Reflecting for the Week (3)

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I pause from blogging this week, in order to reflect more on my other work: Theory of Algorithms and The Core Algorithm.

What do you need to reflect on, and how often should you do so?

Reflecting for the Week (2)

(image credit)

I pause from blogging this week, in order to reflect more on my other work: Theory of Algorithms and The Core Algorithm.

What do you need to reflect on, and how often should you do so?

Reflecting for the Week (1)

(image credit)

I pause from blogging this week, in order to reflect more on my other work: Theory of Algorithms and The Core Algorithm.

What do you need to reflect on, and how often should you do so?

`Home, by Philip Phillips

Hold on, to me as we go
As we roll down this unfamiliar road
And although this wave (wave) is stringing us along
Just know you're not alone
Cause I'm gonna make this place your home 

Settle down, it'll all be clear
Don't pay no mind to the demons
They fill you with fear
The trouble it might drag you down
You get lost, you can always be found 

Just know you're not alone
Cause I'm gonna make this place your home 

Ooo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo. Oo-oo-oo-oo [x2]
Aaa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa. Aa-aa-aa-aaaaaa [x4] 

Settle down, it'll all be clear
Don't pay no mind to the demons
They fill you with fear
The trouble it might drag you down
If you get lost, you can always be found 

Just know you're not alone
Cause I'm gonna make this place your home 

Ooo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo. Ao-oo-oo-oo [x4]
Aaa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa. Aa-aa-aa-aaaaaa [x4]

Home, by Philip Phillips.

I first head of `Home, as a soundtrack in American Family Insurance commercials.  It was so evocative that I had to track it down.  I don't remember how I did, but I did.

I have a firm sense of self and place, and I have had the fortune and pleasure of having traveled around the world.  My formal profile on LinkedIn speaks to this:

I was born in Manila, grew up in Chicago, lived in Dubai, and crisscrossed continents in between. So ask me where home is, and I’ll tell you, “the world.”

So what I love about the lyrics of `Home isn't that I relate to its subject (i.e., "you").  Rather, I identify with its speaker (i.e., "I").  I can find you, and I can make wherever you are feel like home.

`Demons, by Imagine Dragons

When the days are cold
And the cards all fold
And the saints we see
Are all made of gold 

When your dreams all fail
And the ones we hail
Are the worst of all
And the blood’s run stale 

I wanna hide the truth
I wanna shelter you
But with the beast inside
There’s nowhere we can hide 

No matter what we breed
We still are made of greed
This is my kingdom come
This is my kingdom come 

When you feel my heat
Look into my eyes
It’s where my demons hide
It’s where my demons hide 

Don’t get too close
It’s dark inside
It’s where my demons hide
It’s where my demons hide 

At the curtain’s call
It's the last of all
When the lights fade out
All the sinners crawl 

So they dug your grave
And the masquerade
Will come calling out
At the mess you've made 

Don't wanna let you down
But I am hell bound
Though this is all for you
Don't wanna hide the truth 

No matter what we breed
We still are made of greed
This is my kingdom come
This is my kingdom come 

When you feel my heat
Look into my eyes
It’s where my demons hide
It’s where my demons hide 

Don’t get too close
It’s dark inside
It’s where my demons hide
It’s where my demons hide 

They say it's what you make
I say it's up to fate
It's woven in my soul
I need to let you go 

Your eyes, they shine so bright
I wanna save that light
I can't escape this now
Unless you show me how 

When you feel my heat
Look into my eyes
It’s where my demons hide
It’s where my demons hide 

Don’t get too close
It’s dark inside
It’s where my demons hide
It’s where my demons hide

Demons, by Imagine Dragons.

As you see, this week's posts on Art Intersections are about songs that have meaningful, deft lyrics, and are couched in music that make them very popular.  Deft, in that the lyricist knew how to write in iambic meter and deploy rhymes that make natural sense.

`Royals, by Lorde

[Verse 1]
I've never seen a diamond in the flesh
I cut my teeth on wedding rings in the movies
And I'm not proud of my address,
In a torn-up town, no postcode envy 

But every song's like gold teeth, grey goose, trippin' in the bathroom
Blood stains, ball gowns, trashin' the hotel room,
We don't care, we're driving Cadillacs in our dreams.
But everybody's like Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on your timepiece.
Jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash.
We don't care, we aren't caught up in your love affair. 

And we'll never be royals (royals).
It don't run in our blood,
That kind of luxe just ain't for us.
We crave a different kind of buzz.
Let me be your ruler (ruler),
You can call me queen Bee
And baby I'll rule, I'll rule, I'll rule, I'll rule.
Let me live that fantasy. 

