Opera: Sorrowful Mysteries

Lifted, by Palmistry


Every Breaking Wave / The Troubles, by U2 


Solomon, by IKON


The Renaissance, by Tomi Thomas


Bittersweet Symphony, by The Verve


The Five Sorrowful Mysteries:
The Agony in the Garden // The Scourging at the Pillar // The Crowning with Thorns // The Carrying of the Cross // The Crucifixion

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Concert: Chemistry's Mysteries

Lady Jay - Oh My My My


James Blake - The Wilhelm Scream


St. Beauty - Holographic Lover

A side-note on referrals:
I don't always remember the history of how I "discovered" a particular track, album, or artiste, but for the above three I have names and dates: Tec, Ghost, and Janelle Monae - beautiful discoveries yielding beautiful discoveries.

@LadyJayLives like the new jam 'oh my my my'...Dope...More Vim Lady!!

— Show Dem Camp (@ShowDemCamp) September 4, 2014

🎵wilhelms scream - James Blake

— TheLoveMovementSdc (@kingluu) November 9, 2015

@StBeautyBand's new song "Holographic Lover" is a cosmic slow jam of epic proportion, and the soundtrack to romance that transcends space and time! Check out my girls and their new release, exclusively premiered on @NylonMag! 🙏🏾#LinkInBio #LovetheFree #KittyCash #StBeautyBand #WondalandRecords

A photo posted by Janelle Monáe (@janellemonae) on May 10, 2016 at 7:43am PDT

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Embossed

Stopped by this little store near my house to buy (a bag of pure) water.
The owner also stocks greeting cards - birthday cards and such - remember those?

 Remember the pure pleasure of the thick card paper and embossed pink flowers and sparkly lettering on the front of the card, to start with? 

The preferably-not-icky poetry inside. 

 Cards were Hallmark or budget or something nice-and-in-between;

or (starting in the late nineties) sometimes afrocentric and handmade. 

Real cards were just such a great idea, before e-cards, before no-cards. 

I'll have to find an excuse to give a card again sometime.  

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P.S. To everyone who loves me (yeah, you), thank you for loving me.  

Come on, Andy. Let's go, Roger.

Another one of the best tennis stories I know is Andy Murray.  He worked/works super-hard.  He was too little at first, then he became strong; then he was ruthlessly criticized for not feeding his country's enormous hopes and dreams, but he ate all that up and in return won big at home: Wimbledon, and Olympic Gold.
On his own terms, I would say.  And this is life. 

Some of the best writing in the world is about tennis, and indeed I've said (written) this before, some of these guys should win a Nobel Prize.  The campaign is on - Steve Tignor and Peter Bodo of Tennis Magazine, for a major literature / writing award.  It's not an entirely selfless campaign: if a tennis writer can win the Nobel, then so can a blogger like me, right?

Read this, please.
And remember this. 

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New Normal

Was there daylight savings ( ) or something?  I think I lost a day this past week.  Watching Korean drama series - again! - would do that to you.

Life on Pause.

I have also rediscovered sleeping for about 8 hours daily. It doesn't feel like enough sleep yet.  I'll try to improve. Sleep is the answer // sleep is the future.  Don't second-guess yourself. 
 
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Learning new things from old writings

 My sister had this blog in 2007-2008, a fun, flighty, conversational breezy diary called Fausset, accent on the e, but it might as well have been named Confetti.

Raj had his Prithvi and I was one of his fans, and I kept a little us-blog called Duniya / enta Raj too.  

 
 You may also find it fun to mine the earliest months of BellaNaija and NotJustOK, and see too Sergey Brin's little blog from that era.  

