This is just… beautiful. I love TED talks, butI’ve sort of fallen back in love with them lately as I’ve been working on a documentary project with three TED fellows. This piece really highlights the importance of being grateful for the small things hidden in plain sight in the everyday.  

This is a great list of ideas for staying creative and also a really well done video. Check it! I need to start listening to the one about getting away from the computer more… 

“

And courage to me meant ploughing through that dull gray mist that comes down on life— not only overriding people and circumstances but overriding the bleakness of living. A sort of insistence on the value of life and the worth of transient things.



-F Scott Fitzgerald

”

Via Flavorwire:

“YouTube inadvertently did singer-songwriter Mike Hadreas, aka Perfume Genius, a great favor when it denied him the right to run the video for “Hood” (above) as an ad on the site. The clip, which shows gay porn star Arpad Miklos chastely embracing Hadreas, brushing his hair, and applying makeup to him, was judged “non family safe,” despite its lack of nudity or sex. When Perfume Genius went public about YouTube’s censorship, he sparked the outrage of the indie blogosphere and earned a defender in Michael Stipe. Of course, this says little about the music onPut Your Back N 2 It. From what we’ve heard so far, Hadreas’ second album is a delicate, soul-baring epic that demands ample attention on its own merits; fans of Antony and the Johnsons especially should keep an eye out for this one.”

If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front

“One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”
- Gerald Seymour 

I watched this documentary last night and it started an interesting conversation between my friends and I. For me it was really inspiring to see a group of people so passionate about something that they were willing to go to such extremes for it. I don’t know if their methods are right but after seeing the police action taken against them in the film it’s hard not to sympathize with the E.L.F. 

That being said activism is a confusing and challenging subject for me and I don’t really know how to properly articulate my thoughts on it so I think I’ll leave it alone. But I think this documentary is worth watching. It’s up for an Oscar this year. It’s streaming on Netflix. Check it out. It’s worth an hour and a half of your time. 

Un Nombre de Mujer - Los Zafiros

Los Zafiros

I wish I could curl up and live inside of this song… Listening to it makes me want to find a time machine and travel back in time to Cuba in the 60s.

Linen guayabera shirts and hot sweaty nights rum drunk and electric gyrations in the low light and this wild sound mixing with the humidity. In my dreams…

Also, the little bit of story I could glean from the Wikipedia entry on Los Zafiros makes their story seem more interesting than anything Hollywood has vomited out in the last year.

“The group was highly successful from the start, with high record sales and popular tours at home and abroad. However, some members of the group were self-destructive and undisciplined, with heavy drinking and other activities. Two died young: Ignacio died in 1981 at the age of 37 from a brain hemorrhage. Kike died in 1983 from cirrhosis of the liver. El Chino, beset by vision, speech and drinking problems, lived alone in Cayo Hueso until his death on 8 August 1995 at age 56. Today only two members are alive, Manuel Galban and Miguel Cancio. Cancio lives in Miami.”