Leafbox

Albatross - Fleetwood Mac One of the greatest instrumental...

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 17:23:20 -0800

Albatross - Fleetwood Mac

One of the greatest instrumental tracks of all time. Timeless perfect voyage.

Marasa.

“It’s all part of a cosmic...

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 17:12:03 -0800

“It’s all part of a cosmic unconsciousness.”

“A lot o’ people don’t realize what’s really going on. They view life as a bunch o’ unconnected incidents ‘n things. They don’t realize that there’s this, like, lattice o’ coincidence that lays on top o’ everything. Give you an example, show you what I mean: suppose you’re thinkin’ about a plate o’ shrimp. Suddenly someone’ll say, like, “plate,” or “shrimp,” or “plate o’ shrimp” out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin’ for one, either. It’s all part of a cosmic unconsciousness.”

Michael Muller @ Francois Ghebaly Gallery LA. Stopped here for a...

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 17:02:00 -0800

Michael Muller @ Francois Ghebaly Gallery LA. Stopped here for a quick suprise.

Before and After - Konzepp Hong Kong. Pretty wonderful example...

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 19:29:06 -0700

Before and After - Konzepp Hong Kong.

Pretty wonderful example how retail , little bit of architecture, some cheap materials and passion can create something wonderful out of nothing.

Photo

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 21:24:42 -0700

Photo

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 21:24:35 -0700

Photo

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 21:24:30 -0700

"Magic best served slowly, with a dash of restraint."

Sat, 22 Oct 2011 08:15:52 -0700

“Magic best served slowly, with a dash of restraint.”

- Good Mag: The Wirecutter Slices Through the Internet’s Big, Noisy Gadget Scam

There is something inspiring about that goal - post less, strip to the core. Just focus on the essence and not the noise.

Brian Lam, editor of the WireCutter is a friend, and fellow surfer - I think his focus on offering something different, going against convention and trying to run something at a healthier yet more substantial pace is helpful in whatever category one is involved in.

Void- Leafbox

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 00:47:00 -0700

Void- Leafbox

Desert Girl - Leafbox Voice samples from Iranian...

Sun, 29 May 2011 06:51:00 -0700

Desert Girl - Leafbox

Voice samples from Iranian poet/singer: Shajarian Alizadeh Man Aan Nyam

A million other samples from sitar loops, to sakuhachis to heartbeats to more.

Close your eyes arabic night.

Tensegrity - Leafbox. Recorded in Big Sur. Mandolin Lute.

Tue, 24 May 2011 22:59:00 -0700

Tensegrity - Leafbox.

Recorded in Big Sur. Mandolin Lute.

Destoyer - Leafbox Just a state of being. Create , destroy,...

Wed, 18 May 2011 23:44:00 -0700

Destoyer - Leafbox

Just a state of being. Create , destroy, repeat. Jump.

Lone Wolf - Leafbox It was snowing in Tokyo. Close your eyes....

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 07:47:00 -0800

Lone Wolf - Leafbox

It was snowing in Tokyo. Close your eyes. Hope it brings you here.

Please listen with headphones or with good speakers - alone is best.

Armchair Island Hopping

Fri, 26 Nov 2010 00:24:40 -0800

Found a magical book today.

Berliner Judith Schalansky’s illustrated book, Atlas of Remote Islands is the perfect armchair traveler’s delight during a cold winter evening..

There are still places on earth that are unknown.

Visually stunning and uniquely designed, this wondrous book captures fifty islands that are far away in every sense-from the mainland, from people, from airports, and from holiday brochures. The author offers one page historic events , population info and scientific reports to frame each island, providing information on its distance from the mainland, whether its inhabited, its features, and the stories that have shaped its lore. With stunning full-color maps and an air of mysterious adventure, Atlas of Remote Islands is perfect for the traveler or romantic in all of us.

The stories strongly convey is that islands are not only receptacles for dreams and utopia, or testing ground for explorers, scientists and missionaries, but also, and fundamentally, sites of cruelty and violence. Filled with tales of incest, rape, mutiny, disease, bleakness and challenge; of shipwreck and disappointing periods of time, giving explanation and further meaning to the name of some of these islands: Deception Island in the Southern Ocean; Danger Islands in the Pacific Ocean; or Seclusion Island in the Arctic Ocean.

Shakespeare’s Prospero + Caliban would be at home.

Mukokuseki Thanksgiving

Thu, 25 Nov 2010 09:22:00 -0800

Mukokuseki [in Japanese] means ‘no nationality’, stateless, “without ground”. Prior to the Edo era there were no words for the ‘national’ or the ‘non-national’ because Japan was closed to world. Only when the ports opened in 1864 was the existence of other cultures given official recognition with a word of its own. The word for ‘multinational’, takokuseki, didn’t enter the Japanese language until the Gulf War of 1990, with its ‘multinational task force’.