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Ma chérie, mon cher

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What am I supposed to do - 
sit around and wait for you?  
Well, I can't do that...
- Cher, in Believe

 If I had far more than the one or two dozen gigabytes per month to play/live on the internet, I would watch most of these little tennis videos a few times.  I just watched #32 and it's a match I remember well.  I call it Black-On-Black-Violence.  Both Roger Federer and Andy Roddick showed up in black.  Dressed as The Undertaker, I said, as in, somebody is going to leave in a coffin today.  Andy himself was a perennial top 4 player and a one-time world number 1.  He had Jimmy Connors coaching him and had gone through hell to put himself in a position to challenge Roger, who had become a mountain-sized problem to him and everybody.
Oh Lord, the bullets came pow.  Pow.  Andy with the fastest serve in men's tennis.  Power.  Heart.  Fire.    Everything.  Read about it read about it, let me know if you watched it. 
Roger won.
I don't know if I cried but I felt Andy's heart.  That was when he became my guy, because before that...ehn, he's American, so, too...uncomplicated.
Omg another match I just remembered: Andy Roddick winning at Queens - pure, unadulterated beauty.  First of all the courts at Queens make you - I mean if you're the kind that gets visceral reactions to beautiful things - you'll lose your breath for a bit.  It's so dirty-yellow green and red.  And Andy respecting the space because it's England, yet being such a giant, so fit, hard, and American.  And then doing his job, whacking the ball, and winning and being happy. 

I usually cheat by using my internet overnight (12-6 is free in the contract), but the internet company cheats by charging for the first and the final 45minutes or so, that is you're only safe from 1-5am.  Then I usually call monthly when I run out of 'data' to complain about all the lost gigabytes and they usually apologize and tack them back on, but I'm sorta getting tired of the dance.  And maybe having too many all-nighters watching gossip videos and music videos while downloading edu/Coursera recordings and all the films and music albums I want, and getting really tired from the jetlag :) is not always the way to live.

Federer: amazing!
Rafa Nadal: mi amor.  I fell in love at first sight.

I wonder if when I'm 99 and dying my only regret will be all these years I'm spending NOT watching tennis.
Because think about my life without the 2008 Wimbledon final - the excitement leading up to it, the experience of seeing it, alone, undisturbed... The thing is I wouldn't even know what I didn't know, that I had missed out on the whole joy of life. 
Or my life without the drama of Ana Ivanovic - the beauty, the hustle, the rise, the fall, - or Anna Chakvetadze (A-Chak, the psychologist and book-lover, just kept placing the ball and placing the ball and many times, that was enough to win) in those days.
Or life without taking a snapshot of a body like Martina Hingis' and wondering what it means.  For many years I've struggled to describe it without thinking of horses horses.  I think it's how pronounced the balls of the shoulders are, like mine.  And since anatomically hips and shoulders are close kin, she's a bit more a collage of different structures fit together and less one compact aerodynamic mass.
(Yes I just figured it out.  It has these exaggerated balls (1) and it reminds me of me (2).  So I was utterly captivated, and now it turns out I'm just crazy about myself?  How narcissistic.  How pathetic. ) 
I thought to use the word gangly for Ms Hingis.  I know gangly is usually a Venus Williams tall-with-limbs-flying-here-and-there - you should watch Venus play, she is a tall, beautiful child - not a not-so-tall, non-flailing, sexy mama; but what I was thinking was actually GANGLIA, GANGLION, gangly in that sense, and after some work I've found there is support for relating ganglia-ness / gangliness to the knobs of her shoulders, the knobs/orbs at the hips etc.  Ganglia Origins: From Latin - swelling; From Greek - cystic tumour.
She walks like a bow-legged horse.  :)  Or maybe it's my imagination.

I looked up 'gangly' and found this person so named...

 I don't think to use gangly for myself.  For myself, I think Bantu, rather short/squat and explosive at least in the lower-body, contrasted with the slender-tall Sudanic type.  (Map) No I'm not actually short.  But I look like someone who really should be stronger.  Except that I don't like to move.  I'm basically like Martina.  She's a professional athlete, so I must be wrong about her not liking to move so much?  I think she's a bitch, definitely.  I don't think she's a person who gives too much of a _ ; I definitely from-a-distance like her.  Very much. 
Hey.
If she was gay
and I was gay
I'd stay away
Cos it won't be ok
You know she'd wipe
the floor with my aaaassss
And she would break my heart 
Yes she would break my heart
Stomp on the littler part
Save the rest for breakfast 
fried eggs and rare girl-heart
line of coke for dessert
That bi* would fu* me up
That shi* would be so crae
No shrink could fix all that
So better not to start
...
But I'm not gay
Nor is she gay.
Crae. 
For the melody, you know If You Were Gay from Avenue Q, right?  

