"El Cóndor Pasa" Melody Nearly 100 Years Old

I heard the Vienna Boys' Choir recently and was knocked out by a sublimely beautiful Peruvian melody that sounded oh so familiar (it is on the album pictured). El Cóndor Pasa ("The condor goes by," or "flies past") is a song from the zarzuela El Cóndor Pasa by the Peruvian composer Daniel Alomía Robles, written in 1913 and based on traditional Andean folk tunes. It is possibly the best-known Peruvian song worldwide due to a cover version by Simon & Garfunkel in 1970 on their Bridge Over Troubled Water album. This cover version is called "El Condor Pasa (If I Could)". I recognised it right away, but the backstory is most interesting.

Paul Simon heard a version called "Paso Del Condor" by Jorge Milchberg, who was head of the group Urubamba, who told Simon, perhaps through ignorance, that the song was an 18th-century musical composition by an anonymous composer. Simon became interested in the song and composed new lyrics for the melody. In 1970, Alomía Robles' son Armando Robles Godoy filed a copyright lawsuit against Simon and demonstrated that the song had been composed by his father and that his father had copyrighted the song in the United States in 1933.

Old School Trumps New School in The Five Obstructions

The Five Obstructions is a 2003 Danish film by Lars von Trier and Jørgen Leth. The film is a documentary, but incorporates lengthy sections of experimental films produced by the filmmakers. The premise is that Lars von Trier has created a challenge for his friend and mentor, Jørgen Leth, another filmmaker. Von Trier's favourite film is Leth's The Perfect Human (1967). Von Trier gives Leth the task of remaking The Perfect Human five times, each time with a different 'obstruction' (or obstacle) given by von Trier.

Lars von Trier, whose own films combine harsh intimacy with jarring theatricality, professes great admiration for The Perfect Human, which may be why he wants to smash it, describing it as ''a little gem we are now going to ruin.'' Arbitrary constraints were conjured up by von Trier. He beckons Leth from his home in Haiti to reshoot the movie in Havana, with the proviso that no shot could last more than 12 frames, which translates into half a second of screen time. Leth turned the stuttering staccato of abrupt jump cuts into elegant syncopation. The next version had to be shot in ''the worst place on earth,'' which turned out to be Mumbai's red light district on Faukland Road. von Trier, disgusted by the results -- ''It's a marvelous film, but you didn't follow the rules'' -- punishes Leth by ordering him to go back and do it again, and then when this order is refused, to make ''a film without rules.'' After that he had to remake The Perfect Human as a cartoon, for which he enlisted the help of Bob Sabiston, the a Texas-based computer genius.

Lars von Trier sees himself as a maniacal psychoanalyst. His goal is clearly to shatter Leth's nearly superhuman composure, to wrench him out of longstanding habits and techniques and to break down his aesthetic and psychological defenses. It is amusing and rather gratifying to watch him fail, since his restless provocations are in the end no match for Leth's implacably passive-aggressive reserve. Their battle of wills climaxes with a fifth obstruction, in which von Trier has already made the fifth version, but it must be credited as Leth's, and Leth must read a voice-over narration from his own perspective but in fact written by von Trier. All of his meddling failed to produce the desired result, which was to force Mr. Leth, a chilly perfectionist, to make an imperfect film. This amounts to an admission of defeat on von Trier's part. At stake are two divergent ideas about what art should be: Leth values control, formal balance and arm's-length irony, while von Trier is interested in making a mess. This is the collision !

At the Berlinale 2010, Lars von Trier, Martin Scorcese and Robert De Niro announced plans to work on a remake of Scorsese's film Taxi Driver. The film will be made with same restrictions as were used in The Five Obstructions.

Bertolucci Takes a Postmodern Cue from Delillo

Bertolucci's 2003 film The Dreamers takes an intimate look at the evolving complex relationship between an American student visiting Paris (Matthew) and the twins Théo and Isabelle. They all fancy themselves as film buffs. Living large in an apartment all to themselves (parents on vacation), they isolate themselves from the growing tumult on the streets in May, 1968. The subplot relates to the ouster of beloved Henri Langlois, founder of the Cinémathèque Française.

Matthew tries to impress upon Théo the importance of the tumult outside their apartment. "There's something going on out there. Something that feels like it could be really important."

