Joe Nolan's Insomnia

Insomnia: The New Awakening

2010-08-19T01:05:00.002-05:00

Welcome to a fun archive of the original Insomnia.

Find all of the old posts and the bigger, badder version of the blog here.

Stay awake!

Love, Joe Nolan

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2010-03-22T16:30:00.001-05:00

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Happy St. Patrick's Day!

2010-03-17T11:20:00.004-05:00

Welcome, one and all to the annual St. Patrick's Day edition of Insomnia!

Every year I enjoy using this forum to present us - one and all - with a greeting of sorts on this, the yearly Wearing of the Green.

On with it:

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY!

THIS IS YOUR DRINK:

THIS IS YOUR DRINK'S COCKTAIL:

THIS IS YOUR DRINKING BUDDY:

THIS IS HIS DATE:

THIS IS YOUR DATE:

THIS IS YOUR OTHER DATE:

"

THIS IS THE OPENING BAND:

THIS IS THE HEADLINER:

THIS IS YOUR EVENT PLANNER:

THIS IS YOUR WINGMAN:

THIS IS MY MESSAGE TO YOU:

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY!

Love, Joe Nolan

___________________________________________________________

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

Une Amuse Bouche Pour Vous

2010-02-25T20:37:00.003-06:00

Bon soir.

Une amuse bouche pour vous:

"Notes on New Girlfriends"

Like bullets in a magazine, the next
one replaced the last with a
kind of brutal precision;
a murderous grace.

Love, Joe Nolan

___________________________________________________________

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

Barbarians at the Gate

2010-02-12T21:49:00.003-06:00

Hey y'all,

A little ditty I've been popping together
for some weeks now. It was all there at the first
flush. Less was more in this case.

At the big
table
with the new
old friends.
The day Nick left
for New York
he looked like
CuChulainn in his knitted
beard.
The word barbarian means
"bearded one".
In Ancient Rome
the bearded ones
smashed the skulls
of the clean shaven
beneath the weight of
history. And James
Joyce wore a mustache in less
desperate times.

Love, Joe Nolan

___________________________________________________________

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

On the Death of Howard Zinn...

2010-01-27T20:31:00.004-06:00

Hello all,

Howard Zinn died this evening. The legendary rabble-rouser was one of our best. An old football coach of mine always encouraged us to be "the firstest with the mostest" when it came to tackling ball carriers. Zinn exemplified that kind of practical enthusiasm when it came to the causes of peace and social justice.

His website is the best source for finding out more about the man and this sad, late news.

A few thoughts:

I cried
a bit
when Howard Zinn Died,
and the coffee was cold in the cup.
Bitter lips
speak no peace
and this prayer
is forgetting how to fly.
Somewhere,
now,
there is a hole
in this world
and it's shaped like a
straight-standing man.
I cried
a bit
when Howard Zinn died,
but my heart is ignorant
like a bill of sale
or a new coat of paint
on an age-old throne.
I cried
a bit
when Howard Zinn died,
but now my tears have organized.

Now, they are marching.

Love, Joe Nolan

___________________________________________________________

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

Run Run Randolph

2010-01-21T08:09:00.005-06:00

Hello babies,

And welcome back.

Haven't posted in a bit and wanted to blow the dust off of this illuminated scroll to fill you in on some of the recent hap's.

The latest version of the Disinformation World News podcast has been kicking around on the site for some time now. This latest episode features pieces on robotic limbs controlled by the mind, Nigerian witch hunters and the Wal-Mart Gestapo. Yours truly chimes in with a short biography on the 19th Century sex-magician, Paschal Beverly Randolph.

Randolph was notable as an African American magician in the Western ritual magic tradition at a time when most black practitioners were root workers, practicing the various systems that evolved out of the African diaspora. Randolphs sex-magic system of Affectional Alchemy is considered to be the first fully-developed, modern system of erotic ritual.

If you'd like to explore more about Randolph, here are a number of the sources I used for the report:

PBR's Wikipedia Page
PBR at Lucky Mojo
Your Very Own Brotherhood of Eulis Invitation
Read PBR at Google Books
Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor at Wikipedia
PBR at Soul.org
The Invisible Basilica
Article about PBR

If you missed the last episode which featured new stories about the South American rape-monster: the Popobawa. Check it out here. You can also read the transcript to my segment - the 2nd half of my report on the Hollow Earth - right here:

In our last segment, we discussed the early history of the Hollow Earth. Many cultures around the globe have their own unique beliefs regarding the various kingdoms that may reside beneath the surface of our planet, and respected scientists like comet discoverer Edmund Halley and noted politicians like Continental Congressman John Cleve Symmes promoted early ideas about the Hollow Earth and created the hypothetical models that the theory is based on.

Simply speaking, by the 20th Century, proponents of Hollow Earth theory believed that the Earth was a hollow sphere with large entrances to the interior world at the North and South Poles. Generally, these theories posited civilizations that thrived beneath the ground in a climate provided by an internal sun.

One modern evangelist of the Hollow Earth model was Dr. Raymond W . Bernard. Born Walter Seigmeister, Bernard grew up in New York City, where he attended Columbia and NYU. An intelligent successful young man, Bernard was was also an eccentric in the making. Although his parents hoped he'd earn an M.D. Bernard instead took a PhD in education, writing his dissertation on the controversial educational philosophies of Rudolph Steiner. Steiner's writings were also Bernard's entry into theories about Atlantis and other esoteric subjects.

By the mid 1940's, Bernard began dressing in all black and growing his hair out. Soon, he abandoned the Judaism of his childhood for a hodge-podge of Eastern mysticism and bizarre dietary restrictions. It was around this time that Seigmeister adopted his alias in order to avoid authorities who were after him for selling bogus nutritional supplements. After moving to Mexico for several years, Bernard returned to the States obsessed with ideas about the Hollow Earth. In 1964 – Bernard published The Hollow Earth - The Greatest Geographical Discovery in History Made by Admiral Richard E. Byrd in the Mysterious Land Beyond the Poles - The True Origin of the Flying Saucers. Not only is Bernard's volume in possession of what may be the greatest book title of all time, it is also one of the most important contributions to Hollow Earth theory.

Bernard filled his book with accounts of different explorers who claimed to have made successful journeys into the Hollow Earth. Admiral Byrd figures heavily in the book. Bernard latched on to a brief mention in Byrd's memoir where the Admiral writes about seeing a patch of green oasis in the midst of the endless white at the North pole. For Bernard, this passing observation was a hook on which he hung a fantastic cosmology and a fanatic belief in the world within the world.
Bernard went on to write the book Flying Saucers from the Earth's Interior and to claim that he was in contact with legendary mystics dwelling in secret ashrams as well as Blavatsky's Tibetan Grand Lamas. It was either madness or moxie that eventually led the good doctor back across the border - this time all the way to South America - where he was rumored to have disappeared or died from pneumonia, searching for a tunnel to Agartha deep in the interior jungles.

If the theory of the Hollow Earth had to be associated with only one man, that man would be Richard Sharpe Shaver. However, it's impossible to tell Shaver's story without including Ray Palmer the publisher of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories.

In 1943, Shaver contacted Palmer at the magazine with an amazing tale of his own. Shaver claimed he had stumbled upon an ancient language called Mantong. In fact, Shaver claimed that Mantong was the root of all human languages and that by applying a few rules to any word in any tongue, a secret meaning could be revealed. Quizzing Shaver as to how he came across the discovery, Palmer realized he was tugging at the threads of an even stranger yarn.

Shaver replied to Palmer's inquiries with a 10,000 word document entitled A Warning to Future Man. In the document, Shaver let fly with one of the most complex Hollow Earth cosmologies that has ever been conceived.

Shaver's Hollow Earth was populated by a highly-advanced race of extraterrestrial Titans who had populated Atlantis and then the entire globe. This early race had built vast, complex underground caverns to escape damaging radiation from the sun. These ancient astronauts eventually left the earth for another planet, leaving behind the Teros: a race of servants they had created through genetic engineering. However, the rigors of life underground took their toll and many of the Teros transformed over time into Deros. Shaver explained that the “Deros” term was an abbreviation for “detrimental robots”. The Deros were organic creatures, but they were robot like in their brutal, sadistic behavior. Shaver also insisted that many of mankind's ills – from train wrecks to lost car keys – could be blamed on the Deros and their use of the advanced technology that they still manipulated in their underground cities.

Ray Palmer knew a great story when he heard one and he immediately began readying Shaver's tale for publication. Palmer added a long narrative plot to Shaver's account, eventually crafting a 31,000 word story that he entitled “I Remember Lemuria”. However, the most ingenious device Palmer employed was his insistence that Shaver's eye-witness account was absolutely factual. Whether or not Palmer was a true-believer, casting the account as an eye-witness report was a masterstroke. The “Lemuria” issue of Amazing Stories resulted in a record run that saw the magazine's circulation jump by 50,000 copies. Reader response went through the roof and the steady trickle of letters that Palmer had come to expect became a deluge of thousands, with many readers corroborating Shaver's tale, claiming they too had had contact with the Deros.

Before Shaver began to publish his stories in post-war America, another group on the other side of the world had begun to search for an entrance to Agartha at the South Pole. However, these were not science fiction fans, they were miltary men and their leader was Adolph Hitler.

In addition to an array of esoteric devotions that included astrology and the search for many ancient artifacts, Hitler and his top advisors were convinced that the Earth was hollow and populated by a race of great Masters that Hitler hoped to create a super-race of god-men with.

The most intriguing story of the Nazi's quest for the Hollow Earth states that in the last days of WWII, Hitler, his closest advisors and a number of German soldiers made a mad dash for the South Pole, entering the Hollow Earth where they remain to this day.

The idea that Hitler made such an escape persists because of a number tenuous speculations and the novelty of the Nazi's occult fascinations. While there is little evidence that Hitler and his henchmen actually found an interior earth, there is at least one document that keeps the speculation alive.

According to official records the German U-boat 209 reported for the last time on May 6, 1943. According to the report the submarine had been badly damaged in its confrontation with fighter planes from the Royal Canadian Air Force vessel the Canadian Catalina. U-209 was called back to base but never arrived. The crew was never heard from again.

Or were they?

The International Society for a Complete Earth claims to be in possession of a letter that was sent from a naval officer on U-209. They claim that the family has corroborated the hand writing on the letter as being that of their sibling and son.

The letter states that the sub did indeed make a bee-line for the South Pole at the end of the war and escape into the Hollow Earth. The sailor goes on to remark that his fellow crewmen were also safe and that – though they would not be returning to the surface world - they were not being held against their will.

Hollow Earth theory is as vast and complex as the subterranean kingdoms it strives to explain and – although we've only scratched the surface – it is my hope that we have entertained you dear listener with a fantastic tale populated by strange creatures in wondrous lands dwelling just over the horizon at the very edge of the human imagination. But more importantly it is my hope that this report has inspired you with the stories of men like Dr. Raymond Bernard and Richard Shaver. Individuals who stood their ground against one of the cruelest enemies known to man: the prejudice that is reserved for those bold souls among us who would abandon the complacencies of their times to live in a world of their own making.

For Disinformation World News, this has been another installment of Insomnia.

I'm Joe Nolan.

Stay awake.

I'll be back sooner than later, loved ones. I won't be a part of the next Disinfo podcast, but I'll be back in the flow on the next one.

'til then.

Love, Joe Nolan

___________________________________________________________

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

Deep and Crisp and Even

2009-12-18T11:15:00.004-06:00

Hey all and all and then some,

Really feeling the spirit today. Was recently, nearly
reduced to tears of joy hearing "Feliz Navidad" at the
bean aisle in Kroger.

Check out this performance of the song, live in Denmark in 1973.
Hippest caroling ever!

Regardless of your religio/mystico/philosophical relationship to the world without and within, this season really does put people in mind of others. Within such sudden selflessness there lies that great, untapped potential for Total Revolution: psychic, spiritual, personal, interpersonal, galactic...

This tree will grow.
I saw it in a dream.

Here is the text for the poem I recited in an audio post in the last entry in this luminescent journal:

"Origami Gunship"

There is a truer
truth to be
known beneath the smoldering
sky of starving
leaves as winter takes
over the South.

(A Yankee front
sweeping down from Connecticut.
An icy grimace
in Union Blue).

There is a knowing to be known
between myself
and the girl with the black
hat
and the red
bag
and the white
teeth.
She smiles like a friendly
Nazi and she laughs
when I reach
past her
for the hot sauce.

There is a light
to bright
this grey window
with the frost
in the corners
and the dead
hornet:
legs up;
tobacco-colored wings more
delicate than Chinese
paper;
memento mori;
origami gunship;
an abdomen
swollen with
frozen poison.
A glinting light breaks
across the tip
of the stinger.
The sun roars to life
for the first time
in weeks.

One of my most enjoyable projects was being asked to edit an issue of Number: An Independent Journal of the Arts. I've been writing reviews, reports and interviews for the publication for years and this opportunity allowed me to make an issue that focused more exclusively on the Nashville art scene (The journal covers Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee and is a publication of University of Memphis).

I recently turned in new piece that features an interview with TSU curator Jodi Hays Gresham. Browsing through the Number site last night I noticed that the back issues have been updated. You can now download a .pdf version of all the recent issues.

Click here to download the Joe Nolan edited Number:62

And here is a special Holiday treat. In a recent post I offered this track for download and had so much response from the folks who heard it that I've decided to make it an open link so people don't have to keep emailing me here and on Facebook to get it. This is a demo for my new song "Phantom Punch". Inspired by the second boxing match between Cassius Clay and Sonny Liston, my pal Jean Paul Lilliston and I had some audio problems so I recorded these vocals on a cell phone in Nashville to a speaker phone in Chicago. Most people who've heard this insist that I have to use these vocals as they turned out surprisingly good. See what you think...

Phantom Punch

Enjoy the goodies. Travel safely and be grateful and thanks to all of you who've read this electric rag and listened to my noises this year.

___________________________________________________________

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

Origami Gunship

2009-12-13T13:18:00.003-06:00

Seasons Greetings...and a new poem...

Mobile post sent by MightyJoeNolan using Utterli. Replies. mp3

___________________________________________________________

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

Devil's Advocate: First Impressions of Antichrist

2009-11-21T01:25:00.008-06:00

Hey all,

Just returned from seeing Lars von Trier's new film Antichrist.

For those of you who may not be up to speed regarding this flick, it is a disturbing film peppered with very graphic sexual/violent images. It was both panned and praised at Cannes earlier this year. Here is the breakdown from IMDB:

A grieving couple retreats to their cabin in the woods, hoping to repair their broken hearts and troubled marriage. But nature takes its course and things go from bad to worse.

That really is the truth of the plot of the film. It is a very simple movie and the cast is made up almost exclusively of a husband and wife: She and He.

Ok, here we go...

The plot is very simple - and so is the theme. Although this is a movie full of symbols and layers it is a very basic fable dealing with the triumph of civilization over nature and reason over chaos. Mythological stories have layers and tangents - as this movie surely does - but - at their core they are simple tales that tell a basic truth.

This movie is full of rough hewn symbols and telling dialog, but there is not that much to it, and the hand wringing over the violence in the third act is also over-hyped. Although you will surely see some unique images in this part of the film it is actually less disturbing than the first and second acts. Remember how scary Jaws was until you saw the shark?

Although it may seem callous or a bit crazy to some viewers, I was actually relieved when the brutality got going. At that point in the film LVT simply leaves us with a schlocky horror film that I no longer had to fear.

At that point, it's just a movie.

This film is gorgeous in many ways and disturbing as well, but it's ultimately very flawed despite its ambitions. A lesser film for LVT without question, but not a failure by any stretch. However, this movie won't break your heart, strain your brain or sicken your stomach. The grief at the center of the film is never really communicated in a moving way. The simple fable at its heart will never withstand over-intellectualizing and he gore is ultimately silly movie tricks that fail to convey any real horror.

Again, they actually break the tension and create more relief than revulsion.

Anyway. See it for yourself and leave a comment or two. My thoughts may seem to be on the negative side, but I absolutely recommend the film. Gainsbourg and Dafoe are relentlessly brave in their roles and the cinematography is the best I've seen this year - outside of the gorgeous black and white in the film Tetro.

Now there is a movie worth talking about.

___________________________________________________________

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

Sing a New Song

2009-11-19T17:29:00.005-06:00

Yo and what up, homestyle...

Just a quick word to the wise-up...

I've been cyber-collaborating with Jean Paul Lilliston, working on
my new CD, The Wicked.

I've had some technical difficulties as of late, so we decided to try cutting some vocals over the phone. I cued up the song (sans vocals)and put on my headphones while J.P. mic'd up his home phone and put it on speaker. The next step is obvious: The song kicked off and I commencedto screaming into my cell phone in my living room. Turned out great. We'll eventually do "real" vocals, but these are fine for now.

We've got some horn/bass/drum cats coming in from Austin soon and they needed a version with vocals.

If you leave me a comment or send me an email I'll give you a link where you can download the demo w the speaker phone vocals!

This is what the song is about:

___________________________________________________________

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

I Remember Jacques de Molay

2009-11-13T16:05:00.004-06:00

Bonjour et bonsoir, mes amis,

Welcome back to another post-it note here where the photons do glow.

Just wanted to drop a few lines about Friday the 13th.

Fridays and the number 13 have been characterized by negative superstitions since before The Da Vinci Code was published. Long known as a kind of "day of bad luck", Friday the 13th is also steeped in conspiracy culture and its occult power reaches back to many deep secrets that lie at the heart of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, the Vatican, the Knights Templar, the founding of Freemasonry and the roots of international banking. Whether you believe the origins of "Friday the 13th" have anything to do with the Knights Templar, you've got to admit the intersection is a fun one to consider.

Here's some skinny from the Wiki(although they seem to deny a connection between the date and the fall of the KT):

On Friday, October 13, 1307 (a date sometimes incorrectly linked with the origin of the Friday the 13th superstition)[24][25] Philip ordered de Molay and scores of other French Templars to be simultaneously arrested. The Templars were charged with numerous offenses (including apostasy, idolatry, heresy, "obscene rituals" and homosexuality, corruption and fraud, and secrecy).[26] Many of the accused confessed to these charges under torture, and these confessions, even though obtained under duress, caused a scandal in Paris. After more bullying from Philip, Pope Clement then issued the papal bull Pastoralis Praeeminentiae on November 22, 1307, which instructed all Christian monarchs in Europe to arrest all Templars and seize their assets.[27]

Pope Clement called for papal hearings to determine the Templars' guilt or innocence, and once freed of the Inquisitors' torture, many Templars recanted their confessions. Some had sufficient legal experience to defend themselves in the trials, but in 1310 Philip blocked this attempt, using the previously forced confessions to have dozens of Templars burned at the stake in Paris.[28][29]

With Philip threatening military action unless the Pope complied with his wishes, Pope Clement finally agreed to disband the Order, citing the public scandal that had been generated by the confessions. At the Council of Vienne in 1312, he issued a series of papal bulls, including Vox in excelso, which officially dissolved the Order, and Ad providam, which turned over most Templar assets to the Hospitallers.[31]

As for the leaders of the Order, the elderly Grand Master Jacques de Molay, who had confessed under torture, retracted his statement. His associate Geoffrey de Charney, Preceptor of Normandy, followed de Molay's example and insisted on his innocence. Both men were declared guilty of being relapsed heretics, and they were sentenced to burn alive at the stake in Paris on March 18, 1314. De Molay reportedly remained defiant to the end, asking to be tied in such a way that he could face the Notre Dame Cathedral and hold his hands together in prayer.[32] According to legend, he called out from the flames that both Pope Clement and King Philip would soon meet him before God. Pope Clement died only a month later, and King Philip died in a hunting accident before the end of the year.[33]

With the last of the Order's leaders gone, the remaining Templars around Europe were either arrested and tried under the Papal investigation (with virtually none convicted), absorbed into other military orders such as the Knights Hospitaller, or pensioned and allowed to live out their days peacefully. Some may have fled to other territories outside Papal control, such as excommunicated Scotland or to Switzerland. Templar organizations in Portugal simply changed their name, from Knights Templar to Knights of Christ.[34]

Here at Insomnia, we associate these days with the undoing of Jacques de Molay and his Knights as well as with my birthday which I have always felt protects me from other "superstitions" like walking under ladders etc. When a black cat crosses my trail I feel "hey, I must be onto something". In other words, I feel that being born on a 13th gives me a kind of astral-immuno-booster, defending me from lesser demons and the frivolity of negative thinking.

For those of us who may feel a day like today to be frought with peril, here are the last words of the Templar's last leader, Jacques de Molay, right before he was executed by the Pope and King Philip IV. As you'll see, Jacques gets the last laugh:

"It is just that, in so terrible a day, and in the last moments of my life, I should discover all the iniquity of falsehood, and make the truth triumph. I declare, then, in the face of heaven and earth, and acknowledge, though to my eternal shame, that I have committed the greatest crimes but it has been the acknowledging of those which have been so foully charged on the order. I attest - and truth obliges me to attest - that it is innocent! I made the contrary declaration only to suspend the excessive pains of torture, and to mollify those who made me endure them. I know the punishments which have been inflicted on all the knights who had the courage to revoke a similar confession; but the dreadful spectacle which is presented to me is not able to make me confirm one lie by another. The life offered me on such infamous terms I abandon without regret."

The execution of Jacques DeMolay Reports say they were slowly roasted over a hot, smokeless fire prolonging their agony as their flesh slowly cooked and blackened. Jacques DeMolay insisted that his hands were not to be bound so that he could pray in his final moments and before he died he cursed both Philip and Pope Clement, summoning both of them to appear before God, the supreme judge, before the year was out. His last words were, "Let evil swiftly befall those who have wrongly condemned us - God will avenge us." Guy of Advernge is reported to have added, "I shall follow the way of my master as a martyr you have killed him. You have done and know not. God willing, on this day, I shall die in the Order like him."

The chilling irony of the conclusion of this story is that Jacques DeMolay's final words did, in fact, come true. Pope Clement V died only a month later on April 20th (he is suspected of having cancer of the bowel) and Philip IV was killed while on a hunting trip on November 29th 1314. True to the claim both men did indeed die within the year of Jacques DeMolay's own death.

Have a good day everyone.

Watch out for false benefactors.

