a rumbo perdido

in florida for the week, enjoying the sun's warm rays, my mom's home cooking, & the slow-paced dynamics inherent to orlando.  just takin' 'er easy...

went to the salvador dalí museum in st.petersburg earlier in the week - it was awesome.  the collection is actually one of the most extensive in the world.  plus, the museum usually has other works on loan and also houses temporary exhibits - currently on dalí & film (which -ironically - opened at the london tate modern).  here's what i learned:

1. dalí & walt disney collaborated on a surreal, animated film called destino, which was abandoned midway through & lay dormant for 57 years until disney's nephew ordered it to be completed. i loved it. like fantasia, the images morph into one another to create crosses between reality and fantasy.  also, right around that time, dalí was designing a dream sequence for alfred hithcock's film spellbound - a freudian scene in which an amnesic (gregory peck) narrates a recurring dream to his psychoanalyst (ingrid bergman) in an attempt to decode his subconsciousness. 

2. in the 70's, dalí released a hallucinogenic tv documentary called impressions of upper mongolia.  he was inspired in great part by patterns obtained staining the brass band of a pen. here's the catch - he would regularly urinate on it to "improve the patination" ... !

on to other things.

here's otros aires, a neo-tango group founded in barcelona in 2003 by miguel di genova.  they sound good!  click here to listen to sin rumbo on their own website - or check out another of their songs, below.  enjoy!

milonga sentimental - otros aires

and a bit more of a classic, by one of the masters.

libertango - ástor piazzolla - performed by yo-yo ma 

besos.

Starving Hysterical Naked

This weekend has changed my life. Why? Well, I'll tell you. But, first... you might want to sit down.

Imagine that the simplest, most fundamental assumptions on which you rested your life, the very facts that drove your every move, your every decision - were suddenly violently ripped from beneath your feet, throwing you into a state of chaos, disorientation, imbalance! Well, what I learned this weekend did just that. Except - worse, because what I experienced in reaction to this radical, far-reaching fact were 2 somewhat opposing feelings, leaving my soul in a state of perhaps eternal conflict. (I should note - this was all courtesy of the Sleeping and Dreaming exhibition at the Wellcome Trust).

Apparently, the "fact" that we need 8 hours of sleep - is a MYTH! It was popularized during the time of King Henry VIII when Sir Thomas More wrote Utopia - and in his "perfect world," the inhabitants slept 8 hours!

My immediate reaction was one of relief. To someone with insomniac tendencies, knowing that we are each "unique" and that there is no real number of hours that the human body requires - or rather, that there is variation among us - is alleviating.

But, on the other hand, to someone who has planned her life around 8 hours of sleep - that is, constantly set, reset and modified her alarm during sleepless nights in order to assure the valued 8 hours of sleep - to someone who has missed meetings, classes, exams, & outings in pursuit of the heavenly 8 hours of sleep - this piece of news is quite troubling!

What was soothing - apparently many great inventors, discoverers, and thinkers have stumbled upon their creations in their dreams, literally. Among them, Paul McCartney. He woke up from a dream listening to the tune of Yesterday playing in his head & wondered how nobody had ever written down the melody to such a beautiful song. Enjoy!

Paul McCartney - Yesterday

Besos.

I'd like to invite you over for a duck dinner...

You bring the ducks! (J. Wellington Wimpy)

Popeye the Sailor Song
(Jeje... note J. Wellington Wimpy's hamburger cooking skills!)


Max Fleischer, one of my childhood heroes.
If the name doesn't sound too familiar, think animation.
Creator of Betty Boop.
Responsible for Popeye the Sailor.
Brought Superman to the screen.
Inventor of Rotoscoping. (In fact, check out this 1936 article published in Popular Science.)

Considering the cartoons debuted in the 1930's, the animation effects are pretty sick!

Popeye the Sailor - Rotograph


On an entirely different note - check out this month's issue of National Geographic, if you can. There's an article on Bhutan that utterly made my jaw drop. The headline reads:

Bhutan's Enlightened Experiment

Guided by a novel idea, the tiny Buddhist kingdom tries to join the modern world without losing its soul.

I just didn't realize places like this still existed.
Besos.

Please follow me into the sea...

Don't worry if it's cold. (Phish)

I have a terrible attention span (& too curious a mind), so I'm constantly finding new books to read, movies to watch, places to visit...