There is a brief moment in the film where Matt and Isabelle are walking on the street and notice a television in a storefront broadcasting the student riots. Ironically, they discover the reality of what is going on from the television, rather than through their apartment window. This is immediately reminiscent of the party scene in Delillo's Underworld, where multiple TV screens are playing the Zapruder film of Kennedy's assassination on continuous loop. Seeing it on TV makes it more real in a very postmodern fashion.

Marc Anthony Yhap Steals the Show in The White Diamond

Werner Herzog, master film maker, has served up a delicious documentary filmed on location at Kaieteur Falls, Guyana in 2004. The film starts out on a technical note reviewing the history of air flight, especially airships, and focuses on Graham Dorrington, a geeky aeronautical engineer who is a lecturer at Queen Mary, University of London, who is planning to test a tear-drop shaped airship above Guyana's jungle canopy. Dorrington becomes quite the humanist in front of Herzog's camera as he recounts the tragic death in Sumatra of his colleague cinematographer Dieter Plage. Bellow aficionados will recognize the scientist/humanist dichotomy explored in The Dean's December, yet in Dorrington, these two world views share the same brain. The scenes of Kaieteur are spectacular, especially watching the millions of white-tipped swifts (Aeronautes montivagus) which roost in inaccessible caves behind the falls. At one point Herzog is able to film the secret nesting place of the huge swift colony. Herzog shows the local chief explaining that showing the nesting grounds to others will bring disaster--and then leaves the actual footage of the nests out of the picture! There is anawesome scene in this film where Herzog shoots the upside-down reflection of the mighty waterfall in a falling drop of rain. The soundtrack by Ernst Reijseger is haunting.

Well, this is all very well, but a Rastafarian diamond miner by the name of Marc Anthony Yhap steals the show. He is the sole survivor in Guyana of an extended family that has emigrated to Malaga, Spain. In some ways, the film is a call home from a man who misses his family. Dorrington feels he exudes great wisdom. His innocent words are magical.

That is a beautiful view. It has a sunset and there is the balloon just floating
around aimlessly. Yeah, it's beautiful. It's just fantastic. I'm so fortunate
enough to witness something of a gem. I'm a miner mostly, and this is like a
diamond. Nice big diamond. Yeah, I love this. This is cool. This is real cool.
There is this big white diamond just floating around in the sunrise. It's
good.

Wow, I would like to use this craft to fly up to them, yeah. Even if it takes a whole year, months. I would love to have this craft to fly to them. Maybe land on the rooftop, give them a surprise. Yeah, it would be beautiful there, for me to be in the aircraft early in the morning. There is Marc Yhap at their doorstep saying, 'Hello, good morning.'

Abbot of Sponheim's 1492 "In Defence of Scribes" Foreshadows the Death of Liner Notes

Soon after Gutenberg's invention of movable type, the Abbot of Sponheim, Johannes Trithemius, wrote a tract in 1492, called In Defence of Scribes, in which he urged that the scribal tradition be maintained because the very act of handcopying sacred texts brought spiritual enlightenment. Unfortunately, his message was severely compromised when he had the book set in movable type so his message could be spread quickly and cheaply. This incident is mentioned 500 years later in Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody ( a title taken from Joyce's Finnegans Wake). Jefferies (The Guardian) comments that some irony lurks in Shirky's production of a traditional book that is hardly an exemplar of the mass collaborations that are his book's subject. Maybe this can be coined "Pulling a Sponheim."

More interestingly, this loss of the scriveners' trade highlights a more modern loss to audiophiles in the transition to file sharing of MP3 music files, sans artwork, sans liner notes. What would Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band be without those liner notes ? This MP3-driven takeover was a classic example of good enough is good enough. Today's youth do not think in terms of buying a physical object that contains a finite number of songs arbitrarily selected by someone else. And that is a sad loss for the art of music.

Mexico City Classes Clash in Bizarre Battle in Heaven

Mexico City film director/provocateur Carlos Reygadas entered this film into the 2005 Cannes Film Festival. It is a serious art film, with sexuality so real it borders on the surreal. Romney (The Independent) says "if only because the film is so outré that it seems closer to modern art than to any usual form of narrative cinema. It's almost too damn weird to be a film."