I haven't really watched tennis since 2008.  Maybe I watch three matches a year nowadays.  And not even full-attention.  Then again, Novak Djokovic has been number one for a few years.  I was happy for him to be a top three player behind Roger and Rafa, but not happy when he started beating Rafa.  I don't want anybody beating my Rafa, don't you hear me?
I never thought Novak would become so powerful, and while I'm sure he's a great guy and great player and all, I don't really want to watch him.  And that's not fair at all.
I have to mention Andy Murray.  Or it won't be fair.  I like Andy.
So maybe it's ok to not watch tennis to spite Novak?  My friend Bala has been a Djokovic fan since whenever.  He's not getting any from me with that kind of attitude :P  Haha just kidding, that's just one of ten good reasons.

Always thought that if I was 99 and dying, one of my regrets would NOT be that I didn't have a kid or two, so why bother?  Especially when I know how much I hate my life when it's filled with chores.  It's like dying, dude, when you have to constantly do silly things that you would rather not do and can't find the importance of doing.  I remember having my Chemistry book in front of me, while this little baby wanted to play.  Yeah it's fun to play with you for a few minutes but then I have to get back to regular eleven-year-old life.  I remember poo-poo.  (OK, diapers nowadays, thank God.)  There's laundry and connecting (because if you're going to parent you'd better do it well by paying attention and connecting with them) and the other day somebody reminded me about school, yeah, kids go to school, and I remembered: shit there's also the morning routine wake up brush teeth get to school on time nonsense to deal with?  I hated being woken up rudely to start the day with a bath, like what's so wrong with waking up when you feel like waking up, naturally?  And now I'm supposed to wake up somebody else?
School itself was great.  It's efficient.  You're with people your age so learning and play come naturally.  The adults have enough to do to keep them happily engaged.  They cook for a lot of people at a time and get it over with.  I can't even feed myself, too lazy, and now I've got to feed somebody else on a schedule?  Why mess things up in my life?  Why now when everything is so perfect?
If only I could be a dad.
Because I love you, future kids, I just don't want all this mommy shit.
And if you knew how stupid life was, you might consider staying unborn too.  There's nothing here.

So yesterday I learned one new way to be a dad:  I was at my amala woman's place buying some food to eat there and some to take home, and found out her kids are in boarding school.  The younger is eight years old.  Really?  You don't have to wait till secondary school to cart them off?  Awesome.  And she's a super-intelligent woman in my opinion, a Christianly-doctrinely businesswoman; she says she visits them often, maybe twice a week, husband too.  She says they live in a nice private hostel just outside town.  They eat well.  I'm thinking wow they don't have to deal with traffic; they can step right from schooltime into lunch, siesta/nap, sports/play, prep time, sleep.  This is magic.  I was in boarding school from age 9 too and always wondered about the hellish traffic and crappy lifestyle of day (commuting) students.  Unnecessary stress going back and forth. 
You never know though, what you think is best may not be what your kid prefers, but my preference has always been for kids to have lots of room to grow, lots of interactions with various interesting people, lots of space to play.
Those conditions were there in most of my own life and I see them as very positive.  I would hate to crowd my kid or be crowded in by them.
But it's probably not my calling to create all these healthy kiddie-developing conditions in this current concrete jungle with new modern cloistered life (can't talk to neighbours), small nuclear families (I think of those as hell, children need space), money-centered lifestyle (and getting very little value in exchange for the money.)  It is not my calling; I like twenty-year olds, I like to talk to people like adults, I like to teach in a respectful laissez-faire manner, I like to interact and go, I don't like the full-time-hands-on thing with a tiny little baby ... and so having kids has seemed to me like a passport to hell, at least if not well managed.  Maybe when I was 18 and busy it would have fit in as a nice side-gig.  Now I'm, oh Lord, I'm a grown-ass woman, and it just seems like it would be such a change from a grown-up life, if that makes sense.  Can't do it.  Definitely outsourcing.  Give me your college kids, I'll give you my toddler. 

