Showing posts with label death. Show all posts
Showing posts with label death. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Ukulele Anthem (by Amanda Palmer)



Sid Vicious played a four-string Fender bass guitar and couldn't sing

And everybody hated him except the ones who loved him
A ukulele has four strings, but Sid did did not play ukulele
He did smack and probably killed his girlfriend Nancy Spungen
If only Sid had had a ukulele, maybe he would have been happy
Maybe he would not have suffered such a sad end
He maybe would have not done all that heroin instead
He maybe would've sat around just singing nice songs to his girlfriend
So play your favorite cover song, especially if the words are wrong
'Cause even if your grades are bad, it doesn't mean you're failing
Do your homework with a fork
And eat your fruit loops in the dark
And bring your etch-a-sketch to work
And play your ukulele
Ukulele small and fierceful
Ukulele brave and peaceful
You can play the ukulele too, it is painfully simple
Play your ukulele badly, play your ukulele loudly
Ukulele banish evil
Ukulele save the people
Ukulele gleaming golden from the top of every steeple
Lizzie borden took an axe, and gave her mother forty whacks
Then gave her father forty-one, and left a tragic puzzle
If only they had given her an instrument, those puritans
Had lost the plot completely
See what happens when you muzzle
A person's creativity
And do not let them sing and scream
And nowadays it's worse 'cause kids have automatic handguns
It takes about an hour to teach someone to play the ukulele
About the same to teach someone to build a standard pipe bomb
YOU DO THE MATH
So play your favorite cover song, especially if the words are wrong
'Cause even if your grades are bad, it doesn't mean you're failing
Do your homework with a fork
And eat your fruit loops in the dark
And bring your flask of jack to work
And play your ukulele
Ukulele, thing of wonder
Ukulele, wand of thunder
You can play the ukulele, too
In London and down under
Play joan jett, and play jacques brel
And eminem and neutral milk ho-
Tell the children
Crush the hatred
Play your ukulele naked
If anybody tries to steal your ukulele, let them take it
Imagine there's no music, imagine there are no songs
Imagine that John Lennon wasn't shot in front of his apartment
Now imagine if John Lennon had composed "imagine" for the ukulele
Maybe people would have truly got the message
You may think my approach is simple-minded and naïve
Like if you want to change the world then why not quit and feed the hungry
But people for millennia have needed music to survive
And that is why I promised John that I will not feel guilty
So play your favorite Beatles song
And make the subway fall in love
They're only $19.95, that isn't lots of money
Play until the sun comes up
And play until your fingers suffer
Play LCD soundsystem songs on your ukulele
Quit the bitching on your blog
And stop pretending art is hard
Just limit yourself to three chords
And do not practice daily
You'll minimize some stranger's sadness
With a piece of wood and plastic
Holy fuck, it's so fantastic, playing ukulele
Eat your homework with a fork
And do your fruit loops in the dark
Bring your etch-a-sketch to work
Your flask of Jack
Your vibrator
Your fear of heights
Your Nikon lens
Your mom and dad
Your disco stick
Your soundtrack to "karate kid"
Your ginsu knives
Your rosary
Your new Rebecca Black CD
Your favorite room
Your bowie knife
Your stuffed giraffe
Your new glass eye
Your sousaphone
Your breakfast tea
Your Nick Drake tapes
Your giving tree
Your ice cream truck
Your missing wife
Your will to live
Your urge to cry
Remember we're all gonna die
So play, your ukulele

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Midway between beauty & horror. Love what is

Do we have the courage to face the realities of our time?
And allow ourselves to feel deeply enough that it transforms us
 and our future?
Come with me on a journey through the eye of beauty
Across an ocean of grief and beyond…
Chris Jordan - Director/Producer   For more information:  MidwayFilm.com  Twitter: @midwayjourney

Music Baaba Maal

Text below from the Vimeo page of the project:

A powerful, poetic, visual and introspective journey into the heart of an astonishingly symbolic environmental tragedy. On one of the remotest islands on our planet, tens of thousands of baby albatrosses lie dead on the ground, their bodies filled with plastic from the Pacific Garbage Patch. Returning to the island over several years, our team is witnessing the cycles of life and death of these birds as a multi-layered metaphor for our times. With photographer Chris Jordan as our guide, we walk through the fire of horror and grief, facing the immensity of this tragedy—and our own complicity—head on. And in this process, we find an unexpected route to a transformational experience of beauty, acceptance, and understanding.

We frame our story in the vividly gorgeous language of state-of-the-art high-definition digital cinematography, surrounded by millions of live birds in one of the world’s most beautiful natural sanctuaries. The viewer will experience stunning juxtapositions of beauty and horror, destruction and renewal, grief and joy, birth and death, coming out the other side with their heart broken open and their worldview shifted. Stepping outside the stylistic templates of traditional environmental or documentary films, MIDWAY will take viewers on a guided tour into the depths of their own spirits, delivering a profound message of reverence and love.

Watching and reading this takes us to embrace  chaos, confusion and conflict as Harrison Owen suggests us; birth and death, breath in, breath out; let go through the grief process,... Open Space. It also takes us to Byron Katie´s proposal to love what is.

Best,

Eleder BuM (Bilbao underground Mayor)
www.burumapak.blogspot.com (Basque)   @Eleder_BuM  (Twitter)

http://www.bilbohiria.com/gaika/berbaz (radio interviews Basque)  

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

When the devil dances


Picture picked at: http://djembefola.com/dance.php

Harrison Owen sent yesterday this beautiful piece to the OSLIST.

I don’t know if this fits, but some many years ago I had the privilege of spending some time in the African Bush with some wonderful people. I think this was my first awareness of open space (Open Space?). Anyhow I wrote about it and it went like this (in my first book, “When the Devil Dances” and I should add that the Devil is not the familiar figure with long horns but rather the missionaries mistaken appellation for a central actor in village life.)

In the village
All things go in a circle,
And everything fits.
To speak of the drums
Is to speak of the dance,
Is to speak of the Devils…

Weaving and Forging
Fire and Steel – The Bush
Life, Death, and Life again.

When the Devil Dances Life goes on


Harrison Owen
_______________________________________________

A good piece for a song, really! Keep dancing!

Eleder BuM31    Mind Mapping-Open Space Technology-Sormena