What this really means - that I hardly ever finish what I started!  But I have an inexplicable addiction to physics books (yeah, I know - it's embarrassing) & an even more terrible habit of reading them front-to-back.  Anyway, I'm almost done reading The Elegant Universe by theoretical physicist Brian Greene, who is currently at Columbia University in New York.  I only wanted to mention it here because I think he does a brilliant job of breaking down complex theories into comprehensible concepts.  You can even watch the mini-series online, here.  

Salvador Dalí's The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory, & a powerful welcome to the new physics of his times. (I think he was a Heisenberg fan.)  Speaking of which, I love his clocks - depictions of relativistic time? For me, at least a reminder to stop & breathe.  

For the more philosophically (or less mathematically) inclined mind, I read The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics some time ago, in which Gary Zukav explains the pillars of quantum physics through occasional allusions to ancient Eastern philosophies. 

Uuuff, enough thinking.  Time to kick back & howl at the moon.

Janis Joplin - Summertime (Live Gröna Lund 1969)

Besos.

We Walked around til the Moon got Full like a Plate

Oh, that was so real. 

(Jeff Buckley)

This year, I've chosen to do my thesis on synesthesia - essentially a fusion of the senses, so that stimulation in one sense modality (i.e., sound) elicits automatic, involuntary stimulation in another sense modality (i.e., vision). Synesthetes are people who "see music," "hear colors," or "taste shapes" - feats seemingly impossible to accomplish by the "normal" non-synesthetic brain, at least without ingestion of hallucinogens (i.e., LSD, ayahuasca, etc.).

I think their day-to-day experiences are much richer than the average person's, or at least more multi-dimensional.  For example, musical pitches aren't just sounds & numbers aren't just digits - they can have colors, sometimes complete with depth; and perhaps most interestingly, they can elicit particular feelings in their beholders.  

What would it be like to experience the world as they do?  I'm not inclined to believe that even a full description, backed by all corresponding scientific knowledge, would give us complete understanding of their worlds, much less make their actual sense-experiences more accessible to us.  (Hmm - qualia & Frank Jackson's Knowledge Argument - something perhaps to come back to?) 

While we're on the topic -Daniel Tammet is a high-functioning autistic savant who also happens to experience synesthesia.  He wrote I Was Born on a Blue Day, in which he describes, among other things, how his synesthetic experiences allow him to accomplish huge mathematical calculations in his head.  He also has a blog, in which he shares diverse personal ideas (not necessarily related to synesthesia). Here are some posts that I found interesting: 

• The Benefits of Self Sufficiency (agreed - something else to come back to?)
  
• 'Simplified Spelling' Is a Bad "Eyedihr" (why the English language shouldn't revolutionize its spelling)
  
• Falsifiability and the God Hypothesis (what would convince him to stop believing in God)
  
• Mänti (a language he's created)
  

And always finish with something to soothe the soul.

Jeff Buckley - Lover, You Should've Come Over

Besos.

Los Gatos Ya Nacemos Gatos

I came across this clip while surfing YouTube for musical pieces that would transport me back to earlier times.  You know, when I was    

                                                                                    young...

                                                                             free...

                                                                                     irresponsible...

                                                                                 and

                                                                                              in love... 

...well, with none other than my living room piano.  Alas, those days are gone.  

Moving on, right!  Umm... I learned to play this when I was 18 & studying music @ University. 

And she's... 11!?!  Ok, so it's not perfect, but I'd say it's pretty good!

Chelsea Dock - Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, 3rd Movement

Besos.

When the Wind Blows

As for the aura encompassing our humble abode during the last 10 days, only one thing is certain: that the chain of events having seized the inhabitants of Flat 2 (and sparing no trespassers) and their resultant effects in the hearts of all involved parties are describable only by a single term - ineffable.  (Please, allow yourself the freedom to click on the previous link & check out a whole list of ineffable things, according to Wikipedia.  And if you're really intrigued by the idea of "pre-Big Bang," "multiple dimensions," and the like, then - by all means - do yourself the courtesy of familiarizing yourself with Australian David Tow & his "Theories of Everything" - & most preferably on a night when you're already freaked out.)  

But if a general idea is to be given (regarding the nature of the last 10 days), then the following definitions will suffice:

Murphy's Law: Things will go wrong in any situation, given the chance.
Finagle's Law: (Murphy's corollary) Anything that can go wrong, will - and at the worst possible moment. (This one apparently is a favorite among hackers because of its allusion to the Second Law of Thermodynamics - Entropy - which states that the perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum.)

Happy Valentines Day!  

and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

-ee cummings

Matt Damon - My Funny Valentine

Besos.