What shifts the balance?
Boarding school - Oh Yes.  Especially since it's not even these big-money arrangements where I dunno, you're paying for the kids to basically network with rich kids and sleep under duvets with constant air-conditioning.  They're in Africa, what's all the rubbish about pretending it's Scotland? 

The alternatives I've considered before -
Very flexible work (beyond what you think of as flexible.  No, I will not be one of those harried adults.  Nope.  Not happening.  Unless there's a war or something.)  That's part of my life now.
Rural living or a semblance of it, like a job back in the 'country', or living on a nice university campus with everything.  I know people who had that - academic parents, staff school - and hated it, they claim they grew up poor.  Oh well.
Communal living, like multiple little families, like Rafa's extended-family house, so someone can baby-talk and pull my baby's cheeks and teach them drawing or stories and it doesn't fall to just two unfortunate souls to do everything.  I mean who came up with this whole isolated couples idea - it's so inhumane.

I really had everything as a kid: 
We were for a time too poor to be isolated and Lagos was 20 times less crowded.  Kind neighbours, low stress levels.  I was always talking.
Lived on a gorgeous island for a few years, even.  Maybe 200 people in 64 little houses on well over 10 hectares (so maybe 10,000sq.ft. per person) with no fences.  Amazing.
Then not sure what happened, stress level rising, maybe because of the extra kids - twins, maybe it's just hard after a few years of marriage to pretend life isn't frustrating, maybe it's just luck - sometimes a life is easy sometimes it's fraught with ... the mind/soul is not happy, but thankfully school was there for me.  So many people at school from whom to learn so many things.  I couldn't sleep my first night even long after lights-out, it was so exciting.  The biggest problem was holidays from boarding school.  Most people don't feel the same way, I'm sure.

So kids, I know you want to be born and everything.  Help me figure out the logistics of it, get yourself a daddy or two - maybe he's always wanted to be a mommy or maybe he has a nice extended family to feed us, because you know I love food, and I will take time out of my not-so-busy schedule to get knocked up and you know, do the whole nine months in the oven and two years carrying you on my back like a smiling peasant before you move on to General Relativity / Quantum Mechanics.

I'll get a unique 'oja' for your royal ass, not this towel.

If I was 35 and dying, how much would I regret not having done novel #2?  Not very much.  Now I thought of a new way to constrain the work - make it about children, the four main characters' ages are pushed down under 16, maybe even around 10, throughout.  To make that work well, I really should hang out with young people, and there are many schools about, and I have no job keeping me from doing it, so why not do it?  If I was 35 and dying though, I'd remember that it was supposed to be just one novel and I've done that.  These extra writings are beyond what's required, so hey, good job.  Do whatever you want.  Hang out with kids and write something amazing, or don't hang out with kids and write an irritating writerly piece.  Your business.

I'm tired.  I hate writing.  Yeah, right.  Time to shower.  11:11am, it's nice and warm. 

Efa and Adamooh - a story to avoid

Eve was in the garden trying to chill but this big bright red apple would not stop shining in her face, taunting her.
And you already know that God had said don’t eat that apple and all, but enlightened beings could easily tell it was a setup.

Like the children in the marshmallow test, Efa was not so enlightened.
Compared to the angels for instance, she was a baby in years of existence.
Given this, and the fact that she was not even promised a reward theoretically exceeding her indefinitely long wait to explore the bright red apple, 
I mean what eggheads might call a poor incentive structure,
you can already guess what happened to her, her male mate, and the fruit of the Garden. 

Now when God returned from his stroll, knowing full well that for sure the apple was gone, or one might say instead of God to say that she was tired of sharing the fine garden with these overly-intelligent human creatures,
he/she sought an excuse to kick them out,
Wherefore God put on his scary God voice and thundered at them – what!?! where is the shiny apple that I left here, I must be going blind, for I can't see it.
Music videos can be a corrupting influence on anyone, no matter how young, because the first words that came out of the woman’s mouth were “It wasn’t me.”
Straight out of the Shaggy song.

