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Vitro NasuIconoclastic Incubator
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Bach, Handel and Purcell
Happy Birthday, Mark!
Mark Morris was born on August 29, 1956 (Virgo/Monkey - a cunning perfectionist.)
See video clip of his dances from here.
Old Salon interview of Mark Morris
(Mark Morris introduced me to Lou Harrison’s music).
Received an email notice from Christopher DeLaurenti, a Seattle composer who recorded live 2004 Republican National Convention Protest in New York, read more here.
Collage by Christopher DeLaurenti
1 prologue 15″
2 Thursday, September 2 15′16″
3. late evening: Thursday, September 2 and Friday, August 27 2′55″
4 Wednesday, September 1 11″
5 Tuesday, August 31 3′57″
6 “Our streets!” 8′04″
7.late evening: Tuesday, August 31 1′29″
8. Monday, August 30 43″
9. Poor People’s March 8′50″
10. “Arm the Poor! Stop the War!” 9′56″
11. Sunday, August 29 3′38″
12. Saturday, August 28 8′37″
13. coda 1′06″
Live in New York… is a 65 minute manufactured compact disc.
Chris has a nice web site, find out more on Chris’ other intriguing projects and his writings on music in general. He gives great interviews, intense and expansive.
Ishikawa Takuboku 
Roma-ji diary translated by Donald Keene
A Spoonful of Cocoa
I know
The sad heart of the terrorist-
A single-minded heart
Which finds it impossible to cut asunder speech and act,
A heart that wants to speak with deeds
Instead of words, which one has been deprived of,
A heart that hurls at the foe the body encasing it-
This is the sorrow serious and fervent men forever have.
Sipping cold cocoa from a spoon
After some eternal endless debate,
I know from this slightly bitter taste
The sad sad heart
Of the terrorist.
(Poem received from Hal - via email. This poem from a series of poems called The Whistle and Whistling–yobuko to kuchibue around 1911 very influenced by russian socialist, was ill at the time of poem)
Matt who lives in Japan blogged about the above poem, here.
Two renowned and beloved Japanese poets came from the same region Iwate ken.
Both born poor, excelled in school and suffered illness, one died at the age of 26, another at 37. In spite of their humble origin, both received excellent education, learned English, played music. Takuboku read Gorky and Ibsen and tried his translation of Ibsen’s work.
Takuboku according to Donald Keene was an enfant terrible who wasted his extraordinary gift. Although the western word “Terrorist” appeared in katakana in his poem, he was an apolitical poet, who was isolated, anti-social and prone to unhealthy dose of introspection and self-loathing.
Miyazawa went to the same school and followed in Takuboku’s footsteps to become a poet. But unlike self-involved Takuboku, Miyazawa cultivated a life as a thinker, a practicing buddhist, a geologist/agronomist, and idealsitic educator and reformer.
Kenji Miyazawa was born on Aug 27, 1896. Today he is known mostly for writing children’s stories.
“In the introduction to his collection of short stories, The Restaurant of Many Orders, he set himself up as an experimental medium for the chaotic processes of natural phenomena. He saw himself as a simple vehicle for reprocessing nature itself. “These stories of mine,” he wrote in 1923, “all came to me from moonlight and rainbows, at places like railroad tracks and fields and forests.”
Kenji Miyazawa, Rebel with a Cause (collection of essays)
From Who is Kenji?
Kame neko (oven cat- a sample story by Kenji Miyazawa)
All about Kenji - (more formal page from Hanamaki city)
VISIONS OF IHATOV: KENJI’s SPRING, read here.
(Kenji’s influence on the Japanese Anime culture.)
(image source)
Drawings by a buddhist/poet/geologist/agronomist/socialist
Finished reading “Vanishing Point” by David Markson.
Ice Tea 
Photo 2000
“The Universe was created on October 26, 4004 B.C. At 9.00 A.M.
Announced Archbishop Ussher, in 1645.”
“Tolstoy to Chekhov:
You know I can’t stand Shakespeare’s plays, but yours are worse”
“Tolstoy had an illegitimate son he never acknowledged.
Karl Marx had an illegitimate son he never acknowledged.
Henrik Ibsen had an illegitimate son he never acknowledged.”
(From Vanishing Point by David Markson)
Speaking of father and son, today (Aug 20) is a birthday of
Eero Saarinen the Finnish architect who built St Louis’ arch and
Dulles airport. He and his father were both born on the same date,
August 20 just like John Lennon and his son. (they are Libra - October boys).
Saarinen’s design are all over the world in office, in homes and at the airports.
Look at his chairs.
This chair is not designed by Eero Saarinen.
Isola Chair 
from Calligaris
Paid $10.00 for this Italian chair at garage sale. (click the link to see the actual price of this chair at retail. Mine has black seat and the sample does not).
Saw” the Son” by Dardenne brothers from Belgium.