Love, Joe
______________________________________________________________________________

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

Our Somnambulant Republic

2009-11-06T11:19:00.004-06:00

Hola, mi amigos

As promised, here is a new post offering up some more goodies that spilled over
the edges of my latest installment of Insomnia for the Disinformation World News podcast.

Thanks to Raymond and Joe for putting up with two rather lengthy segments on a subject that is as vast as the Earth itself. The Hollow Earth has long been a favorite crypto-myth-consmology-theory and
having a chance to just burrow into it and share my notes has been lots of fun.

As I mention in the 'cast, the thing that I find most attractive about this line of thought is the freedom required to think it. While such notions may have pushed some men like Dr. Raymond Bernard a little closer to a dangerous edge, it seems that most of the proponents of the theory are of two specific types: the bold adventurer and the child-like dreamer. Both proud clans are always encouraged to join our somnambulant republic here in the world between dream and waking.

Here are a number of links to the resources I used in researching the second half of my installment on The Hollow Earth:

Crystal Links
Hitler and Secret Societies
The Complete Works of Dr. Raymond Bernard
Podcast about Dr. Raymond Bernard
Richard Sharpe Shaver

Raymond Palmer
The official word on the disappearance of U209

Have fun surfing these links. The Raymond Bernard podcast is especially good and the other 'casts at Memory Palace are worth checking into as well.

If you missed my first installment about the Hollow Earth, here is a transcript. You can also find the 'cast archived at Disinformation.

The Early History of the Hollow Earth

When exploring esoteric subjects it can be difficult to find the connections between various disciplines, notions, theories and organizations. Occult practices ultimately rely on systems of associations and it's compelling to imagine a kind of grand unified theory that encompasses all of the mysteries.

While such an ambitious task remains beyond the grasp of this humble report, there is an intersection point where occult mysteries, cryptozoology, conspiracy theories, ufology, ancient religious beliefs and straight-up-science fiction all meet on a strange horizon where a few brave souls have dared to believe the impossible.

Come with us now dear listener as we illuminate the early history of the Hollow Earth.

Cultures throughout time on every continent of the globe have believed that a paradise resides within our own planet. The Hopi tribes in North America, Tibetan monks, the People of Iceland and the fanatical beliefs of the highest ranks of the Nazi party all share in common a connection to the idea of the hollow earth. For Tibetan monks, Shambala is a real kingdom of peace and tranquility where ancient masters live within the earth's interior. The intricate folklore of Iceland is predicated on the notion of a hollow-earth and Hitler's Nazis ultimately claimed lineage to the powerful beings that are said to reside beneath the surface of our planet.

But where do our modern conceptions of the Hollow Earth originate?

In 1664, a Jesuit priest named Athanasius Kircher published his daunting, encyclopedic tome Mundus Subterraneas. An exhaustive compendium of geography and geology, Kircher's book also contained ambitious tracts on fantastic creatures, spontaneous generation, alchemy, fireworks, eclipses and a number of other eclectic subjects. Kircher's own hand supplied his readers with some of the first cross-section drawings of the earth, revealing pockets of interior fire, fueled by alchemical, cosmic rays. Kircher imagined that the freezing oceans at the north pole poured into the interior earth where they were warmed by the central fires, eventually flowing back to the planet's surface at the south pole. Kircher's imaginative model was one of the first that attempted to explain global weather patterns and oceanic circulation.

In 1692 Edmund Haley – of Haley's comet fame – posited that the earth contained a system of concentric spheres. He believed that each level was temperate and supported life and that the
Aurora borealois was caused by off-gassing from these inner realms

In the 19th century John Cleve Symmes - a delegate to the Continental Congress from the state of New Jersey - accepted Haley's theory but also claimed that there were 4,000-mile-wide entrances to the earth's interior at the north and south poles. In addition, Symmes forwarded the idea that the holes were inhabited by humanoids. In the face of daunting ridicule, Symmes lectured, published, and lobbied energetically to raise funds for an expedition to the North Pole in order to meet the inner-earth's inhabitants and open "new sources of trade and commerce."

Symmes helped to found The Smithsonian Institution which he envisioned as a future home for the artifacts and treasures that were anticipated to come from this journey, and he made such a strong case that he was able to bring pressure on then president J Q Adams

“I am fascinated by the possibilities.” Adams was quoted as saying “We need to be willing to go forward in discovering new lands, expanding our horizons.. I say give them the money! This could be the greatest discovery since America.”

Funding for the Sea Expedition was eventually squashed by Andrew Jackson when JQ Adams left office.

Given the kind of radical faith that a belief in the HJollow Earth requires, it's no surprise that an eccentric American physician named Cyrus Teed was able to found a religion based on Hollow-Earth doctrines in the 1800s. During an unconventional scientific experiment involving high-voltage electricity, Teed was badly shocked and knocked unconscious. Upon waking, Teed claimed to have been contacted by no less than the Mother of the Universe, who told Teed that he was the savior of the world. Teed promptly founded a Utopian enclave in Fort Myers, Florida. The group's central belief was that "the universe is a cell, a hollow globe, the physical body of which is the earth; the sun is at the center. We live on the inside of the cell; and the sun, moon, planets and stars are all within the globe." Teed and his believers were claiming that the universe was inside out. Outside of the earth – according to Teed – there was nothing. Teed never wavered in his convictions and his ideas attracted a fanatical following. Peter Bender a German aviator was one of the most outspoken believers in Teed's ideas. His enthusiasm for the notion excited a community in Germany who eventually formed the Hollow Earth Society, which still exists today.

Some simply believed that Teed had suffered brain damage when he was injured during his experiment.

IN 1929, Marshall B Gardener, author of A Journey to the Earth's Interior, returned to the Symmes model, but claimed that the inner Earth was illuminated by a sun that was 600 miles in diameter.

In (1934) Guy Ballard published Unveiled Mysteries, written under the pseudonym Godfre Ray King. Ballard claimed that while visiting Mount Shasta, he met a stranger who gave him a creamy liquid to drink. Having imbibed the brew, Ballard suddenly realized that the stranger was Count Saint Germaine, an eighteenth-century occultist who had become an immortal Tibetan Master according to the writings of H.P. Blavatsky

Ballard wrote that he had many meetings with the Count and the two enjoyed out-of-body visits to the inner-earth where Ballard witnessed scientific wonders, spiritual marvels and even attended a conference with along with 12 Venusian masters beneath the Grand Teton Range in Wyoming. Ballard and his family toured and lectured, spreading his ideas and attracting seekers to the occult group he founded: The "I AM" Activity.

Many hollow-earth publications, reports and rumors have persisted to this day.

In our next installment, we'll explore the Shaver Mystery, the disappearance of Doctor Raymond Bernard and the final destination of Nazi U-boat 209.

Until then this has been another installment of Insomnia for Disinformation World News, I'm Joe Nolan.

Stay awake.

______________________________________________________________________________

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

Invitation and Farewell

2009-10-13T09:31:00.005-05:00

Amigos y amigas,

Bienvenido a la Nada.

"I had a friend who believed in UFO's"

This grey morning I
walk between the cracks.
Back
to the seen of the crime:
the true, original vision.

This grey morning I
steer into the current,
escaping the tangled embrace of morning
traffic and autumn
trees and sallow
light in the mist
like a kiss speaking
invitation and
farewell.

This grey morning I
sit in warm cafes drinking
in something more than
inspiration.

A poster on a board,
at the back,
near the busted fountain says that
"Air is an element".
But I am dreaming Russian
dolls.

The water that wets the air is -
in turn - grim with earth and
everything's born
from fire.

In grey mornings I
stopped worrying about
tears years ago.
Now, it's the not crying that is worrisome.

Sadness suckles salt.

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

Pod Monk No Zero

2009-10-11T19:31:00.005-05:00

Greetings all and more again.

Just a quick one this time.

Thanks to everyone who has been messaging me regarding the Disinformation World News Podcast and The Wicked - the new CD I am in the middle of recording with Jean Paul Lilliston.

A new Podcast should be up in a few weeks so go subscribe to the 'cast at Disinfo' and you won't miss any of the weirdness. If you are interested in previewing the new CD, listen to this free download of The Ol'Double Zero. This brand new tune has been a highlight of the various festival shows I did this summer and this work-in-progress version is a fun listen to the project as it evolves. This tune is a really raggedy country-rocker.

In addition to all of this bloated self-promotion I'd like to give some props to Thelonious Monk on what would have been his 92nd birthday. Bless you Monk. Thanks for all those great tunes.

In lieu of 92 candles, enjoy this screening of the Clint-Eastwood-produced documentary Straight No Chaser. I first saw this movie in college in Michigan and this is what turned me on to jazz.

This playlist is hosted on my YouTube channel: Imagicon and is curated by your good friends in the AV department here at Insomnia, The Sleepless Film Festival.

If you need even more music, check out my latest project:

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

The "I's" in Activism: A Chat with Nate C (Part 3)

2009-10-08T13:52:00.004-05:00

Hola amigos.

For this latest episode of Insomnia we are revisiting our discussion about anarchism, activism, revolution, evolution and possible solutions with Nate C. Nate
was a great addition to Nashville's activist community before relocating to the West. Our discussion began as a dialog about the unrest in Greece following the police shooting of a young boy last December. It has since evolved into an ongoing, wide-ranging discussion. Catch up by clicking through the "nate c" label at the bottom of this post.

And now, back to it...

JN: We had been discussing ways in which to disengage from the political system, the economic system, the cultural system...It seems that resistance defines these obstacles even more clearly - and allows them to define us and our ideas! The notion we were working towards was that disengagement is preferable to opposition.

NC: First of all, don't vote. Do you remember that game where one person takes something from you and tosses it back and forth with another person over your head to watch you squirm? You try to run to each person to take your thing back, but as soon as you catch up to them, they throw it and you're sent scampering after the other person. The only way to win that game is to stop. You are over-matched. Now imagine the Republicans on one side of the playground, the Democrats on the other, and the American people in the middle. They have stolen our freedom, liberty, money, land, and time and have proceeded to toss them back and forth over our heads, watching us frantically bounce from one party to the other in hopes that one will be better than the other. Just stop playing. Every government we have put in place, especially during the last century, has been guilty of unmentionable atrocities. Every congressman has voted for something embarrassing and deplorable. We are also coming to a point where the accountability of our politicians is non-existent because we're left to choose between vomiting or diarrhea.

JN: Graphic, but apt! This is something many readers of this illuminated manuscript may be very tuned into, but it is also one of the central lies that spellbinds the society at large. I can turn on the TV or the radio at any point in the next 24 hours and I can hear people arguing for and against the virtues of the Democrats or the values of the Republicans, but the truth is that both parties are beholden to the same corporate "citizens" and both parties have an interest in maintaining their mutual control despite the corrosive effect it has on something that could resemble real democracy. Of course, we even PAY for this circus to continue.

NC: Paying as little tax as possible is another way not to play. I've yet to pay any income tax, because I have always made less than the limit. When the refund check comes, it goes into printing or buying new zines, printing posters, or the ABC bail fund. The government grows in proportion to our greed. You can choose vocations that provide "under the table" pay, such as work in carpentry, plumbing, drywall, electrical, selling handmade goods or produce, fixing junk and selling it, flipping cars or motorcycles, becoming highly skilled and bartering when possible, or other such endeavors.

JN: Now you are beginning to pick at the nerve. Of course, the whole wheel spins on production and consumption. This requires ever-expanding markets. Setting aside the fact of limited resources for the time being, your solutions fly in the face of the marketing and advertising industries who are in the business of producing desire where their is none, need in the midst of excess and a system of FASCIon that creates demand based on planned obsolescence. We also find that people who refuse to excessively buy and produce automatically find themselves at odds with the mainstream, if only because mainstream, bourgeois behavior almost always guarantees subservience. We've all seen our conscientious, if not radical friends, marry, have children, buy homes and suddenly have an abrupt change in values. Instead of becoming MORE cooperative, MORE communal and MORE determined to live outside the mainstream, there is renewed pressure for re-integration. This just adds to the cut-off, fearful, love-lost existence that has become de rigueur in the US: Call the cops when your neighbor's music is too loud and then worry if they know it was you.

NC: Don't call the police. Buy a pistol, permit it if you plan to carry it, and learn how to use it to defend yourself and those around you. Less calls make it harder to justify increasing the police force. Know your neighbors, and have enough of a rapport that you can go knock on their door when they're making too much noise. Be involved in your community enough to take a man aside who's abusing his wife and let him know it won't be tolerated. Grow some balls and fight your own battles.

JN: Ha. Amen. But it's easier said than done for most of us. Most of us are stuck in this false game. I just saw the 1963 omnibus film RO.GO.PA.G. The title is an acronym made from the director's last names: Rosellini, Godard, Pasolini, and Uga Gregoretti. Gregoretti's segment dealt specifically with consumerism and the way it shapes us from cradle to grave. It was both very funny and really sad.

NC: Drop out of the consumerist game. Fix stuff, pick stuff out of the trash, give things away, share your work and teach your skills, share your tools and borrow others'. Pay cash, use money orders, and avoid banks. Buying used or directly from producers, you avoid sales tax and support a local economy, rather than multi-national corporate economies. Can and dry your own food and buy in bulk. Split a large house with people you get along with. Rather that going to bars, invite people over and share your new batch of home-brewed beer or wine. Rather than restaurants, have a potluck and someone's house a few nights a week. Host movie Netflix nights, rather than going to the movies. Ride your bike or walk instead of putting wear on publicly-funded roads with your car or buying gas to make it run. Maybe open a community space, but only if you like headaches.

JN: Ha. Amen, again. These suggestions remind me of Hakim Bey's notions that even a simple dinner party can have revolutionary consequences when we are willing to leave behind mediated entertainment and consumption - along with our social masks - in favor of real, human fellowship. It may sound corny, but we need to make room in our lives to love one another. How can there be real change where there is no love? And in the face of a wild, irrational love, what guard can stand its ground?

NC: Through these strategies, we can create a separate, parallel society that pushes our values, rather than supporting the status quo. We don't fight capitalism on its own turf. When it comes to riot gear, cities, asphalt, tazers, tear gas, and clubs they're the home team, and all their fans are there to cheer them on. Our home court advantage comes into play when we are in situations to be resourceful, loving, open, and persistent. When governments try to be resourceful, they take our tax dollars and fund a study to determine what kind of bureaucracy is required to solve their problem. When they try to be open, our FOIA requests are denied half the time, and the other half, they're full of black marker. I'm still waiting to see the government show love.

JN: Again, this kind of talk brings me back to Guevara's Guerilla Warfare, or even accounts I have read of America's Revolutionary War.

NC: From another perspective, take Carlos Marghiella's The Mini-Manual of the Urban Guerrilla, in which he mentions the basics of guerrilla warfare. He suggests never to attack an enemy at their strongest point. Hang back and wait for your opportunity. You'll see the same thing in the Art of War. At protests, like this September's G20, the government is at its very strongest. Why would you wage an attack then? We waste bail money, show our asses, smash up a lot of windows of well-meaning small businesses, shut traffic down, and allow the entire Anarchist movement to be associated with juvenile, crimethinc-style violence by the media. How do you actually win that battle? Would victory be the G20 moving to a different location or happening in private, or on an island and leaving Pittsburgh in ruins (again)?

JN: Amen...

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

A Bridge on the River Why

2009-09-28T20:18:00.005-05:00

Bon soir, mes amis.

I've actually been sleeping more like a normal human being as of late. As a result, I haven't been posting as much as I do when I am in my werewolf state. The wolf likes to post. I like to write, but the final results seem to take longer when I'm not as blood-thirsty.

This post is actually an interview with Nashville photographer/musician/bon vivant and raconteur, Tony Doling. We discuss Halfway Across A Bridge: Super8 Stills, his latest exhibit at Twist Art Gallery in downtown Nashville's historic Arcade building.

JN: Why don't you tell me a little bit about your new exhibit. How did the concept evolve?

TD: I've been thinking about this show for a couple of years now. I lived in Marin County from 1999-2000. LA for 2 months in 2000. I lived across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco for almost a year, and crossed that bridge probably 50-60 times. For an individual who would like to consider himself an artist/photographer, I never took a single photo of that bridge. I mean, why bother? It's all been done. What I did do is shoot about 10 seconds of black and white Super 8 film footage by sticking my camera out of the window of a moving car while crossing that bridge. For some time now, I've wanted to display the random, incomplete images that came out of these 10 seconds. After a stunning amount of time scanning tiny little frames, that's the show that I came up with.

JN: Obviously, in Marin County the bridge takes on a number of practical, symbolic and historical meanings. How did the bridge figure into your world view during that time?

TD: As a guy who grew up in Louisiana, I was clearly affected by all the many definitive images I'd seen across the rest of the country (The Golden Gate Bridge, The Chicago and NYC skylines, The Seattle Space Needle and on and on). My only relationship was to see something become more beautiful and majestic in person than any of the media images could have attempted to portray.

JN: Still, the images of the bridge color the perception of the real thing. The real thing can sometimes become almost unreal once we have been saturated with mediated messages about what something is. In this case, images of the bridge are a cliché. What made you decide to shoot your footage at that moment? What made you roll down that window?

TD: We were shooting a lot of Super 8 at the time (my brother, Shane and I, when we had common days off) and I had a camera loaded with film and didn't want to turn around to get a legit shot, but couldn't pass up the opportunity to capture the fact that we had actually seen the thing in person. Not a lot of foresight involved.

JN: Its one thing to create some work, its another thing to put it on display. You've started showing more work formally in the last year, but what made you decide to pursue getting this show together?

TD: Again, to be totally honest, an opening came up for the main gallery at Twist, and, given the age of the footage and concept, I realized I would probably never do it if I didn't force myself to do it now.

JN: You've displayed your photos before, but this is more of a conceptual installation. Does this show represent something new in your opinion? A step up? A step out?

TD: I don't know the specific term I would give it, but it is an artistic risk for me. I like to consider myself a simple, no frills guy who doesn't take himself too seriously. I never had a "Master Plan" for this when I shot this. I was just glad to have a day off. The biggest fear for me doing something different than I've done before is that the reaction may be "Who does this guy think he is?" There's definitely a worry that people will think I'm intentionally trying to do something conceptual out of context with my character, and that the result may be insincere. I hope it's not.

JN: At first, I began to suspect that your ambivalence regarding this show was disingenuous, especially given your confidence regarding your musical projects. (Doling is a composer/musician with the Nashville-based pop-collective, Bulb). However, I was fascinated to find out that you look at this show as something separate from your other projects. And you're genuinely worried about it! (Laughs). Tell me a bit about how this is "something different" from your musical efforts.

TD: Well, first of all, I've been playing music for so long, I don't really even have to think about it. In the work I do with Todd ((Greene), a great artist here in Nashville, as well) in bulb, it's so collaborative. I write most of the music and he writes the lyrics and melodies. It's a kind of assembly line in regards to the specialization and by far the most collaborative thing I've ever done. It's a unique way of doing music, but seems to work as we are just wrapping up our 15th album. www.bulbmusic.com (thanks for the plug, Joe). With the Twist show, although I've used many great suggestions from friends, it's still just my name on it - so I feel alot more pressure. There's always a worry in my new ventures into visual arts about the fact that by displaying your work, you have to be willing to let people like it or not, and maybe even tell you that they don't like it. I need to get used to that and be okay with it.

JN: We all certainly have to find a way to continually take ground despite criticism, rejection or - even worse - disinterest. I think my solution is always to stay so busy that I don't have time to consider how others might perceive a given effort. It helps to be immersed in an expansive project. Have you been looking for a bigger project to do or did the material inspire the show?

TD: The accidental nature of the footage and the question of what to do with it definitely inspired the show. The "something bigger" idea scares the shit out of me.

JN: Will you be pursuing similar ideas/projects in the future?

TD: I have no idea where to go now. Any ideas?

JN: What will make this show “successful” in your eyes?

TD: I hope that some of the girls at the after-party might talk to me since I had stuff at the Gallery Crawl.

Doling's project will open this Saturday night, October 3 with an artist reception from 6 – 9 p.m. at Twist Gallery's space at 73 Arcade.

If you're going out of your mind searching for new music, check out the Bulb music link above and download my latest CD at your favorite digital site below.

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

Hollow Can You Go?

2009-09-14T14:30:00.006-05:00

Yo Ho Ho, YoYo's

Hope this writeywrite finds you well.

I am pleased to present you with a bit of follow-up to my recent segment on the latest Disinformation World News podcast.

The segment is called Insomnia - just like this glowing tome - and I plan on following up with extras on this blog for listeners who might want to dig a bit deeper into the 'cast segments.

This week's segment featured the early history of the Hollow Earth. My sources for the piece came from all over the Internet and from my own library. I modeled the arc of the story on this entertaining, short documentary that I am hosting at my YouTube Channel.

Here are some additional sources on The Hollow Earth:

Agartha
Edmond Halley
Hollow Earth
Hollow Earth page at the UnMuseum

If you missed the last podcast, here is a transcript of my segment about R. Crumb's new graphic project on the Book of Genesis:

When visual artist R. Crumb set out to create a new story based on Adam and Eve, a friend suggested "Why not the entire Book of Genesis?" Crumb – who had planned on a twisted tale of his own- soon found himself face-to-face with a much stranger story: the one found in the first book of the Bible itself.

Crumb first came to popular consciousness for creating timeless characters like Mr Natural and Fritz the Cat as well as the Keep on Truckin' comics that have become icons of the counter-cultural upheaval that marked the American 1960's and 70's. Although Crumb's savage satire continues to divide critics, it has engendered him to an avant garde that place him among some of the best storytellers and visual artists of his generation. Crumb's work was most recently given a mainstream resurgence with the release of Terry Zwigoff's 1994 documentary, “Crumb” which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in that same year. Ten years later, in 2004, the Guardian published one of the first articles about Crumb's Genesis project. The book is finally set to be published this fall by Norton.

Even after he'd returned to the original biblical story, Crumb still planned on the kind of satirical approach he's best known for. Imagining a tale full of slapstick hi-jinx and Yiddish humor, Crumb – who was raised Catholic – set about re-reading the Book of Genesis and was stunned by what he found.

A recent New Yorker article claims that Crumb was so stupefied by the sheer weirdness of the Biblical tale that he quickly changed his approach from a satirical send up to a straight illustration job that he applied himself to with fervent devotion.

Its easy to understand why.