All this time, Adam tarried in a corner, trembling.
Shuoooe! said God. If it wasn’t you, then who was it, Baby Gehl?
Adamu gave Efya this look like, she would be in trouble if she dared implicate him.
Smooth Mummy Eve was indeed about to name her man as the culprit, but fear gripped her heart, because Adamu as gentle as he looks, is dangerous when angry,
and very strong.
Eve saw one snake slithering by, she pointed at that damned soul, “it was the serpent.”
God was amused, suppressing laughter really.  "Oh, child, you think I was born yesterday?" thought he. 
while Adam was amazed pondering when in all his days naming and counting animals he'd ever observed a snake to eat a red apple.
In all, the residents of Eden and heaven were amazed that she would tell such an improbable lie. 

Eve continued: it was the serpent, he came and whispered sssss in my ear to eat the apple, then plucked the apple and showed me and Adamu how to eat
and even took a piece and dropped it in my mouth.
That’s why we’re in this predicament.
It wasn’t me, remember it was you that put the snake here and this daft Adamu too.
But I really blame the snake.
God was speechless.
Wow.
Audacious.
Crafty. 
Very sexy in spite of.  Because of.  In spite of.  Not really sure right now. 
But God is wise which makes H God.  Hence did he consider the best course of action which had been known to Her since the beginning, end, and middle of time.
If it was only the man, I might overlook the sin, thought God.
But this Lai one over here, at this rate she will soon swindle me out of my own garden, or knock me off my throne.
The time is now to send everybody packing.
Let them go therefore and be gods over their territory.  They will soon come to respect what a difficult job I have.
And let snakes eating apples remain the symbol of the illuminati.
And so God pretended once again to be very angry and He said “I banish you.” But secretly he was proud of them.
Behind the beard he was smiling.

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Celebrate in advance

Get to know

The popular Show Dem Camp (SDC):

Feel Alright ft. Poe and Boj

Happy Weekend ft. Kid Konnect

Ewele ft. Ms. Iye

The venerated rap-duo Show Dem Camp - Ghost and Tec:

Clone Wars Volume 1 (2010)

Clone Wars 2

There's still the collaborator ShowDemCamp:
with Jesse, MI, BlackMagic, The Collectiv3, Falz, many great African women in music...not to mention The Dreamer Project

The Afropolitan ShowDemCamp.

The...

They have more sides than a geometry test :)

Get caught up on their work - really some of it is hard to find because dropped all over the place like goat pearls but if you're like me you'll enjoy the challenge - and get ready for their next project.

I think it's this summer, and I think it's a Clone Wars Volume 3 tape or something?

Now get caught up on OluwaJesseJagz.  I think his next album is this summer too; I just know.  The last one was a surprise and it was super-duper-awesome.  Just, really, a feast, in every way.
Jesse Jagz of the thousand nicknames and fittingly, Gemini, is the greatest: the only artist to appear twice on my top-five music video feature.
No seriously.  Fela - dead.  Bob Marley - murdered.  By this skinny kid from Jos, Nigeria named Jesse Abaga.
Nothing left to prove, in my opinion.
What will he do next?  Maybe go for the sound of cash-registers credit alerts?  Serve us a new story-brand-swag-persona?  Open up our heads and put the truth inside?  Add some honey to his sound and make it so confectionately ours?  I don't know, I don't know.  I do know that I am not setting myself up for a crash to reality because the reality is Jesse is astounding. 

AdVertIseMent: Read my books.
The crazy thing is omgggg so much great music and art in Nigeria.  I can't wait for the rest of this experience.

This is one video that didn't move me at first.

So while it's great fun, it's not even his best.

S h u d d e r.