Another minimal and affecting depiction of family tragedy.
You spent most of the time looking at the back of the
character’s head as the camera follows him around.
“Karl Marx learned Russian mainly to read Pushkin.
Joyce learned Norwegian to read Ibsen.” (from Vanishing Point)
I learned English to read the screenplay of “Rebel Without a Cause”.
“James Baldwin borrowed money from Marlon Brando with which
to finish his first novel” (another instance of Marlon did this
and Marlon did that picked up from Vanishing Point.)
Now I lost the page for the next piece of information,
Stanley Kunitz delivered eulogy at Mark Rothko’s funeral according to David Markson.
All in one - a slide, a bed, and a balcony, a new concept in architectural design?
Or a bed trying to escape from the building?
The image was copied from a news headline from SF gate a couple years ago. It was a time people were fleeing the city, losing their jobs and rents remained expensive.
Yesterday from the same newspaper came this delightful news:
Local California artists are busy decorating the rooms of a new hotel in San Francisco.
Three photos on view, here.
Gallery of Hotel des Arts.
(great idea)
New Can below by Los Angeles street artist Buff Monster who decorated the rooms of Hotel des Arts.
Back to Ephemeral Cities
On this day today (Aug 13, 1912)
“On August 13, in the Brod family home, he had met the Berlin office worker Felice Bauer”—read more from Kafka goes to movies by Hanns Zischler here.
Quick note on Hanns Zischler and his book Kafka Goes to Movies.
“For its appreciation, the Süddeutsche Zeitung scores a minor coup. How’s this for a brief bio: “Hanns Zischler has translated Derrida’s Of Grammatology, is researching Kafka and cinema and is an internationally renowned actor - he is currently in Budapest shooting Munich with Spielberg.” In the SZ, he recalls Wenders as a film student before segueing into Im Lauf der Zeit (Kings of the Road).”
The above text via - Wim Wenders turns 60 (greencine daily)
Paris Texas, American Friend, Wings of Desire, Alice in the Cities, what is your favorite Wim Wenders Film?
Mel Gibson who played mutant agent in Wenders’ “Million Dollor Hotel” characterized the film “as boring as a dog’s ass”. Mel’s star power could not rescue this film, nor could not have persuaded me not to see this film. The Germans may accuse Wenders for not being German enough but his heart seems to be in the right place.
(Ibrahim Ferrer who appeared in Wenders film passed away a few days ago.)
Here are some recent roadside attractions I collected:
The Cardinal - Otto Preminger
The Saul Bass title design collection.(via cinemarati)
There is a priest hiding in the shade on the left, can you see?
Romy Schneider debuted in America with this film.
Added these to vitro-nasu side bar menu.
Latrinalia under flush
Web of Interest a film lover and a student from Canada
Yummy-wakame has striking new make over. (Web designer from South Africa)
Ethiopa Lives 19 Ethiopians turn their cameras onto their own lives.
Where? Here, there in the (Ban)-sky, Museum of Bank sy(stem)
Micky and Ronnie got the famous screaming naked girl
August 2, 2005 - walls got decorated in Palestine
Dead Soldier’s mother camping at Crawford
with a Cow in Warhol tatoo.
Street artists Practice war on the ground
digital image Aug 8, 2005 Fung Lin Hall
Back to Ephemeral Cities
A great soul beautiful person and a sensitive voice passed away. Rest in peace.
Rest in rhythm, Ibrahim Ferrer (Ron Silliman)
Philippe Petit returns to Street Juggling! Where?
2PM—Sat. & Sun. Aug. 6th & 7th*
On Aug 7, 1974 Frenchman Philippe Petit
(an illegal street juggler, consumate pickpocket, poet and the grandest tightrope walker) walked a tightrope strung between the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center.
Quick digest of the event, here.
Digital image Aug 7, 2005 ( made it this morning with 2 coffees in between)
Digital photo collage dedicated to all street artists and poets.
The miraculous walk of TWC started with a tooth ache.
“The adventure of the World Trade Center begins with the first appearance of such thoughts, in a dentist’s waiting room in Paris. I am barely eighteen years old. ” (see more)
Stepping Into the Void
It took all night to complete the rigging, securing the steel cable a quarter of a mile in the sky across the 130-foot gap separating the towers. Wall Street was just beginning to come to life when, at a little past seven on the morning of August 7, 1974, Philippe Petit stepped onto the wire stretched out across the void.
Spellbinding
Philippe Petit On the street below, people stopped in their tracks — first by the tens, then by the hundreds and thousands — staring up in wonder and disbelief at the tiny figure walking on air between the towers. Sgt. Charles Daniels of the Port Authority Police Department, dispatched to the roof to bring Petit down, looked on in helpless amazement. “I observed the tightrope ‘dancer’ — because you couldn’t call him a ‘walker’ — approximately halfway between the two towers,” he later reported. “And upon seeing us he started to smile and laugh and he started going into a dancing routine on the high wire… And when he got to the building we asked him to get off the high wire but instead he turned around and ran back out into the middle… He was bouncing up and down. His feet were actually leaving the wire and then he would resettle back on the wire again… Unbelievable really…. [E]verybody was spellbound in the watching of it.” (Via)
Marlon Brando invited Philippe at his workshop, from here.