The term ‘mukokuseki’, or “stateless”, has also been used by various commentators to describe lots of Japanese popular culture and I would extend popular culture in general. As film scholar Susan Pointon points out that “it is impossible to ignore the constant cross-pollination and cultural borrowing that complicate and enrich anime texts.” Pointon goes on to propose that contemporary media cultures function as intersections where elements of different cultures collide, mutate, and merge. In her summary of anime From Akira to Princess Mononoke Susan J. Napier suggests that “Despite its indisputably Japanese origins, anime exists increasingly as a nexus point in global culture - [it inhabits] an amorphous new media territory that crosses and even intermingles national boundaries.” In this regard anime is perhaps the ideal aesthetic product for contemporary period, at the forefront of creating an alternative cultural discourse that goes beyond traditional categories of “native” or “international” to participate in what may well be a genuinely new form of global culture.

I have a feeling that I have always been too part of a mukokuseki diaspora, making Ramen in San Francisco, setting up a shop (Revolver) that is a cross between Maine, Hokkaido, and Chile, pushing towards a bastardized aesthetic that is a blend of everything without worry or care of its origins. I’m not unique at all in the scenario - most of my friends seems to blend between worlds, cross pollinating ideas from sources often forgotten. Who said you can’t surf before dim sum or watch french movies while eating a taco.

Something to consider on Thanksgiving - itself a blend of worlds - the new and the old.

54 Chevy - 2 guitars by @wsstefan + @leafbox - 1 take.

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 23:44:51 -0800

54 Chevy - 2 guitars by @wsstefan + @leafbox - 1 take.

I blog mostly now Revolver @...

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 14:55:33 -0700

I blog mostly now Revolver @ http://www.revolversf.com/blogs/news/

Follow other updates for me at @leafbox on Twitter

Song by P.K 14

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 15:12:49 -0800

Song by P.K 14

“Youth is a disease cured by age” “Bernard Shaw said that.” ...

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 17:33:07 -0800

“Youth is a disease cured by age”

“Bernard Shaw said that.” Pausing my Grandpa for me to reflect.

My Grandpa is 91. His name is Heinz. He’s lived through a lot. Born in a hospital on the entrance of Valpariso, an important, central, and global port. He moved to a rural upbringing in La Serena, a beach city edging the desert.

The son of a German railroad engineer and 2nd generation German - Chilean mother. After school he went to Germany to learn how to operate and build factories, knowledge he would take back one day to Chile. He met my Grandmother just as Hitler and the Nazis rose into power. He could pass as German, but Chilean at heart, neither a Jew, nor Pole - something else he was useful and forced to manage a chocolate factory; a ridiculous bittersweet irony to an early confusion of the war and his new marriage.

Sensing danger, he somehow convinced his directors in need of a trip to Italy for new materials and machinery. Under practical disguise of business, they crossed through Switzerland and escaped to a less complex nightmare: fascist Italy.

There he found work at a rennet factory, learning to dry stomachs, mixing acids and other mysteries to create the necessary fermentation for ancient and beautiful cheeses. He found hope in rennet, seeing its demand even in war as sign enough of its potential. He would bring these ancient recipes to Chile one day telling himself, calming himself. He was lucky for life there was paradise compared to what he could only imagine had become of the former chocolate company north.

At the end of the war he hugged Americans, serving as a translator with his limited English. He waved as the tanks rolled through, my grandma amazed. awing at sight the first black troops she had ever seen.

He traveled by land to Barcelona boarding a steamer and found return to the Americas.

Buenos Aires, the Andes snowcapped distant and majestic popped in his eyes promising a new future. He vowed never to return to old Europe, to a place of hell and confusion. At heart a Latin American he settled in the outskirts of Santiago, starting his factory of rennet (which today still runs), calm in rural life laughing as he forgot, rearing Children and moving on.

“Youth is a disease cured by age…”

“Bernard Shaw said that.” Pausing for me to reflect.

Nasreen Mohamedi’s Lines Female Indian artist Nasreen...

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 15:41:00 -0800

Nasreen Mohamedi’s Lines

Female Indian artist Nasreen Mohamedi’s (1937–1990) drawings are mystic, modernist, utopias? that contradict the daily life of India and Pakistan. An early and solitary pioneer of the modernist movement in India, her sketches are untitled, and unnumbered.

I can’t help but think how “unIndian” her art is; leading me to question if her work was imposing some order on the chaos of Delhi where she lived, or reflecting it. Did she see some clarity in her daily experience? Does her surroundings even matter in the context of her work? Questions for art-historians.

Some answers and a review of her recent showing in UK The MILTON KEYNES GALLERY UK in Frieze Magazine