My Nigerian Brewery

All sorts brewing in my freezer at the moment:

I drank a boozy mango-ginger drink last night - it was ordinary spiced puréed mango when I bought it.
Then I tried my usual watermelon-pineapple drink today and of course that was mildly fermented too, pineapple takes very little time to start - acid, something like that.  You can explain it to me.  Sugar, little things (bacteria?) feed on it and release alcohol/ethanol?  Yeast for bread? 
I still have some delicious zobo in there and maybe one more bottle of pineapple-watermelon.
Zobo is bright red, so when I open it, have to be careful not to spray the whole room.  I once sprayed my backpack and furniture with kunu. Sprayed a man on the bus with zobo :( just a little bit. 

To the best of my knowledge, I had power at some point yesterday, maybe 24 hours ago, so it appears the freezer has thawed out fast.  It's also interesting that it builds up water and ice nowadays...I looked online for that problem but didn't understand the explanation...some sort of blockage in some little pipe and that stops the built-in defrost mechanism, sounds easy enough.

I learned the other day that my fabulous plumber is a wack electrician.  Yeah he can change a lightbulb, but once I had him change a light-switch (months ago when he was doing this and that about the house) and he did it upside down.
So now for two of my switches 'on' is 'off'.
He is a terrific plumber though.  (Experienced.  Excellent, logical, etc.  Very orderly mind.  Good process.  You know how much I love a beautiful mind and hate how girls/women often neglect logic. )  I've heard two people who use plumbers a lot and on large projects say similarly good things about him.  
But he's taught me an important lesson about specialization, else I would have someday asked him to check out the wet fridge.  Leaving it that way for now just means I have to empty the defrost tray once or twice a week before it starts leaking water into the fridge and onto the carpet - that happens a lot, and it's not a huge problem, bigger things in life...

For now there's no electricity so no worries about frost.
All I have to do is keep eating so I can empty the place out.

It's only been about one day without, so of course it could be that there's no problem.  I mean, power could return before I hit the full stop at the end of this sentence.
Or not.
The great development is that for once we have some sort of warning: Power supply in more danger as Ikeja Electric exits talks with Labour, in yesterday's news via NewsBuka.  No seriously, this is a move in the right direction, warn us of impending woes.  I've always felt like news organizations should tell us exactly these things.  Are we gonna have power?  When?  Publish a schedule. 

For those who are now frightened and will like to run generators to disturb the nights and share their pain, here's a warning for you too: FG lied, fuel scarcity to end in May  also via my NewsBuka, subscribe.

So at least you can plan: 
Buy a pack of candles.  Book a month in a hotel.  Oh wait: 'Hotels' sometimes literally 'home away from home' hehe.  Make friends with $erious people, or just jet out to, I don't know, Cotonou, Lomé, Accra?  I recommend taking up new hobbies, like farming in your backyard.  You don't have a backyard?

Good luck, everyone.  It's never as bad as it seems.  Back to re-watching my Legal/Political Philosophy videos. 
  
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I don't know what I'm doing

...I don't know what I'm saying 
I don't know why I'm watching all these white people dancing 
- Rufus Wainwright (This Love Affair, alternate video) 

#3 - black skin tone

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 Forgetting to sign my latest paintings/drawings, uh-oh.  

Tips for old people at concerts

I had fun at GidiCulture yesterday.
Basically I love the outdoors and I'm always indoors, so it was fantastic and chill to be out on the beachsand doing nothing.  People-watching.  

Then the main event started
and this hyperactive em-cee and his 500 minions decided to kick me out: in their bid to get the place more, urr, pumping (oh God why do people say turnt turnt turnt) they turned up the volume till iii was vibrating.
I stepped back and back and back till I was out on the street. :D
The end. 

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If you're old like me, the way to handle these things is:

• Go early, maybe a few hours early, and leave when it gets noisy i.e. when the main event starts?   
• Afterwards, definitely bitch and complain (call your friendly radio station, start a letter-writing campaign...o right, they have email now - do that too) so that the concert world will change to accommodate the needs of the sane and still-hearing in society.

Current top 12 websites

Twitter
Bellanaija
RealBubbler
Facebook

NewsBuka
UpNaira
KAT
XBubbler

LifeLib 
Instagram 
Swift 
NotJustOK

Those are the suggested sites on my Firefox Home page, based on my browsing history.
Yikes, I'm a blog addict.