Marcos (a lead actor of exceptional unsightliness) is a security guard and a working class chauffeur working for a retired General, but has a few issues, not just that he is having sex with the General's daughter Ana. Btw, Ana gets her kicks working in the sex trade. You see, he and his very obese wife, Berta, have just learned that a neighbor's baby they kidnapped, accidentally died. That this mere fact is passed over so easily may be the most shocking aspect of the film. It's just a matter of time before Marcos comes clean with plans to turn himself in to the police, he already admitted his problem to Ana. Well, it makes sense then that he must kill her, and effectively dies himself while participating in a pilgrimage to the Basilica in honor of the Lady of Guadalupe. That's the story, fair enough.

But what makes this film interesting is the urban backdrop of Mexico City and the clinical treatment of rather mundane quotidinal carnal appetites among the characters. Does Reygadas have contempt for his actors ? It is hard to imagine they were chosen for anything besides their physical appearance. There is a very tender sex scene between Marcos and Berta, but due to their hippopotamus-like dimensions, it is more than totally bizarre. In a later sex scene between Marcos and Ana, the camera slowly pans through 360 degrees, implying all the city's problems come haunting the characters in that stark room. The improbable mismatch of body types strains the imagination (pardon the photo, I could not resist).

Terry Gilliam is Lost in La Mancha

In 2002, documentary film makers Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe have a field day portraying director Terry Gilliam as a real life Don Quixote in his effort to make a modern version of the Cervantes epic, starring Johnny Depp. Benjamin Fernandez (Production Designer) notes how Gilliam can "see things we can't see," like windmills maybe ? The industry has a perception of Gilliam as a director out of control, especially after the financially ruinous movie The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988). Like Quixote who aims to change the world at age 50, Gilliam (61) sees this film as his own last hurrah, but reality wins over The Man Who Killed Don Quixote in the end. Plagued by flash floods, military fighter jet noise, and a herniated disc for actor Jean Rochefort (DQ), the film was ultimately abandoned, although Gilliam later bought it back from the insurance company.

Orson Welles' Don Quixote an Exercise in Tilting at Windmills

Orson Welles' Don Quixote was an exercise in futility (the Tilting at Windmills pun irresistible) to bring Cervantes' novel to the screen. Many have tried, some failures have even been documented, like Terry Gilliam in Lost in La Mancha. Welles' story is of great interest, but for readers of the book, the chronicler issue is perhaps most interesting.

Yes, there is a chronicler issue in Don Quixote. Cervantes chooses to act the role of historian in the book, rather than novelist. The representation of authorship in the novel is intriguing, since Cervantes intercedes early in the book (1st Part, Book 2, Chap 1) explains how the history of the famed knight has been cut off at this point. In the first 8 chapters, mention is made of an anonymous chronicler: "Who doubts, in the ensuing ages, when the true history of my famous acts shall come to light, but that the wise man who shall write it....And, thou wise enchanter, whosoever thou beest, whom it shall concern to be the chronicler of this strange history..." (1st, 1, 2).

In his Moorish travels the author has discovered in Toledo an old manuscript written in Arabic by an historian named Cid Hamet Benengeli. Cervantes uses this as a device to ensure the objectivity of the storyteller, the author is a Moor, for an infidel would try very hard to understate the achievements of a Spaniard. This assures the reader that the history of Don Quixote is true and unexaggerated. "And if any objection be made against the truth of this, it can be none other that the author was a Moor; and it is a known property of that nation to be lying: yet, in respect that they hate us mortally, it is to be conjectured that in this history there is rather want and concealment of our knight's worthy acts than any superfluity; which I imagine the rather, because I find in the progress thereof, many times, that when he might and ought to have advanced his pen in our knight's praises, he doth, as it were of purpose, pass over them in silence; which was very ill done." In effect, the balance of Part I is based on the pretended discovery of a pretended translation of a pretended Arabian account.