The New Yorker piece included pages of Crumb's story, telling the entire tale of the creation of the world, the birth of Adam, God's creation of Eve and their eventual expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Crumb's illustrations bring the story to life in such a simple matter-of-fact style that the odd, eerie, quirks in the narration pop out in stark relief in a way that is easier to miss when simply reading the text from a Bible.
The three strangest points that are brought to the fore by Crumb's take on the tale are the identity of the Forbidden Fruit eve shares with Adam, the nature of the creature that eve meets in the Garden, and the nature of the God in the story, angry, worried, and referencing himself in the plural at the oddest moments.

If you'd like to read a great essay about apples, pick up Michael Pollan's Botany of Desire. Pollan discusses the apple's evolution from a few fruiting trees on a tiny hillside in Kazakhstan to a world wide staple. He also touches lightly on Eve's apple, wondering aloud – as many have – if actual apples could have even been available in an earthly Garden of Eden that the Bible states was located in the region of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Many have posited the notion that the apple could have actually been a fig or a pomegranate or another species more easily found in the region. However, if we are going to concern ourselves with actual geography and real botany, we must quickly admit that neither apples or pomegranates or figs, seem to be capable of the kind of world-changing, shattering of consciousness that occurred when Adam and Eve first plucked and sucked their way into the longest after-school detention of all time. But what if the fruit wasn't a fruit at all? What if it was a mushroom?

The late great Terence mckenna provides us with one of the most entertaining creation narratives of all time in his book Food of the Gods. Mckenna posits that early proto-humans, faced with receding forests and food sources, left the trees for the grass lands where they discovered the first holy trinity: cows, cowpies and psilocybin mushrooms. Another book that every loyal listener should pour over for their own satisfaction, McKenna's hypothesis goes on to claim that our ancestors who ate the mushrooms would hunt better, screw more effectively, and eventually be so overwhelmed with the spiritual tremendum revealed at the core of the mushroom's mystery that they would found the first religion, focused on the great horned female deity that represented the origin of the foodstuff that had made them something more than monkees. According to Mckenna they lived in communal villages as gentle hunters and gatherers who encouraged extended families, eschewed monogamy in favor of group bonding orgies and created the first spoken language while they sang their songs to an ancient sky.
In other words - Paradise.

Or not.

There doesn't seem to be a way to identify the Forbidden Fruit of the Bible's first book , or even to determine if it is strictly a symbol for a time when man became aware of himself in a way that he wasn't before. But what about the snake? Is the serpent in the garden to be taken literally? Symbolically? And are we even correct to think of the serpent as a serpent?

Again, dear listener, it is beyond the scope of this report to determine whether or not a real creature actually spoke to the first woman in that garden so long ago. But one thing we can't ignore is the nature of the serpent the bible itself describes. A creature that is brought weirdly to life in Crumb's new book.

The most striking detail in Crumb's Genesis is his representation of the serpent in the garden as a scaly lizard man walking upright on two legs. I was taken aback by this until I remembered my own catholic upbringing in which we learned that the serpent doesn't crawl on its belly until God curses him to do so as punishment for interfering with eve and encouraging her to eat the fruit. Most Bibles don't say so explicitly, but the implication, one that is backed up by most theologians, is that the serpent walked like a man before he was cursed.

The obvious leap – and one we will now gleefully take together – is to David Ikke and his reptilian conspiracy theory. Listeners to this program are no doubt familiar with David Ikke and his theory that the Illuminati rulers of this world are in fact not human at all. In the Wikipedia entry about Icke it is stated that “In 1999, he published The Biggest Secret, in which he wrote that the Illuminati are a race of reptilian humanoids known as the Babylonian Brotherhood, and that many prominent figures are reptilian, including George W. Bush, Queen Elizabeth II, Kris Kristofferson, and Boxcar Willie ” For Icke, the shape-shifters are aliens that have come to the earth from the constellation Draco. They are required to drink human blood to shapeshift and they have interbred with humans so that they can continue to appear normal to us, but still hold on to traces of their true DNA. Does this account for the prominence of the dragon in myths and fables from all over the world and does the serpent still whisper in our ears when we turn on the television to listen to the latest political debate? Is it possible that the Draco's do exist on Earth and that they may have been here since time immemorial interfering with man's development all along?

Crumb addresses the birth of man like he does the rest of the story of Creation – simply illustrating a strictly biblical narrative of the tale – and what a tale it is. Although there are a number of contradictions and oddities to the bible's story of the creation of man, we'll only take a look at the oddest bits. When God creates Adam he builds him out of dust and breathes life into his nostrils. This strikes me as a fairly straight fable that one would expect in any of the creation myths from around the world. However, when he creates Eve, God performs a weird surgery of sorts, causing a deep sleep to fall over Adam, removing his rib and fashioning her from what I feel comfortable referring to as his genetic material. In addition God states “Now we have made man in our own image”. Who is the we god is referring to?
Perhaps we can clear up some of these questions by referring to an earlier text.

In his Twelfth Planet series, scholar Zachariah Sitchin claims that ancient Sumerian texts tell the creation story in greater detail then the bible he claims they influenced. Sitchins interpretations state that the man was genetically engineered by aliens from the planet Niburu to mine gold that the visitors required to stabilize the atmosphere on their home planet. Sitchin would argue that we were created by Gods and that the plural references in the bible are an important clue pointing to this deeper tale. The idea that an advance race engineered humanity also provides some kind of explanation regarding why the God of the bible would need to perform some strange medical procedure to create a woman when he has been able to think the entirety of the universe into existence by evocation alone.

If the rest of Crumb's book is as thought provoking as the snippets that have been published, written up and leaked on the Internet, we are certainly in for a wild ride, one that will surely provoke more questions than it will be able to provide answers for. But – dear listeners – if you keep wondering, we'll keep asking and together we'll take a tip from the man himself and keep on trucking.

For Disinformation World News,

I'm Joe Nolan

All the podcasts are archived at Disinfo.com. Disinformation World News podcast">Check 'em out, listen to episodes you may have missed and subscribe so you won't miss any more!

Once you return to the surface world, take a listen to my latest CD and pick up a few downloads at your favorite digital music provider...

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

And Now a Special Announcement

2009-08-25T11:46:00.002-05:00

Good days and day dreams daemons and deities alike.

In my last post on this illuminated scroll, I alluded to some workings that were in the works and asked you to keep your eyes open for a new upcoming and tomorrow.

We are now at that tomorrow.

I am pleased to announce that I have been asked to contribute to the Disinformation World News Podcast. I have been a fan of this site and this 'cast for ages and I am really looking forward to contributing to this alternative news/occult/Fortean/ultracultural stew of goodness.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the site, Disinformation - IMHO - was one of the first great websites that made use of the internet as a kind of feedback engine, pointing the curious toward the ever more curious-er and creating a sort of clearing-house of counter-cultural information and energetics.

The Disinformation Podcasts are the evolution of the popular Out There podcasts that were pioneered by Raymond Wiley and Joe McFall at the University of Georgia. This show was a huge hit in the occult/weirdness scene and Disinfo smartly tapped them to develop their new podcasts about a year ago.

Check out our first episode together. My segment covers the psychedelic implications of artist R. Crumb's new Book of Genesis project that will be released this fall.

If you just can't get enough of my golden voice, take a listen to my latest CD and pick up a few downloads at your favorite digital music provider...

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

I Like Iron Mike

2009-08-14T10:40:00.004-05:00

Hello small babies,

God bless us every one.

So last night I had the pleasure of enjoying the new Mike Tyson documentary, Tyson.

Tyson is directed by James Toback, one of the most eccentric, challenging directors working today.

This is Toback's first doc, but Tyson explores themes of sexuality, racism, madness and drug use that permeate his body of work. If you are interested in exploring his work I recommend watching all of his films, but Fingers (starring Harvey Keitel as a pianist/mob enforcer) and Black and White (a sprawling, Altmanesque exploration of race and class that features Mike Tyson as himself in a supporting role) are both particularly good.

Toback - who wrote a notorious biography of NFL great Jim Brown - befriended Tyson years ago and his film gives Iron Mike a chance to tell his side of his sad, maddening, bizarre story. In fact, Tyson is mostly just our eponymous anti-hero speaking on camera, telling his own story in his own words. Toback's masterful use of split-screen, audio editing and found footage creates a gripping setting for the loquacious ex-champ to express himself - sometimes laughing, sometimes crying - in his own unique way.

Tyson comes off as a troubled man who was driven to become Heavyweight Champion of the World not through a sense of mission or a striving for greatness, but by a terrible, gnawing insecurity for his own physical safety that resulted from experiences he had as a child, growing up in a particularly brutal section of Brooklyn, NY.

The Tyson we see in the film, is poetic, thoughtful, humbled, regretful, joyous when he speaks about his 6 children and generous when he speaks about his fellow fighters. He is also, clearly a complex, sensitive man who may always be haunted by his own peculiar demons, but Tyson makes no apologies. In much the same manner that Mike used to enter the ring with no robe save for a lather of sweat or a kind of improvised tunic fashioned from a gym towel, Tyson wastes little time with formalities. This film comes out swinging and its a knockout.

If you live in Nashville, you missed your last chance to see the film last night. However, I understand the movie has already been released to DVD and is available on Netflix. Check it out.

In the meantime, here are two Tyson docs I am hosting on my YouTube channel.

This first one from ESPN's excellent Beyond the Glory series of boxing career retrospectives.

This next doc is a film made for The Learning Channel entitled The Mike Tyson story.

If all that punching has you wanting to rock out. Check out my newest CD...

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

The "I's" in Activism: A Chat with Nate C (Part 2)

2009-08-13T12:32:00.006-05:00

Ca vas, Comrades

I have been in touch with Nate again after a lull in our conversation due to his being preoccupied with a recent move to a City in the Sky.

A few how-you-dos and a couple restaurant recommendations later and we are back up to speed with our ongoing discussion. For the uninitiated, Nate is a friend of mine who recently left Nashville. More accurately, Nate was a guy I met one time at a party who I promptly had an hour of engaging conversation with concerning his upcoming wedding, his impending move and - most importantly for our purposes - his upcoming trip to Greece to make a film about the civil unrest that had erupted in Athens following the police shooting of a teenage boy that occurred last December.

To catch up on our earlier installment, simply click the "Nate C" label at the bottom of this post.

I got the last word in our last post, addressing the idea that people in America are to prosperous to revolt in the way we've recently seen in Iran. Nate touches on this idea and then we get back to our talk about Greece.

And now, back to our conversation...

The "I's" in Activism: A Chat with Nate C (Part 2)

NC: The Iranian people seem to have a pretty miserable daily existence. I'm poor in this country and I can still manage to eat out some, have a couple of drinks, and pay for an education. Iranians also believe in a god, and that leads them to believe in justice and absolutes. Religion makes people militant.

In Greece, the Greek Orthodox church runs the show. They own real estate that they rent out to the Greek Government. To believe in the State is to believe in the Church. Inversely, to not believe in the Church is to not believe in the State. Kids in school there are reading the existentialists. They read classical philosophy in middle school. They were wearing black, riding scooters, smoking cigarettes, and drinking red wine before it was cool. The educated youth are godless and stateless, unbound by any sense of dominance or other assortments of damnation.

JN: I would assume that this plays into the appeal of Anarchistic ideas among the young. There is universal yearning among all young people everywhere, you can see the literary echoes of the idea of this kind of Children's Paradise in Burrough's Wild Boys or among Peter Pan's Lost Boys. However, the Greek youth obviously have their own particular circumstances in regards to the way the State and the Church affect their lives. In America, these forces also wield tremendous power, but not officially. It's far more subtle, and ultimately, can't really be compared. Apples to Oranges. Of course, they are living within a historic shadow that is so vast and ancient that it literally stretches across the ideals, values and foundations of our own country. Contemporary Americans have a hard time comprehending the weight of that kind of history.

NC: The word paradigm starts to address the question, but it's even broader than that. The paradigms of Athens are influenced by the cultural heritage and history, and vice versa. The Athenian lifestyle would be a good starting place toward understanding.

From what I was able to gather, my perception of Athenian culture is that it's very leisurely. Wait staff in restaurants there are paid a healthy hourly wage, so rushing around to earn the highest amount of gratuity possible within a shift is alien to them. Friends stop by to visit waiters in the cafe, and they sit and have coffee together while on the clock. At cafes in the U.S., I've seen owners disable electrical outlets to keep people from "camping" with their laptops. It's not that way at all in Athens.

They take vacations regularly--little weekend excursions to an island or the countryside. That sort of thing isn't cordoned off and reserved for a week each year like in U.S. working culture.

Television is very new in Greece. The teens didn't grow up in front of it, and the mid-thirties is the beginning of the main TV-watching demographic. The difference between the TV watchers and the others is shocking; early teens are taking up the styles and lifestyles they see on MTV-- a fairly new development in Greece. When people are not watching television, they are engaged in active forms of entertainment, rather than passively watching pictures of other people being active. I would argue that this creates a predisposition toward action, such as what culminated in political action.

JN: This is an important point. As we began to address in our last conversation, revolt is rarely the result of cause and effect. There has to be an underlying predisposition that will allow for people to activate for change. There may be a demand, but a willingness to answer that call cannot be assumed. Clearly many factors go into such decisions, but the passivity of American media culture can undermine activism on many levels including physical health, education, political awareness etc.

NC: We can't make the mistake of putting too much stock in the types of entertainment available there though. Education in Greece is free. Even college is free, and without limits on the amount of time they can continue their studies if in good standing. Many young people are very well read and educated. Most speak a few languages, and know their history and government. Their "classics" are not puritanical popular novels and poems but philosophical tracts thousands of years old about free thought, democracy, and the nature of man's existence. They have a better shot from the beginning reading Plato than Edgar Allen Poe.

JN: Although I have read and enjoyed much of the Am. Lit. canon, your point is well taken. Another continuing irony is that our culture shares the same common roots, but I don't think I would've read Plato until late in high school - if not college - if it hadn't been for the library of books my father had collected. It's become such a cliche - especially in the last 8 years - but people who don't know their past are truly doomed to create wrong-headed tomorrows or at least let them be created in their name.

NC: In a town where there's a sense of a past, there's also a clearer idea of the future perhaps. Athenians want their mark on the world to be minimal, and the mark they do leave to be positive, like all healthy humans. When they see their government threatening that with their actions, they take it very seriously. An awareness of what effected change in the past makes "true believers" that believe in future reforms.

JN: There is a sense of empowerment in this kind of recollection. Successful civil actions build on themselves. I find it so odd that America is still trying to decide whether is was right for the radicals in the '60's to protest the Vietnam War.
This gets very Chomskyan. There is a constant battle over which version of history we will honor. Members of the Labor Movement literally fought and died in the streets of this country so that children were no longer employed in factories and so workers could work only 40 hours with a weekend. Today, many Americans will ignorantly talk down unions, but you can bet they'd never give up their weekends. There is a lack of understanding/knowledge about events that aren't even 100 years old.

The unrest in Greece began with the police shooting of a teenager in Athens. America isn't immune to such brutality. What is the relationship between the average Athenian and the police?

NC: Law in general in Greece is not taken very seriously. In the U.S. we have the most skilled guns in the world pointed at us every time we step out of line. The cops in Athens are twenty-something college drop outs. They lounge in the shade on street corners flirting with the one or two female soldiers stationed with the group, hassle immigrants, smoke cigarettes, drink frappes and play with the many stray dogs in the city. They don't write speeding tickets. Public intoxication, assault, etc. are par for the course. People drink beer walking down the streets and the police won't even bother to put down their cigarettes.

JN: How does the economic situation compare to America or to Guevara's Argentina and Cuba as per our last discussion?

NC: In the Cuban struggle, and the ones in Argentina where Guevara spent his formative years, people were poor, desperate, hungry, bored, and informed. That's similar to how things are in Greece.

To have a perfect storm for radical social change, we need a few factors:
1. An accessible geography. The United States is too damn big.
2. Dominant modes of transit that are communal.
3. A culture where death is a part of life, not something alien to be feared.
4. A leisurely pace that allows people to catch their breath and look around.
5. Graffiti and wheat pasting as street media forms, or access to other media.
6. Civil unrest due to unemployment--especially among the educated.
7. A widespread awareness of exactly how fucked up the system is.
8. Enough anonymity to organize effectively in underground resistance movements.
9. An awareness of, and an environment dominated by, the history of one's civilization.
10. Interaction with people from other parts of the world.

Now, what of these factors above can we change in the States? Which factor are changing on their own? Who controls the factors that seem here to stay? A good beginning would be to:
1. Turn off the television.
2. Start organizing community social events that are available at little or no cost.
3. Make education free and open to all, both practical skills and the traditional fields of study.
4. Make politics fun and interesting.
5. Liberate stigmatized words from the conventional lexicon.
6. Eat less, drink less, and ride bikes more.
7. Never pay for another permit of any sort.
8. Write letters and send books to prisoners.
9. Just like when you were fighting with your little sister, ignoring her is the best way to fight back. The government is insecure and craves your attention. "You're a terrorist!" "I know you are, but what am I?" "Stop it!!!!!" Works every time.
10. Drink, fuck, smoke, eat good food, and dance.

Amen.

More to come...

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

Miguel Angel Torres VS Brian Bowles

2009-08-09T22:07:00.004-05:00

Hey everybody,

Tonight's the night. Miguel Angel Torres and Brian Bowles are just about to meet in the cage for the third challenge to Torres' WEC Bantam Weight title.

Going into this fight, I am - of course - in favor of Torres: my vote for best pound for pound fighter in the world. However, it may not be so simple.

Bowles is less experienced than Torres, but he is undefeated, he's never gone the distance, he has proven that he can take a punch.

Torres is coming off a very close win against Mizugaki - also covered on this blog...

You can bet that Bowles studied that fight and will try to bring some strategy to the fight tonight. Mizugaki confounded Torres by taking his shattering punches better than previous opponents while also standing up Torres, pushing his own agenda, showing little fear of - and little respect for - Torres formidable striking skills.

Look for Bowles to pressure Torres right off the bat looking for a quick knockout. This won't be easy. Torres is as tough as they come.

The fighters are being announced and we're about to begin...

Round One:
Both fighters look to be in amazing condition. Neither fighter shows any signs of rushing in, both waiting for the other to make a move. A full minute has gone by with NO contact. BOWLES DROPS TORRES WITH HIS FIRST PUNCH OF THE NIGHT, but Torres immediately jumps up and appears to be pissed. Bowles gets Torres to the cage and manages a takedown. Torres attacks Bowles with heel kicks from the guard, Bowles stands up and eats a few up kicks. Bowles and Torres are back on their feet. One minute and a half to go. Bowles moves in, Torres connects with a hard right driving Bowles back. Torres chases him to the cage with a flurry of blows, but Bowles is covering up and backing up before scoring a solid right to the chin of Torres. Torres buckles and rolls to the ground. Bowles follows him down scoring right punches and elbows to the face as Torres attempts to maneuver into a position where he can utilize his up-kicks. Bowles lands a very clean right to Torres chin and he appears to go limp just before Bowles lands a series of hard lefts and gets the TKO.

UNBELIEVABLE.

Congratulations Brian Bowles. An amazing fight. First Faber loses two in a row, now Torres 17 fight winning streak comes to a close.

Fighters like Faber and Torres remain two of the most exciting fighters in the sport, but it is a credit to the evolution of mixed martial arts that even such amazing fighters can lose a given fight in a given night.

I feel like Torres amazing jab has been absent during both of the last two fights. Not to take anything from Bowles, but I think Torres can take this belt back if he is willing and able to go back to fundamentals, putting an emphasis on the techniques that lead him to the championship in the first place.

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

Radio Radio

2009-08-09T13:50:00.003-05:00

Hey y'all and then some,

Hope everyone is enjoying a lazy Sunday. I am marinating some chicken thighs in anticipation of my potluck supper later with a girl from a faraway land. We will also be frying green tomatoes and assembling ravioli while staring longingly into one another's eyes and trying not to laugh.

Wanted to say thanks again to all the good people who came out to my latest show at Ugly Mugs cafe in Nashville last night. We had a real blast and this was definitely the funner-est show I've had on this recent run of performances this spring and summer.

Here's the set list:

San Fransisco Girl
Like I never Knew You
The Wicked
See About You
Rush Hour Blues/Goodnight Irene

A few of these tunes (The Wicked, Like I never knew you) are songs I've been playing a lot lately. I am currently working on them for my new CD. Not sure when that will be done...

Also I have some fun news coming soon regarding a great podcast that I have been asked to contribute to. I should be making an announcement soon so stay tuned. In the meantime, whet your appetite on this fun interview with Austin Gandy from the Invisible College segments on Disinformation Podcasts.

I am also planning on making the recent recording of my show at the chapel in the Downtown Presbyterian Church in Nashville available online soon. There is a new site I've been wanting to investigate and I am contemplating creating a kind of bootleg clearing house where I can post live recordings, outtakes and demos for download, stream etc. Of course, I already have a similar archive on the jukebox page at my website, but this would include more material like my recent performance at the Kalamazoo Art Hop in Michigan and more.

Also, take some time to listen to my latest report for Nashville Public Radio. I recently did a story about Nashville's visual art scene, focusing on the economics of running a gallery during tough times.

Here is the transcript:

The Arts Economy – A Tale of Two Galleries (transcript)
Thursday, July 23rd, 2009

By Joe Nolan

As the economic recession continues, the always-risky art business has proved particularly vulnerable. In January, art sales were down by half at the Christies and Sotheby’s auction houses in New York. Here in Nashville, WPLN’s Joe Nolan reports on the fortunes of two local galleries trying to attract the difficult art dollar.

Audio for this feature is available here.

dotted line

(SOUND: Twist Gallery)

In downtown Nashville, the 106 year old Arcade building has become the epicenter of the city’s latest art scene. The first Saturday of every month, art fans head downtown for a Gallery Crawl, visiting the fourteen art spaces that call the Arcade and Nashville’s 5th Avenue of the Arts home.

Twist Gallery was one of the first venues to help transform the mostly-vacant Arcade, and was one of a handful of galleries that participated in the inaugural Art Crawl.

CARLISLE: “I’m Caroline Carlisle with Twist Art Gallery and we’re standing in the front room of Twist…”

The storefront gallery at Twist is displaying a show of drawings by two artists from Atlanta’s Beep Beep Gallery. Jason R. Butcher’s odd-ball narratives feature characters like a man whose his inner-child’s arms and legs are growing out of his chest. The exhibit spills into the gallery’s back room where an inventory of small retail items helps to pay the rent for Twist’s more challenging shows.