[Verse 2]
My friends and I—we've cracked the code.
We count our dollars on the train to the party.
And everyone who knows us knows that we're fine with this,
We didn't come from money. 

But every song's like gold teeth, grey goose, trippin' in the bathroom.
Blood stains, ball gowns, trashin' the hotel room,
We don't care, we're driving Cadillacs in our dreams.
But everybody's like Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on your timepiece.
Jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash
We don't care, we aren't caught up in your love affair 

And we'll never be royals (royals).
It don't run in our blood
That kind of luxe just ain't for us.
We crave a different kind of buzz.
Let me be your ruler (ruler),
You can call me queen Bee
And baby I'll rule, I'll rule, I'll rule, I'll rule.
Let me live that fantasy.

Ooh ooh oh
We're bigger than we ever dreamed,
And I'm in love with being queen.
Ooh ooh oh
Life is great without a care
We aren't caught up in your love affair.

And we'll never be royals (royals).
It don't run in our blood
That kind of luxe just ain't for us.
We crave a different kind of buzz
Let me be your ruler (ruler),
You can call me queen Bee
And baby I'll rule, I'll rule, I'll rule, I'll rule.
Let me live that fantasy.

Royals, by Lorde.

This is a bold, intelligent yet catchy song.  The speaker understands haute couture society, but scoffs at it in ways that avoid flat out arrogance (rf. Cristal is a high-priced champagne, cloaked in exclusivity; Grey Goose is a premium brand vodka, produced in France).  Instead, it retains an earthy confidence that I just love.

Portraitists at the National Portrait Gallery

Katie O'Hagan writes: 

"I painted Life Raft in 2011, during a time of great personal upheaval. During this period, I came to truly understand, for the first time, the vital role that art plays in my life. As most of the solid ground I had depended on seemed to erode away, my art emerged as the only thing keeping my head above water. I woke up one morning with this image in my head. I built the raft myself and spent the next couple of months completing the painting. It's a very literal image, and I felt quite exposed and not entirely comfortable making it at first. Now I see it as something positive to come out of a bad situation. It also marked a turning point in my work, as it has led to a move toward more personal paintings, beyond the straightforward portraiture I was doing before."

Vincent Giarrano writes: 

My work [`City Girl] is about real life experience, painting the beauty that I find in contemporary life. I combine classic and contemporary elements to reflect history and also what life is like now. This is present in the subjects I paint as well as how I've chosen to paint them. My subject for this piece is Amanda Leigh Dunn, a stylish young woman living in New York City. I wanted my painting to resonate as a sincere representation of her lifestyle and character.

Jason Hanasik writes: 

"I asked Sharrod to re-create a durational salute--something he learned at a mock boot camp during his summer vacation--for my video camera one winter afternoon. He agreed and stood, staring forward, saluting a superior 'ghost' for the better part of twenty minutes. At the end of the take, exhausted and fatigued, Sharrod turned slightly, while still holding the salute. I suddenly realized that my interest had more to do with the relationship of the salute to mimicry than the durational exercise. 

As the sun set, we did two more takes of him spinning, slowly, 360 degrees while attempting to maintain the salute." 

I realized somewhere between shooting and editing the footage that the military salute was, in many ways, a male equivalent of the endlessly spinning ballerina nestled in the jewelry box so many of my (female) childhood friends had sitting on their dressers.

Religion, Science and Art at 82nd & Fifth

The painting is `Madonna and Child with Angels (ca. 1455 - 1460), by Antonio Rossellino.

Luke Syson

Luke Syson doesn't so much equate `Faith with religion, as he does with experience of, and belief in, transcendence, that is, going beyond ordinary life or reality.

`Guitar (1937) is by Hermann Hauser.

Jerry Kerr Dobney

Hauser created such beautiful art, amid the horrific Zeitgeist of Nazism.  Jerry Kerr Dobney wonders about that, and his `String Theory, perhaps a pun on a conceptual framework in physics, speaks to this wondering.

Fashion concept `No. 13 [Collection] (spring/summer 1999), by Alexander McQueen.  

Andrew Bolton

This is fascinating concept, and Andrew Bolton's impassioned talk `Extreme Fashion helps to crystallize my notion that fashion is art.

Conserving René Magritte at MoMA

The Menaced Assassin

The Palace of Curtains III

The False Mirror

The Portrait

Ballet Stretches Apropos for Hockey Goalies

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More than football players, hockey goalies are probably more apt to be this limber.  Perhaps they do have similar stretches in their training and warm up.  

Natalia Osipova, in the Romantic Ballet `Giselle

Image credits, by Janejira Matthews.

Athleticism and Lyricism, by Simone Cameresi

Image credits, by Simone Cameresi.