When Orson Welles embarked in Mexico City in 1958 on his never ending project of filming Don Quixote, he would add a new dimension to the chronicler question, as film maker becomes chronicler explicitly. Welles was able to complete the scenes involving Francisco Reiguera (DQ) prior to the actor’s death in 1969 and Akin Tamiroff (SP). Welles also brought in child actress Patty McCormack (photo, note Bad Seed braids) to play an American girl visiting Mexico City. During her visit, she would encounter Welles (playing himself) and then meet Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Delays forced her to drop out as she outgrew her role. Footage was shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 1986, one year after Welles died. In 1990, Spanish producer Patxi Irigoyen and director Jesús Franco acquired the rights to the extant footage of the Don Quixote project. Franco included footage of Welles filming in Spain, taken from a documentary he had made in the 1960s. Welles had not intended to appear in the film himself, other than as its narrator. The Irigoyen and Franco work premiered at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival as Don Quixote de Orson Welles.

The movie takes place in the contemporary era, the knight-errant and his squire befuddled by the modern contrivances of televisions, motor scooters, missiles, and movie cameras. Further, director Welles is featured in the film, albeit, posthumous. This recalls Cervantes' reference to his own book Galatea. In one scene Sancho earns some pocket money working for the film crew. In many ways, this is a postmodern version of the 400-year old relation between author and characters. Was Orson Welles conscious of this chronicler issue vis a vis Cid Hamet Benengeli et al.? We'll never know.

400 Years Later, Entrepreneurs Following Footsteps of Don Quixote's Squire

Sancho's Wife Ain't Buying it ! The final scene in Cervantes' Don Quixote (1st part, book 4, chapter 25) involves the return of the knight-errant and squire home. This is the most amazing corollary to the plight of the modern entrepreneur's wife you could hope to imagine ! Sancho's wife cuts to the quick:


At the news of this his arrival, Sancho Panza's wife repaired also to to get some tidings of the good man; for she had learned that he was gone away with the knight, to serve him as his squire; and as soon as ever she saw her husband, the question, she asked him was, whether the ass were in health or no ?

Sancho answered that he was come in better health than his master.

'God be thanked,' quoth she, ' who hath done me so great a favour; but tell me now, friend, what profit hast thou reaped by this thy squireship ? What petticoat hast thou brought me home ? What shoes for thy little boys ?'

'I bring none of these things, good wife,' quoth Sancho; 'although I bring other things of more moment and estimation.'

'I am very glad of that,' quoth his wife: 'show me those things of more moment and estimation, good friend I would fain see them, to the end that this heart of mine may be cheered, which hath been so swollen and sorrowful all the time of thine absence.'

'Thou shalt see them at home,' quoth Sancho, 'and therefore rest satisfied for this time; for and it please God that we travel once again to seek adventures, thou shalt see me shortly after an earl or governor of an island, and that not of every ordinary one neither, but of one of the best in the world.'

'I pray God, husband, it may be so,' replied she, 'for we have very great need of it. But what means that island ? for I understand not the word.'

"Honey is not made for the ass's mouth,' quoth Sancho; 'wife, thou shalt know it in good time, yea and shalt wonder to hear the title of ladyship given thee by all thy vassals.'

'What is that thou speakest, Sancho, of lordships, islands, and vassals?' answered Joan Panza (for so she was called, although her husband and she were not kinsfolk, but by reason that in the Mancha the wives are usually called after their husband's surname).

"Do not busy thyself, Joan,' quoth Sancho, 'to know these things on such a sudden; let it suffice that I tell thee the truth, and therewithal sew up thy mouth. I will only say thus much unto thee, as it were by the way, that there is nothing in the world so pleasant as for an honest man to be the squire of a knight-errant that seeks adventures. It is very true that the greatest number of adventures found out succeeded not to a man's satisfaction so much as he would desire; for of a hundred that are encountered, the ninety-and-nine are wont to be cross and untoward ones. I know it by experience, for I have come away myself out of some of them well canvassed, and out of others well beaten. But yes, for all that, it is a fine thing to expect events, traverse groves, search woods, tread on rocks, visit castles, and lodge in inns at a man's pleasure, without paying the devil a cross.'