CARLISLE: “….handmade items, artist created things, t-shirts, vinyl record bowls, note cards, handmade bags and whatnot, all priced below $250. It could go from $3 on up, but we try to keep things affordable for people.”

By executing this one-two punch of challenging programming and savvy retail, Carlisle says Twist is effectively weathering a current dip in sales.

CARLISLE: “I would say we’ve seen a little bit of a slow down this year. The funny thing is we’ve seen more people in the gallery – less sales.”

Despite lean times, Twist has added an additional gallery on the Arcade’s upper level, adding to its space in the real world while it simultaneously increase their reach online.

CARLISLE: “We just recently added several features that we’re excited about. One is our shop button that takes you to our Etsy shop. I’ll click on that now.”

Etsy.com is an Internet bazaar where the gallery can sell their artist’s work online. Twist also employs a blog, social networking profiles and Twitter to carry their exhibits beyond the gallery’s walls extending the Twist brand well beyond the Arcade.

CARLISLE: “That’s just how you do it now. You can’t just have a website or just have a blog or you can’t just have a physical bricks and mortar space. We haven’t quite figured out what it is, but I think we’re trying to and I think that’s the next step.”

Another gallery contemplating its next step is only 6 blocks from the Arcade. Although the two galleries are within walking distance from one another, Ruby Green has a different, longer story to tell, one that can sometimes feel a world away from the Avenue of the Arts that Ruby Green also calls home.

CAMPBELL: “I am Chris Campbell and I’m the founding director of Ruby Green, and this is what we call the main gallery. We have divided our entire gallery space into 5 working artist studios. We’re just trying to survive and pay our bills right now.”

The studios recall the venue’s roots as a collection of ramshackle artist spaces that Campbell transformed into a non-profit art gallery in 1998. Ruby Green quickly became known as one of the largest, most engaging art gallery spaces in Nashville. The gallery’s art-for-art’s-sake programming offered challenging installations, video art and experimental live music.

(SOUND OF EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC)

The interest generated by bands like German Castro as well as the gallery’s well-attended exhibits paid off in 2005 when the Andy Warhol Foundation recognized the gallery’s achievements.

CAMPBELL: “It was one of the best things that’s ever happened to I think Nashville’s contemporary art scene personally, because we’re in the books. We’re in the history.”

The Foundation provided Ruby Green with $135,000 dollars, allowing the gallery to hire some of its loyal volunteers.

CAMPBELL: “So for a few years we had paid employees and we were able to reach out and do a lot more and serve a lot more artists. But like all non-profits you still always have to cover all of your operating costs. It’s very rare to get money that’s going to go just for rent and electricity.”

Today at Ruby Green, the main gallery has come full circle. The newly-erected walls fill the formerly spacious room, and the artist studios are linked by a common hallway. Although this latest effort is creating income for the space, the gallery is facing greater challenges.

Campbell worries that possible downtown development plans for green spaces and new Convention Center parking may mean the end of the building that is the gallery’s ten-year old home, forcing Ruby Green to find a new venue even further removed from 5th Avenue and a Gallery Crawl that they already feel a world away from.

CAMPBELL: “I was told that 5th Avenue of the arts is a big elephant and that they can only eat a bite at a time and they’re starting up at TPAC so, you know, we’re at the end of the elephant. The other end (laughs).”

As of the airing of this report, the doors were locked at Ruby Green. The gallery has put in a 30 days notice with their landlord and will be leaving their space to search for a new home in the coming weeks.

For Nashville public radio, I’m Joe Nolan.

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

Real to Reel

2009-08-04T09:59:00.004-05:00

Yes and what up?

A quick update on some of what's going down with what's coming up...

First of all, I have played several shows in the past months and have been enjoying a musically active summer playing festivals and other such gigs that have been embedded in sunny funny goings-on.

This last weekend I played at the Downtown Presbyterian Church in Nashville during the First Saturday Gallery Crawl. The 'Crawl draws 1000's of folks downtown for art gawking, free wine and live tunes.

The guys from Eastern Block played in the Arcade while David Hellams, Harvey Gerard and myself played the Church along with the Team from Welcome to 1979.

The cats from '79 are an analog recording collective/full blown studio on the west side of our fair city. The guys came in with the reel to reel and we recorded each of our sets to shiny, black tape; curling around itself like a noisy little viper. I just found out that I am also going get my filthy little hands on all the audio from my performance at the Kalamazoo art hop earlier this summer.

All of this archiving is inspiring me to find a new outlet for all this live/demo material. I recently began digitizing a bunch of stuff that I have on cassettes from the early 90's.

More on that soon.

For those of you in Nashville, I'll be doing a short set at Ugly Mugs coffee in East Nashville at 6:30 PM this coming Saturday, August 8.

See you there?

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

The "I's" in Activism: A Chat with Nate C (Part 1)

2009-07-28T16:05:00.008-05:00

Hello my people,

Welcome back.

Haven't had a chance to catch up here in awhile, so I thought it would be a good time to do something special.

In the early spring I found myself at a birthday party for a friend of mine at Nashville's Little Hamilton space. "Little Hamilton" is the name most of us use for the Firebrand Anarchist Collective located on Little Hamilton street in a warehouse/small industry district in Nashville.

The group has worked - in various forms - for years to make the space a reality and over the last year they finally did. They have become a lighthouse of sorts for Nashville's activist community, attracting punks, hippies, bike kids, Greens, anti-war and Food-Not-Bombs groups with their resources and activities.

At the party, I met a guy named Nate C just a few days before he was to be married on the pedestrian bridge that crosses the Cumberland River downtown. He was also a few weeks away from a trip to Athens, Greece where he intended to document the civil unrest that stemmed from the shooting of a young Anarchist in December of 2008 by filming footage for a short documentary.

Nate and I had a chance to touch base when he got back to The South, but he has recently departed for The Western Lands. His story, his insights and his commitment have fueled an ongoing discussion that we are continuing online and sharing via this illuminated document.

This discussion will be presented in a series of posts as our discussion continues. Please click on the "Anarchism" label at the end of this post to access the entire series.

Enjoy!

The "I's" in Activism: A Chat with Nate C (Part 1)

Joe Nolan: Hey, Nate! Why don't you start by filling us in on your story and lead us up to your trip to Athens and the situation in Greece.

Nate Cougill: I'm an activist in my mid-20's. I've been active in establishing Little Hamilton Collective and the Firebrand Infoshop in Nashville for the past two years. I think there are better ways to organize a society than a representative democracy, and I see my work as a manifestation of that belief. Rather than engaging the government and seeking to change it, I disregard the government whenever possible and work at creating a parallel society by building self-directed community projects. I believe in everyone's right to live as the please, harming noone. This is the greatest degree of freedom is the kind where nobody's exercise of freedom infringes on the freedom of others. With LHC, I've been lucky enough to find other people in this backwards Southern town that think about things in a similar way, and try to make a physical space that expresses these beliefs.

Now, you might be wondering where Greece falls into all this. Last December, a teenager was shot in cold blood by a police officer. The kid was being harrassed by two officers abusing their authority, and he didn't back down. News of what happened spread like wildfire. The kid was a professed Anarchist and was involved in organizing around Athens. Rather than considering the cost of expressing dissent, then holding signs in front of state buildings until their permits expired, Athenians took to the streets and set everything in sight on fire, including police officers and squad cars. The movement spread to other cities on the European continent. Absolut Vodka put out an ad with a picture of an Absolut bottle with a burning rag stuffed into it bearing the phrase, "Absolut Athens." There were solidarity demonstrations in the United States, but the wildfires were extinguished in the Atlantic. Aside from those who watch fringe political news on the internet, the story was a passing headline on CNN presented without an appropriate amount context.

As things stand currently in this country, police brutality is nothing out of the ordinary. We imprison a larger portion of our population than any other country in the world. The constitution has become a punchline at political fundraisers. What makes Greeks take to the streets over a single injustice, and why are people in the U.S. still sitting on their hands as they watch their country being destroyed and their birthright stolen by madmen? I went to Greece to seek out some answers and bring them back to share with anti-authoritarians in the States.

JN: Lets get a little more into Greece and the conversation we had at Little Hamilton. Tell me about your original plans to document your visit.

NC: When I was headed to Greece originally, I had planned to make a documentary about Athenian politics. There's been enough said already about the rioting last December, but nobody was talking about why there were riots in Athens over one teen's unjust death, and here in the States such an act is usually met with apathy. More important than studying the events in Greece is the study of why they happened in Greece.

Despite my best efforts, fine video camera was pretty far out of my reach, and I ended up arriving in Athens during a lull in the commotion. This was before the kidnappings and bombings started and about a month before police began shooting immigrants in Platia Omonia-- a block away from where I was staying. I thought it best to write an article about my findings.

It's still in progress, but it goes into the tactical advantages of staging political events in a place like Athens, versus a U.S. city.

JN: One thing that I find interesting is the way that this kind of unrest occurs in places like Greece, but we see it less here. There were a lot of under-covered protests leading up to the Iraq war and many large protests during the first four years of Bush, but the recent months call to mind the perfect example: Iran.

You don't see this point of view represented in our media, and - of course - the cultural context is very different, but the people of Iran are essentially risking their lives because they believe an election was stolen, just like many people in the U.S. believed after the 2000 election. However, things never reached that fever pitch here in the states.

In Che Guevara's book "Guerilla Warfare", he spends a lot of time talking about the pre-conditions for revolution. Suffice to say that its easier to revolt when you are hungry. The logic follows that Americans - even most low income Americans - don't miss enough meals to take real chances and demand fundamental changes.

Tell me more about the differences that exist between a place like Athens and a place like New York or Chicago regarding civil disobedience and revolutionary consciousness. Are the differences primarily economic or is it more complicated than that in your opinion?

(To be continued)

Check out this Wikipedia entry to brush up on the history of Anarchism in Greece.

Here is the entry's blurb regarding the riots that occurred last December:

December 2008

On December 6, 2008, a 15-year old youth was shot dead by a policeman after a verbal exchange in the libertarian stronghold of Exarchia, Athens. Within an hour, anarchists, leftists and sympathisers rioted and attacked banks, police vehicles and government offices in the area.The police refusal to apologise brought thousands to the streets for daily clashes and demonstrations. The parliament building was besieged for weeks by angry crowds. Major violence erupted during one of the marches, with rioters attacking and setting on fire many public buildings, banks and shops. Thousands of young people staged angry protests across Greece, attacking police stations in every town. Almost in every neighbourhood of Athens and Pireus police stations, banks and big businesses were firebombed. The "December Unrest", as it became known, gave a new impetus to the Anarchists, who were in the forefront of the movement.

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

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Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

Goodnight, Captain: The Death of Steve McNair

2009-07-04T15:46:00.008-05:00

In a week of high-profile deaths, none has been as shocking - or as seemingly senseless - as the apparent murder/suicide (hours later being referred to as a double-homicide) of the former Nashville Titans quarterback in downtown Nashville today.

I had been attending a Hot Chicken Festival on the other side of the Cumberland river in east Nashville. On my way home, I passed on the highway in favor of a trip over the bridge and along the waterfront to Crema to get a cup of coffee. Crema was closed for the holiday, so I began the slow meander west towards the main artery to my side of town that is 8th Avenue.

Passing by 2nd and Lea, I found that my my path towards 8th was blocked at several points by what turned out to be a number of police cars and a tangle of yellow crime scene tape.

By the time I got home I heard that Steve may have been killed. As usual, my Facebook friends and I were spreading the news before many of the local stations had even gone through with official stories.

As some of you know, I spent an earlier lifetime as a jock. For all of my dark poetics I used to be totally dedicated to playing football as a co-captain of my varsity team. A lover of the smashing and the crashing, I usually look down on quarterbacks in favor of defensive ends and pulling guards. I've never cared for the glory-boy posturing that goes along with the QB position.

Steve was different. He was everything a good quarterback should be AND he was one of the toughest dudes to ever play the game. "Country Strong" as someone once said. McNair was a stoic, heroic leader, a true inspiration and a great warrior-citizen for the city of Nashville and the Titans.

Goodnight, Captain.

If you have the time, watch this great video online at NFL dot com. It tells the story of Steve's road to the NFL. It lasts for about 7 minutes. Sorry I couldn't embed it.

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

Chicago Breakdown

2009-07-04T09:34:00.004-05:00

All then, and again...

Lots of catching up to do. First of all, thanks to all of you who have made it out to the recent shows.

If you haven't been following along regarding the latest shows, I've been playing in the Midwest and the Southeast in recent weeks. I have also begun recording a new CD in Chicago with J.P. Lilliston.

The other week we tasted a bit of shock when a flash rainstorm flooded the Chicago studio, leaving us with fingers crossed for about a week everything dried out and the body count got added up. Praise His Name, the modem and the back up - back up hard drive gave their all for the cause, leaving the computer the external hard drive and all of the tracks we'd already cut intact.

We are out of commission pending an insurance check and reconnecting the network, but we'll be back at it in no time. We've recorded the vocal/guitar/tempo skeletons of nine songs, and are sort of arranging a tenth - spoken word - number via internet and phone. We are attempting to set a recent prose piece to a musical background that resembles the Velvet Underground song "What Goes On". Check my posts from about a month ago to find my prose-poem about an aerial photo of Nashville. Those will be the "lyrics" of the "song".

We've already done rather promising "sketches" (how many "" am I gonna squeeze into this shit?) of two songs. One song - "Detroit City Boy" - is really beginning to cut sharp with gnashing layers of funky-mean slide laid down my Mr. Lilliston.

We stayed up too late nearly every night we were recording. We were putting in rather regular hours, but in the eve we ate - had a killer beef and leek soup at a Korean restaurant we were able to stroll to from Chez Lilliston - and watched movies before JP and I would retire to the studio to listen to our day's work and rap about ideas, referencing other songs that inevitably lead to JP pulling up said chanson on the iTunes...listening...scheming...

We also have a tune that is twisting into a kind of carribean/reggae vibe. JP had more than one reggae groove in mind during the Blue Turns Black project, but none of them stuck. JP's total creativity during the making of that last record is one of the reasons why we are working on this record more directly, with JP taking a producer/engineer role. In the meantime, I am vacating the Admiral's chair and getting a chance to focus a bit more on writing, singing, playing. A shared vision all around. Nice to team up with him in this way, especially when we are off to such a great start.

I posted some links to early demos weeks ago, but they've all been taken down. If you want to hear some of these latest mock-ups, contact me or leave a comment and your wish shall be granted.

Happy 4th of July

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

Neda/Nada

2009-06-24T20:31:00.005-05:00

Hello again,

God bless us every one.

Inshallah.

Love to you all. Just a quick note. And a few shouts.

First things first. All my love to the people on their feet in Iran. I wish them the best and I salute their bravery, their resourcefulness, their tenacity and their sense of justice. I am on the verge of sleep here in this American Night and I know this is a luxury you may not have at this point. Strangely, I am the one left feeling like YOU are dreaming for us both.

So be it.

That said, I'd ask my fellow fellows to keep their eyes wide and their phasers set to "skeptical". Lets take precautions to not be unwitting pawns in yet another game, Princes. Guard the sovereignty of your own conscience if you'd fight the disenfranchisement of another.

Good intentions are never good enough.

While its easy to plug into CNN and just stay there - I've been doing it a lot - there are better sources out there that are further removed from American hype and agenda. This Alternet article may be the best one I've read explaining the abuses of the electoral process in Iran.

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

Rock 'N Roll

2009-06-02T01:01:00.002-05:00

Dear lovelies,

A quick one while he's away.

Just wanted to let my Nashville homies know that I will be performing a Short Set at The Family Wash tomorrow night, Tuesday, 6/2/09.

I also want my Michigan posse to know that I will be performing at the Art Hop at the Kalamazoo Library on Friday, 6/5/09.

Come down and say hello.

I will actually be spending the weekend in Chicago, working on a new CD project with JP Lilliston.

Want a preview?

Download these demo tracks and get a sense for what we're up to:

The Ol' Double Zero

All These Things

Enjoy!

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

Reflections on an Aerial Photograph of a City on a River

2009-05-23T13:35:00.000-05:00

Reflections on an Aerial Photograph of a City on a River

I've heard it said – and who hasn't – that this city is circles within circles. I've heard it said that a city within a circle is European, and that all these rings interconnect even as other rings rise from limestone, through the earth, breaking concrete, pushing great circles of steel and glass further still into the curve of the concave sky as if to challenge the primacy of the heavens and plant a root in the clouds themselves, stating simply that – yes - The Heavens too are fallen.

A circle is a garrote and an embrace. A circle is a mistake you never learn from and its the only direction home. And two broken circles straddle a river called Cumberland like a couple of big, dumb, broken lockets, mutely pouring away their secret whispers into the green water that will circle back toward western bluegrass and shine its treasures in the blue moonlight, appearing early and foretelling the future.

A biscuit, a salty slice of pork, a thin pancake crunching on the edges, orange juice in a small glass with tiny, green-tangled leaves dancing along the painted rim, and a round plate full of circles adds up to a square meal at the start of the day for a cowboy or a conman or a gentleman from Kurdistan with a wife and a black-haired baby and a half-dream-home that he left on the other side of a circular sphere we all agree to call the Earth just to round the whole thing off.

Circle back and pick me up. Pick up the tab. We can square up later.

A circle is just points on a plane, pointing toward their common center. But is the center the source, or simply a reference: merely a point itself? A circle doesn't exist without a center, but every point is part of countless circles tangled in a Euclidean underbrush just as every center is centered in every smalling circle radiating in from the edge of nowhere infinity into

This.

Here.

Now.

Tycho crater is a round crater in the South of the roundly moon. At 108 million years it is a newborn among the rocks and came to life as a daughter of Mother Moon and her Father, Baptistina, of the family Baptistina, a cloud-like clan of asteroids that loved the blue moon and left a mark when it reached out to touch her face. Tycho's shape is perfect in the sharp shadows that rake her razor rim and she is named for an astronomer who lost half of his face beneath the heavy arc of a falling, silver broadsword.

His nose was replaced by one made of gold.

Tycho was the site of the excavation of the great monolith in 2001, five years before another Baptist monument Billy Grahamed from the middle of this circle here, completing a circle between a city of Athena and the solar reflection of Selene, kissing her country cousin in the midst of midheaven.

Will the circle

Be unbroken

By and by, Lord.

By and by...

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

Undiscovered Country

2009-05-15T00:46:00.003-05:00

God Bless us every one.

I have recently discovered a trove of treasure, a vein really, one full of heroines in the rain, firing arrows into the stars.

Moving images move at the speed of light. We sit hushed in darkened theaters while Scientists madly scratch their heads in search of Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel.

In Contempt, Godard builds a universe on a piece of ass and James Toback counts to 7 and back again using every one of his Fingers. Blake saw the Universe in a Grain of Sand when he woke from a vision of a movie camera's glass lens.

We reproduce the moving of our movements so that they may move again. Not to infantilize - to live forever in a repeating loop - but to prove the existence of parallel worlds. To show ourselves to ourselves the way some mystics see human beings as the eyes of God staring back at the blind, mad, demiurge. If the eyes are the windows to the soul, and we are the eyes of God, then surely we replicate HIS replication and the fall continues unabated.

Apples are complimented by both butter and popcorn.

Lets open the vein and see what - exactly - may pour out.

The Power of Words

- Edgar Allen Poe

OINOS. Pardon, Agathos, the weakness of a spirit new-fledged with immortality!

AGATHOS. You have spoken nothing, my Oinos, for which pardon is to be demanded. Not even here is knowledge thing of intuition. For wisdom, ask of the angels freely, that it may be given!

OINOS. But in this existence, I dreamed that I should be at once cognizant of all things, and thus at once be happy in being cognizant of all.

AGATHOS. Ah, not in knowledge is happiness, but in the acquisition of knowledge! In for ever knowing, we are for ever blessed; but to know all were the curse of a fiend.

OINOS. But does not The Most High know all?

AGATHOS. That (since he is The Most Happy) must be still the one thing unknown even to Him.

OINOS. But, since we grow hourly in knowledge, must not at last all things be known?

AGATHOS. Look down into the abysmal distances!–attempt to force the gaze down the multitudinous vistas of the stars, as we sweep slowly through them thus–and thus–and thus! Even the spiritual vision, is it not at all points arrested by the continuous golden walls of the universe?–the walls of the myriads of the shining bodies that mere number has appeared to blend into unity?

OINOS. I clearly perceive that the infinity of matter is no dream.

AGATHOS. There are no dreams in Aidenn–but it is here whispered that, of this infinity of matter, the sole purpose is to afford infinite springs, at which the soul may allay the thirst to know, which is for ever unquenchable within it–since to quench it, would be to extinguish the soul's self. Question me then, my Oinos, freely and without fear. Come! we will leave to the left the loud harmony of the Pleiades, and swoop outward from the throne into the starry meadows beyond Orion, where, for pansies and violets, and heart's- ease, are the beds of the triplicate and triple–tinted suns.

OINOS. And now, Agathos, as we proceed, instruct me!–speak to me in the earth's familiar tones. I understand not what you hinted to me, just now, of the modes or of the method of what, during mortality, we were accustomed to call Creation. Do you mean to say that the Creator is not God?

AGATHOS. I mean to say that the Deity does not create.

OINOS. Explain.

AGATHOS. In the beginning only, he created. The seeming creatures which are now, throughout the universe, so perpetually springing into being, can only be considered as the mediate or indirect, not as the direct or immediate results of the Divine creative power.

OINOS. Among men, my Agathos, this idea would be considered heretical in the extreme.

AGATHOS. Among angels, my Oinos, it is seen to be simply true.

OINOS. I can comprehend you thus far–that certain operations of what we term Nature, or the natural laws, will, under certain conditions, give rise to that which has all the appearance of creation. Shortly before the final overthrow of the earth, there were, I well remember, many very successful experiments in what some philosophers were weak enough to denominate the creation of animalculae.

AGATHOS. The cases of which you speak were, in fact, instances of the secondary creation–and of the only species of creation which has ever been, since the first word spoke into existence the first law.

OINOS. Are not the starry worlds that, from the abyss of nonentity, burst hourly forth into the heavens–are not these stars, Agathos, the immediate handiwork of the King?

