These Things: Disney, Dali, Pink Floyd, Pythagorus, and Some Comedy Shorts
The Gardens at Sunset Grove. August 2018.
I’m trying to engage again on Twitter, because I really dig the platform, but there’s so much political vitriol that I quickly become frustrated or depressed. So I focus my attention toward art and design, music, poetry, and film. I get on a bicycle because I love riding a bicycle. These help me so much. What is the thing that is pure joy for you? I hope you get to hang out with that thing soon.
This isn’t new. The composer Alan Hovhaness stated in a 1971 interview in Ararat magazine:
We are in a very dangerous period. We are in danger of destroying ourselves, and I have a great fear about this ... The older generation is ruling ruthlessly. I feel that this is a terrible threat to our civilization. It's the greed of huge companies and huge organizations which control life in a kind of a brutal way ... It's gotten worse and worse, somehow, because physical science has given us more and more terrible deadly weapons, and the human spirit has been destroyed in so many cases, so what's the use of having the most powerful country in the world if we have killed the soul. It's of no use.
So, it’s nothing new to feel human. Here are some things made by humans that have inspired me recently (or hopefully helped me to be a better human type person):
- “The Expert” - A comedy short film where “the expert” has to explain the obvious to a room full of colleagues during a meeting.
- “Destino and Time” - A collaboration between Salvador Dali and Walt Disney that began in 1946 is now fully realized to the music of Pink Floyd.
- “Pythagorus on the Purpose of Life and the Meaning of Wisdom” - Pythagoras coined the word philosopher to describe himself as a “lover of wisdom.”
- “Talk WITH People, Not AT Them” - How many times do I find myself talking too much (it’s not only in The Morning Ride Podcast).
- “The Horribly Slow Murder with the Extremely Inefficient Weapon” - A little darker, and sillier, and you don’t even have to watch the entire film to enjoy the concept of this comedy.
The Morning Ride Podcast
I’m still working on the format for this podcast, but I record it on my bicycle commute into the office so it’s very fluid (non sequitor at times) and really more like a blog or journal. Sometimes it’s worth a listen. I’m sorry, I never know when that is :)
- 42. I’ve Not Been Seeing the Light
- 41. 14 Tangents From Nowhere
- 40. How Do You Plan For Your Weekend (and your life?)
- and so on and so forth
Until we then again, Jeff O.