid things. Let’s be clear: A woman’s body is not dangerous to you. Her body will not cause you harm. It will not make you do stupid things. If you do stupid things, it is because you chose to do stupid things.”

- How to See a Woman: A Conversation Between a Father and Son 

Things Can Change In A Day

"Perhaps it’s true that things can change in a day. That a few dozen hours can affect the outcome of whole lifetimes. And that when they do, those few dozen hours, like the salvaged remains of a burned house—-the charred clock, the singed photograph, the scorched furniture—-must be resurrected from the ruins and examined. Preserved. Accounted for. Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Imbued with new meaning. Suddenly they become the bleached bones of a story.”

- Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

I was waitlisted at a medical school I really had high hopes of attending. I know this doesn't mean my dream of becoming a doctor is over, but my heart aches knowing my chances have further diminished.

Wakeskating the Eighth Wonder of the World

Pro wakeskaters Brian Grubb and Dominik Preisner get a once in a lifetime opportunity to session the famous rice terraces of Banaue, in the Philippines.

Death Cab for Cutie Transatlanticism 10 Year Anniversary

Life hands us many milestones as we wend our way from cradle to grave. From first teeth to first kisses to first loves and losses, we mark off our crucial firsts as transformative events; we're no longer babies, or children, or teenagers, or dependent on others to get by. One of those milestones, for those of us who so often set our lives to music, is the first time we get to mutter, "That came out 10 years ago? God, I am so old."

Death Cab for Cutie's Transatlanticism played in the background of countless decade-old milestones around the world, especially the ones involving first kisses and so forth, and it's no wonder. The album, and its epic title song in particular, played on an endless loop across popular culture — on movie soundtracks and in dramatic moments from such TV shows as Six Feet Under. The way singer Ben Gibbard channeled youthful confusion, vulnerability and sweetness mirrored universal fumbling feelings of growing up and facing down the complexities of love, heartbreak, long-distance yearning and budding nostalgia. From the first line of its first song ("So this is the new year / and I don't feel any different"), Transatlanticisms wims in uncertainty, as if its narrator isn't even quite sure how feelings work yet.

For all its ubiquity and imitators, Transatlanticism holds up as an exquisitely produced, largely flawless record in which every song is bound to serve as someone's favorite. As such, though new would-be fans are born every day, most of its target audience already owns the thing, right? Enter this reissue, out Oct. 29, in which the original album is packaged alongside an identically sequenced but otherwise revelatory set of demo versions.

by STEPHEN THOMPSON

Daft Punk: Accessing Electronic Music's Humanity

I freely admit that, until the new Random Access Memories, I wasn't much of a Daft Punk fan. I could appreciate the craft and imagination that went into creating the French duo's mixture of electronic genres — techno, house, disco — but the mechanical repetitions and heavily filtered vocals didn't turn me on in any other way.

But now, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo have come up with an album that exposes the human side of their musical impulses. It's the equivalent of removing the helmet-masks the pair invariably wears in public performances. Random Access Memories is a collection filled with music that suggests mad romance, heartache and an embrace of the past that's never merely nostalgic or sentimental.

"Get Lucky," the album's superb first single, features lead vocals from Pharrell Williams and guitar work by Nile Rodgers, who co-founded the great disco band Chic in the '70s. The rhythm of "Get Lucky" is lushly irresistible and a perfect example of what seems to have struck Daft Punk's members, now in their late 30s, as a revelation: After years of constructing their music by sampling bits of other artists' beats and riffs, using technology to strip dance music down to its essence, they want to build their sound back up with fresh humanity. They do it by largely avoiding samples on Random Access Memories, having Rodgers and others play real guitars and inviting other, non-mechanized voices to do some of the vocal work. These collaborators range from Pharrell to Paul Williams — yes, the Paul Williams who wrote '70s hits such as The Carpenters' "We've Only Just Begun."

One of my favorite cuts on the album is "Fragments of Time," which features a vocal by Todd Edwards and sounds a little like vintage Steely Dan, sleek and serenely clever. "Turning our days into melodies," goes a line in that Daft Punk track, and it's this new desire to create songs that you and I could sing along to — to maintain the intensity and rhythms of dance music while letting it take a human breath — that gives Random Access Memories its touching vulnerability. Daft Punk still makes appearances in helmets, but its members' feelings are no longer masked. Turns out these would-be robots are romantics, but they're not old softies. This is music that uses its creators' thorough sense of pop history to create a sense of uplift, purpose and passion.

By Ken Tucker

“There is another world, and it is in this one.” - Paul Éluard

The Perks Of Being A Wallflower: We don't get to choose where we came from, but we can choose where we go.

Always was one of my favorite books. I wish the author could always direct the film version of great books, but I guess not everyone is as talented as Stephen Chbosky.

I don't know if I will have the time to write anymore letters

because I might be too busy trying to participate.

So if this does end up being the last letter,

I just want you to know that I was in a bad place before I started high school

and you helped me.

Even if you didn't know what I was talking about

or know someone who's gone through it.

You made me not feel alone.

Because I know there are people who say all these things don't happen.

And there are people who forget what it's like to be sixteen when they turn seventeen.

And know these will all be stories someday

and our pictures will become old photographs

and we'll all become somebody's mom or dad.

But right now these moments are not stories.

This is happening.

I am here and I am looking at her

and she is so beautiful.

I can see it.

This one moment when you know you're not a sad story,

you are alive.

And you stand up and see the lights on buildings

and everything that makes you wonder,

when you were listening to that song

on that drive with the people you love most in this world.

And in this moment, I swear, we are infinite.

