The SIlk Road Project

On a Friday while at Brown last winter, I heard about a performance happening that night at the little Avon Theater. The rumor going around said that Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble (youtube) was going to be playing a live score to a 1926-something animated, silhouette style film based on the the Arabian epic The 1001 Nights. Better yet, I heard that this was free to Brown students.

I arrived at the theater to see a line that stretched almost a half mile down the street. It was cold, and I had come alone. I made a few phone calls, I watched my breath dissolve with every exhale. The line began to move, and soon I was inside the theater. I was lucky: those who had arrived to the line only ten minutes after I had were past the capacity of the theater, and weren't allowed in.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (imdb), as it was titled, is the oldest full-length animated film. It took a decade for German animator Lotte Reiniger to paste together this epic entirely out of paper-cut silhouettes.

Rarely has this film ever been screened in public, and never again would it be screened with a live score provided by the Silk Road Ensemble, which was at the time in residence at RISD. The music, played on a myriad of world instruments, was vivid and rich, enhanced all the more by it's live performance. The animation, far from being shoddy or "experimental" somehow conveyed more emotion, more humanity, and more drama than any of the more realistic or "cartoon-like" animation of today. It was a once-ever performance, and the sheer emotive force brought by the combination of both music and light - it moved the audience to utter silence at times, and gasps and cheers at others - is something I will remember and carry with me until the end of my days. (Providence Journal Article about the event here)

Yo-Yo Ma has said in various places (namely his podcast) that his motivation for music is actually the study of human relationships - how relationships come and go, their joys and their pains, and the ever more complex interweave of human experience. The historical Silk Road, the amorphous trade route from China to Rome that existed for many centuries, is the perfect medium for this study. The Silk Road was a truly amazing phenomenon: before the age of mass transit and fast travel, people would cross borders and mountains and deserts between them and their far-flung cultural neighbors to trade art, food, stories, and melodies.

The Silk Road Ensemble, which played an original score to The Adventures of Prince Achmed using instruments from every corner of Eurasia, is only a part of Yo-Yo Ma's greater Silk Road Project. The Project is dedicated to both the study of the historical cross-cultural interactions along the Silk Road, but also the potential for contemporary interaction. Asking "What happens when strangers meet?" it brings together artists, musicians, writers, poets, and scholars from Italy to Saudi Arabia to Mongolia, and together creates something that is innately human and truly beautiful.

They Silk Road Ensemble has two CD's out, and I highly recommend buying them both. There is going to be a concert next week at Harvard, Nov. 29 and 30, featuring the Silk Road Ensemble. I'm going, who's coming with me?

Shorpy Shorpy Shorpy!

Yeah, say it: Shorpy. It just rolls off the tongue like honey: Shorpy.

So, what the hell is it?

Shorpy calls itself "The 100-Year-Old Photo Blog", and that is about as apt a subtitle as you can get. It is a blog, and on it people post "vintage" photographs, usually between 100 and 70 years old. These are not the crappy, flea-market quality snapshots, however; the photos uploaded to Shorpy are intended as both entertainment and art.

Usually, the photos depict either some sort of candid situation of daily life, or a posing subject in his "natural habitat". The goal here is to display what life was like in this not-so-distant past, and elicit a certain empathy from the viewer.

Many of these photos are powerful, moving, beautiful, and/or troubling. This one, of a small shop in 1938 Key West, is telling for it's main protagonist: the man on the left, obviously past his prime, but with one more crutch and one fewer leg than normal. One can assume, based on his age, that he lost that leg in World War I.

This one, one of the rare few in color, is a beautiful landscape of a Chicago Railroad yard in 1942 - the very pinacle of the Railroad Era. With a landscape made entirely of trains and cars, and the engines spewing steam like man-made clouds, this image is representative of peak of the steam-epoch, and also a lament for its passing.

Some other favorites of mine: Solomon the Newsie, 1909. Clerk 37, 1942. Rural Mother, 1936.

So, why is it named Shorpy? Well, the blog gets its title from a man named "Shorpy" Higginbotham who, as a boy as young as fourteen, worked in a coal mine in Alabama. His real name was Henry Sharp Higginbotham, and he later served in World War I. He died in 1927 in a coal mine, crushed by a rock.

In 1910, when Shorpy was fourteen and working in the mine, a photographer named Lewis Wickes Hine visited and took some photographs. To our knowledge, only four images of Shorpy survive from this time, and they are eerily haunting. His face seems that of a man much older, cynical, dour. His hands are huge, and his arms are deformed from carrying heavy grease containers during his physically formative years. He is child labor, he is the ultimate end of 19th century business.