AGATHOS. Let me endeavor, my Oinos, to lead you, step by step, to the conception I intend. You are well aware that, as no thought can perish, so no act is without infinite result. We moved our hands, for example, when we were dwellers on the earth, and, in so doing, gave vibration to the atmosphere which engirdled it. This vibration was indefinitely extended, till it gave impulse to every particle of the earth's air, which thenceforward, and for ever, was actuated by the one movement of the hand. This fact the mathematicians of our globe well knew. They made the special effects, indeed, wrought in the fluid by special impulses, the subject of exact calculation–so that it became easy to determine in what precise period an impulse of given extent would engirdle the orb, and impress (for ever) every atom of the atmosphere circumambient. Retrograding, they found no difficulty, from a given effect, under given conditions, in determining the value of the original impulse. Now the mathematicians who saw that the results of any given impulse were absolutely endless–and who saw that a portion of these results were accurately traceable through the agency of algebraic analysis–who saw, too, the facility of the retrogradation–these men saw, at the same time, that this species of analysis itself, had within itself a capacity for indefinite progress–that there were no bounds conceivable to its advancement and applicability, except within the intellect of him who advanced or applied it. But at this point our mathematicians paused.

OINOS. And why, Agathos, should they have proceeded?

AGATHOS. Because there were some considerations of deep interest beyond. It was deducible from what they knew, that to a being of infinite understanding–one to whom the perfection of the algebraic analysis lay unfolded–there could be no difficulty in tracing every impulse given the air–and the ether through the air–to the remotest consequences at any even infinitely remote epoch of time. It is indeed demonstrable that every such impulse given the air, must, in the end, impress every individual thing that exists within the universe;–and the being of infinite understanding–the being whom we have imagined–might trace the remote undulations of the impulse- trace them upward and onward in their influences upon all particles of an matter–upward and onward for ever in their modifications of old forms–or, in other words, in their creation of new–until he found them reflected–unimpressive at last–back from the throne of the Godhead. And not only could such a thing do this, but at any epoch, should a given result be afforded him–should one of these numberless comets, for example, be presented to his inspection–he could have no difficulty in determining, by the analytic retrogradation, to what original impulse it was due. This power of retrogradation in its absolute fulness and perfection–this faculty of referring at all epochs, all effects to all causes–is of course the prerogative of the Deity alone–but in every variety of degree, short of the absolute perfection, is the power itself exercised by the whole host of the Angelic intelligences.

OINOS. But you speak merely of impulses upon the air.

AGATHOS. In speaking of the air, I referred only to the earth; but the general proposition has reference to impulses upon the ether- which, since it pervades, and alone pervades all space, is thus the great medium of creation.

OINOS. Then all motion, of whatever nature, creates?

AGATHOS. It must: but a true philosophy has long taught that the source of all motion is thought–and the source of all thought is-

OINOS. God.

AGATHOS. I have spoken to you, Oinos, as to a child of the fair Earth which lately perished–of impulses upon the atmosphere of the Earth.

OINOS. You did.

AGATHOS. And while I thus spoke, did there not cross your mind some thought of the physical power of words? Is not every word an impulse on the air?

OINOS. But why, Agathos, do you weep–and why, oh why do your wings droop as we hover above this fair star–which is the greenest and yet most terrible of all we have encountered in our flight? Its brilliant flowers look like a fairy dream–but its fierce volcanoes like the passions of a turbulent heart.

AGATHOS. They are!–they are! This wild star–it is now three centuries since, with clasped hands, and with streaming eyes, at the feet of my beloved–I spoke it–with a few passionate sentences- into birth. Its brilliant flowers are the dearest of all unfulfilled dreams, and its raging volcanoes are the passions of the most turbulent and unhallowed of hearts.

THE END

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

Love and Might

2009-05-03T11:50:00.004-05:00

Love and Might

She walked through the kitchen on bare feet in the middle of the night searching for the knife in the dark. She touched the blade of the chef's knife and slid it back down into the block. She touched the blade of the bread knife and pulled it all the way out.

The open refrigerator illuminated the dark kitchen, its blue light bouncing off of the hard, shiny, concrete floor. In many parts of the world, the blinding blur of all of this electric would take on the glow of a metaphysical revelation: a miracle.

A sun inside of an ice cold box.

She pulled out the rest of the chocolate cake and cut a thin slice before bisecting that same slice into two pieces of sugary architecture that she could pick up with her fingers. She touched the side of the decanter and then poured the still-warm-enough coffee into the mug. The entire nation of Ethiopia rose and roared from the ceramic bowl. Hailie Sallassie prayed to his great, great grandfather - old Solomon himself - while the coffee wafted from the bowl in waves of wisdom and bitterness alike.

She slid back the door. The light, white curtains blew in, taking the shape of the night air. She tugged her short robe together at her chest and sat on the sleek white chair overlooking the avenue and the intersection at the boulevard down the block. The streets were quiet, the occasional car whispering to itself as it slid by seven floors down.

She broke the first, small piece of the moist, dark cake and dipped it into the coffee making sure to get as much of the bitter, black liquid into the cake before it became too full and broke of into the cup in soggy defeat. She held the cup near her mouth as she sucked the chocolate in.

Some scientists say that chocolate stimulates a woman's brain in a way that replicates the experience of falling in love. White people first had the privilege of tasting chocolate after the Spanish conquered the Aztecs. The Europeans in their desperation for love enslaved the Mesoamericans on cocoa plantations so that women a world away could pour the dark liquid into their powdered faces. The brown people in South America had been given the gift of the cocoa bean by Quetzalcoatl, the great, feathered deity who had been banished from heaven for sharing the Food of the Gods with mortal men. It seems the people themselves were also banished from Heaven within the boundaries of their own land, and that the Gods -everywhere- favor might over love.

She left the second piece of cake on the saucer, on the steel table next to the sleek chair and held the mug in her hands, warming her pink palms as the chocolate mellowed her expression into a somnambulant gaze focused on some distant desire. She rushed back into her own eyes when she heard the crash.

She could make out one of the cars - on the far side of the boulevard - and could see some kind of steam or smoke rising from the place where the sound came from. The white plume rose above the shop at the corner of the boulevard and then above date tree glowing green beneath the grey moon before she heard the first voices - desperate, scared and angry - disrupting her perfect love with noise and metal and the sound of an ambulance just now wailing in the distance.

At the very first, mushrooms had been served...They ate no more food; they only drank chocolate during the night. And they ate the mushrooms with honey. When the mushrooms took effect on them, then they danced, then they wept. But some, while still in command of their senses, entered and sat there by the house on their seats; they did no more, but only sat there nodding.

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

The Sleepless Film Festival Presents - The Tears of a Clown Double Feature: Renaldo and Clara and Les Enfants du Paradis

2009-04-30T13:51:00.003-05:00

Good morning, comrades.

Today - for your enjoyment - another chapter in our ongoing programming at The Sleepless Film Festival. Today's pick will be Bob Dylan's 1975 epic, Renaldo and Clara.

More than just a concert film, Renaldo' clocks in at nearly 4 hours and is packed with improvised scenes featuring Mr. Zimmerman as well as the revolving cast of characters that peopled the fabled Rolling Thunder Revue tour, including: Joan Baez, Scarlett Rivera, Roger McGuinn, Ramblin Jack Elliot, Allen Ginsberg, Ronnie Hawkins, Sam Shepard and others.

Shepard was brought on as a screenwriter for the film, but ended up spending most of the tour holding on for dear life, taking enough notes to pen his classic Rolling Thunder Logbook - a great companion to the film.

Dylan is ultimately credited with writing and directing the film, and the influence of Marcel Carne's Les Enfants du Paradis is evident throughout - particularly in Dylan's infamous use of whiteface, clown makeup.

As a special treat, we are also including Carne's classic for a kind of Dylanesque double feature. But first, here is the films synopsis from the good people at Film Threat:

BOOTLEG FILES 127: "Renaldo and Clara” (1977 Bob Dylan nightmare).

LAST SEEN: We cannot confirm the last public screening.

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None.

REASON FOR DISAPPEARANCE: It stinks.

CHANCES OF SEEING A DVD RELEASE: Not likely.

BOOTLEG OPPORTUNITIES: Scratch and it will surface.

Being a film critic, I’ve been able to see an awful lot of movies. And, also, I’ve seen a lot of awful movies. But when it comes to the movie misfires, there is always a nagging question: when do you hit the bottom of the barrel? Surely there must be one film that can stand out as being the very, very, very worst thing ever made.

Well, I found the bottom of the barrel. And it is occupied by “Renaldo and Clara,” the 1977 monstrosity that marked the film directing debut of Bob Dylan. Yes, that Bob Dylan. The one-time Robert Zimmerman put down his guitar, picked up a viewfinder, and brought forth something which could charitably be described as the single biggest waste of celluloid in the entire history of motion pictures.

Unlike classic baddies such as “Plan 9 from Outer Space” or “Manos: The Hands of Fate,” “Renaldo and Clara” does not lend itself to the so-bad-it’s-good charm. You cannot laugh along, MST3K-style, at its awfulness. Instead, you are left numb, dumb and completely baffled at the thorough incoherence and painful lethargy of this endeavor. If I could, to borrow a Cher lyric, turn back time – well, I would turn back the four hours (yes, four hours) of the “Renaldo and Clara” running time that I put myself through.

Four hours of what? Even after watching it, I have no idea what the f**k the movie is supposed to be about. Bob Dylan plays Renaldo and his then-wife Sara plays Clara. Who these people are and what they are supposed to do is never defined. Three-hundred-pound Ronnie Hawkins plays Bob Dylan and Ronee Blakely (fresh off her Oscar-nominated debut in “Nashville”) plays Sara Dylan. Joan Baez is also the Woman in White – if only because she wears white in the movie. Baez’s character and Sara are at odds over Renaldo’s love, or maybe not – this is not clear in Dylan’s mishmash of a screenplay.

Much of the footage was shot during Dylan’s now-legendary Rolling Thunder tour, although the reasons for Dylan’s eccentric on-stage appearance (wearing plastic masks or white paint on his face) is never explained or entirely clear.

In the course of the film, folk singer David Blue plays pinball alongside a swimming pool (huh?) while talking about New York’s Greenwich Village in the late 1950s and 1960s. A group of street preachers hector indifferent New Yorkers about the alleged end of the world. A belly dancer entertains the patrons of a restaurant by wiggling her solar plexus to “Hava Nagila,” and she is followed by a sleazy lounge singer performing “Wilkommen” from the musical “Cabaret,” who is then followed on stage by Allen Ginsberg. Then we cut back to David Blue at his pinball machine. Then we go to an Indian reservation. Then Ginsberg returns to read poetry.

It is not surprising that Steve Pulchalski, the editor of Shock Cinema, described the film as being “edited together with a Weed Eater.” Midway through the movie, the action switches into a concert benefit for Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, the boxer who was framed for murder in a controversial and long-running criminal case. Some scenes later, Harry Dean Stanton turns up as a convict escaping from prison. Joan Baez and Sara Dylan later turn up in a bordello dressed like prostitutes. Dylan (the real one, not Ronnie Hawkins) sings part of “House of the Rising Sun.” Allen Ginsberg returns to recite his classic poem “Kaddish” while a woman in Gypsy clothing massages his head. David Blue comes back later to play more pinball (perhaps he thought he was filming “Tommy”?). Allen Ginsberg returns again to dance (to what?). The film closes with a black woman, who is never identified and who played no part in the previous four hours, singing about “castles in the shifting sands.”

Every now and then, Dylan sings something. Often the performances are magical (his cover of Hank Williams’ “Kaw-Liga” plus “Tangled Up In Blue” and “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” are standouts). But more often than not, he is a sullen and shadowy presence. A variety of oddballs ranging from Sam Shepard (in his film debut) to Ramblin’ Jack Elliot to Roger McGuinn pop up here and there, with no clear purpose.

(This brief description fails to take into account the endless and pointless symbolism of such objects as flowers, horse-drawn carriages, rooms full of senior citizens and Jack Kerouac’s grave – all of which figure prominently).

Dylan’s relationship with cinema was never entirely satisfying. He loathed the documentary “Don’t Look Now” that enshrined him as a 60s icon, dismissing it as “somebody else’s movie.” His acting debut in Sam Peckinpah’s “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid” was widely considered to be a disaster and an earlier attempt at directing, the 1972 documentary “Eat the Document,” was equally egregious. Deciding to take the reins and be his own director and writer may have seemed like a good idea, but in fact it was a disaster since “Renaldo and Clara” turned out to be little more than a rambling wreck of a home movie.

In an interview with Playboy timed to the film’s release, Dylan blithely declared “Renaldo and Clara” to be a “very open movie.” He also acknowledged the film (much of it financed by himself) ran far beyond its projected $600,000 budget – Dylan told the Playboy interviewer that his previous two tours existed to raise funds for this project.

“Renaldo and Clara” opened to overwhelmingly hostile and bewildered reviews, although a few critics (most notably David Sterritt of the Christian Science Monitor) were charitably in praising its uncommon approach to linear storytelling. Audiences, though, stayed away in droves. Even the thousands who packed the “Rolling Thunder” tour wouldn’t pay to see Dylan on the big screen. Word of mouth proved so fatal that Dylan withdrew the film and cut two hours from its running time. But the trimmer “Renaldo and Clara” was still a hodgepodge horror and the film was withdrawn.

To date, Dylan has refused to allow “Renaldo and Clara” to have a commercial home video release. Bootlegs of shaky quality can be found, and their origins are traced to a single telecast on the British Channel 4 some years ago.

Dylan’s failure with “Renaldo and Clara” did not end his film work. He turned up in 1987 as the star of “Hearts of Fire” and co-wrote and starred in the 2003 fiasco “Masked and Anonymous.” Incredibly, Dylan eventually won an Academy Award – for his song “Things Have Changed” in the 2000 film “Wonder Boys.” The idea that the man who made “Renaldo and Clara” could possess an Oscar is enough to bring illness to anyone who loves movies..

And now - Renaldo and Clara...

Our second feature - Marcel Carne's Les Enfants du Paradis - also deserves an introduction. This one comes from our pal at the Chicago Sun-Times, Mr. Roger Ebert:

All discussions of Marcel Carne's ''Children of Paradise'' begin with the miracle of its making. Named at Cannes as the greatest French film of all time, costing more than any French film before it, ''Les Enfants du Paradis'' was shot in Paris and Nice during the Nazi occupation and released in 1945. Its sets sometimes had to be moved between the two cities. Its designer and composer, Jews sought by the Nazis, worked from hiding. Carne was forced to hire pro-Nazi collaborators as extras; they did not suspect they were working next to resistance fighters. The Nazis banned all films over about 90 minutes in length, so Carne simply made two films, confident he could show them together after the war was over. The film opened in Paris right after the liberation, and ran for 54 weeks. It is said to play somewhere in Paris every day.

That this film, wicked, worldly, flamboyant, set in Paris in 1828, could have been imagined under those circumstances is astonishing. That the production, with all of its costumes, carriages, theaters, mansions, crowded streets and rude rooming houses, could have been mounted at that time seems logistically impossible (''It is said,'' wrote Pauline Kael, ''that the starving extras made away with some of the banquets before they could be photographed''). Carne was the leading French director of the decade 1935-1945, but to make this ambitious costume film during wartime required more than clout; it required reckless courage.

Despite the fame of ''Children of Paradise, most of the available prints are worn and dim. It used to play every New Years' Day at Chicago's beloved Clark Theater, and that's where I first saw it, in 1967, but the 1991 laserdisc was of disappointing quality, and videotapes even worse. Now the film has been released in sparkling clarity on a Criterion DVD that begins with a restored Pathe 35mm print and employs digital technology to make the blips, dirt and scratches disappear. It is likely the film has not looked better since its premiere. There are formidably informative commentary tracks by Brian Stonehill and Charles Affron.

The film's original trailer (on the disc) calls ''Children of Paradise'' the French answer to ''Gone With the Wind.'' In its scope and its heedless heroine, there is a similarity, but the movie is not a historical epic but a sophisticated, cynical portrait of actors, murderers, swindlers, pickpockets, prostitutes, impresarios and the decadent rich. Many of the characters are based on real people, as is its milieu of nightclubs, dives and dens, theaters high and low, and the hiding places of the unsavory.

Carne plunges us directly into this world with his famous opening shot on the ''Boulevard of Crime,'' which rivals the ''street of dying men'' scene in ''GWTW,'' reaching seemingly to infinity, alive with activity, jammed with countless extras. This was a set designed by the great art director Alexander Trauner, working secretly; the credits list his contribution as ''clandestine.'' To force the perspective and fool the eye, he used buildings that fell off rapidly in height, and miniature carriages driven by dwarves. The street is a riot of low-life. Mimes, jugglers, animal acts and dancers provide previews outside their theaters, to lure crowds inside. One of the first attractions we see is advertised as ''Truth.'' This is the elegant courtesan Garance, who revolves slowly in a tub of water, regarding herself naked in a mirror. The water conceals her body, so that she supplies ''truth, but only from the neck up.'' This is also what she supplies in life.

Garance is played by Arletty (1898-1992), born as Leonie Bathiat, who became a star in the 1930s and was, truth to tell, a little old to play a sexual temptress who mesmerizes men. Like Marlene Dietrich, to whom she was often compared, Arletty's appeal was based not on fresh ripeness but on a tantalizing sophistication. What fascinates men is that she has seen it all, done it all, admits it, takes their measure, and yet flatters them that she adores them. Even cutthroats fall under her spell; when the criminal Lacenaire tells her ''I'd spill torrents of blood to give you rivers of diamonds'' she looks him in the eye and replies, ''I'd settle for less.''

Around Garance circle many of the movie's most important characters. The mime Baptiste (Jean-Louis Barrault) sees her from her stage, defends her in pantomime against a pickpocket charge, is rewarded by a rose, and falls for her. So does Frederick Lemaitre (Pierre Brasseur), as an actor who dreams of doing something good--perhaps Shakespeare. And Lacenaire (Marcel Herrand), who with his ruffled shirt, curly hair, villain's mustache and cold speech is the Rhett Butler of the piece. And the Count Edouard de Montray (Louis Salou), who thinks he has brought her but discovers he was only renting.

It is possible that Garance truly loves the innocent Baptiste, who triumphs in a bar brawl and brings her home to his rude rooming house, where he rents her a room of her own and retires separately for the night. But Frederick, who lives in the rooming house, has no such scruples--and, for that matter, Baptiste is no saint. He marries the theater manager's daughter, sires ''an abominable offspring,'' in the words of Pauline Kael, and cheats on his wife by still loving Garance. Lacenaire, who strides through the underworld like a king, basking in his reputation for ruthlessness, thinks he can have Garance for the asking (''you are the only woman for whom I do not have contempt''), but it is the Count whose money makes her his mistress. When Lacenaire pulls back a drapery so that the Count can see Garance in the arms of Frederick, so many men think they have the right to her that the actor observes, ''Jealousy belongs to all if a woman belongs to none.''

Most of the movie is frankly shot on sets, including exteriors. A misty dawn scene involving a duel provides a rare excursion outside Paris. He had ''an eye for the sad romance of fog-laden streets and squalid lodging houses,'' David Thomson writes. His characters live artificially in the demimonde, actors who are always on stage; if we meet a street beggar, like the blind man Fil de Soie (Gaston Modot), we are not much surprised to find he can see well enough indoors.

Carne's screenplay was by his usual collaborator Jacques Prevert; they not only set their story in a theatrical world but divert from the action to show the actors at work. Kael counts ''five kinds of theatrical performances,'' and they would include Baptiste's miming and a scene from ''Othello'' that provides oblique reflections on the plot. It is Baptiste whose art leaves the greatest impression. Jean-Louis Barrault (1910-1994), then a star at the Comedie Francais, is first seen in clown makeup, glumly surveying the Boulevard of Crime, brought to life only by his mimed defense of Garance. Later, he stages his own extended mime performance--only to see, from the stage, Garance flirting in the wings. No one's trust is repaid in this movie.

If Carne was France's leading director, Prevert was the leading screenwriter, at a time when writers were given equal billing with directors. They both continued to work for decades--Prevert into the 1960s, Carne into the 1980s--but never surpassed ''Children of Paradise.'' Indeed, it was precisely this kind of well-mounted, witty film that was attacked by the young French critics of the 1950s who later became known as the New Wave. They wanted a rougher, more direct, more improvisational feel--theater not on a stage but in your face.

If the Cannes festival were to attempt again today to choose the best French film ever made, would ''Children of Paradise'' win? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Just as American audiences prefer ''Gone With the Wind'' or ''Casablanca'' while the critics always choose ''Citizen Kane,'' at Cannes the palm might go to Godard or Truffaut, or Jean Vigo's ''L'Atalante.'' But ''Children of Paradise,'' now finally available in a high-quality print and ready to win new admirers, might have a chance. Few achievements in the world of cinema can equal it.

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

Oh, My My! Oh, Hell Yes! - Observations on a Music City Marathon

2009-04-25T09:29:00.010-05:00

I woke up this morning to the sound of thunderous applause.

After a long, hard week of suffering with insufferable allergies to everything green and growing here in this spring in The Old South (as I type on my front porch this
illumined screen is beginning to glow like deep sea algae as it is slowly - but resolutely - covered in a fine mist of tree pollen) I spent the night sleeping on my living room couch.

Along with the green stuff, we have had an early heat wave that has seen temperatures pushing toward the 90's and - rather than crank up the AC in order to cool down my 100 year old, upstairs apartment - I opted to curl beneath the cool currents from my open windows, basking in the moonlit breezes, listening to the Internet streaming away some nonsense about reverse-engineered UFO technology, benevolent aliens, human DNA and intergalactic brotherhood.

I woke up this morning to the sound of thunderous applause.

The annual Music City Marathon was passing by my window this morning as it does every year here on this, The Street of Dreams. Annually, Belmont Blvd. is suddenly awash in a sea of sweaty strivings. Seemingly countless numbers of Teams in Training and Fitness Walkers and Hardcore Runners and Svelte Seniors and any number of otherwise sane individuals create any number of excuses to reenact the brave deeds of that ancient messenger at Marathon.