(This info will be filed to Marlon did this and Marlon did that collection )
Summer reading for kids:
The Man Who Walked Between the Towers
Back to Ephemeral Cities
Found about this sad news today. There was a headline a while ago about accidental drowning in Southern California but did not connect the tragedy with the filmmaker who made the “Picture Bride“.
This lovely film was produced by an acquaintance (Lisa Onodera) and our family and Friends in Hawaii feel extremely proud of their achievement.
“Picture Bride” began as Hatta’s thesis project at UCLA. During the early 1900s, nearly 20,000 Japanese, Korean and Okinawan women crossed the Pacific to Hawaii to marry Japanese plantation workers after an exchange of photographs.” More here.
Her new film “Fishbowl” will air on PBS.
Remembering Kayo Hatta.
“Kayo turned to adapting the novel The Floating World. But amazingly, she faced disappointment after disappointment trying to get the project financed and going. Even after her success, very few were willing to take a chance on Asian or Asian American material.”
( I wonder if it is the same “The Floating World” by Cynthia Kadohata.
It is a great loss - I would like to see how she would have realized that singular vision Cynthia created in her fresh novel. More on Cynthia check my previous post).
(*** As a personal aside, my grandmother was a picture bride but she was a Chinese peasant with big feet, who left Canton China to marry an overseas Chinese man in Japan. She married on the boat to a rooster instead of a young man she had never met. I never bothered to ask her about the symbolism of a rooster taking over for the absent husband. Don’t know if there was a cockfight after that. My grandmother uncharacteristically was a heavy smoker all her life and she was seventeen when she married. Lucky that she was a peasant, as she escaped having her feet bound. My grandmother did not fear sex or frank discussions - she was a very level headed former picture bride. Her arranged marriage produced more than 8 children and had a relatively happy union except for my grandfather’s occasional opium smoking. )
Rent ‘Picture Bride” (might find it at your local library) or read “Floating World” and thanks to Kayo Hatta for your courage and hard work and we will remember, try to continue and follow your example.
Un Americain En Enfer
This image from the French site - it says an American in hell.
Who is this American? He is Richard Hell or in his youth sometimes known as M’sieur Tarzan.
Hell came out with a new novel, the village voice review of Godlike is in.
Matt (pas-audela) updated the post with Richard Hell’s interview at 3am magazine.
Hell now writes film reviews on his site. His reviews are fresh and entertaining.
Speaking of entertainment let us look at another portrait as compelling as M’sieur Tarzan.
Hiroko-san
(image source)
Hiroko-san is one of many personalities Issey Ogata created for his solo performance.
The westerners were introduced to Issey Ogata in Yi Yi (Edward Yang) . He almost stole the film from other fine Taiwan actors.
From Emperor Hirohito to playing a modern technocrat or sad ordinary man in Tony Takitani - Issey Ogata is a magnetic performer. Thanks to Sokurov for his patience and finding the right actor. (Unlike the team Spieldberg/Marshall for casting more worldly famous Chinese actresses for Japanese Geisha film- financial reward was their primary concern.)
“Although his face–or rather his many faces–has appeared on TV in dramas and commercials, Ogata easily vanishes into Tokyo’s crowd. “I ride the subway or train,” he says with pride, “and no one notices me.” (from here.)
A gallery of photos of his solo performance, here.
1) Leave it to Bush (well crafted animation by Ken McKintyre.)
2) Celebrity Verite - Brad Pitt is a closet conceptual artist - his collaborator Fashion photographer Steven Klein is showing his work at Gagosian L.A. ( for above 2 links from here)
3) On this day today (August 3) in Milan and Sicily:
1778 The opera house La Scala opened in Milan, Italy, with a performance of Antonio Salieri’s ”Europa riconosciuta.’
1943 Gen. George S. Patton slapped a private at an army hospital in Sicily, accusing him of cowardice.
4) Sky Burial and One woman broke the silence.
5) Something caught my attention.
6) Sokurov on Emperor Hirohito, The Sun. (Added Sokurov’s homepage to vitro nasu sidebar menu.)
The comic Japanse actor Issey Ogata plays the Emperor Hirohito.
“Recently, Ogata has been basking in the limelight, having played the lead in two critically acclaimed feature films. One is “Tony Takitani,” the latest work by Japanese director Jun Ichikawa, which is based on a short story by the best-selling and world-renowned novelist, Haruki Murakami. ” (More here - you can see the chameleon in the sample photos of Ogata playing different characters.)
