Most excellent, your Excellence.

OMEN SPECULATION. COWBOY LORE. COMPUTER MAGIC.

“The Shrine / An Argument” from the Fleet Foxes’ newest album, Helplessness Blues [2011, Sub Pop Records]. I’ve included the lyrics, taken directly from the album’s jacket, below:

I went down among the dust and pollen
To the old stone fountain in the morning after dawn
Underneath were all these pennies
Fallen from the hands of children
They were there and then were gone

And I wonder what became of them
What became of them

Sunlight over me no matter what I do
Apples in the summer are cold and sweet
Everyday a passing complete

I’m not one to ever pray for mercy
Or to wish on pennies in the fountain or the shrine
But that day you know I left my money
And I thought of you only
All that copper glowing fine

And I wonder what became of you
What became of you

Sunlight over me no matter what I do
Apples in the summer are cold and sweet
Everyday a passing complete
Apples in the summer are cold and sweet
Everyday a passing complete

In the morning waking up to terrible sunlight
All diffuse like skin abuse the sun is half its size
When you talk you hardly even look in my eyes
In the morning, in the morning

In the doorway holding every letter that I wrote
In the driveway pulling away putting on your coat
In the ocean washing off my name from your throat
In the morning, in the morning

In the ocean washing off my name from your throat
In the morning, in the morning

Green apples hang from my tree
They belong only to me
Green apples hang from my green apple tree
They belong only to, only to me

And if I just stay awhile here staring at the sea
And the waves break ever closer, ever near to me
I will lay down in the sand and let the ocean lead
Carry me to Innisfree like pollen on the breeze

If I Knew

Yellow sky, black moon.
If I knew what shirt you were wearing,
if I knew where you were sitting,
the sky and my voice wouldn’t be the same.

[Yannis Ritsos]

A selection of nightscapes photographed by Chris Kotsiopoulos, who captures images of the Greek sky.

…America, I wonder whether your moral and spiritual progress has been commensurate with your scientific progress. It appears to me that your moral progress lags behind your scientific progress, your mentality outdistances your morality, and your civilization outshines your culture. How much of your modern life can be summarized in the words of your poet Thoreau: “Improved means to an unimproved end.” Through your scientific genius you have made of the world a neighbourhood, but you have failed to employ your moral and spiritual genius to make of it a brotherhood. So, America, the atomic bomb you have to fear today is not merely that deadly weapon which can be dropped from an aeroplane on the heads of millions of people, but that atomic bomb which lies in the hearts of men, capable of exploding into the most staggering hate and the most devastating selfishness.

—Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love

Marking the one-year anniversary of Haiti’s earthquake, Plan International commissioned Canadian photojournalist Natasha Fillion to run a workshop with young Haitians, instructing them on how to document their lives though photography.  The image above was captured by fourteen-year-old Lubin, who explains how he achieved the shot: I took a first picture with flash and they all flew off the ground, then I took a second one, and that made a beautiful picture.

Marking the one-year anniversary of Haiti’s earthquake, Plan International commissioned Canadian photojournalist Natasha Fillion to run a workshop with young Haitians, instructing them on how to document their lives though photography.  The image above was captured by fourteen-year-old Lubin, who explains how he achieved the shot:

I took a first picture with flash and they all flew off the ground, then I took a second one, and that made a beautiful picture.

I have learned that to be with those I like is enough.

—Walt Whitman

The Portrait Machine Project



Carlo Van de Roer uses a modified Polaroid aura camera, originally created to record what psychics may see, to capture portraits of “friends and people whose personalities are in the public sphere.”  The Portrait Machine Project presents the viewer with otherwise unseen insight into the subject’s character and their interaction with the photographer.

A selection of Van de Roer’s portraits, followed by their camera generated descriptions:













The trailer for the upcoming film, The Tree of Life. Oh, Terrence Malick, I love thee with a passion put to use in my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.

A Verger’s Dream: Saints Cosmas and Damian Performing a Miraculous Cure by Transplantation of a Leg

Artist: Master of Los Balbases
Date created: around 1495
Physical Description: oil painting on wood; 169 x 133 centimeters

Saints Cosmas and Damian were early Christian martyrs who practiced medicine without payment and therefore were represented to the public as medical ideals. In this Spanish altarpiece, the saints appear in a vision, dressed in the full finery of academic doctors as they perform the miracle of transplanting a leg. The vision, as described in a book of 1275 by Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda aurea (The golden legend):

Felix, the eighth pope after S. Gregory, did do make a noble church at Rome of the saints Cosmo and Damian, and there was a man which served devoutly the holy martyrs in that church, who a canker had consumed all his thigh. And as he slept, the holy martyrs Cosmo and Damian, appeared to him their devout servant, bringing with them an instrument and ointment of whom that one said to that other: Where shall we have flesh when we have cut away the rotten flesh to fill the void place? Then that other said to him: There is an Ethiopian that this day is buried in the churchyard of S. Peter ad Vincula, which is yet fresh, let us bear this thither, and take we out of that morian’s flesh and fill this place withal. And so they fetched the thigh of the sick man and so changed that one for that other. And when the sick man awoke and felt no pain, he put forth his hand and felt his leg without hurt, and then took a candle, and saw well that it was not his thigh, but that it was another. And when he was well come to himself, he sprang out of his bed for joy, and recounted to all the people how it was happed to him, and that which he had seen in his sleep, and how he was healed. And they sent hastily to the tomb of the dead man, and found the thigh of him cut off, and that other thigh in the tomb instead of his. Then let us pray unto these holy martyrs to be our succour and help in all our hurts, blechures and sores, and that by their merits after this life we may come to everlasting bliss in heaven. Amen.

My own miraculous powers do not extend very far. They’re quite limited, in fact: I have only the power to manifest squalor. This requires me to point my palm in a certain direction and say, “squalor!” after which, there is squalor. “Squalor!” in the trees. “Squalor!” in your car. “Squalor!” on your head. And so forth.

(Source: images.wellcome.ac.uk)

One needs to be nominalistic, no doubt: power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society.

—Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality