Kia ora, hola, and happy Cinco de Mayo! I’m finding the interwebs unbearable today with fake assassination images and impassioned reactions, so I thought I’d toss in a list of inspiring, beautiful and delicious things that I’m loving in the hopes they may nourish your senses instead.

1. These Smythson elephant motif correspondence cards, gifted me by Aunt Lainie.
2. Democracy Now Earth Day special featuring fantastic interview with Vandana Shiva and Maude Barlow on the rights of Mother Earth, and a powerful speech by Van Jones at the PowerShift 2011 conference
3. Chile rellenos, homemade habanero salsa, y margaritas (y huevos rancheros, y tacos pescado…) at La Boca Loca in Miramar, Wellington, New Zealand
4. Radio Shangri-La: What I Learned in Bhutan, the Happiest Kingdom on Earth, by Lisa Napoli
5. Becoming Transhuman (Part 3: Resolving), a dance through the Bardo with shamans, guided by Mark Pesce in his 2001 magnum opus recently uploaded to YouTube
6. L’Abandon, the new album from Tucson, Arizona chanteuse, Marianne Dissard. This is music to get dressed by when you’re dressing to kill.
7. So Beautiful or So What, the so beautiful new album by Paul Simon.
8. Queen of the Sun: What are the Bees Telling Us? is a must-see. Here are my notes at Garden.Geek.NZ

Losar Tashi Delek (Happy Tibetan New Year) and welcome to Year of the Earth Rat. Tibet House celebrated in its inimitable style with a wonderful evening directed by Philip Glass. (Happy Valentine’s Day, Philip!) The concert kicked off with a spirited introduction by Robert Thurman, followed by an invocation from the Drepung Gomang monks in front of a backdrop of the Potala Palace, the residence of the Dalai Lama in Lhasa, Tibet.

Many of the artists were new to me this year, but my two highlights were sweet surprises from artists I already loved. First, Sufjan Stevens sent chills up my spine with his reworking of the “Star Spangled Banner.” Here’s an audio version from Lee’s Place in Toronto, 2004, and a video recorded at the Sasquatch Music Festival at the Gorge 5/27/06. Check out his lyrics (and compare to the original).

The second was provided by the indefatigable Ray Davies, who performed the most luscious version of his song, “Days.” I was familiar with Elvis Costello’s cover from the “Until the End of the World” soundtrack, but while Elvis really packs in the loss, Ray conveys all of the love. Just splendid. Here’s a video from BBC Electric Proms (2007?) and with The Kinks in ’69. Apparently Wim Wenders has been using this song in his films since 1970.

It was wonderful to see Nawang Khechog back, recovered from a near-fatal car accident he experienced almost one year ago. Most of his songs are so peaceful, heart-opening and mind-quieting. Highlight was the lively “Last Stand of the Wild Yak,” which utilized an amazing array of Tibetan horns, including one with a dragon head at the end.

Happy introductions: Phamie Gow, a Barcelona based Scot reinventing the harp. I couldn’t help but think of Joanna Newsom as my reference points for rockin’ harps are few, but Phamie has her own distinctive style, spirit and punk. Loved “Dancing Hands,” and her duet with Canadian fiddler Ashley MacIsaac.

Last but not least, I enjoyed the mini-vacation to Rio I took during Marisa Monte’s set, the southern charm of Band of Horses, and Tom Verlaine’s interpretation of reincarnation as “going to Wal-mart when he dies”. Wherever I go, I’ll thank you for the days… and the music.

Afternoon Update:

Here’s a video of “Days” from the 3-part directors cut of “Until the End of the World” (which was never released in the U.S.). Solveig Donmartin (as Claire Torneur) is leading a singalong in the Australian outback, accompanied by most of the cast (and a didgeridoo). The movie, one of my favorites ever, seems unusually pertinent today as it begins with a voiceover about a satellite out of control, and the “end of the world” comes (or not) when the satellite gets shot down, causing all electrical systems to fail (EMP effect).

Do you engage with pleasure, curiosity, fun and celebration (with time for naps) in the face of the tragedy of the day? Do you want to? This is the book for you.

Maira Kalman’s delightful new release, The Principles of Uncertainty, turns out to be a heavy book. Mostly physically. Kalman says it’s because the book is extensively inked: “all the colors are in there.” Even if you’ve been following this year-long illustrated journal at the New York Times, the high-resolution images of her gouache paintings are undeniably gorgeous in print. (Even more so in person at the Julie Saul Gallery through November 24, 2007.)

Aside from the inherent pleasures of the portable printed format, the book offers a few bonuses to those already familiar with the images:

• A pull out “Map of the United States” by Kalman’s beautiful mother, Sara Berman, with instructions to: “Either put it on the wall or put it back in the book. If you put it back in the book, it may one day fall out when someone browses through the book and it will become a thing that falls out of the book.”



• An appendix filled with “things that fall out of books” and a fabulous collection of numbers in the wild. (Kalman would love the Numbers fonts by Hoefler & Frere-Jones.)
• Luscious liner page images of mosses of Long Island.
• An index that’s amusing on its own, featuring laughter, love (as a guarantee of sanity), finding self, forgetting, forgiveness, hairdos, dreams (bad, fragment of, good, malaise after bad, no answer to), and even happiness. One thing you won’t find in the index is “inner peace” (p. 245-6), a phrase that seems to trigger its opposite for Kalman. (What is that about?)