The Battle of Marathon (Greek: Μάχη τοῡ Μαραθῶνος, Māche tou Marathōnos) took place in 490 BC during the first Persian invasion of Greece. It was fought between the citizens of Athens, aided by Plataea, and a Persian force commanded by Datis and Artaphernes. It was the culmination of the first attempt by Persia, under King Darius I, to subjugate Greece. The first Persian invasion was a response to Greek involvement in the Ionian Revolt, when Athens and Eretria had sent a force to support the cities of Ionia in their attempt to overthrow Persian rule. The Athenian and Eretrian had succeeded in capturing and burning Sardis, but was then forced to retreat with heavy losses. In response to this raid, the Persian king Darius I swore to have revenge on Athens and Eretria.

Once the Ionian revolt was finally crushed by the Persian victory at the Battle of Lade, Darius began to plan to subjugate Greece. In 490 BC, he sent a naval task force under Datis and Artaphernes across the Aegean, to subjugate the Cyclades, and then to make punitive attacks on Athens and Eretria. Reaching Euboea in mid-summer after a succesful campaign in the Aegean, the Persians proceeded to besiege and capture Eretria. The Persian force then sailed for Attica, landing in the bay near the town of Marathon. The Athenians, joined by a small force from Plataea, marched to Marathon, and succeeded in blocking the two exits from the plain of Marathon. Stalemate ensued for five days, before the Athenians (for reasons that are not completely clear) decided to attack the Persians. Despite the numerical advantage of the Persians, the hoplites proved devastatingly effective against the more lightly armed Persian infantry, routing the wings before turning in on the centre of the Persian line.

The defeat at Marathon marked the end of the first Persian invasion of Greece, and the Persian force retreated to Asia. Darius then began raising a huge new army with which he meant to completely subjugate Greece; however, in 486 BC, his Egyptian subjects revolted, indefinitely postponing any Greek expedition. After Darius then died, his son Xerxes I re-started the preparations for a second invasion of Greece, which finally began in 480 BC.

The Battle of Marathon was a watershed in the Greco-Persian wars, showing the Greeks that the Persians could be beaten; the eventual Greek triumph in these wars can be seen to begin at Marathon. Since the following two hundred years saw the rise of the Classical Greek civilization, which has been enduringly influential in western society, the Battle of Marathon is often seen as the pivotal moment in European history. For instance, John Stuart Mill famously suggested that "the Battle of Marathon, even as an event in British history, is more important than the Battle of Hastings". The Battle of Marathon is perhaps now more famous as the inspiration for the Marathon race. Although historically inaccurate, the legend of a Greek messenger running to Athens with news of the victory became the inspiration for this athletics event, introduced at the 1896 Athens Olympics, and originally run between Marathon and Athens. (From our good friends at Wikipedia)

Unlike most years - when such enthusiasms rouse me to waking just before they lull me back to The Shore of All Dreams - I popped right up, started the espresso - His Name Be Praised - and jumped into what turned out to be an ice-cold shower. Must-call-landlord...

Dear Landlord, please don't put a price on my Soul...

I made my way down to the Street of Dreams in a green T-shirt and over-sized cargo shorts, only to find that I was wearing the exact same outfit as a four-year-old kid who was standing near the edge of the street, yelling with great enthusiasm - if not eloquence - slurping on a fugitive, orange popsicle that was making a break for it all the way up to his sharp, bird-like elbows. He continued to CAW like an alabaster crow beneath his neat, Aryan crew-cut. Whether in praise or judgment I will never know.

That's when I heard the music.

One of the built-in features of Nashville is the addition of Live Music to every event you can possibly imagine. Even a strenuous athletic event of ancient origin is not spared this sonic pairing - no matter how incongruous.

I strolled up the street, mug in hand, toward the Bi Rite grocery, registering more moments of people-watching gold than it is possible to enumerate in this desperate scratching. As I made my way south, the dull throb of the music began to get clearer as the shorter frequencies began to match the pace of their big-bottomed brothers and the rhythm of the racers began to move - slighty in, and then slighty out of - time with Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl". Suddenly I had a craving for a Natural Light and I had half a mind to go back and hang out with my co-ed neighbors who seemed to have taken to the lawn - along with more than one cooler - at the crack of the crack of the dawn.

That's when it happened.

As soon as I had recognized the old hippy chestnut it ended only to be followed by the most impressive feat of athletic fury I am sure to witness all day. As soon as Van The Man's "La La's" went bye-bye, they were replaced by the unmistakable strains of AC/DC's "You Shook Me All Night Long"! Impossible! This kind of segue is the musical equivalent of pole vaulting over a small building only to nail a perfect landing after picking off a bird-on-the wing at 50 yards with a biathalon rifle on the way down. For the first time - in a long time - I could feel the presence of true glory.

Again, His Name Be Praised.

As I write this, the race is coming to a close on my street. One side of the Boulevard is filled with the straggling walkers who make up the happy, hopeful end of the line. There is a group of hula hoopers coming down the way, lead by my pal Raquel. I thought that I had missed them, but - now that I see this madness - that would've been impossible. I'm looking for familiar faces, but I can't make out anyone in that sea of white t-shirts, pink hoops and unbridled enthusiasm.

Godspeed, good women.

The band seems to have stopped now. The last song I recognized was Tom Petty's "Last Dance With Mary Jane". An appropriate ditty for the reenactment of the deeds of a heroic warrior from an ancient, brave age? Probably not. An interesting suggestion for a silly street on a sunny Saturday soaked in morning dreams and the sound of the little white trucks picking up the little red cones that won't mark another mile until next year?

Sure enough.

(Right on cue, the coeds next door crank it up loud...)

He came from somewhere back in her long ago
The sentimental fool dont see
Tryin hard to recreate
What had yet to be created once in her life

She musters a smile
For his nostalgic tale
Never coming near what he wanted to say
Only to realize
It never really was

She had a place in his life
He never made her think twice
As he rises to her apology
Anybody else would surely know
Hes watching her go

But what a fool believes he sees
No wise man has the power to reason away
What seems to be
Is always better than nothing
And nothing at all keeps sending him...

Somewhere back in her long ago
Where he can still believe theres a place in her life
Someday, somewhere, she will return

She had a place in his life
He never made her think twice
As he rises to her apology
Anybody else would surely know
Hes watching her go

But what a fool believes he sees
No wise man has the power to reason away
What seems to be
Is always better than nothing
Theres nothing at all
But what a fool believes he sees...

(What a Fool Believes, The Doobie Brothers)

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

The Sleepless Film Festival Presents - Grindhouse Lotus Venoms: A Shaw Brothers Double Feature

2009-04-21T20:29:00.012-05:00

Hola bueno.

Ok,

so,

It is SPRINGTIME in The Old South. This means I am strolling through a wonderland of tulips and other flowers I don't know the names of. There are these sorta droopy ones that come in both yellow and purple. They are also pretty - however - they lack the stately architecture of the simple, sensual tulip.

Another thing that the SPRINGTIME has wrought is a delightful Westerly breeze that I engineer into an Easterly one to discourage my neighbor's cigarette smoke from creeping through my kitchen window. This yangitty-yang flow also invests my daily SUN SALUTATIONS with that extra level of CHI that my ardent, firey posturings demand.

However, I've slacked off today, as SPRINGTIME has also brought allergy season. I have terrible allergies. They are so bad that I am never sure if I have a cold or just allergies when I feel this way. My head is so crazy stuffed and dizzy it is almost making me feel rather giddy...almost. In addition, my body aches badly enough that it requires effort to turn a key in a lock. Seriously. Those of you who know me well know that I am usually the type who'd be more likely to absent-mindedly pull the knob off a door, so you see the depth of my suffering.

Yes you can send chicken soup via PayPal...

Anyway, needless to say, I am down and out and just trying to rest and stay full of liquids. I caught up on all my NetFlix today and decided to share the wealth. Regardless of whether you are sick or not, you may be in need of a Grindhouse-style Kung Fu double feature.

While I was a kid in Michigan, I would watch "Martial Arts Theatre" late at night on Saturdays. I remember flipping back and forth between MAT and SNL. The late nights and bad dubbing served me well. Years later - when Shaw Brothers/Golden Harvest titles became a badge of hip - I was thoroughly educated and well-prepared to speak in great depth about "Pei Mei's vital nerve" the "animal styles of the Five Deadly Venoms" and that "kid with the Golden Arms".

Here are two Shaw Brothers classics for you to enjoy. If you've never seen these, I am jealous of the joy you are about to experience. If you're an old veteran, enjoy this trip down memory lane.

The Fist of the White Lotus

Originally titled Clan of the White Lotus, this 1980 Shaw Brothers classic was released as Fist of the White Lotus in the West. In Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill films, the character of Pei Mei appears as Kiddo's instructor. Pei Mei is played by Lo Lieh in Fist', but Lieh's Fist' co-star - Gordon Liu - reprised the role for the Tarantino revenge tale.

Five Deadly Venoms

Five Deadly Venoms is another Shaw Brothers Kung Fu Classic. Released in 1978, The' Venoms rather convoluted plot involves 5 warriors - each with a different animal-style of Kung Fu - who may or may not be attempting to steal a fortune from the former colleague of their dying teacher. The flick is referenced by the Wu-Tang Clan and World of Warcraft. Kill Bill's Deadly Viper Assassination squad is also a not-so-veiled reference.

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Love,
Joe Nolan

Torres v.s. Mizugaki - Round By Round

2009-04-05T21:10:00.006-05:00

Bonjour et bon soir, mes amis.

As you may know Miguel "Angel" Torres will be fighting tonight, defending his WEC championship against Takeya Mizugaki. This is how the fight is sized up on the Fox Sports site:

CHICAGO - Watching the way bantamweight champion Miguel Torres glared across his right shoulder at Takeya Mizugaki every time the challenger spoke at Friday's WEC 40 pre event press conference, you would have thought he wanted to tear the Japanese fighter apart right then and there. Maybe that's because he did.

"I want to fight him now," Torres (35-1) told InsideFighting after the press conference ended.

"I hadn't seen him. I don't know anything about him and to be able to stand three feet away from him I wanted to like jump over the podium and choke him while he was talking. I wanted to so bad."

Torres' menacing game face is quickly becoming the stuff of legend. It certainly had Reed Harris talking Friday afternoon. The World Extreme Cagefighting typically straps title belts on to the waists of champions after their wins inside the cage. But after a recent successful Torres defense he found the task more scary than routine.

"I went over with his belt after the fight to put it on him, tapped him on the shoulder and he turned around with this look," Harris remembered while recreating his own fear-filled expression from the moment. "He scared me and I took a step back. �Whoa!' One of Miguel's guys then came over to me and said, 'He'll be fine in a couple minutes.' He just gets in a zone when he's fighting."

As followers of this blog know, when I am not working on my short film of my one-act play about Charles Baudelaire in the Confederate South I can usually be found in various stages of undress, in my kitchen, slicing garlic with a high G piano wire or repairing one of my prized powdered wigs. Otherwise, there is a good chance that I am eating sandwiches in the tub, listening to the TV in the other room playing the Director's Commentary of Starship Troopers.

However, once I finally settle down, I like to build a nest out of antique jewelry in the middle of my living room and practice my wrestling bridging, keeping my form both supple and limber.

Nothing goes with this better than a double espresso and Mixed Martial Arts, and I believe tonight's fight will be the most important MMA contest before Uriah Faber rematches Mike Brown.

Brown took Faber's belt in a TKO at their last meeting. Check out Brown here in another contest:

Brown vs. Garcia - Watch more Funny Videos

Many people think Uriah is the best pound-for-pound fighter out there. Faber is fantastic, but Torres gets my vote as THE BEST FIGHTER IN THE WORLD.

The fight's about to begin.

I am going to blog as the fight goes on, so I can share my reactions blow by blow.

The fight will take place in Chicago. This is de facto home court for East Chicagoan, Torres.

Pre Fight:

Miz makes his entrance. He looks focused and cool. He has a beautiful face for a fighter, and he carries himself with the quiet confidence we see in many Japanese fighters: an elegant bravado.

The corner man applies a liberal coat of petroleum jelly to Miz' eyes and brow. Annointed, the Miz prays briefly before entering the cage.

Torres enters with an intensity that appears to find his dark, focused eyes on the verge of tears. Again, Torres seems ferocious. Mir just commented that "Torres is seriously looking to hurt you at all times." That said, this guy is a TOTAL CLASS ACT - and a mean motherfucker on The Octagon.

Tail of the Tape: Torres'reach is -as always- something to contend with. He has 8 inches on Miz. Torres also has insanely long legs. In fact MMA should consider length of leg in their tape stats. It makes a huge difference.

Round 1:

Round starts slowly. Miz begins to throw several fearless combos.
Torres is n't throwing his jab like usual. Torres complains of a low kick, but is unhurt. Miguel throws several knees in a clinch with Miz and gets slammed down on his back. Both fighters are throwing many punches, but both are slipping both with great movement, head/movement. Torres is leading with a left round kick, but to little real effect. Torres' trademark jab is nowhere to be found. I give the first round to Miz.

Round 2:

Torres slips an recovers quickly. Miz is the aggressor again. He's not doing a lot of damage, but he is running the fight. Miz continues to make points on the inside. Miz lands a great right. The best punch of the night. Miz starts eating punches. There is a sense of blood in the water. Torres pins him on the cage. Miz turns him out, but is quickly pinned again as Torres unloads knees to the Miz' midsection. Miz is tired. Torres loses his mouthpiece and the fighters need to start again. Torres is throwing knees in baroque arcs that are a kind of dance of damage raining down against the ribs of the Miz. Torres wins the round on a strong second half.

Round 3:

Starts slow. Torres looks like a cobra. Mir raves about a left hook that all but misses. Miz lands some good shots after Torres kicks his front leg. Torres misses a gullotine attempt. Miz continues being busy with his combo punching. Mir goes crazy for a lame punch to the top of Miz' head only to immediately have the fight stopped to investigate a nasty cut over Torres' right eye that seems to have come from a Miz' left. This could be a big deal. Torres pushes the pace and Miz answers back. Torres in beginning to pour it on as his elbows come into play. The Miz lands a great combo of punches and ends with knee to Torres face which is again awash in red. The crowd begins to cheer TORRES. TORRES. TORRES. The round ends. Miz wins another.

Round 4:

Miguel goes into round with huge gobs of jelly on his cut. Where is Torres' jab? Torres takes the fight to the ground, but Miz escapes. Mir suggests that Torres may need to take the fight to the ground. Torres is really losing this fight at this point. (3:09) Mir is saying that Torres is landing better shots as Torres bleeds all over Miz. Torres is owning this round. Keeping Miz against the cage indefinitely. Knees and punches. Miz almost takes Torres back after Miguel misses an elbow but Torres drops for kneelock and the pair divide. Torres continues to get the worst of these largely ineffectual exchanges.

Round 5:

I can't believe I am saying this, but Miz has this fight won if Torres can't knock him out in this round. Mir is defending Torres, but we seem to be watching different fights. Torres rocks Miz with three of the best punches of the night. Mir still acting like Torres is ahead on all the cards. Torres throws his only good jab of the night with three minutes left. Torres pins Miz on cage, but is rather ineffectual and he ultimately falls to his back in the scuffle. Torres pins Miz on cage again after some open punching. One minute to go and both fighters seem tired. Miz mocks Torres. Both fighters punch it out hard for the last 20 seconds.

The lack of commentary at the end of the fight has to do with the fact that Mir et al. are trying to figure out how NOT to say that Torres just lost this fight.

I doubt the judges will go this way, but Mizugaki just won this fight.

Torres never even started to establish his jab in a fight that stayed on its feet. He underestimated Miz and got beat.

Here is the decision...

Miguel wins a unanimous decision. This is not correct or just. I love Torres but he lost tonight.

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The Last Days of Pompeii

2009-04-01T10:46:00.003-05:00

Hola, Amigos!

If you have been enjoying these little stories I am writing here, encourage me with a comment :)

If you hate these, I'll understand. Just tell me to stop.

THE OL'SARGE

In all his days, he'd never seen nothin' like this.

The Sarge wiped his brow with a hard, dirty, tan forearm - the grime running like fast, gray tears down either side of his face. The smoke bombs draped the whole scene in Tibetan prayer flags.

Drifting Yellow.

Rising Red.

"So, this is the bardo...?"

*
Chikkhai bardo (Tibetan): is the fourth bardo of the moment of death. According to tradition, this bardo is held to commence when the outer and inner signs presage that the onset of death is nigh, and continues through the dissolution or transmutation of the Mahabhuta until the external and internal breath has completed.
*

2) HISTORICAL USAGE OF DATURA

Press Play

2a) TIMELINE

1676
a group of soldiers go insane in jamestown upon ingestion of cooked Datura plants.

1968
Datura over-the-counter remedies for athsmatic difficulties are banned after people begin using them recreationally.

2b) General Overview of Historical Usage

Datura has been used for a very long time. Originally, it seems it was used as a shamanistic tool, one that could help a shaman gain entrance to "other worlds of existance." It also contains several chemicals that are helpful to the body in certain conditions. Atropine, a chemical derived from plants in the Solanaceae, is used in hospitals and generally a trusted drug. As such, one can imagine that it is fairly safe when used within the suggested dosages.

It would seem that people discovered its medicinal properties through shamans, or "Medicine Men." Often shamanism is used to cure illness, and certainly Datura would be a very good cure for some diseases.

6 a2) Tea

My experience with tea is also inconclusive. The first time I made a tea with boiling water, and seeds in a coffee filter. I used about 45 seeds, that were not quite mature (still rather small and somewhat yellow). The tea was very bright yellow and was not particularly pleasant tasting, with a mild spicy taste (like jalapeno) to it. The effects came on in about half an hour, with a mild stupor. Basically it was difficult to walk (I felt almost drunk) and thought was somewhat impaired. This didn't last very long at all, probably about 3 hours.

Note: This stuporous effect could have come from the blocking of anticholinergenic receptors. Drugs that produce acetylcholine have long been called "smart drugs" (Nootropics) for the way they make a user feel intelligent (and they actually perform better intellectually) and stimulated. Some have even been dubbed healthy coffee substitutes.

Perhaps atropine is a "dumb drug?"

My second experience was with more seeds, perhaps 60, but this time I ran the tea through the seeds 5 times. I added a very big (proportionally) amount of Grenadine and I also put a bag of Celestial Seasoning's 'Red Zinger' into the mix. The taste was mainly sugary, and the taste of the Datura was almost non-existant. The effects lasted about as long. The second dose was taken 2 days after the first, so it is important to note that they may have had a combined effect. After the second dose, I went to sleep, and had incredibly vivid dreams.

I remember being in a room talking to friends of mine. It seemed proper to speak out loud (I was aware that I was speaking out loud as well as in the dream), and was overall a very pleasant experience (the dream). This is probably delerium, along with interference in the brain stem.

My third experience was just the same as the first, and dreaming was no different than "normal."

This effect may also impair driving. Wearing sunglasses is usually a good idea when driving, provided they arent too dark, and with dilated pupils, it almost becomes a must.

Delerium/Delerium in Sleep

This is not well documented, so all I can do is hypothesize.

When one dreams, most of the images, sounds, et cetera, one hears, originate from the brain stem. Atropine interferes directly with much of the activity in the brain stem, ranging from motor impairment and tachycardia to the basal ganglionic blockage.

"One guy, who dealt drugs and wasn't particularly centered and/or able to connect with anyone else in the group decided to take off. Another guy and I understood that it was dangerous for anybody to become separated so we pursued him down to a busy boulevard where after a couple of blocks we became freaked and ceased trying to talk him into returning with us. We went back to the house. He went on his way, went to his house, got a suitcase full of drugs, walked to a strange neighborhood and into some old people's house. Whereupon, he began to behave as if he was in his own house. What occurred next I'm sure is obvious."

The baby cried out over the intercom and she climbed down off of the step ladder, jumping to the floor with the last step.

A young woman - given early to marriage and children - she had been up in the dark getting the older ones off to school.

"Just me and the baby, now." She thought the thought just before the house began to shake.

In the last days of Pompeii, there was a festival in the street. Thousands of people crowded the storefronts - smiles full of lamb, wine, cheese, and herbs - listening to the music, and dreaming of an Africa guarded by tree cats with sharp eyes and wide wings - a fresco of human movement, undulating in the sun like an iridescent snake. The girls dropped their dresses in the public fountain and the graffiti punned the walls it was written on until the writings - and then the walls - were covered in the light, gray ash.

The artillery continued in the distance. He could hear the squawk of the radio getting closer. "These birds only sing bad news."

"Sargent! We've broken through! We've been ordered to push to the border!"

The Sargent stared at the huge, smooth, silver disc, half-buried in the mud and trees, burning blue flames, so hot the surface distorted its reflection of the battleground like a not-so-fun-house mirror.

"We're way passed that, son." The Sargent emptied his rifle into the black ground.

CRACK

CRACK

CRACK

THE END

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Joe Nolan

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A Rose Colored Ghost

2009-03-29T11:37:00.007-05:00

La Lumiere Jaune

Chapter One -

"That's what I do is candles," she spoke loudly and clearly beneath her whitening, widening eyes, beneath her whitening, thinning hair. He gazed at her, nonplussed, barely paying attention in that way that calls attention to itself. He leaned back, his weight on one foot behind the counter, quickly sweeping the damp espresso grinds from the counter top into the aluminum knock box.

"We've got the bigger ones and - you know - the smalls and the mediums, and the Buddhists and the ones they call Juniper Joan in France. They're the ones that are yellow." She was gesturing with her hands, as if she could tease some kind of sign out of the thin air that would mean "yellow". He made another espresso, cranking the porta' to the right, stabbing the button on the left.

"Well I need candles." He said it in a tone that subtly - but unmistakeably - revealed itself to mean "You should give me some free candles."

"I can bring in the flyer. I'll bring you one." She walked out the door, into the bleak Sunday with an hysterical smile on her face, as if she'd just murdered the Easter Bunny.

"Doppio Espresso!" he called out, spinning the saucer onto the counter so that the coffee in the white demitasse cup swirled - without spilling - forming the image of Bodhi Dharma in the soft, caramel-colored crema.

Chapter Two - In the Garden

That was the morning that he had the idea for the pink.

He had painted layers of gesso on the canvas before he added the light plaster, like a layer of dust on the moon. Between each step he'd used the sandpaper, here and there, one spot rough, one spot smooth, drawing a map of the human capacity for love.

This morning he mixed the pink just as he had in his dream, the the plum color he'd already used and the white and the cadmium, and the thinner. Thinner than thin. A rose-colored ghost.