In just four images, this mysterious boy nicknamed "Shorpy" embodies both a fantastical past that seems far removed from our modern lives, and a very real, human, mortal past that still haunts us today. That's the draw of Shorpy, and his blog.

the cake is a lie.

On October 10, 2007, Valve Software released The Orange Box, a collection of five games for the Xbox and the PC. In this magical construction-cone colored box was something for everyone, but most importantly, two of the finest games to be made in the last few years: Team Fortress 2 and Portal. Today, I'll talk about Portal, though sometime very soon I'll put something up about TF2 as well.


The premise of Portal (wiki) is so simple it's sexy: no guns, no blunt objects, no grenades, just a portal gun. That is, a gun that shoots portals. Walk though a blue portal, and walk out of an orange portal, no matter where they both are placed.

This makes for easy walking through walls, but also creates some very fun tricks as well. As this image (stolen from Wired Magazine) shows, momentum is conserved when traveling through a portal. Let me repeat that: you keep your momentum when you go through a portal, as if you had gone through nothing at all. This means that (as you can see in 2a and 2b) when you fall into a portal in a floor, you will "fall out" of the other portal in the wall. Furthermore (3a and 3b), falling down a portal in a floor will result in your "falling up" the other portal in another floor. Fun!

But what really takes the cake (*cough*) is Portal's plot. (I will make an effort not to drop any spoilers.) The game is narrated by a computer, GlaDOS (pronounced like "Gladys") in what has to be the creepiest computerized-human voice I've ever heard anywhere. It's creepy, but GlaDOS also likes to crack jokes - or at least you're not sure if she's joking, which makes it even more funny.

This voice (not to mention this game) is so awesome that my friends and I went around for months before the game was realized repeating the parting line of the Portal teaser trailer: "Now you are thinking...in Portals."

The plot is addictive and clever. It's quick though, leaving everyone wanting more. (Spoliers in these links!!) Thankfully, there's the Internet: here's a flash-based side-scrolling version of Portal that's very entertaining. Also, you would be shocked at how many people have covered the cool Jonathan Coulton song from the end credits screen. This guy, these people from England, and - good heavens.

If you're interested - and you should be - Portal is available as part of The Orange Box either in physical box form in game stores or through Steam, Valve's online distrobution system, for $50. (I used Steam, and I liked the experience - it was easy and fast.) It's a chunk of cash, I know, but for five games, at least two of which are quality, it's worth it.

Golden Compasses, Golden Ages, and a Time Machine

In twenty four hours, I came across three movies that are really, really exciting:

The Golden Compass (trailer) is a new film that is due to premiere on December 7. Based on the Philip Pullman novel and produced by New Line (the Lord of the Rings production company), this is apt to be a fantastic fantasy epic.

The book is truly wonderful, the story of a young girl in a world similar to late 19th century Europe, but quite different as well with kingdoms of bears, steampunk-style flying machines, witches, and animal familiars. The book itself is one of those that you simply cannot put down, with intrigue and action (not cheesy action either - nifty, interpersonal action) around every bend. And did I mention that there's a healthy dose of steampunk in this??

Also, the cast seems spectacular: Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig (Bond), and Eva Green (best witch ever).

If you want to talk about amazing casts, though, nothing can really top Elizabeth - The Golden Age (trailer). It is the sequel to the 1990's Elizabeth, which was a great film itself. The sequel has brought back a critical mass of the old cast, with Geoffrey Rush (Captain Barbossa of Pirates infamy) and most importantly Cate Blanchett (Galadriel from LotR), probably the greatest actress of the first decade of this century, as Queen Elizabeth. Oh, and Clive Owen (think the stunning Children of Men)is in this too.

The first film was the story of the Virgin Queen's rise to power; this film is the story of the first few years of her shaky rule, and her various conflicts with Spain (ahem...the Armada and all). From what I can tell, we have a Cate-cum-Queen who has found her inner strength to rule, but has to deal with a lot of shit hitting the fan at once and as a result has some degree of melancholy and drama with Clive Owen (who should be Francis Drake, not bloody Walter Raleigh).

Check out the videos on the film's website - they show just how awesome Cate Blanchett is.

Even better, Elizabeth - The Golden Age comes out October 12.

Lastly, an old film: the 1960 production of The Time Machine (trailer). I caught this on television last night, and could not stop watching. No actors of note here, but the adaption of the HG Wells novel is the primary draw.