Parallax Views: Cardenio's Tale in Don Quixote Informs Belvaux's Trilogy

Cervantes wrote a very famous tale within Don Quixote, known as "Cardenio’s Tale" (1st Part, Book 3, Chap 13). Shakespeare later adopted it for a play of the same name. In brief, it is a story about Cardenio falling in love with Lucinda. Yet his friend, Don Fernando, isolates Cardenio from Lucinda, and marries her through some sleight of hand. Cardenio secretly watches the ceremony from a distant vantage point. Cardenio’s narrative presents problems because it is not exclusively his. He is not the only source for the story. His story is in part that of other characters in the book. The story is also fractured by the interrupted text presentation. Later, Dorothea relates details (1st Part, Book 4, Chap 1) of the same story as she intersects with Cardenio’s tale by way of Don Fernando (she was a former lover, also shorted by the marriage to Lucinda). As different characters relate different aspects of the story, the skewed viewpoints offer a way for the reader to gather more of the facts than the individual characters have themselves. When Dorothea relates her knowledge of the wedding ceremony, Cardenio is shocked to hear that the letter that was found on Lucinda when she fainted at the wedding ceremony was a declaration in her hand that she was already Cardenio’s wife (in principle). Dorothea watched Fernando reading it. Hence, Cardenio is not fully apprised of his own tale until he hears Dorothea’s version. Finally, Don Fernando joins the others, and tells his own version of the story (1st Part, Book 4, Chap 9).

This parallax view of events, as exploited in Don Quixote, often referred to as the first modern novel (1602) is fully utilized in film. Exactly 400 years later, The Belgian director, Lucas Belvaux has used this approach brilliantly in his 2002 Trilogy (On the Run, An Amazing Couple, and After the Life) of films (thriller, comedy, and melodrama), each taking place at the same time. Different characters in the 3 films keep swapping foreground and background roles. It is not until we’ve seen the final installment that we have full vision, it is only peripheral when viewing each film individually. This is a bold experiment in film that is brilliantly executed.

Dhobi Ghat's Frustrated Lovers

Dhobi Ghat is a brilliant Indian "Indie" film directed by Kiran Rao, wife of Bollywood star Aamir Khan (who plans an understated Arun in the film). It is about the intersection of four lives, much in the flavor of the Paul Haggis film Crash (2004). Breathtaking photography of Mumbai in all its decay and vibrancy is reminiscent of Slumdog Millionaire. As in much Indian literature (The God of Small Things is the quintessential exemplar), the protagonists are foiled by their class (or lack of). A one-night stand between the beautiful New York-investment banker Shai (Monica Digra) and the emotionally remote artist Arun never gets traction. At the same time, the dhobi wallah (clothes washer) Munna (Prateik), a poor boy with dreams of Bollywood stardom, falls hopelessly in love with the sophisticated Shai. The dhobi wallah compound is a well known tourist stop in Mumbai.

In parallel, the postmodern essence of this movie is a film within a film. Arun moves into a flat in the Muslim section of the city, and discovers a video left in an armoire, belonging to the previous tenant. It is the diary of a videographer, whose piece opens the film, a young Muslim bride, Yasmin (Kriti Malhotra). Arun is transfixed by the videos and is inspired to paint based on what he discovers. As the videos unfold, he discovers her husband has been unfaithful, ultimately leading to a tragic ending. Unrequited love amongst characters with disparate roots is the theme. In the final scene, realizing he will never attain her, the dhobi runs to catch Shai's taxi to give her Arun's new address. Likewise, she crumbles the note.

Catadores Find Dignity at Jardim Gramacho

Waste Land is a 2010 documentary by Lucy Walker documenting Brazilian artist Vik Muniz' art creations with the help of garbage pickers in Rio's Jardim Gramacho (the "Garbage Garden"), the world's largest landfill. As a youth in São Paulo, Muniz had the "good fortune" to be shot in the leg by a rich kid, who paid him off; he used the money to buy a ticket to America. It is Muniz' grand vision that creates treasure out of trash and restores great human dignity to these catadores (Portuguese for scavengers) as they take great pride in their artistic creations that are auctioned in London and exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in São Paulo. Muniz fashions re-creations of famous paintings, including Jacques-Louis David's Death of Marat. The posed photographs are then re-created in giant Seurat-style pointillism with salvaged materials. In the end it is the elite world of art auctions that funnels monetary reward and recognition to these struggling workers.

Muniz' close rapport with six pickers is especially touching. Tiaõ is the head of the Association of Recycling Pickers of Jardim Gramacho. Muniz and his wife (his ex by the end of this three-year effort) debate the ethics of taking Tiaõ to London to witness the auction. There is concern that after seeing how the other half lives, he could never return. In the end he makes the trip and is overwhelmed with pride. This is a film that is much more about humanity than about garbage, much more about a culture of catadores than a culture of waste.