#2

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###Three Sisters, novel #1 here###

These are amazing lines, every time I hear them

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Time for bed, little bee, little bee.  

I will always love you more than you love me.  

- Sarah McLachlan, in Little B 

Every breaking wave on the shore 

tells the next one there'll be one more. 

Every gambler knows that 

to lose 

is what you're really there for.  

- Bono/U2, in Every Breaking Wave 
(So...hopelessly tragic.) 

Tell me you love me.  

If you don't, then lie, oh lie to me.  

- Chris Martin/Coldplay, in True Love
(It's the way he sings it that is so moving, searing, touching, haunting.  He really does sound so pitiable.)

Call it magic. 

Back to back...HITS

I just watched Ordet (The Word) a 1955 Danish film by Carl Th. Dreyer.
And
1. I can't keep it to myself.
2. My life just changed: "if you had prayed to God, He would have answered your prayers."  Ah, true.  Ask, for a change, stoic one.  The answer is yes, really, only maybe sometimes the answer is not yes.  (a paragraph of personal stuff I just deleted.)

Now I really wish to see Rams.
And be a judge at Cannes or the Oscars or any large international film festival / awards programme.

Yesterday, I watched the zen film Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, ...and Spring.
Please, treat yourself to this film.  
Raise The Red Lantern, from the day before that, was also a complete masterpiece.

In very related news, I decided on the title for Novel #2 - it has changed a few times, but maybe this is the final one, the best one - cutting it down from a bevy of twelve main characters to just four.  That way less rambling, more story.  It will be short and verrry good.  And I'll do a rework of Three Sisters (Novel #1) too.
It's been many many years of thinking about these people, and I've not been writing, but hey, the book is practically reality.
I've been letting all these other works soak in and influence me and so it's really going to be something wonderful.  Yeah, I'm going to shit a pearl. 

There'll be many unused characters (and drafts) and they'll get recycled into short-stories and maybe one or two into novel #3.  Then no more novels hehehehe.  Just kidding, once you pop you can't stop.
Thank you for feedback on novel #1 so far, I need the feedback, I'll use it, so please send more.  Thanks again.

I've been swimming in muse-ic.  Jill Scott this morning.  India.Arie yesterday.  Madonna.  Great.  Great.  Great.  Lorde.  I want my writing to feel like the Lorde album - heady, pure.  Guess what the Lorde album is called?  Pure Heroine.  Did I just describe it as heady and pure!?  Hey, Cannes?  The ghost of Roger Ebert says...Tosin's really good at this. 

Great films too: you want to see what I've been watching?  HERE.  It's hard to keep these things to myself.  Boring books, I'm reading a Jane Austen-y novel titled The Third Sister, by Julia Barrett.  It's clever, it's slim, it's not going very fast.  If you want to see what else I've been reading - go here.

Also going slow slow slow - anything on Coursera, math-for-myself, Arabic and the languages I want to learn.

No job starting next week, maybe for a couple of months.  Colleague says I'm actually going on maternity leave, pregnant with a book.  Maybe I'll write one chapter of it, more likely I'll write close to ten chapters.  Then start a job again somewhere gorgeous.  Awh, I'm going to miss my kids.

Did you ever see Avenue Q?  You absolutely have to listen to the audio.  And you have to listen to the award-winning audio for Hamilton, the Broadway musical too.  And tell me which other musical-theater audio I have to get, please, because three shows are better than two.

These things are amazing.  They are simply at the pinnacle and that's the best water from which to drink.
 

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###Three Sisters, novel #1 here###

Bonus films:
Sometimes the reviewers don't know what they're talking about: these products were really great experiences for me - Home (2015 animated film and soundtrack album with Rihanna) and We Are Your Friends (2015 DJ-music-culture film), ignore the poor reviews.

MUSIC: Soul Soul Food

Feel Good, by Lira

Life, by Efya

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Of Birds and Bees

Ju: I want a little baby too…everybody I know has one. 
Po: Ask your mummy. 

Ju: Mummy, why do you always say no babies? 
Mo: (Keeps ironing shirts.)