Kalman celebrated the release of the book at the New York Public Library with a 37.5 minute conversation with Paul Holdengräber, followed with 3 songs composed by Nico Muhly, and cake instead of questions. Instead of questions from the audience, that is. All Maira’s works wrestle with the eternal existential dilemma: “We are here now, and we are not going to be here at a certain point, so what is that about?” and the natural corollary, “What would we do all day long, forever?”

I don’t know what we’ll do forever, but I highly recommend checking out how Kalman observes the world, “making sense and then nonsense” out of it with grace, gratitude and joie de vivre, today.

• The Principles of Uncertainty book on Amazon
• The Principles of Uncertainty blog on NYT
• NYT’s video highlights of the celebration at the NYPL

• Bjork – Volta (itunes)
  Favorites: Earth Intruders, Innocence, Wanderlust
• Tori Amos – American Girl Posse (itunes)
  Favorites: Big Wheel, Almost Rosey
• Rufus Wainwright – Release the Stars (itunes)
  Favorites: Going to a Town, Do I Disappoint You?
• Voxtrot – Voxtrot (itunes)
  Favorites: Kid Gloves, Brother in Conflict
• Feist – The Reminder (itunes)
  Favorites: I Feel It All, 1234

I’m also loving Andrew Kuo’s Earl Boykins site, expressing musical data and opinion in bright infographics. Here’s his graphical analysis of the new Voxtrot self-titled album:

rufus wainwright at satalla

Originally uploaded by this is emily.

Easter Sunday’s NYT explores the Unsettling History of That Joyous Hallelujah, revealing that Handel’s Messiah tune actually celebrates the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple as divine retribution against the Jews rather than the birth or resurrection of Jesus. I’m just relieved it’s not about my joyous “Hallelujah“, the one by the Canadian Jewish Buddhist ex-monk Leonard Cohen (originally from “Various Positions“) exploring destruction and divinity in love, sex and intimate relationships.
Like Handel’s, Cohen’s Hallelujah has been performed by many artists. John Cale’s, Jeff Buckley’s, Sheryl Crow’s and k.d. lang’s versions sing to me. Imogen Heap’s a capella and Bono’s dance mix… not so much. But one version cuts through my heart every time, and that would be Rufus Wainwright’s. I’m not sure if it’s the voice, the delivery or the change of “dove” to “dark” in the clincher verse, but reprises arise in me all the time.

Speaking of verses, there are about 15 known ones and they appear in various configurations in each performance. Leonard shifted the lyrics over time from the biblical towards the sexual, while the music went the other way, bloating out with a choir. So I’ve been playing on the keyboards lately my ultimate Hallelujah, which would be Rufus playing his version but adding on the last two of Leonard’s 1994 lyrics… something like this:

I did my best, it wasn’t much.
I couldn’t feel, so I learned to touch.
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you.

And even tough it all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my lips but Hallelujah.

I’m also open to the possibility that the ultimate Hallelujah is a Tori Amos cover since we’re clearly in her territory. Doubt me? Listen to her transform U2′s Running to Stand Still (8/7/2003).

Easter Egg: New Rufus Wainwright song “Going to a Town” at Hard to Find a Friend.

Her Story Is Strange

• Debbie Millman interviews Maira Kalman for her Design Matters podcast, introducing her subject with a story about the sign at right.

  On Vagueness: “The word itself defines the entire essence of being and how things are always confused and unknown and then you go ahead and make some kind of sense out of it, and then you make some kind of nonsense about it and it’s a full time job, just figuring it out.”

  Her last installment of “The Principles of Uncertainty” comes tomorrow, but the book is coming out in Fall (with a fabulous index!).

• Happy first birthday Photojojo, a delightful site/e-mail list that’s all about fun with digital photos. Inspired to try out today’s tip and tutorial on making Videoramas – full motion video panoramas.
• Scrapblog is another fun tool for creating and sharing multimedia scrapbooks or presentations online with photos from Flickr/Yahoo/Photobucket and videos from YouTube.
• Today’s Daily Om comes right on time: Centering And Expressing.
• Lonely Planet launches travel video social networking channel lonelyplanet.tv, and Charles Simonyi blogs about traveling beyond this lonely planet, following in the weightless footsteps of the amazing Anousheh Ansari. If you’re over the moon about space tourism or terraforming, you’ll want to attend Esther’s Flight School.
• If like Maira, you prefer to explore more vague territories, NYTimes points out you, along with everyone in China, can take “Topics in Philosophy of Language: Vagueness,” a graduate level course at M.I.T.
• Apple announced that they will sell EMI’s entire catalog of music without copy-protection from the iTunes store. Thank you! The other important news here is that the music will be higher quality, encoded at 256 kilobits per second rather than 128 kbps. I’ll be one of their best customers once again, and not have to feel bad about the superfluous CD and packaging waste generated just to enjoy music. (Which reminds me, dear Poptech, why can’t I buy the Antibabel EP by Yungchen Lhamo and Reggie Watts as downloadable files? Will you carbon offset my CD purchase and shipping?) Lately, I’ve been receiving most of my aural gratification from the Hype Machine.