W111 or perfection 💫

 

A musical tempera 💫

 

A Baroque guitar, an harpsichord and a viola da gamba, dated 1940… too cute to don’t buy it.

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An early-bird 🇦🇹 floh-Markt 💫

 

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Nina Simone 💫

 

Discipline and creativity 💫

 

… not only self-tortured and -tormented artist, lost in alcohol and thoughts of self-destruction…

"The artist must undertake an inner work that precedes the creative gesture: distinguishing what is individual from what can become a vehicle for a more universal truth.

In this sense, discipline does not limit creative freedom, but rather makes it possible."

M.I.A.V. Raggi, author of "The Sacred Circle"

Empire State Building’s rebels 💫

 

Seriously: I strongly emphasize with these daredevils ❤️

… and - most of all - with their message.

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Ève Guerra or the Art of flashback 💫

 

Your images are often in motion. Did you look to cinema to write the novel?

"From Darren Aronofsky's films, I borrowed the process of recurring flashback. It's about distorting temporality by reproducing the same scene to create an effect of insistence and repetition, almost like overpressure. The same thing happens in Christopher Nolan's work: we see the same scene again, but with different elements.

It's a technique I used in the novel, just as I borrowed some things from poetry: free verse, line breaks... I'm a Latinist, and punctuation is a modern invention, from the 16th century: before that, there wasn't real punctuation, there were segments and breathing units. 

When I write, I really think in terms of breathing units: I interrupt the sentence when I feel I can't carry it forward anymore, when the words no longer hold together. Line breaks aren't casual; they're more melodic." I have a melodic relationship with the phrase. I'm very interested in the sound, as well as the meaning."

Western Electric 300A 💫

 

Yessss!

Such a treasure.

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Robbie Basho 💫

 

Sharing some seldom seen pictures of the iconic musician.

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Goto Unit’s trivia 💫

 

Two SG-146LD on the workshop bench.

My SG-146LD

The Statement 

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Ohhh, indeed!

 

Peter Walker’s masterpiece 💫

 

I love this picture.

PW is elegant, ironic and - well deserved - so proud.

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Max Rostal Violin Recital on Triston 💫

 

This album is an exact reproduction of the original master tape. In order to guarantee the best possible sound quality, no digital equipment or post-processing has been used. It is a hand-numbered limited edition of 250 copies.

Violinist and teacher; born 7 August 1905 in Teschen (Austria), died 6 August 1991 in Bern, Switzerland.

From the age of 15, Max Rostal was already having lessons with the foremost teacher of his time, Carl Flesch. After completing his studies with him, Rostal worked as a violinist in Vienna and Oslo before becoming his former teacher's assistant at the Hochschule für Musik Berlin in 1928. With a group of his students from Berlin including Maria Lidka, Rostal emigrated to the UK where he went on to be a successful and influential teacher and performer in London. He was professor at Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London until moving to Bern, Switzerland in 1958.

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Office ☺️

 

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Murakami-san ☺️

 

"Anything, if it remains the same for too long, will gradually exhaust its energy."

Haruki Murakami

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Cooling down 😉

 

Lebowskism, oblomovism, dudeism and other -isms 💫

 

When they finished writing The Big Lebowski, the Coen brothers faced a problem. The protagonist was a scruffy, pot-smoking, bowling-obsessed homeless man known simply as "The Dude."

He wasn't a traditional hero, and he barely cared about solving the mystery surrounding him. He just wanted his rug back, because it really tied the whole room together.

The Coen brothers had partly based him on a real-life friend, but now they needed an actor who could truly bring this strange, adrift character to life.

One name kept coming back: Jeff Bridges.

When Bridges read the script, he laughed out loud because he felt like the directors had secretly studied his own teenage years in California.

That relaxed pace was already there in him.

In fact, many of The Dude's outfits, like his rubber flip-flops and old T-shirts, came straight from Bridges' closet.

But here's what surprises most fans: Bridges remained completely sober during filming.

Even though the Dude smokes marijuana constantly, Bridges wanted total control over the pacing of his performance. He set the musical score, knowing that every single "friend" and long pause had to fall at the right time.

Before scenes, he had a ritual.

He'd ask Joel or Ethan Coen a simple question: "Do you think the Dude smoked one on the way here?" They usually said yes. Bridges would rub his eyes until they were red, then let himself go into the scene.

The part naturally suited him, but when the film came out in 1998, it was a complete flop.

Critics compared it unfavorably to Fargo, audiences were confused, and it made very little money before disappearing behind behemoths like Titanic. For a while, it seemed forgotten.

Then something strange happened. People kept quoting it, midnight screenings began to fill up, and fans began dressing in bathrobes. Festivals called Lebowski Fests emerged, and an entire philosophy called "Dudeism" grew around the character's laid-back way of surviving the chaos.

Even the harshest critics changed their minds and reevaluated their reviews, realizing how deeply the film had resonated with them.

Today, The Big Lebowski is considered one of the greatest cult films ever made. In a world obsessed with ambition, image, and speed, The Dude offered something rarer: slowness, kindness, and honesty.

We spend our entire lives working our asses off, chasing money and stressing over status symbols because society tells us that's how successful people do it.

But when the world goes crazy, ambitious people crumble, while slackers keep going. Perhaps the punchline of modern life is that the people who try the least are the only ones who have truly figured out how to be happy.

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Detoxing

 

I’ll slow down my WEB activity in the next days.

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Arvo Pärt’s Alina on vinyl 💫

 

I so much love this music… and the just issued vinyl version is so lively and shiny.

Unfortunately, ECM’s vinyl isn’t up to par with the ‘70s early pressings or with US WB’s, anymore: it’s noisy and crackling like a few years old record, but… music is so good you do forgive them!

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Ragas for Afternoon, too 💫

 

A marvelous disc!

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