Ju: If you don’t want to do it, I’ll have a baby myself. 
Po: Uh oh.  How do you plan to do that? 

Ju: (Hands Po the phone.)  Now, help me write it in the search place. 
Po: Write what?  “Where do babies come from?” 

Ju: Yes.  How to get a baby. 
Po: Oookay.  Google…search…pornography...ah, here: March of the Penguins.  I think this film will tell us.  Should we put it on the big screen?  Join us, Mummy, and we can make an egg after. 

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I'm a zillionaire, I don't need a job.

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but call me if you want me anyway.

My top Woody Allen films, so far

Hard to choose, but the first ones I ever saw were Match Point and Anything Else.  Anything Else was offbeat (Christina Ricci) while Match Point was both commercial and sophisticated at the same time.  Top Five, for sure.

I had a Woody Allen-watching binge in 2015, who knows I may have seen ten of his films in one year.  The most arthouse of them, reportedly modeled after Ingmar Bergman, is Interiors.  If you like capital F Film, you must watch this.  If you can't stand sad reality, then avoid.  Woody Allen has a few oft-repeated themes, one of them is what conservative people might tag marriage-bashing.  See Husbands and Wives to continue the education.  What's New Pussycat? to see Peter O'Toole join the fun.  It's a very old film and took me several tries to stop falling asleep.    Hollywood Ending if you want to see true love win in the end - no, you won't fall asleep.

Before the binge, I saw and loved Midnight in Paris.  Then the binge gave me two related experiences that I love just as much: Magic in the Moonlight + The Purple Rose of Cairo.  Mmua, all three of them. Mmua. 

My binge started with finally getting to the end of Vicky Cristina Barcelona.  It's an interesting film because, this guy knows how to romance places - Barcelona in this case, because he knows what to do with Scarlett Johansson (or ScarJo just plain always knows what to do; be good, bad, dangerous, imperfect, and alluring on film), because Javier Bardem looks the way he does, because Penelope Cruz sounds the way she does, and because it's generally not alright in real life to share romance in the way this movie depicts.  

I think I've seen Whatever Works in a theater, though I'm fuzzy on details like Anything Else.  They must have been alike, with a very good lead actor playing a very jaded or rebellious character that makes untraditional choices for their sexual relationship(s).  I almost forgot about Manhattan.  It must have been like Husbands and Wives, but with less drama.  A Russian student had his (Woody's) attention, I think.  Love and Death had more colour and more Russian and more explicit humour; a very theatrical experience, even if the story line evades me.   

To Rome With Love I think I saw without subtitles - oops.  I ditched Take The Money and Run because it seemed super-stupid; not my genre.  The critics always say Annie Hall is his greatest, guess I'll have to watch that again.  It seemed funny, quirky, and romance-y enough.

Next, I'm going to see Fading Gigolo (I hear it's boring, un sympathique petit film as someone called it - which is often my thing), and New York Stories (I hope he's in his element in his city.)  Then maybe Play It Again, Sam and Paris-Manhattan will be next?

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My top five music+video experiences of 2015

1. "untitled", by Kendrick Lamar

Kendrick Lamar performed an Untitled song on the Colbert Report, December 2014
just before completely owning the music of 2015

2. Awww, by Di'Ja

Puppy love, awww...

3. Uptown Funk, by Mark Ronson (featuring Bruno Mars)

Shake it, but please don't break it.

4. Adventure of a Lifetime, by Coldplay

A for effort.

5. Watch Me, by Silentó

This counts as gym time.

Have a brilliant year!

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Bonus:
Kendrick Lamar on youtube with videos off the Butterfly album "i", King Kunta, Alright, For Free, and These Walls leading the way;
in stunning live performances on Stephen Colbert's shows, at the Kennedy Center, with Ellen DeGeneres, at the Grammy and BET awards;
and fairly stealing the show as a featured artist with Jidenna, Taylor Swift, Chris Brown, and other friends.

I'm done here #ToPimpAButterfly pic.twitter.com/nXRwMRxURA

— David McQueen ♕ (@DavidMcQueen) March 18, 2015