While it is faithful to many aspects of the book, it updates the plot to accommodate 1960 realities: the time traveler first visits 1917, then 1944, the years of the two great wars of the 20th century. This Time Traveler is forlorn about humanity, about how it is constantly warring, and using science to find new ways of killing men faster and more efficiently. So he also visits 1966 (the "future" at the time), and just barely escapes the nuclear annihilation of London. (Later on, the air-raid sirens used in 20th century London come back to have importance to the 802nd century eloi and morlocks.)

What 1960's culture thought its future would be is fascinating in and of itself. But this film raises some issues about war and time and life and death that are still relevant today, and would be relevant to generations of men both past and future. Well worth watching, as long as you can get over the cheesy-by-today's-standards morlock costumes.

Midas Touch

While most beer tasters would spend their time looking for just the right stout or brown ale, I have more....eclectic tastes.  That's why, last year while perusing the refrigerated beer cabinets at Campus Fine Wines in Providence, I did not hesitate to buy a $12 four pack of Midas Touch beer (technically "Golden Elixir"), brewed by the Dogfish Head Brewing Company.

"Made from an Ancient Mesopotamian Recipe!"  the label read.  It claimed to have tastes of barley, white Muscat grapes, honey and saffron - the last three of which I had never heard of being in a beer before.  

Well, the result was absolutely delicious.  It might be a stretch to call it beer though, on account of its sweet, fruity taste and extra-smooth consistency.  With an alcohol content of 9%, it lives somewhere in a nether-region between wine, mead, and beer.  It is not overwhelmingly sweet, however - the saffron in there somehow gives it a very subtle-but-important undertone of spice.



And what they say is true:  this beer was designed based on residue found in jars in the tomb of an ancient Mesopotamian King, who was probably the real-life version of the mythical Midas.  In fact, National Geographic did a report on Midas Touch, and its more recent, limited edition, ancient Chinese sibling beer.

Dogfish is crazy brewer based in Delaware with a motto of "off-centered stuff for off-centered people."  They have actual locations in other mid-Atlantic states, but for those of us up here in the Northeast, we have to be happy with finding Midas Touch in liquor stores.  However BLUE - the blues/jazz club on Congress Street in Portland, Maine - just began to feature Midas Touch on tap, which I must say is a heavenly experience.

PS - If you're a brewing junkie and care to know more precisely what goes into this magical libation, there's a list of ingredients with instructions for your own micro/home-brew version of Midas Touch here.

debris libris

I seem to be addicted to blogging.

I have now created another blog for the purpose of posting little scraps of writing that I write or say or think of in the course of a day - things that are interesting or cool or different but don't have much hope of having a life beyond their first utterance.

debris libris

I could probably post to it all by myself, but I would really like to get other minds involved, so if you'd like to contribute (by which I mean post your own interesting, cool, or different snippets of words whenever you feel like), let me know. With enough people and enough posting, this thing could become a big seething pit of inspiration or just plain old good thoughts.

I'm going to add a feed to it on the sidebar of this blog, watch out.

Good day.

Amadou & Mariam

Often when I put something on my Amazon.com wishlist, I have no idea whatsoever what it is - I just found it somewhere and the album cover art looked cool, or the title was clever, or the genre was something I like.

Such as the case with Amadou & Mariam's album Dimanche a Bamako (ahem, cover art), a musical duo from Mali. Up until this week, I had no idea who they really were or what any of their music sounded like.

I then came across one of their songs (Coulybali) on Last.fm here at the store, and immediately fell in love. Amadou & Mariam both sing and play, but most importantly they create. This is not your typical folksy African music, or your standard new-agey pseudo-African filler. They really make fun music, interesting music, that has roots not only in Mali's folk, but in American blues and jazz, Latin music, eastern instruments, and good ol' rock and roll.

Now if the story ended there, it would be pretty damn good, but I fired up Wikipedia discovered a stunning fact about Amadou & Mariam: they are both blind. In fact, they apparently are commonly known as "the blind couple from Mali." They met at Mali's Institute for the Young Blind (who knew that Mali had such a thing?) and from there started to make music.

Their website is terribly fun. If you go to the Radio section, as I now have done, you can sign up and listen to their music interspersed with music that has influenced them. For instance, I just heard my favorite Coulibaly followed by Nina Simone's Sinnerman and now Diana Ross is singing.

PS - Yay Mali! These are not the first musicians from Mali I've come across and liked: Salif Keita is awesome, too. You might know his song Madan which has been remixed and featured in a Buddha Bar album (V, Disc 1) and in Techhouse Dance Parties. Salif Keita is not blind, but he is an albino. AND Malian royalty. His nickname is "the Golden Voice of Africa."