a story about songs

There is a tribe in Africa called the Himba tribe, where the birth date of a child is counted not from when they were born, nor from when they are conceived but from the day that the child was a thought in its mother’s mind. And when a woman decides that she will have a child, she goes off and sits under a tree, by herself, and she listens until she can hear the song of the child that wants to come. And after she’s heard the song of this child, she comes back to the man who will be the child’s father, and teaches it to him. And then, when they make love to physically conceive the child, some of that time they sing the song of the child, as a way to invite it. And then, when the mother is pregnant, the mother teaches that child’s song to the midwives and the old women of the village, so that when the child is born, the old women and the people around her sing the child’s song to welcome it. And then, as the child grows up, the other villagers are taught the child’s song. If the child falls, or hurts its knee, someone picks it up and sings its song to it. Or perhaps the child does something wonderful, or goes through the rites of puberty, then as a way of honoring this person, the people of the village sing his or her song. In the African tribe there is one other occasion upon which the villagers sing to the child. If at any time during his or her life, the person commits a crime or aberrant social act, the individual is called to the center of the village and the people in the community form a circle around them. Then they sing their song to them. The tribe recognizes that the correction for antisocial behavior is not punishment; it is love and the remembrance of identity. When you recognize your own song, you have no desire or need to do anything that would hurt another. And it goes this way through their life. In marriage, the songs are sung, together. And finally, when this child is lying in bed, ready to die, all the villagers know his or her song, and they sing—for the last time—the song to that person. You may not have grown up in an African tribe that sings your song to you at crucial life transitions, but life is always reminding you when you are in tune with yourself and when you are not. When you feel good, what you are doing matches your song, and when you feel awful, it doesn’t. In the end, we shall all recognize our song and sing it well. You may feel a little warbly at the moment, but so have all the great singers. Just keep singing and you’ll find your way home.

what makes a man

my mum and i we live alone

A great apartment is our home

In fairhome towers

I have to keep me company

Two dogs a cat a parakeet

Some plants and flowers

I help my mother with the chores

I wash she dries i do the floors

We work together

I shop and cook and sow a bit

Though mum does too i must admit

I do it better

At night i work in a strange bar

Impersonating every star

I'm quite deceiving

The customers come in with doubt

And wonder what i'm all about

But leave believing

I do a very special show

Where i am nude from head to toe

After stripteasing

Each night the men look so surprised

I change my sex before their eyes

Tell me if you can

What makes a man a man

At three o'clock or so i meet

With friends to have a bite to eat

And conversation

We love to empty out our hearts

With every subject from the arts

To liberation

We love to pull apart someone

And spread some gossip just for fun

Or start a rumor

We let our hair down so to speak

And mock ourselves with tongue-in-cheek

And inside humor

So many times we have to pay

For having fun and being gay

It's not amusing

There's always those that spoil our games

By finding fault and calling names

Always accusing

They draw attention to themselves

At the expense of someone else

It's so confusing

Yet they make fun of how i talk

And imitate the way i walk

Tell me if you can

What makes a man a man

My masquerade comes to an end

And i go home to bed again

Alone and friendless

I close my eyes i think of him

I fantasize what might have been

My dreams are endless

We love each other but it seems

The love is only in my dreams

It's so one sided

But in this life i must confess

The search for love and happiness

Is unrequited

I ask myself what i have got

Of what i am and what i'm not

What have i given

The answers come from those who make

The rules that some of us must break

Just to keep living

I know my life is not a crime

I'm just a victim of my time

I stand defenseless

Nobody has the right to be

The judge of what is right for me

Tell me if you can

What make a man a man

Tell me if you can

Tell me if you can

Tell me if you can

What makes a man a man

*******
the same song by a younger charles aznavour and in english

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this is one of the 8 songs Vidal Sassoon would take to a desert island.

not what they appear to be

next time i am in nyc, i want to go to 58 joralemon street in brooklyn

listening to words

http://www.thrillingwonderstories.co.uk/

to be thru

telling the story to yourself over and over again

"you write all these songs when you feel a bit fucked up. and when it comes to the actual gig, you have to sing them in a row - you just...it's fucking depressing, you know what i mean." ... another artist whose insight into pain elevated the art while burying the maker..."

keeping up a lie

bernie madoff

boy meets world. boy is baffled

TODAY from m ss ng p eces on Vimeo.

authenticity

authenticity is not a tool.
nan goldin does fashion photography. more.

we are becoming post-human

interview with tom ford, interesting at around 18:00
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128380389

the dead

more
thanks jim

ähnlichkeiten

sara says it reminds her of someone.