He used a roller, riding just over the edge of the tape covering nearly two thirds of the horizontal rectangle on the right side.

She came in from the street from the car from the store where she'd run to get salami, whiskey, tampons and new batteries for the camera.

"It's started," she said as if gazing at a horizon after a quick steep climb.

"Gimme." He took the sack from her arms and walked into the house, the screen door banging behind him. She looked back at the painting and smiled, her shoulders rising a bit, her beaming face bending slightly down and to the right as if she was crushing her nose against a baby.

Chapter 3 - I Want Everything

They found the Saint in the middle of the road. By then he'd gone completely blind from the corrosion of the visions and his hands had become misshapen crescents - like a crabs claws; shining, hard, and smoothed by prayer.

The End

Espresso Machine Parts Glossary & Nomenclature

(from http://www.espressoparts-usa.com/category/espressotutorials.01_espresso_glossary/)

Espresso: Nomenclature

The Oxford English dictionary is the leading authority on the etymology of the English language, and provides a clear source for English. Espresso is a purely Italian word, as the O.E.D. states:
Espresso,
[It. caff� espresso, lit. '�pressed-out coffee']

However, for a more concise understanding of where the term 'espresso' comes from, one must delve a little deeper and explore the word 'Coffee'�. Again from the O.E.D.:
Coffee,

[ad. Arab. qahwah, in Turkish pronounced kahveh, the name of the infusion or beverage; said by Arab lexicographers to have originally meant 'wine' or some kind of wine, and to be a derivative of a vb.-root qahiya 'to have no appetite'. Some have conjectured that it is a foreign, perh. African, word disguised, and have thought it connected with the name of Kaffa in the south Abyssinian highlands, where the plant appears to be native. But of this there is no evidence, and the name qahwah is not given to the berry or plant, which is called bunn, the native name in Shoa being b{umac}n.

The European langs. generally appear to have got the name from Turkish kahveh, about 1600, perh. through It. caffe cf. F., Sp., Pg. caf�, Ger. kaffee, Da., Sw. kaffe. The Eng. coffee, Du. koffie, earlier Ger. coffee, koffee, Russ. kophe, kophe{ibreve}, have o, app. representing earlier au from ahw or ahv.]

Now a clearer idea of the meaning of 'espresso' comes to the surface. We have seen that it literally means "pressed-out coffee"�. This is partly due to the process of extracting coffee from the beans in an ingenious process developed in 1901 by Luigi Bezzera. Some stories report that he wanted to be able to brew coffee faster so that his employees wouldn'�t take lengthy coffee breaks, so he came up with the idea of using steam pressure to quickly force water through coffee held in small removable baskets. It probably did not take him long to figure out that loose grounds held in this basket were not producing a very good cup, so, after re-calculating the volume of grounds and temperature of water, he pressed it and produced the first espresso.

Now on to the espresso machine parts.

Espresso Machine Parts Glossary
Portafiltro (Portafilter)

This words definition is simply based on the word split in two: porta (portable) filtro (filter). It could be said that it is the first best tool of the barista when it comes to interacting with coffee. Without it, there is no espresso. But without its best friend and next best tool, the tamper, or the thing that one presses or �tamps� the ground coffee with in the portafilter, your grounds are useless. There are literally hundreds of designs of tampers, but the best would certainly be a tamper that fits snuggly into the portafilter.
Portafilter Body

The main component of the portafilter is the 'body' of the assembly. The body holds the 'filter'�, or 'basket'�. The remaining components are the tension 'spring' which keeps the basket in place, the 'spout' which directs the flow of the espresso and the 'handle'� itself. In most cases the body of the Portafilter is specific to each manufacture, but in some cases, different manufactures have borrowed the designs from other manufactures, and they may be interchangeable from model to model.
Portafilter Spring

The springs hold the baskets in place. It is held in the portafilter by clipping in to a groove that is milled into the inner surface of the portafilter body. Some are round in profile and circumference, but most are bent into a hexagonal shape with one open end.
Portafilter Basket

The same is true with the baskets, not only in size, but also in volume. Most machines use a standardized portafilter basket with the volume capacity of 14 grams for the 'double-shot', but 12 gram versions are available for some machines. For the 'single-shot', most people are comfortable with the standard 7 gram basket, not even knowing that a 6 gram basket is available as well. Some machines portafilter bodies are able to accept an even larger size: a 'triple' or 21 gram basket. These variances are based exclusively on personal preference, and in the end will not affect the quality of a drink: in the end, it is the barista that chooses and grinds the coffee and then pulls the shot, not the basket.
Portafilter Spout(s)

The spout attached to the bottom of the body of a portafilter offers a barista yet more choices.

In most cases the portafilter spout is threaded onto the bottom of the portafilter. Most manufactures (except Gaggia, which employs a �"�) use a 3/8"� threaded fitting. The double shot versions are available tall, short, with a cover or without, in an adjustable or the standard non-adjustable style. The single shot comes with a straight, curved, short or tall choice. A rare and essentially never used triple� spout can also be used.

For the La Cimbali machines, a screw on style is used. Two screws hold a double or single spout onto the body. The height of your drain pan in relation to your cup may be a factor in choosing a style of spout. Most baristas will agree that being able to physically see a shot being poured thus being able to closely watch the process for quality is very important. Placing a large 16oz. or 20 oz. cup directly under the portafilter, pressing a button and walking away is frowned upon by any barista with distinguished taste and respect for the art.

In some cases, a machine will simply refuse to pour an even double shot from each end of the spout no matter how much �'tweaking'� of tamping or positioning a barista may try. This is what the adjustable spouts are for. The adjustable spout re-directs the espresso from one side to another with the turn of a screw. As with the baskets, one portafilter spout is not necessarily better than another, but you may find that your functionality and efficiency may be improved by your choice of spout.
Gruppo (Group Head)

The group head (brew head) is the large protrusion coming off of the front of an espresso machine which the portafilter is engaged to when brewing. Most espresso machines are categorized by the number of groups that are on the machine, i.e., one (single), two, three or four group. The group head can sometimes be an enigma to owners, users and customers alike. There are various different styles of group heads as with all other components of espresso machines.

The oldest system is the lever operated espresso machine. It uses a lever and piston assembly to force water through the grounds with a steady yet adjustable flow; the barista has the ability to increase and decrease the water dispensing pressure as he/she pulls a shot. This is where the term "�pull a shot" comes from. There are also a wide variety of hydraulic heads that are, today, rarely produced, and difficult to find parts for. These work in a similar way as the lever groups allowing the barista to control the flow rate, but use a combination of smaller vertical pistons that open and close with a small lever or arm. The most common form of group head today is the solenoid operated group. It employs and electronic coil that energizes a valve to open and close its orifice and allow water through - or keep it contained -� and are operated with either an analog rocker switch or digital electronic circuit commonly referred to as a touchpad.

Solenoid group machines are then divided into three other designations: super-automatic, automatic and semi-automatic.

Super-automatic Espresso Machines

Super-automatic machines are the newest style of espresso machine on the market. These machines grind the coffee, tamp, extract and dispose of the grounds, while frothing milk and pouring the entire drink - whatever drink one selects from its digital touch pad - all in one step.

Espresso aficionados are of the opinion that these take the heart out of brewing coffee, but they are very useful and convenient for extremely high volume, high traffic (both with customers as well as employees; little training is required) locations.

The down side is that they can be very labor intensive for technicians, if one is able to find a certified or trained technician at all, leading to costly service bills.
Automatic Espresso Machines

Automatic espresso machines are probably the most common machine on the market. The come with programmable digital touchpad dosing circuits. The operator enters two single (one short and one long) and two double shots timed shot pours into the computer in the machine. The computer then sends a signal to both the pump motor and flow meter (a small electronic wheel also called an impeller) to dispense water though the group.

Rubinetti Vapore/Acqua (Steam/water Valves)

Steam and hot water valves are no less important than the group heads; they are used just as often if not more! Most two, three and four group commercial machines only come with two steam and one hot water wand. The steam wands on most traditional commercial machines are placed at either end of the machine, and move in any direction. Some older equipment steam wands will only move forward and back, but check with a dealer of the equipment -� there may be a retro-fit kit if this design doesn'�t work for you.

In recent years, some manufactures have started producing equipment that comes out of the box with what is known as an 'auto-frother'. In days past these were an optional item. These are attachments placed on a traditional steam wand, or replacing the steam wand altogether. They allow the operator to quickly froth milk without learning or implementing the skills practiced by traditional baristi for frothing milk. Some are very technically advanced, going as far as digitally displaying the temperature of the milk, but with all of them - as with traditional wands, but to a far greater degree -� they must be cleaned daily, which can be labor intensive due to the number of components they are assembled with.

Hot water wands are kept very simple. They are normally an aerator threaded into a tube which draws hot water out of the boiler. In most cases, the machine must be hot for the siphoning effect of the valve to be operational.

Both steam and hot water valves may be operated by a knob that one turns, a lever one activates, or a button, digital or analog, that one presses. Valves that are opened via a knob are easily repairable, and are similar to the valves we see in sink and tub faucets. Lever activated valves are just as simply constructed, but can take a little finessing to repair.

Electrically opening valves all use a solenoid to open and close the valve, but digitally operated valves can be problematic. With a digital steam or water valve, a signal must first go through the circuit board behind the button before sending the signal to the solenoid to open or close. This can be a problem to diagnose: is it the circuit that has failed, or the solenoid?
Caldaia (Boiler)

Boilers in espresso machines vary in construction material, size and assembly. Most are brass. Some are constructed out of stainless steel. The benefit of a stainless steel boiler is the fact that it will never rust, but by the time a brass boiler rusts out of a machine, it has probably been long enough for the machine to have already paid for itself in sales it has produced. All boilers are subject to, and victims of, lime and mineral scale build-up.

The size of a boiler can be important. With a large capacity boiler and a small wattage heating element, the machine will take longer to heat up and struggle to maintain its optimum temperature in a high volume output environment. The variables of wattage, voltage and boiler capacity are infinite and can be very confusing, but a comfortable high ratio would be about 300 watts per listed boiler liter capacity for a 220 volt machine.

The most prevalent boilers on the market use a heat exchanger to supply water to the group head(s). Heat exchangers are essentially boilers inside of a boiler. The ambient heat of the water and steam inside the main boiler heats up the cool water coming into the heat exchanger. What this means is that the temperature of the water is directly dependent on, and related to, the amount of steam pressure in the boiler. If one increases the steam pressure, they are also increasing the temperature of the water being dispensed out of the group. In two, three and four group machines, this effect takes place across the board, thus the adjustability of steam pressure and water temperature is limited.

Some machines come manufactured with two separate boilers; one for steam and one for brewing. The benefit of this is the ability to adjust either boiler to your specific needs or desires. Each boiler has a different circuit controlling its heating element, and can be dialed in for the desired temperature of brewing and steaming.

Boilers are filled with fresh water in two ways: with a manual-fill valve, and with an auto-fill valve. These two valves work in tandem. The main power switch for machines generally turns on the auto-fill circuit, allowing water to by-pass the manual fill valve through the auto-fill solenoid and fill the boiler with water. Once the water reaches a probe (the auto-fill probe) that is threaded into the top of the boiler, this grounds the circuit out, telling the solenoid to close and the pump motor to turn off. The manual-fill valve is usually only used in emergencies when one or more of the auto-fill components has failed. These valves can also be electronically opened, but most use a standard push stem valve. Additionally, the manual-fill valve differs from the auto in that it doesn'�t use the pump motor to allow water in, only the static pressure of the water supply.

Keeping a close eye on the water level is very important. An empty boiler will quickly burn out the heating element.
Pompa (Pump)

The pump is used to push water through the group head, as well as fill the boiler. Most commercial machines use a large pump called a rotary vane pump. They are commonly made of brass and come with water in and water out fittings, a mounting flange, an adjustment screw and a drive shaft. The most common version has a clamp style mounting flange and a flat drive shaft. Other variations are a bolt on flange, using two or three bolts, a retrofitted three prong flange adaptor and or a round drive shaft. These pumps should all have an adjustment screw located on the side of the pump that one uses to increase or decrease the dispensing water coming out of the group head. While dispensing water, one turns the screw clockwise to increase or counter-clockwise to decrease the pressure. All rotary vane pumps are required to be hooked up to a pressurized water supply. These pumps can only run without water for about 75 revolutions before the graphite bearings wear out and the pump is ruined.

Some smaller compact models (and almost all home machines) come with a different style pump, the vibratory pump. These are smaller, less expensive and not adjustable. Some, such as the Fluid-o-tech model, are connected to the electrical wiring via a wiring boot that snaps on and is held in place with a screw. Others, such as the Ulka model, come with two spade type terminals, that may or may not be wired in with a high limit pump shut-off diode. They do not need to be installed to pressurized water, and are not attached to a pump motor, discussed next.
Motopompa (Pump Motor)

The motors turn the pump. In most new machines, the motor and pump are placed inside the machine, but in a large majority of older machines, the pump is mounted outside. Some manufactures still prefer to keep the look of their equipment the same, and so have not modified their body assembly to be able to fit a pump inside. This is inconsequential as the pumps and motors are very durable.

As with pumps, there are different models of motors available as well. The most common is the clamp flange, flat drive shaft model. Others may have a round or splined drive shaft and holes in the flange for bolts. They are available in different sizes as well, but the important thing when replacing a motor is to get the exact wattage and voltage, as well as the same microfarad rating on its start capacitor.

That pretty much covers all of the major working systems of an espresso machine. As with any piece of machinery, all makes and models, even if they have the same tag, may not be exactly the same. So be observant, vigilant and patient when working on the equipment.

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Joe Nolan

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A Burning Thing

2009-03-25T22:09:00.004-05:00

Love in the Free World

Chapter One - The Free and the Brave

He sat on the porch, twirling a wooden match between his fingers like a tiny baton. The cars passed by on The Boulevard with a sweet hiss in the just-cool night time air. He could hear the television in the downstairs apartment. A trumpet played a fanfare and a number of people clapped and cheered. It was either a game show or a war movie.

Chapter Two - A Woman's Prerogative

Like the night before - and the night before that - she was already in her pajamas by 9:30, the slight burn beneath the blinking lids of her eyes like a sharp little voice admonishing her to get to bed even a few minutes earlier tonight. She had to be up by 5 to catch the bus by 6 to make it to her stop by 6:30 to cross the street at Mag and West by 6:45 to get to the University by 7; at which point she would stop into the Student Union and order a small orange juice to drink with the perpetual cereal bars she pulled from her purse like magician's rabbits. She'd read the latest movie review in the paper and see if she could complete the crossword before heading to teach her class at 8. She had finished the whole puzzle just yesterday.

Chapter Three - Me and the Blues

The Kid got up late. He had a way of getting off his schedule. This was mostly due to the fact that there was no schedule to keep. Not really. Ever since the surgery, he had been at home - mostly in his room - mostly moving his head like a squirrel peaking out of a hole - fast jerky glances from side to side - as if "looking at things faster" would somehow compensate for the fact that his eyes really didn't work anymore. He glanced quickly to his left as he accidentally knocked his water over into his pill bottles. The entire TV tray crashed, the little blue capsules swelling and softening in the clear wet between the shards.

Chapter Four - Angels with Dirty Faces

As usual, the music was too loud. She was yelling something in his ear but he couldn't hear her. He yelled back, but she couldn't understand. He stepped away from her and took her by the shoulders, squaring her to himself and looking directly at her face.

"What?" He mouthed it exaggeratedly hoping she could read his lips. She smiled, closed her eyes and licked her lips as she inhaled - as if she was about to jump from a high dive. She exhaled and smiled and grabbed his elbows with her small hands, gently moving them in rhythm with her mouthings.

"I adore you."

Chapter 5 - Follow Apollo

The next day the sun rose and the sun set, and everyone was quite sure it would continue for some time.

The End

Find me on my Facebook. Send me a friend request on the site!

Check out my videos, the archives of The Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my new You Tube channel: Joe Nolan's Imagicon

Listen my new CD - Blue Turns Black!

Love,
Joe Nolan

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Lake Not Still

2009-03-24T22:06:00.006-05:00

Down by the Water

Chapter 1 - The Stone Skipper

The surface of the lake was smooth, but not still. The entire mirror of its green expanse slowly undulated above fast moving contractions and expansions of water that seemed to have been displaced by something the size of a 16 year old girl.

Chapter 2 - A Gun and a Girl

"Never point the gun toward yourself or anyone else"

"Duh..."

Her father laughed, his broad red nose - like a wedge of cheese - bouncing above the spreading, rock-candy smile. He coughed a few times - bringing his fist to his lips - then he exhaled like a punctured tire, dropped his hand to chamois on the picnic table, picked it up, and continued to slowly rub the barrel of the rifle. He wasn't being particularly thorough. In fact, he was hardly paying attention at all.

Chapter 3 - The Tree Falls

The crow called out as it lit down within the tree-shaded clearing; the dark, damp earth cool and moist beneath a winter's worth of wind blown needles, leaves, bark, broken twigs, and a small silver ring on the slender white finger of a pale hand at the end of a pair of bones where another black bird pulled something passed it's snapping beak and into his gullet.

Chapter 4 - The Ring of Mary Bell

Mary Bell stared at the sky with a gaze that had forgotten time. Time - also - had forgotten Mary Bell.

The End

Find me on my Facebook. Send me a friend request on the site!

Check out my videos, the archives of The Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my new You Tube channel: Joe Nolan's Imagicon

Listen my new CD - Blue Turns Black!

Love,
Joe Nolan

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Check out my profile at Reverb Nation to see my updated press and bio.

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Romeo Has A Raygun

2009-03-23T11:03:00.005-05:00

Bonjour, mes amis

Happy Monday!

Here's to hopin' you dreamed a little dream in the last 48.

Had a quiet weekend myself. Watched the Spartans win a few basketball games. Watched my friend's teams lose a few. I've enjoyed that a little bit too much ;)

The Silent Sounding Sea

Chapter One - The Young Boy

The Young Boy stood on the grey cliff overlooking the blue water. The breeze blew in from the west, warm and full of sun. In the distance he could hear the Monday morning sounds of the market opening. He could smell roasted meat and rich country dirt as he contemplated the deep dark indigo that stretched to the edge of the sky.

Chapter Two - The Physics of the Free Kick

All the boys yelled at once, shirtless but dry in the mid-afternoon sun despite the frantic pace of the game. The ball passed quickly from foot to foot, knee to chest, head to ground, only to pop loose suddenly like prisoner on the run, skittering across the dry dust toward the women where they cooked and smoked their pipes, before finally being caught by one of the young boys who extended his foot passed the ball - mid-run - and brought his heel down like an ax, sending the sphere leaping backwards toward another dark, wavy head. The women looking on disapprovingly as if to say "Boys and men are only full of games."

Chapter Three - Romeo Has a Raygun

Three small tables constituted a makeshift cafe in the market. The American frowned beneath his stringy mustache like he had taken a bite of bad fruit. Keeping to himself, he read from a thin volume of Shakespeare. Having spent a lot of time alone, he had developed the habit of talking to himself. Around others, he usually whispered, but absorbed in his reading, surrounded by the chaos of the market, he had forgotten himself and mumbled aloud -

The world's my oyster
Which I with sword will open.

On the small table next to his coffee, a British voice spoke English over a satellite radio -

Surging demand for feed, food, and fuel have recently led to drastic price increases, which are not likely to fall in the foreseeable future, due to low stocks and slow-growing supplies of agricultural outputs. Climate change will also have a negative impact on food production, compounding the challenge of meeting global food demand, and potentially exacerbating hunger and malnutrition among the world's poorest people. Economic growth has helped to reduce hunger, particularly when it is equitable. Unfortunately, growth is never positioned to reach the poorest people.

Chapter Four - The Winds On High

He ran as fast as he could. The young boy lifted one brown, bare foot onto the rock while the other swung forward into the emptiness. Rising into the air, the distant market disappeared from the edge of his sight, replaced only by billowing blue sky. At this highest point, the rest of his vision filled with the endless ocean. Imagining himself immersed in that warm water, he'd hold his breath - floating. Weightless. Forever.

The End

Find me on my Facebook. Send me a friend request on the site!

Check out my videos, the archives of The Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my new You Tube channel: Joe Nolan's Imagicon

Listen my new CD - Blue Turns Black!

Love,
Joe Nolan

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Check out my profile at Reverb Nation to see my updated press and bio.

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Grand Grey Lynx

2009-03-18T19:29:00.007-05:00

Bon jour,

Comment?

Recently asked what my favorite period of visual art was, I had to stop short and address the subject through a broader, more general appeal.

For me the best stuff happened in America between the end of WWII and the middle of the 1960's...give or take half a decade. But not only in visual art. This is the GREAT TIME for journalism, art, film, music, dance, poetry/lit - everything! Social Justice...Spiritual Consciousness...True Human Liberty...

This is not to say the BEST in the history of the world. Who knows? Who cares? This is my favorite period and the one that is most influential where my own projects are concerned.

I also started watching Jean Luc Godard's Histoire(s) du Cinema.

It is a poem.

The Old Man

Chapter One - The Old Man

The old man stared at the spinning fan in the window. He peered through the blink-a-black light, his eyelashes fluttering before his agitated vision.

He heard a hornet humming past his left ear. Then another. Then another hornet, closer and faster, like the next one, and the one immediately following it.

The cars passsed by like armored boars, snorting and growling, masticating and belching all black roads between here and there; shitting carbon colored clouds of bleak, black, bad history and torment.

The Old Man sat upright on the sidewalk near the intersection of Hart and Altman. He'd fallen asleep again.

Chapter 2 - Wake Up Little Snoozy

Tea comes from China. Whether it does or doesn't is of no importance to us dear reader, but it was important to the Old Man as he dunked a small, white, wet bag on a string into and out of the still, steaming water.

Tea comes from China. He thought the thought for a long time. He didn't hold the statement in his head like a scribble on a chalkboard. It breathed. It was draped in musculature and wet with function and consciousness.

Tea Comes from China.

Chapter 3 The Devil Rides West

The television was turned up loud, but he didn't really notice loud noises anymore. As his senses receded he felt safer in the world. As his hearing dulled to a soft, still, hushing wave, he became more like an animal, more aware of his faculties, having begun to perceive the limits of their definitions. He began to interpret the input from the environment around him in terms of fight-or-flight - like a monkey or perhaps a grand, grey lynx. Sounds were either vitally important or of no consequence.