Art and Pornography Make Strange Bedfellows

9 Songs is a 2004 British film directed by Michael Winterbottom (The Killer Inside Me). The title refers to the nine songs played by seven different indie rock bands (Dandy Warhols, Primal Scream, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Von Bondies, Elbow, Super Furry Animals, and Franz Ferdinand) and Michael Nyman (contemporary classicist) at Brixton Academy and other venues in London that complement the story of the film. The film is controversial in its depiction of unsimulated sex between its two co-stars, Kieran O'Brien and Margo Stilley, in a mainstream film that received a certificate for general release. The film is framed as a reminiscence from glaciologist Matt, while working in Antarctica, of his 12-month romance with American exchange student Lisa.

It is hard to imagine that the graphic sex scenes contributed artistically to the film's meaning, but a case can no doubt be made. One reviewer (Jim White) has commented that "this is not acting we see, this is activity." Ironically, despite the effort to portray a tender love story, the net effect is wholly unerotic. So what is the point ? While pornography strives to eroticize, this artistic film falls short in that arena. White makes the insightful point that film is too mechanical, intrusive, and voyeuristic a platform in comparison with literature. The film author is at a huge disadvantage, his mode of communication is literal, not literary.

Haiti's ISPAN Up Against a Wall

While doing volunteer work in Haiti last March, I could not help but marvel at something that no one even thinks about discussing post earthquake: the fabulous Haitian architecture. I was fascinated to see a poster in Jérémie for the Institut de Sauvegarde du Patrimoine National ("ISPAN"), an organization devoted to architectural preservation. Jérémie is like a Hollywood set of an African city late 1800s, a city that time forgot. The colonial architecture is striking.

Most impressive is the whimsical ginger-bread Victorian architecture in Port-au-Prince. So many villas feature "witch's-hat" spires, many beneath the rubble. How can preservation efforts even begin to compete with the desperation of restoring infrastructure and saving lives ?

Films Highlight Arab Persian Chasm

Omar Sharif stars with a young Pierre Boulanger in the French film Monsieur Ibrahim et les fleurs du Coran (2003) by François Dupeyron. Cairo-born Sharif plays a Sufi grocer, Ibrahim Demirci, in a Sephardic Jewish section of Paris on rue Bleue in the 1960s. Sharif describes this in the voice-over commentary as the Sentier section in the 2nd arrondissement, center of the "schmatta business", although rue Bleue is a bit north of rue Sentier. The young Jewish Moise Schmidt (Momo) befriends Ibrahim as a father figure, after his own father has abandoned him. This heartfelt affection between Muslim and Jew forms a backdrop of tolerance relative to the chasm between Arab and Persian culture.

Momo's father frequently asks him to go across the street to purchase items from the "Arab." There is a great line from Ibrahim "I'm not an Arab, Momo. I'm from the Golden Crescent." And later, "I'm not an Arab, Momo. I'm a Muslim." This is reminiscent of the similar line in the triple-Oscar winning American movie Crash (2004), by Paul Haggis, a film based on racial stereotyping. The Iranian shopkeeper is so distraught after his store has been wrecked and tagged with racist graffiti. He says "They think we're Arab. When did Persian become Arab?" It seems that mistaken identity is more damaging than the trashed store. Of course, this is against a backdrop of 9/11.

There is a strange nexus between the two films. Ibrahim and Momo go off on a trip to his homeland,Turkey, in a brilliant red Simca Aronde Océane (spyder). Well, that sports car ultimately crashes and leads to Ibrahim's death. By the way, Brigitte Bardot appeared in a red Simca Océane in the movie la Parisienne, which is the basis of a scene in the film, played by Isabelle Adjani.

Timmy Thomas' Why Can't We Live Together (1972) is the main soundtrack for Monsieur Ibrahim. The lyrics speak wonderfully to the "collision." Sade did a great cover on Diamond Life (1984).

Tell me why, tell me why, tell me why.

Why can't we live together?

Tell me why, tell me why.

Why can't we live together?

Everybody wants to live together.

Why can't we be together?

No more war, no more war, no more war...

Just a little peace.

No more war, no more war.

All we want is some peace in this world.

Everybody wants to live together.

Why can't we be together?

No matter, no matter what colour.

You are still my brother.

