Things I Read Today

Henning Nelms' "Magic and Showmanship: A Handbook for Conjurers":
"The Japanese define an artist as 'one who has the ability to do more and the will to refrain.' This definition covers showmanship as well. Showmanship adds glamor and drama. However, if we try to give any routine more importance than it will bear, we destroy the illusion and may reveal the secret."

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William Gibson's "Spook Country":
"She was fascinated by how things worked in the world, and why people did them. When she wrote about things, her sense of them changed, and with it, her sense of herself."

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Grant Morrison's "Final Crisis" (Issue #5):
"If your superheroes can't save you, maybe it's time to think of something that can. If it don't exist, think it up. Then make it real ...

Was there ever a word you tried to imagine? The sort of word that could remind you who you truly were inside? Maybe it's more than a word ... it's a face, a scent, a voice. Like a memory of a place where someone cared only for you. A name."

What Have You Done?

Twenty-eight years ago, when I heard a voice on the radio say "John Lennon is dead" ...

Instinctively I steered directly to my old job, to the student newspaper office at Illinois State, to see what I could find on the UPI wire machine and to help with whatever the staff was planning to run. There I met another friend who had the same idea. We were both townies, both still lived near after our respective college "careers," still kept in touch with the newspaper staff. Both of us puzzled at the emptiness of the front offices and the lack of activity in the production room, until the new editor came in. He guessed what we were there for, saying, "Yeah, we heard the news, but wanted to meet the printer's deadline."

1980 and things had changed before our eyes, those who came after had already chosen a new and unexpected path from our own. We would have run a special issue, "deadlines be damned," but these "kids" (three or four years our junior) were too young by birth to carry any unconditional love for Beatles. That's how it was in the those days: you were either old enough to remember seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan's show or you thought Paul McCartney was just the guy who had a band called Wings.

1980: To most of the disaffected youth we knew, Jimmy Carter gave peace a bad name in his failure to deal with pretty much everything, while Reagan picked up enough of those who still felt they had to care about something, coloring the campus world in hues far different from the post 60s era we tried fruitlessly to keep flowering. Hindsight shows a view of us being too busy with a culture we were too young for, that we never got around to making one pure of the past and unquestionably our own. What kind of youth movement revels in the past, instead of rejecting it? Or, is that the way it always appears to be from the outside?

Whatever the past, our future would be one without Lennon the man. His works, his words, his thoughts would continue and we could use whatever time was left to make some sense, something good with them.

So this is Christmas and what have you done?

Not done yet, John...

Leave your own memories here.


WAR IS OVER! (If You Want It) from Yoko Ono on Vimeo.

Following the Heard 2008 - the Finale

Let's see how this finale to the year stands up with the two previous parts...

1) Angry*The Bug
2) The World Is Gone Wrong*BB King
3) You Only Live Twice*The Postmarks
4) I-Tunes Song*Homeboy Sandman
5) Kyotei Daiski (Favorite Games Mix)*Omodaka
6) Transformer*Marnie Stern
7) Clampdown*The Clash
8) Limbo*KatJonBand
9) Parisian Goldfish*Flying Lotus
10) Cobrastyle*Robyn
11) Never Give You Up*Raphael Saadiq
12) Sandcastle Disco*Solange
13) Riddle Me This*Aaron Parks
14) Official*Q-Tip
15) Live Your Life*T.I.
16) Folks*Mighty Underdogs
17) Harps & Angels*Randy Newman
18) That's Not My Name*The Ting Tings
19) Golden Age*TV on the Radio
20) Stop This World*Ne-Yo