“We knew, finally, that the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love and even death, and that our job was merely to create the noise that seemed to fascinate them.” - Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides

“Flowers grow for those that know to bloom is to know your roots to give the earth all its worth tend to the new shoots.” - Lemn Sissay, excerpt “Shipping Good”

 

sølve sundsbø & digital light ltd | vogue italia september 2013

Two or Three Things I Know For Sure

“Behind my carefully buttoned collar is my nakedness, the struggle to find clean clothes, food, meaning, and money. Behind sex is rage, behind anger is love, behind this moment is silence, years of silence.”  

- Dorothy Allison, Two or Three Things I Know For Sure

The Commons of Pensacola

THE COMMONS OF PENSACOLA

World premiere play by Amanda Peet

Directed by Lynne Meadow

with Blythe Danner, Zoe Levin, Ali Marsh, Sarah Jessica Parker, 
Michael Stahl-David and Nilaja Sun

Blythe Danner and Sarah Jessica Parker star in the world premiere of Amanda Peet’s play THE COMMONS OF PENSACOLA. MTC's award-winning Artistic Director Lynne Meadow directs the production, Ms. Peet’s playwriting debut.

Judith (Blythe Danner) has been divested of her assets and forced to leave her luxurious New York life after her husband’s Wall Street scam became headline news. When her daughter Becca (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Becca’s filmmaker boyfriend pay Judith a visit to the one bedroom condo Judith now occupies in Pensacola, Florida, everyone’s motives are called into question. How will past and present circumstances inform how this family moves into the future? 

The Cage

You call yourself a free spirit, a “wild thing,” and you’re terrified somebody’s gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you’re already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it’s not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It’s wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.

  - Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Can You See The Forest Through The Trees?

You Are Who You Are

What I really mean to say is that I hope you aren’t held back because of a number. And that you don’t rush into things because it feels like time is slipping by. I hope you do what’s right for you. Hold on. Slow down. And breathe in. Your age is your age. But more importantly, your life is your life. Don’t change your journey so that it matches someone else’s. We need to walk different paths so the whole world can be explored. Revel in the differences. And enjoy where you are.

…because I’m a twenty-something
todaywasmeaningful.wordpress.com (viaheartbeatofatwentysomething)

Let's Get Wasted

It is the hour to be drunken! To escape being the martyred slaves of time, be ceaselessly drunk. On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, as you wish.

- Charles Baudelaire

“Whatever you think, be sure it is what you think; whatever you want, be sure that is what you want; whatever you feel, be sure that is what you feel.” - T.S. Eliot

State Of Wonder

There was no one clear point of loss. It happened over and over again in a thousand small ways and the only truth there was to learn was that there was no getting used to it.

The River

“I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it’s just too much. The current’s too strong. They’ve got to let go, drift apart. That’s how it is with us. It’s a shame, because we’ve loved each other all our lives. But in the end, we can’t stay together forever.”

- Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

James Brown

I Want To Visit Asia

Angkor Wat, Angkor, Cambodia. A Hindu, then subsequently Buddhist temple complex in Cambodia and the largest religious monument in the world. The temple was built by the Khmer King Suryavarman II in the early 12th century in Yasodharapura the capital of the Khmer Empire.



Koh Samui, Thailand. Often simply Samui as it is referred to by locals, is an island off the east coast of the Kra Isthmus in Thailand.



Bali, Indonesia. an island and a province of Indonesia. The province covers a few small neighbouring islands as well as the island of Bali itself.

Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. The capital and largest city of the Indian state of Rajasthan, Jaipur is known as the Pink City of India.

Kathmandu, Nepal. The capital and largest urban city of Nepal.
The city stands at an elevation of approximately 1,400 metres (4,600 ft) in the bowl-shaped Kathmandu Valley of central Nepal.

Heaven's Gate Mountain, China. Mount Tai is a mountain of historical and cultural significance located north of the city of Tai'an, in Shandong province, China. It is associated with sunrise, birth, and renewal, and is often regarded the foremost of the five. Mount Tai has been a place of worship for at least 3,000 years.



Kyoto, Japan. A city in the central part of the island of Honshu, Japan. It has a population close to 1.5 million. Formerly the imperial capital of Japan for more than one thousand years.

Chiang Mai, Thailand.The largest and most culturally significant city in northern Thailand. It is the capital of Chiang Mai Province, a former capital of the Kingdom of Lanna. It is located 435 miles north of Bangkok, among the highest mountains in the country.



Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The federal capital and most populous city in Malaysia. It is among the fastest growing metropolitan regions in the country, in terms of population and economy.

Meaning in Las Vegas

“Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run, but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant.”

- Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Chained, We Used To Be Closer Than This, Is It Something You Miss?

Not official video.
Music by The xx – Chained.
Video by Ruslan Khasanov.

“She was like a drowning person, flailing, reaching for anything that might save her. Her life was an urgent, desperate struggle to justify her life.” - Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

The Garden of Eden

“When I see an old movie, like from the ’40s or ’50s or ’60s, the people look so calm. They don’t have smart phones, they’re not looking at computer screens, they’re taking their time. They’ll sit in a chair and just stare off into space. I think some day we’ll find our way back to that garden of Eden.”

- Rudy Rucker

Janis Joplin on Rejection

On September 30, 1970, four days before her death, Janis Joplin gave her final interview, a profound conversation about creativity and rejection with Howard Smith of the Village Voice.

New Beginnings

The New York City Ballet created this beautiful tribute to 911, on the 57th floor of the 4WTC building. It was released on September 12th as a hopeful look forward.