They That Chase After the Bear

Today has been a journey. I nearly read an entire book on time, ranging from Einsteinian principles of relativity to critiques of "time's arrow" through subjective time-perception in relation to physical space. That eventually led me to more conventional linear notions of time, including that of the Mayan calender. I hope to write an app for mobiles that will relate to the eventual end of the Mayan calender next December. Tangentially, I started wondering how the Native Americans originating in my neck of the woods believed cosmologically and how that related to time. As I am still researching the temporal aspect, here is a little story about Major Ursa from the Meskwaki tribe. In fact, it is a common story told throughout the Algonquian language branch, particularly Sauk, Fox, and Menominee tribes. Anyways, my apologies for the seemingly antiquated translation, but here it is: "They That Chase After the Boy".

It is said that once on a time long ago in the winter, at the beginning of the season of snow after the first fall of snow, three men went on a hunt for game early on a morning. Upon a hillside into a place where the bush was thick a bear they trailed. One of the men went in following the trail of the bear. And then he started it up running. "Towards the place whence comes the cold is he speeding away!" he said to his companions.

He that headed off on the side which lay towards the source of the cold, "In the direction of the place of the noonday sky is he running!" he said.

Back and forth amongst themselves they kept the bear fleeing. They say that after a while he that was coming up behind chanced to look down at the ground. Behold, green was the surface of the earth lying face up! Now of a truth up into the sky were they conveyed by the bear! When round about the bush they were chasing it then truly was the time that up into the sky they went. And then he that came up behind cried out to him that was next ahead: "O River-that-joins-Another, let us go back! We are being carried up into the sky!" Thus said he to River-that-joins-Another. But by him was he not heeded.

Now River-that-joins-Another was he who ran in between the two, and a little puppy Hold-Tight he had for a pet.

In the autumn they overtook the bear, then they slew it. After they had slain it, then boughs of the oak they cut, likewise boughs of the sumac, then laying the bear on top of the leaves they flayed and cut up the bear; after they had flayed and cut it up, then they began slinging and scattering the meat in every direction. Towards the place of the coming of the morning they flung the head; in the winter-time when the morning is about to appear some stars usually rise; it is said that they came from the head of the bear. And also his backbone, towards the place of the morning they flung it too. They too are commonly seen in the winter-time; they are stars that lie huddled close together; it is said that they came from the backbone.

And they say that these four stars in the lead were the bear, and the three stars at the rear were they who were chasing after the bear. In between two of them is a tiny little star, it hangs near by another; they say that it was the puppy, the pet Hold-Tight of River-that-joins-Another.

Every autumn the oaks and sumacs redden in the leaf because it is then that the hunters lay the bear on top of the leaves and flay and cut it up; then red with blood become the leaves. Such is the reason why every autumn red become the leaves of the oaks and sumacs. 

From William Jones' 1907 collection of Mesquakie stories

the albatross

An albatross used to be known as an omen of good luck until The Rime of the Ancient Mariner was published by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1798. Since then the connection in popular culture and literature alike has taken akin to the idea the bird is psychological burden, following some as a type of curse. It seems to be a perpetuating reference in the recent past showing up in Weeds, Deadwood, and even as a malapropism (albacore) in The Sopranos. Anyways, my main reason for this post is to conjure some response to this great poem by French poet Charles Baudelaire which has the title, you guessed it....


L'Albatros

Souvent, pour s'amuser, les hommes d'équipage
Prennent des albatros, vastes oiseaux des mers,
Qui suivent, indolents compagnons de voyage,
Le navire glissant sur les gouffres amers.

À peine les ont-ils déposés sur les planches,
Que ces rois de l'azur, maladroits et honteux,
Laissent piteusement leurs grandes ailes blanches
Comme des avirons traîner à côté d'eux.

Ce voyageur ailé, comme il est gauche et veule!
Lui, naguère si beau, qu'il est comique et laid!
L'un agace son bec avec un brûle-gueule,
L'autre mime, en boitant, l'infirme qui volait!

Le Poète est semblable au prince des nuées
Qui hante la tempête et se rit de l'archer;
Exilé sur le sol au milieu des huées,
Ses ailes de géant l'empêchent de marcher.

— Charles Baudelaire

The Albatross

Sometimes, to entertain themselves, the men of the crew
Lure upon deck an unlucky albatross, one of those vast
Birds of the sea that follow unwearied the voyage through,
Flying in slow and elegant circles above the mast.