I said no matter, no matter what colour.

You are still my brother.

Everybody wants to live together

Why can't we be together?

Everybody wants to live.

Everybody's got to be together.

Everybody wants to live.

Everybody's going to be together.

Everybody's got to be together.

Everybody wants to be together.

I said no matter, no matter what colour.

You're still my brother.

I said no matter, no matter what colour.

You're still my brother.

Everybody wants to live together.

Why can't we be together?

Gotta live together...Together.

Candy Wrapper Weaving: Cleantech No More

There is some argument over the origin of candy-wrapper weaving. Many scholars say it is based on ancient Mayan paper-weaving techniques. It has also been traced back to prison or "tramp" art from the early 20th century. Men in prison made sculptures out of cigarette packs or gum wrappers sewn together with shuttles fashioned from plastic bottles and fishing line. Gum wrapper sculpture and jewelry making became a popular hobby in the U.S. during the 1960s and 1970s.

Now that this craft has entered the mass market, it is no longer a product of "innocent art." Modern manufacturing operations buy candy wrappers new and fabricate items directly. Ultimately, this product is no longer a cleantech solution as we are no longer reusing spent wrappers.

1838 Brooklyn Navy Yard Hospital: Culture of Abandonment

Would you like to pretend you are Hernan Cortés discovering lost ruins in a steamy South American jungle ? Well, you can do that in Brooklyn (August is hot and steamy) at the Brooklyn Navy Yards, wandering around pre-civil war hospital grounds that astound the senses. This is the epitome of a Culture of Abandonment. It is abhorrent that such a magnificent piece of high style architecture (reflecting a certain cultural attitude in 1838) could fall victim to such neglect.

This urban archeology is the closest thing New York City offers to Cambodia's Angkor Wat. The Navy Yard Hospital Building and the Surgeon's Residence are both designated as NYC Landmark buildings. Technically, they lie outside of the Brooklyn Navy Yard and can be viewed through the gates on Flushing Ave. - they were referred to as an "Annex of the U.S. Naval Receiving Station, Brooklyn, NY." The property was acquired in 1966 by the City of New York and administered by the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corp. During the Civil War, the hospital would supply over 1/3 of the medicines used by the Union troops.

According to the AIA Guide to NYC, the Greek Revival hospital is made of marble quarried locally (Sing Sing) by those hapless prisoners. AIA suggests that such buildings were inspirational for Albert Speer's visions for Hitler's Berlin. Martin E. Thompson was a talented Greek Revivalist architect. Excellent photos of both the Hospital and the French Empire Surgeon's House (with a concave-profiled mansard roof) appear on the web inadvertently uploaded to the Quarters A NRHP site at http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NHLS/Photos/74001252.pdf. A tall flagpole and obscure memorial commemorating soldiers who died in the Canton River (now Guangzhou and Pearl River) in 1856 during the Battle of the Barrier Forts at the beginning of the 2nd Opium War are the only clues of a stately lawn long forgotten. A photo in Berner's The Brooklyn Naval Yard shows the Canton memorial originally stood at the Sands St. gate.

The Kingston Lounge (who advertise as guerrilla preservationists and urban archeologist's) have fabulous photos of the Annex at http://kingstonlounge.blogspot.com/2009/02/brooklyn-navy-yard-hospital-complex.html.

Asmara's Secret: A Gift From Mussolini

The Kingdom of Italy created Eritrea at the end of the nineteenth century, using the classical name for the Red Sea ("erythra"). The colony of Italian Eritrea was established in 1890 (and lasted officially until 1947). Between 1936 and 1941, Italy's Fascist rulers transformed Eritrea into one of the most industrialized modern colonies in all of Africa.

Asmara has been described as a "surreal, out-of-body tourist experience" (The New York Times, 3/19/06, 10/8/08), leading one to ask "Where am I ?" Africa ? The Mediterranean ? The Middle East ? South Beach (minus the miniskirts and Ferraris) ? Asmara became an Art Deco laboratory during the 1930s for designs too avant garde for Italy. Rationalism, Novecento, neo-Classicism, neo-Baroque, and monumentalism are represented. The crown jewel is the Fiat Tagliero gas station designed in 1938 by Giuseppe Pettazzi to look like an airplane. One can imagine the locals living La Dolce Vita many decades ago.