Happy New Year!!!

 

“To look life in the face, always, to look life in the face, and to know it for what it is...at last, to love it for what it is, and then, to put it away...”

Nelson Mandela obituary

 Nelson Mandela in traditional dress in 1950. Photograph: Apic/Getty Images

Hero of the apartheid struggle, he spent 26 years in jail and then became South Africa's first democratically elected president.
One must go back to Dallas, Texas, in 1963 to find a comparable occasion of collective bereavement as that which has met the death of Nelson Mandela, at the age of 95. Even the assassination of President John F Kennedy registered less resonantly in the days before the global village – and, in any case, the trajectory of the American politician's life represented promise shattered rather than hope fulfilled. (to read the article go to this links at The Guardian).

Flying to my hometown

I've been walking in the same way as I did

Missing out the cracks in the pavement

And tutting my heel and strutting my feet

Is there anything I can do for you dear?

Is there anyone I could call?

No and thank you please madam

I ain't lost just wondering

Round my hometown

Memories are fresh

Round my hometown

Oh the people I've met

Are the wonders of my world

Are the wonders of my world

Are the wonders of this world

Are the wonders now

I like it in the city

When the air is so thick and opaque

I love to see everybody in short skirts

Shorts and shades

I like it in the city when two worlds collide

You get the people and the government

Everybody taking different sides

Shows that we ain't gonna stand shit

Shows that we are united

Shows that we ain't gonna take it

Shows that we ain't gonna stand shit

Shows that we are united

Round my hometown

Memories are fresh

Round my hometown

Oh the people I've met

Are the wonders of my world

Are the wonders of my world

Are the wonders of this world

Are the wonders of my world

WINDSWEPT

Windswept is an installation designed by American artist Charles Sowers on the façade of the Randall Museum in San Fransisco. Hundreds of spinning blades reveal the invisible patterns of the wind. It consists of 612 rotating aluminium weather vanes mounted on the outside wall of the museum. If the wind hits the wall, the aluminium blades spin independently, indicating the localised flow of the wind and the way it interacts with the building.

watch the video

Click here for more about this installation.

Diana - a biopic

Director Oliver Hirschbiegel and star Naomi Watts talk to Catherine Shoard about Diana, their biopic of the Princess of Wales. Focusing on the last two years of Diana's life, the film shows the princess isolated from the royal family, hounded by the press and doing her best to maintain a relationship with a charismatic surgeon. (From The Guardian)

The past

Origin Of Love Lyrics

  (From the film Hedwig and the Angry Inch)

When the earth was still flat,
And the clouds made of fire,
And mountains stretched up to the sky,
Sometimes higher,
Folks roamed the earth
Like big rolling kegs.
They had two sets of arms.
They had two sets of legs.
They had two faces peering
Out of one giant head
So they could watch all around them
As they talked; while they read.
And they never knew nothing of love.
It was before the origin of love.

The origin of love

And there were three sexes then,
One that looked like two men
Glued up back to back,
Called the children of the sun.
And similar in shape and girth
Were the children of the earth.
They looked like two girls
Rolled up in one.
And the children of the moon
Were like a fork shoved on a spoon.
They were part sun, part earth
Part daughter, part son.

The origin of love

Now the gods grew quite scared
Of our strength and defiance
And Thor said,
"I'm gonna kill them all
With my hammer,
Like I killed the giants."
And Zeus said, "No,
You better let me
Use my lightening, like scissors,
Like I cut the legs off the whales
And dinosaurs into lizards."
Then he grabbed up some bolts
And he let out a laugh,
Said, "I'll split them right down the middle.
Gonna cut them right up in half."
And then storm clouds gathered above
Into great balls of fire

And then fire shot down
From the sky in bolts
Like shining blades
Of a knife.
And it ripped
Right through the flesh
Of the children of the sun
And the moon
And the earth.
And some Indian god
Sewed the wound up into a hole,
Pulled it round to our belly
To remind us of the price we pay.
And Osiris and the gods of the Nile
Gathered up a big storm
To blow a hurricane,
To scatter us away,
In a flood of wind and rain,
And a sea of tidal waves,
To wash us all away,
And if we don't behave
They'll cut us down again
And we'll be hopping round on one foot
And looking through one eye.

Last time I saw you
We had just split in two.
You were looking at me.
I was looking at you.
You had a way so familiar,
But I could not recognize,
Cause you had blood on your face;
I had blood in my eyes.
But I could swear by your expression
That the pain down in your soul
Was the same as the one down in mine.
That's the pain,
Cuts a straight line
Down through the heart;
We called it love.
So we wrapped our arms around each other,
Trying to shove ourselves back together.
We were making love,
Making love.
It was a cold dark evening,
Such a long time ago,
When by the mighty hand of Jove,
It was the sad story
How we became
Lonely two-legged creatures,
It's the story of
The origin of love.
That's the origin of love.

The book is on the table