No sooner have they disentangled him from their nets
Than this aerial colossus, shorn of his pride,
Goes hobbling pitiably across the planks and lets
His great wings hang like heavy, useless oars at his side.

How droll is the poor floundering creature, how limp and weak —
He, but a moment past so lordly, flying in state!
They tease him: One of them tries to stick a pipe in his beak;
Another mimics with laughter his odd lurching gait.

The Poet is like that wild inheritor of the cloud,
A rider of storms, above the range of arrows and slings;
Exiled on earth, at bay amid the jeering crowd,
He cannot walk for his unmanageable wings.

— George Dillon, Flowers of Evil (NY: Harper and Brothers, 1936)

furniture music

i am on a brian eno kick. i have never listened to him extensively, but have been particularly inspired lately by an album called "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" that he did with talking heads founder david byrne. as i was reading about some of his productions i found out that he is credited with starting ambient music as a genre. he was particularly inspired by the music of french composer erik satie as his "furniture music." i am quite fond of it myself. here are some numbers if you'd like to check them out.


tapisserie en fer forgé, carrelage phonique, and tenture de cabinet préfectoral

The Microsoft Sound (via Wikipedia)

In 1994, Microsoft corporation designers Mark Malamud and Erik Gavriluk approached Brian Eno to compose music for the Windows 95 project. The result was the six-second start-up music-sound of the Windows 95 operating system, The Microsoft Sound. In the San Francisco Chronicle he said:

The idea came up at the time when I was completely bereft of ideas. I'd been working on my own music for a while and was quite lost, actually. And I really appreciated someone coming along and saying, "Here's a specific problem — solve it."

The thing from the agency said, "We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah- blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional," this whole list of adjectives, and then at the bottom it said "and it must be 3¹/₄ seconds long."

I thought this was so funny and an amazing thought to actually try to make a little piece of music. It's like making a tiny little jewel.

In fact, I made 84 pieces. I got completely into this world of tiny, tiny little pieces of music. I was so sensitive to microseconds at the end of this that it really broke a logjam in my own work. Then when I'd finished that and I went back to working with pieces that were like three minutes long, it seemed like oceans of time.

jean seberg

this is a still from breathless (1960), a french film starring jean seberg and the extremely bad-ass jean-paul belmondo. i was struck by seberg's beauty instantly and fell in love with her by the end of the movie. i was even more shocked to find out she is an iowa native (from marshalltown), a ui grad, lived in mallorca, and politically supported the blank panthers and the mesquaki tribe, all of which are fun facts. not so fun, is the fact that she committed suicide in the 16th parisienne arrondissement by overdosing on barbiturates and alcohol while pregnant with her second child. though tragic she is still absolutely beautiful, if i had already mentioned that. rip ms. seberg.

a little mixtape action

a random set of songs for y'all, with no set of coherency whatsoever:

don cherry - brown rice
raphael saadiq - let's take a walk
lana del rey - video games (jamie woon remix)
flight facilities - crave you
hugo frederick - family affair
bayaka - 3 voiced song (from The Extraordinary Music Of The Babenzele Pygmys   And Sounds Of Their Forest Home)
serge gainsbourg - l'anamour
jacques brel - le moribond
goldfish - hold tight
philip glass - 1000 airplanes on the roof
eleanor freidburger - gold glitter year
stanley turrentine - sugar
idris muhammad - piece of you

張帆 - man chang fei

quartetto cetro - crapa pelada
recloose f/ joe dukie - deeper waters

also, highly suggest you check out:
blade runner the soundtrack
CANT - dreams come true
steve reich - music for six marimbas
steve roach - artifacts
the embassadors - healing the music
nguyen le - tales from vietnam

Old news for a new crowd

With all this fuss over the summer to present about the rampantly growing debt problem, I continue to wonder how the Right can say this when national debt quintupled under Reagan and Bush. I won't lie: Reagan certainly did wonders with the economy during his reign in office, but as Lloyd Bensen (D-Tex) said in the New York Times, October 6, 1988 "if you let me write $200 billion worth of hot checks every year, I could give you an illusion of prosperity, too." Though the debt bubble has gone from $10.7 trillion in 2008 to $14.2 trillion by February 2011 under Obama, has anyone been asking the question how we got to that original number in the first place. Here is a little chart to look at it. I´m far from offering a solution, but this should get us thinking a little bit.