Senses working overtime #413

1 Listening: Susan Cowsill

Loving both of her solo albums and Nanny's Song in particular.

2 Reading: Martin Chuzzlewit

3 Listening: Prince - Sign O' The Times

4 Watching: The Recruit (on Netflix)

5 Reading: Excellent article on Dark Side Of The Moon.

Overtime: 

A quote I’m pondering: “I don’t know what’s worse: to not know what you are and be happy, or to become what you’ve always wanted to be, and feel alone.” ― Daniel Keyes

Senses working overtime #388

1 Why deli bought sandwiches taste better than homemade ones

2 The U.S. Supreme Court case about artistic creativity

3 Christian Bale on his characters, acting, and being him.

4 Wrigley Field - home of the Chicago Cubs - via extraordinary drone footage.

How did they do that??

5 Top 100 BBC performances

Overtime: How to get comfortable with uncertainty and change

Senses working overtime #327

1 Jack Kirby 101

Nice little primer on the king of comics.

2 The male gaze theory

Photo by Nate Johnston on Unsplash

Men look at women, women watch themselves being looked at - John Berger (1972)

3 Welcome 2 Prince's America

4 How to gain more from your reading

5 Megan Fox is no longer hiding

Overtime:  

Mary Oliver - Instructions for living a life (courtesy of Austin Kleon via Swiss Miss)

Senses working overtime #298

 1 Prince as birds

2 The power of books

Historian Barbara Tuchman on the power of books:

“Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are engines of change (as the poet said), windows on the world and lighthouses erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print."

(Source: James Clear)

3 The past 11 presidencies, explained by the TV shows that defined them

4 The first second gentleman!

5 Scattered thoughts on the inauguration

Overtime: Lady Gaga sings Star Spangled Banner during the inauguration

Best thing I heard this week! Swept away four miserable years in one fell swoop!!!

Senses working overtime #58

1 Bill Gates' favourite books

I clicked into this and thought it worth sharing because it seems like an honest list. You know what I mean - it's not a list of worthy but unreadable books (hello James Joyce) but actual books that Bill has enjoyed and still enjoys. Cool!

2 Silicon valley hates music
Really interesting article about the plundering of money from artists - try this for a pull quote: 

The problem has gotten so bad that, in 2015, vinyl record sales generated more income for music creators than the billions of music streams on YouTube and its competitors.

3 Build a bridge

Great article about engineering. Now I'm a million miles away from understanding how engineers do what they do but I loved this wide eyed look at exactly that. Fascinating!

4 They're real and they're spectacular

Jerry Seinfeld's girlfriends from the show.  My favourite is Audrey, who won’t taste Jerry’s pie.

5 Seth Godin
Seth is a fellow less-is-more guy. I loved this post on transitions. Here's the whole thing:

Transitions

Coming and going matter far more than what happens in the middle.

Opening things.

Closing them.

Tearing off the bandage.

Losing something.

Meeting someone new.

Getting on the airplane, getting off of it.

Being greeted.

Elections.

Ending a feud.

We mistakenly spend most of our time thinking about, working on and measuring the in-between parts, imagining that this is the meat of it, the important work. In fact, humans remember the transitions, because it's moments of change and possibility and trepidation that light us up.

Overtime: Prince
Wads of words written about Prince since his death but this piece (a four minute read) nicely encapsulates some key ideas.

Senses working overtime #54

1 Prince
I've had enough of celebrity deaths in 2016. It's quite a list so far: Merle Haggard, Garry Shandling, Patti Duke, Frank Sinatra Jnr., Vanity (like her former producer Prince, she was only 57), Dan Hicks, Maurice White, Terry Wogan, Abe Vigoda (a.k.a. Fish), Jimmy Bain, Glen Frey, Dale Griffin (from Mott The Hoople), Victoria Wood, Alan Rickman, Dan Haggerty, Pierre Boulez, Robert Stigwood, Paul Bley, and Vilos Zsigmond are the big ones.

Enough already! This has been a bad four months so far. I thought I'd dedicate this week's SWO to five + one of those who have joined all of those listed and Polly, the famously stunned Norwegian Blue.

Prince was only 57. I'm also a baby boomer, a year older than Prince.



2 Kantner and Anderson

Kantner far left, Anderson up front.

Freakishly, Paul Kantner and Signe Anderson left the Planet Earth Rock 'N' Roll Band together on the same day in January and are now among the stars. 

Signe was the vocalist before Grace took over.




3 Emerson
Keith Emerson. Sadly, prog titan Keith Emerson has made sure ELP never play again.




4 George  
Dear old George Martin. Bless his cottons.




5 Black
Tragically, Colin Vearncombe (a.k.a. Black) died from a car crash in Ireland in January. He was only 53!

No need to laugh or cry/ It's a wonderful, wonderful life



Overtime: Bowie
This continues to resonate and appall really. How is all this possible?

My choice - how to pick one Bowie song? Changes? Ashes To Ashes? Heroes? Sorrow? Lazarus? All are appropriate, but I'm going for a slightly more obscure one from Hunky Dory: the prophetic Quicksand.