Their was little to flee from in the small apartment on Altman. But there was fight in the Old Man.

Chapter 4 The Conquering Hero

The Old Man stood up and turned slowly, committing to an about-face like a reluctant mule. He raised one hand above his eyes to shield them from the bright, burning light. He began the long walk home.

The End

See more of my recent picture-takings at my Facebook. Send me a friend request on the site!

Check out my videos, the archives of The Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my new You Tube channel: Joe Nolan's Imagicon

Listen my new CD - Blue Turns Black!

Love,
Joe Nolan

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Check out my profile at Reverb Nation to see my updated press and bio.

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Happy St. Patrick's Day

2009-03-17T13:28:00.003-05:00

Green!

What up one and all...??..

Happy St. Patrick's Day! I remember writing my St. P's post last year and I am having a hard time believing that we have come back around to this verdant fest again already.

The world...she does keep-a-turning...

On that note, it's time to celebrate!

Remain present as I dish out your presents...

Your St. Paddy's date..

Your appetizers...

Your dinner...

Your second date...

Here is your party...

Here is your drinking buddy...

Here is his drinking buddy...

Here is your drink...

Here is your drink's drink...

Here is your drink's date...

Here is your new best friend...

Here is baby Jesus...

Enjoy yourself!

Check out my videos, the archives of The Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my new You Tube channel: Joe Nolan's Imagicon

Listen to "Mission" and the rest of my new CD - Blue Turns Black!

Love,
Joe Nolan

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Check out my profile at Reverb Nation to see my updated press and bio.

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

The King of May

2009-03-16T10:14:00.003-05:00

Happy Monday!

How about another old-school poem to set the ol' steps in the right direction...

The Straits of Magellan (by Joe Nolan)

strange and true and green and huge and

waiting

beneath seven miles

of ocean.

reflecting blades of daybreak

grass, breaking toward the break

of day and breaking

into the space

of the sky

at the far horizon.

rising

like an art

and like a knife.

a blue-green hue,

that line where the sky meets the sea.

and the rowers row to oblivion,

straining rum-soaked

oars

and sun-stroked

minds,

hallucinating Jésus walking on water

in the shape of a slaughtered

lamb, bleeding

good luck

coins,

plopping

down

to the bottom of the blue.

falling, failing, dove-less olives

returning to Atlantis.

deep, deep down where the dead men go,

on their way

to the center

of the earth.

As a special bonus, here is another poem by Allen Ginsberg. The King of May was inspired by Ginsberg's deportation from Cuba to Prague. Welcomed as a hero in Czechoslovakia, Ginsberg was crowned King of May during the May Day parade. Having seen enough, the Czechs sent Ginsy back to London.

This is a great Spring poem.

Check out my videos, the archives of The Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my new You Tube channel: Joe Nolan's Imagicon

Listen to "Mission" and the rest of my new CD - Blue Turns Black!

Love,
Joe Nolan

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Check out my profile at Reverb Nation to see my updated press and bio.

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

May Day (In hope of Spring)

2009-03-15T14:45:00.003-05:00

Gracias, muchachos.

Another vintage verse vrooms from the vault.

May Day (by Joe Nolan)

The White Hand
marks the countenance
of the mind soldier.
Digital rifle shoulders grim determination.
Calls of EVACUATION!
mark the midnight’s jaundiced
malaise.
Propagandography in the coding of the symbol.
The bug chaser
licks a leg razor
and swallows his sallow tail
like a sick Pisces.
doomed/damned/dimmed
under bomb raid
light-
and the copkillers huddle in
some brave shadow where
everyboy is a King.
We deny The Law its rule and its gallows.
We kill our own martyrs and mark the night
like satyrs
at the limits of our blue desiring.
There are no hirelings among us comrade.
No merchants among pirates.
No cynics among lovers.
No cataract occludes our Solar
Vision of a Vice
that is risen -
Red Angel -
at an angle to the midnight,
that presupposes its corrosive intent.
Hey Mooneyed Ghetto Child
bleeds low-rent television static
from a wound in his side.
No pride among the desperate.
The vestments of poverty and shame learn
a new name from an old one.
Burn
a new flame from an old sun
that no longer dawns
on the chrome junkyard heart of
fallen-sweet autumn apples drinking
seventh story water
in this A.M. (Year of the Ram).
I quest a grail-full
of Love of Chaos.
My Beauty’s breast ridden
with Anarchy ribbons
in the wine-soaked twilight of May Day.
A rose blooms in my palm and
bleeds a bullet
between my teeth.

Check out my videos, the archives of The Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my new You Tube channel: Joe Nolan's Imagicon

Listen to "Mission" and the rest of my new CD - Blue Turns Black!

Love,
Joe Nolan

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Check out my profile at Reverb Nation to see my updated press and bio.

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

From a Makeshift Bed

2009-03-13T18:12:00.003-05:00

Bon soir mes amis.

This is a poem I was reminded of today. Check out more
poems here.

From a Makeshift Bed (by Joe Nolan)

The Ghost haunts my Autumn mind
on the morning after
All Hallows’ Eve.
New-born thoughts
marked
with the symbols of their own demise.
A graveyard in the groin.
A murder on the lips.
This morning, this dawn, upon waking,
I muttered a muddled
prayer
and rose from a makeshift bed
in a strange room.
I cast my fortunes
with the Dark Horse Contender.
I cast my nets in black
waters
and pull my treasure
from the pleasure
that throbs beneath
love-sore skin.
And The Eyes shine through
the 11 hundred light
like a shadow on fire.
I desire my love to come to me
feet-first.
I desire her to fall from the sky.
I will call her manna
and I will speak her name
with a great gnashing
of teeth.
I will name her Hannah
and I will meet her over
waffles and syrup
at a pick-up hitch-up
East of Eden,
West of Spokane,
where the name of the night
is blown
on Pacific winds,
through high blue
trees, that bend
with the ease of death,
taking its toll for a last breath
(a pound of flesh
when a pound of faith is lacking).
And the razing wraith of sunset
overcomes the sky
with the inevitability
of its own
falling blade.
“If we’d stayed here, things would’ve been different.”
“If we’d stayed, we’d’ve reaped The Avalanche.”
And The Hands
shape the shape
of the awkward
afternoon
(a blunt object to bludgeon
the hour by)
as the hours pass by this witness to
their mean meander.
And on the desert floor,
a salamander
swallows a mantis.
And a shark sinks
to the bottom
of some merciless
Atlantis.
And here I still an hour,
for a moment
to devour my love,
coming up through the ice.

Please take the time to check out my vids, the archives of The Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my new You Tube channel:

Joe Nolan's Imagicon

Listen to "Mission" and the rest of my new CD - Blue Turns Black!

Love,
Joe Nolan

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Consider purchasing a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Check out my profile at Reverb Nation to see my updated press and bio.

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

The Old Double Zero

2009-03-07T14:01:00.003-06:00

Hello lovelies,

Here is a brand new song. Seriously. Wrote the last line 4 mins ago...

The Old Double Zero (Lyrics by Joe Nolan)

The Old Double Zero is a shady little bar
A waitress with a smile and a crying steel guitar
Misery loves company, but she don't look for long
She made a brand new friend on the day I wrote this song

I'm the hero of The Old Double Zero
The place where the band only knows one song to play
I'm the Nero of the place where the tears go
The Emperor of Empty, baby, since you gone away

Broken glass in the window, broken glass behind the bar
Bet your ass you can go, but you won't get very far
Yesterday's got long arms. Yesterday's got legs
Yesterday goes stealing where tomorrow stoops to beg

I'm the hero of The Old Double Zero
The place where the band only knows one song to play
I'm the Nero of the place where the tears go
The Emperor of Empty, baby, since you gone away

Nothin' sadder than the sunshine come a-creepin' 'neath the shade
You find you got it bad when you thought you had it made
Nothin' lonely as your shadow as it rises from the night
Searchin' for salvation, but blinded by the light

I'm the hero of The Old Double Zero
The place where the band only knows one song to play
I'm the Nero of the place where the tears go
The Emperor of Empty, baby, since you gone away

Please take the time to check out my other vids, the archives of The Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my new You Tube channel:

Joe Nolan's Imagicon

Listen to "Mission" and the rest of my new CD - Blue Turns Black!

Love,
Joe Nolan

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Consider purchasing a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Check out my profile at Reverb Nation to see my updated press and bio.

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Where Does True Freedom Lie - Consequence and Necessity

2009-03-07T09:07:00.006-06:00

Ahoymatey!

Welcome aboard the good
ship gollywog!

Morning in the Old South. You can smell the smell of
people smelling
for the smell of the the idea of magnolias in bloom.

Not yet children. One should not be impatient with
the Sun.

PUCK
42 Thou speak'st aright;
43 I am that merry wanderer of the night.
44 I jest to Oberon and make him smile
45 When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,
46 Neighing in likeness of a filly foal:
47 And sometime lurk I in a gossip's bowl,
48 In very likeness of a roasted crab,
49 And when she drinks, against her lips I bob
50 And on her wither'd dewlap pour the ale.
51 The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
52 Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;
53 Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,
54 And "tailor" cries, and falls into a cough;
55 And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh,
56 And waxen in their mirth and neeze and swear
57 A merrier hour was never wasted there.
58 But, room, fairy! here comes Oberon.

Fairy
59 And here my mistress. Would that he were gone!

Enter the King of Fairies [OBERON]
at one door with his TRAIN, and the
Queen [TITANIA] at another with hers.

OBERON
60 Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.

- A Midsummer Night's Dream, William Shakespeare

The Flaying of Marsyas, Titian

This painting has a soundtrack...

On black evenings the crows fly at half mast toward the
dreaded dawn. The daytime isn't all bad: the warm sun, the
rain baths, balmy winds beneath inky wings. But the night is
full of the dead. And the dead are full of blood and the soft
tender.

The night is full of dangers unseen and Apollo's reasonable light gives
way to the shadows of the passions and the frightened fates of superstition
and magic.
When the compass becomes a cutlass and the triangle spins boom-
erang, maps reduce to sad, nostalgic paintings and science celebrates fire
with the slaughter of another sacred animal.

Stretched between these poles, in the shocking realization of the dynamo, one must
ask - Where does True Freedom lie?

And now a word from Jack Parsons regarding the nature of freedom, it's consequences and necessity:

...The laws against mutually agreeable sex expression must be repealed, together with the laws prohibiting nudism, birth control and censorship. We must emphatically deny that love is criminal and that the body is indecent. We must affirm the beauty, the dignity, and joyousness and even the humor of sex.

Indeed there are obscene things in the light and in the darkness; things that deserve destruction: -- The exploitation of women for poor wages, the shameful degradation of minorities by the little lice who call themselves members of a 'superior race' and the deliberate machinations towards war. Nowhere among these genuine obscenities is there a place for the love shared by men and women. There are sins but love is not one of them and yet, of all the things that have been called sins, love has been the most punished and the most persecuted. Of all the beauties we know, the springtime of love is closest to paradise. And as all things pass, so love passes -- too soon. This most exquisite and tender of human emotions, this little moment of eternity, should be free and unrestrained. It should not be bought and sold, chained and restricted until lovers, caught in the maelstrom of economics and laws, are hounded like criminals. What end is served and who profits by such cruelty? Only priests and lawyers. Let us adhere to a strict morality where the rights and happiness of our fellow man is concerned. Let us call our true sins by their right names and expiate them accordingly -- but let our lovers go free.

If we are to achieve civilization and sanity, we must institute an educational program in love-making, birth control and disease prevention. Above all we must root out the barbaric and vicious concepts of shamefulness and indecency in sex, exposing the motives and methods of their proponents.

Happy are the parents who, as a result of sexual experimenting, are well mated, taking joy in each other's passion, seeing beauty in their nakedness and not fearing to expose their bodies or the bodies of their children. They would never shame their children for their natural sexual curiosity.

Jesus told the "fallen woman", "Go and sin no more" but I, who am a man, say to you who have given your body for the need of man's body, who have given your love freely for his spirit's sake; "Be blessed in the name of man. And if any god deny you for this, I will deny that god."

The ancients, being simple and without original sin, saw God in the act of love and therein they saw a great mystery, a sacrament revealing the bounty and the beauty of the force that made men and the stars. Thus they worshipped. Poor ignorant old Pagans! How we have progressed. What was most sacred to them, we see as a dirty joke. From this sordid joke we have played on ourselves only Woman Herself can redeem us. She has been the ignominious butt of the joke, the target of malice and arrogance and the scapegoat for masculine inferiority and guilt. She alone can redeem us from our crucifixion and castration. Only woman, of and by herself, can strike through the foolish frustration of the advertisers' ideal. She must elevate her strong, free and splendid image to take her place in the sun as an individual, a companion and mate fit for, and demanding no less than, true men.

Let there be an end to inhibition and an end to pretense. Let us discover what we are and be what we are, honestly and unashamedly. The rabbit has speed to recompense his fear, the panther strength to assuage his hunger. There is room for both even though the rabbit would probably prefer a world of rabbits (dull and overpopulated). All traits are useful wrath, fear, lust and even laziness -- if they are balanced by strength and intelligence. If we lie about things we call our weaknesses and sins, if we say that his is "evil" and that is "wrong", denying that such faults could be part of us, they will grow crooked in the dark. But when we have them out in the open; admitting them, facing them and accepting them, then we will be ashamed to leave any vestige of them secret to turn crippled and twisted. Fear can sharpen our wits against adversity. Anger and strength can be welded into a sword against tyrants both within and without. Lust can be trained to be the strong and subtle servant of love and art.

It is not necessary to deny anything. It is only necessary to know ourselves. Then we will naturally seek that which is needful to our being. Our significance does not lie in the extent to which we resemble others or in the extent to which we differ from them. It lies within our ability to be ourselves. This may well be the entire object of life; to discover ourselves, our meaning. This does not come in a sudden burst of illumination; it is a constant process which continues so long as we are truly alive. The process cannot continue unobstructed unless we are free to undergo all experience and willing to participate in all existence. Then the significant questions are not "is it right" or "is it good" but rather "how does it feel" and "what does it mean". Ultimately these are the only questions that can approach truth but they cannot be asked in the absence of freedom.

Freedom is a Two-Edged Sword, John Whiteside Parsons

Please take the time to check out my other vids, the archives of The Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my new You Tube channel:

Joe Nolan's Imagicon

Listen to "Mission" and the rest of my new CD - Blue Turns Black!

Love,
Joe Nolan

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Consider purchasing a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Check out my profile at Reverb Nation to see my updated press and bio.

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Heroes in the Seaweed

2009-03-04T22:47:00.004-06:00

Ciao lovelies,

I am drinking a bit of the blood and bleeding a bit of the luminous ink in this
here fine hour of the evening.

I am posting this as I watch the video of the Isle of Wight festival.

This 1970 fest was the biggest - and last - of its kind. Wight had all the hippy drapery of Woodstock as well as most of the bad vibes of Altamont.

Except for that whole stab-you-to-death part...

This show had a killer line-up including: Miles Davis, Joni, Jimi, The Doors and Leonard Cohen, Jethro Tull and others.

The vid is OK, but its hard to watch the hippy dream go down in flames.

What's so funny about peace, love and understanding?

On another note, I have been experimenting with my cell phone camera. I got frustrated when I found it hard to take a single pic. My cam always takes two at a time. I realized I was getting some fun effects when the cam moved between shots. Then I realized that I could take these shots and arrange them into a kind of stop-action movie.

Here is a video I made for my song "Mission".

Please take the time to check out my other vids, the archives of The Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my new You Tube channel:

Joe Nolan's Imagicon

Listen to "Mission" and the rest of my new CD - Blue Turns Black!

Love,
Joe Nolan

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Consider purchasing a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Check out my profile at Reverb Nation to see my updated press and bio.

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Tell Me a Story

2009-02-18T21:18:00.003-06:00

Hey everyone,

This one goes out to all y'all in Sunnyvale California. Thanks for hanging out at this questionable corner of the Internet.

We are forever attempting to storm the gates of Heaven here, however, we've been known to get the address wrong.

Today, the clouds cleared for this little dove to land on my shoulder.

I now offer it to The People.

TELL ME A STORY (Lyrics by Joe Nolan)

Tell me a story
maybe one the never ends
bring me to glory
like you would your only friend
When they come to stone me
Have some mercy left to lend
Tell me a story baby
One that never ends

somewhere down the river there's a mission
there's a mill with a spinning water wheel
there's a hawk up in the sky
who's just busy getting high enough
to see if this here story is for real

there's a woman with a baby by the water
the autumn burning brightly in her hair
the current carries off her fears
the water stands in for her tears
and tomorrow she'll be far away from there

Tell me a story
maybe one the never ends
bring me to glory
like you would your only friend
When they come to stone me
Have some mercy left to lend
Tell me a story baby
One that never ends

there's a man with a rifle near the hedgerow
with his red dog running ragged on the green
when you look into his eyes
they are made of alibis
he's the saddest person that I've ever seen

there's an angel with an arrow near the treeline
tonight he'll fly off across the sea
he's not tempting fate
in the way he hesitates
he is patient and he's waiting there for me

Tell me a story
maybe one the never ends
bring me to glory
like you would your only friend
When they come to stone me
Have some mercy yet to lend
Tell me a story baby
One that never ends

Tell me a story
maybe one the never ends
bring me to glory
like you would your only friend
When they come to stone me
Have some mercy yet to lend
Tell me a story baby
One that never ends

This is the new video for my song "The First to Know"

Love,
Joe Nolan

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Consider purchasing a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Check out my profile at Reverb Nation to see my updated press and bio.

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

The Sleepless Film Festival Presents an Academy Awards Special - A Drink with Mickey Rourke: An Evening at the Shamrock Social Club, Part II

2009-02-14T09:39:00.004-06:00

Avast!

Welcome to the Persian immersion!

Please find a space on the rug and sit facing East. The wine has only just started to pour.

Cold Southern mornings are marked by a damp cataract the blurs the air and makes your bones feel wet. Then again, your bones are already pretty wet, what with all the goo.

Clearly I am going over the top in my recent fascination with Mickey Rourke, but The Wrestler was such a great movie, and he was so fantastic in it. For the most part, I don't think we see very much good acting in films nowadays. When I am watching American movies from that great age of the 1970's (Altman, Cassavetes, Hopper, Scorsese, DePalma, Coppola, Lucas, Schrader) or even Euro flicks from the 60's/70's like the movies of Roeg or Godard, the acting in these films tends to be honest and sincere action and dialog - no more, no less.

Nowadays we see to many actors ACTING! This is what makes Rourke such a wonder in this film. There is a scene where Rourke tries to re-establish his relationship with his estranged daughter. It's probably the most emotional scene in the film, and the nature of the scene is such that there is an immediate danger of the acting becoming forced, attenuated, cliche and overly-sentimental. For one moment in the scene - Rourke's biggest moment in the film - he spins perilously close to the edge, but he doesn't wobble. He glides right up against it, and then he glides away. Not only is the scene moving because of its content, but also because while we are watching Randy the Ram reclaim his dignity in his daughter's eyes, we are simultaneously watching Rourke reclaim his squandered gifts and his place as one of the best actors of his generation.

Here is a great, long interview with Rourke in the full-flush of post-Wrestler hype. This chat took place before Rourke received his Academy Award Nomination.

This is the new video for my song "The First to Know"

Love,
Joe Nolan

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Consider purchasing a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Check out my profile at Reverb Nation to see my updated press and bio.

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

The Sleepless Film Festival Presents an Academy Awards Special - A Drink with Mickey Rourke: An Evening at the Shamrock Social Club

2009-02-10T21:31:00.008-06:00

The Academy Awards are upon us and - as every faithful reader of this blog knows - we are crazy for film! As every reader - so brilliant, so dangerous - also must know, the Academy Awards are mostly bullshit.

Just like the Grammy Awards, these American pop-culture celebrations can never seem to decide if they are honoring art or commending commerce.

Will these two never get along?

That said, they sometimes surprise, recognizing real talent over box-office tallies, true vision over crafty hacksterism.

Although neither Darren Aronofsky or his brilliant film The Wrestler got their just due at nomination time, the performance of Mickey Rourke has received the nod.

Here at insomnia we are long-suffering fans of the long-suffering thespian. We wanted to bum his smokes in Diner. We wanted to steal his haircut in Rumble Fish. We wanted to join his revolution in A Prayer for the Dying, and we wanted to be make out with Lisa Bonet in Angel Heart.

After famously destroying his career - and resurfacing with his original dream of boxing greatness - Rourke has made a steady comeback, capped off by his Best Actor nomination for his portrayal of Randy the Ram.

There has been a lot of ink spilled on his journey, but The Sleepless Film Festival would rather hear from the man himself.

Here are two long interviews that allow Rourke to tell his own story on his own terms:

First, The Mickey Rourke Story: One of the best actors of his generation, Mickey Rourke is nominated for an Academy Award for his role as a down-and-out pro wrestler in Darren Aronofsky's film, The Wrestler. In this interview, Rourke talks about his troubled childhood, his early fame, his thirteen year exile from Hollywood, his passion for boxing, and his new work with Robert Rodriguez and Aronofsky.

And now, Mickey Rourke-The Angel Heart Interview: This candid interview with Rourke can be found on the DVD extras of the special edition of Rourke's film Angel Heart. Rourke talks about his bad behavior, boxing, his dog (who makes a cameo) and the great Eric Roberts.

Now for something completely different...

This is the new video for my song "The First To Know"!

If you liked that, you'll love this!

Love,
Joe Nolan

Check out my profile at Reverb Nation to see my updated press and bio.

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

The First to Know

2009-02-04T00:12:00.006-06:00

What up?

Just a quick word and a promise-keeping on my last post.

Here is the brand new short film The First to Know. Directed by Chris Rubin de la Borbolla, this enigmatic video stars Jen Rieger as Anna Karina as the Mystery Girl.

Where is she going?

What is she saying?

Who is the mysterious stranger with the camera.

The soundtrack is my eponymous song from my new CD, Blue Turns Black.

Borbolla also directed the short film REvolution, that also starred Rieger as the Damsel in Distress.

REvolution has already made a splash on Nashville's Music City Arts Channel 9. If you live in Nashville, keep your eyes open for the new one soon!

If you want to check out the other songs on Blue Turns Black, look no further...

Love,
Joe Nolan

Check out my profile at Reverb Nation to see my updated press and bio.

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!