a pencil

"As the foxhunter hunts in order to preserve the breed of foxes, and the golfer plays in order that open spaces may be preserved from the builders, so when the desire comes upon us to go street rambling the pencil does for a pretext, and getting up we say: "Really I must buy a pencil," as if under cover of this excuse we could indulge safely in the greatest pleasure of town life in winter--rambling the streets of London."
from "Street Haunting: A London Adventure" by Virginia Woolf
via at russel davies

sketch

i never thought about it like this

traces left behind

"vogelfrei" - i had seen that film as a teenager and all i can remember is, that it impressed and irritated me a lot and that it was about this landstreicher, this girl on the road, who would never say "thanks" or "please".
a guy i vaguely knew but liked a lot, had recommended it to me. together with "zementgarten" and "tee im harem des archimedes" - (and "birdie" but i did not like that one so much). i didn't really know that guy, we hardly saw eachother, sometimes bumped into eachother at a party or a concert of the local band. i cannot even recall his name. but he left a mark, a quiet one, a beautiful one. and so i had to think about other people i met at some point in my life, who were important for a while and to a certain degree shaped the way i perceive the world. and i don't have a clue where they are now, what they do, if they are still alive.

two days ago i found out by chance, that this film will be screened at a cinema nearby, that the original title is "sans toit ni loi" that it is by wonderful agnes varda, who was also there in person, and stars young sandrine bonnaire. saskia walker did the interview after the screening, a transcript can be found in revolver 24.
the film starts with the girl lying dead at the side of the road. in the voice-over varda says: "since nobody claimed the body, it was burried at the local cementary. this victim of a natural death did not leave a trace. i ask myself who of those who knew her as a child still remember her. the people who recently met her, do remember her. and with the help of their statments i can recount the last few weeks of her life. they were all impressed by her. when they spoke about her, they did not know that she was dead. i did not tell them and also did not mention her name: mona berger. i myself know little about her. but i believe she came from the sea."
a film about what it takes and what it means to be independent. and whether independence and freedom are the same. and how far you can go before it kills you.

a song written for a friend who had died

Mais c'est la mort
Qui t'a assassinée Marcia
C'est la mort
Tu t'es consumée Marcia
C'est le cancer
Que tu as pris sous ton bras
Maintenant tu es en cendres, cendres
La mort c'est comme une chose impossible pour toi
Qui est la vie même Marcia
Et même à toi
Qui est forte comme une fusée
C'est la mort qui t'a emmenée
Marcia Marcia Marcia Marcia Marcia

herr silhouette und herr guillotine

Silhouette:
"Étienne de Silhouette war französischer Finanzminister unter Ludwig XV.
Nach ihm sind Silhouetten benannt, da er zur Ausschmückung seines Schlosses Scherenschnitte anfertigen ließ, die das Budget weniger belasteten als etwa Ölgemälde."

Guillotine:
"Die Guillotine (dt. Fallbeil) ist ein nach dem französischen Arzt Joseph-Ignace Guillotin benanntes Gerät zur Vollstreckung der Todesstrafe durch Enthauptung.
Während der Französischen Revolution wurde die Guillotine per Dekret der Französischen Nationalversammlung vom 20. März 1792 als einziges Hinrichtungswerkzeug eingeführt.
Die Hintergründe sind verschiedener Natur. Zum einen sollte die Maschine die zahlreichen Hinrichtungen rationalisieren. Ferner sollte die Hinrichtung für die Betroffenen schmerzfrei gemacht werden, denn zuvor brauchte ein Henker mit einem von Hand geführten Beil unter Umständen mehrere Schläge. Für den Namensgeber Guillotin waren humanitäre Gründe ausschlaggebend. Er meinte, dass man den Verurteilten die Angst vor dem Sterben nicht nehmen könne, wohl aber die Qualen der Hinrichtung selbst begrenzen. Die Folter und besonders grausame Hinrichtungsmethoden wie das Rädern sollten mit der Guillotine abgeschafft werden.
Zudem sollte aber der Gleichheitsanspruch der Revolution auch bei der Hinrichtung gelten: Vorher war das Enthaupten den Adeligen als „edle“ Todesart vorbehalten, einfache Leute wurden am Galgen gehenkt. Mit der Guillotine wurden alle Hinrichtungen vereinheitlicht.
Als erster Mensch wurde am 25. April 1792 der Straßenräuber Nicolas Jacques Pelletier mit der neuen Guillotine öffentlich hingerichte.
Die letzte Hinrichtung durch die Guillotine fand in Frankreich am 10. September 1977 an Hamida Djandoubi statt. Am 19. Februar 2007 wurde das Verbot der Todesstrafe in die französische Verfassung aufgenommen."

und dann gibts noch die Violin d'Ingres

book of miri

Book of Miri from mirimovie on Vimeo.
hope, i can see it one day

the river that flows both ways

long time ago some one dear wrote a beautiful essay on that very same river - but that was before the days things like that were put online.

notes