Category: Links to stuff I like

External links to pages and media I like that I post about on Cubimension.

EARWORM GARDEN // CHRISTOPHER TIN — SOGNO DI VOLARE

I can’t figure out why this isn’t included in neither the official CIV VI OST or the 25th anniversary album CIV VI DLC, but it isn’t.

It’s Christopher Tin’s official cover of “Volare, oh oh, cantare, oh oh oh oh” with lyrics by Leonardo da Vinci.

Some more Tin:The Drop That Contained the Sea (contains a link to Calling All Dawns as well). Just listen to this music and tell me it doesn’t make you feel happy to be alive)

EDIT: Oh crap, we’ve got a burrower here. I’ve played close to 7 hours of CIV IV in 72 hours, but I’m quite sure that my total playtime of Sogno di Volare is not far behind.

A SAUCERFUL OF SECRETS / CELESTIAL VOICES

Pink Floyd’s A Saucerful of Secrets, and especially Celestial Voices (the part that starts after 07:00), as it was recorded live by the original band itself, is nowhere to be found on Youtube anymore; their corporate representatives seem to be taking good care of wiping clean all traces of humanity from their facade. They made sure that a wordless hymn to the sequence of birth, each person’s battle in life, death and the lamentation that such a thing as death even exists, was something to be excluded from the band’s catalogue online. All that is available now is cover versions, plenty of them, some not so bad, but most not even close to this one live recording from 1969 that bests them all.

Even the entire album Ummagumma is there on their official channel, apart from a single song: that one 12-minute track which has been made conspicuously unavailable.

I can’t fathom what the reasons for keeping this masterpiece from the general public in terms of profit could be, but one thing is for certain: it does stand out.

Listen for yourself.

Download.

gilmour_saucerful
The recording isn’t from Pompeii, where this picture is from, but I imagine every time he’d sing this song and Celestial Voices live there would come some gust of wind out of nowhere and blow his hair around as part of the show.

EARWORM GARDEN // JOHN CALE & BRIAN ENO — SPINNING AWAY

En Lefko earworm numero dos. I find it difficult to believe that there is a song that out-happies “Don’t Worry Be Happy” (which, once again, is not by Bob Marley. Milkas, a musician I met in the army, mentioned once that what Bobby McFerin can do with his voice is out of this world, and I’ve been curious about him since then).

EARWORM GARDEN // KOVACS — FIFTY SHADES OF BLACK

This one was a Life in Technicolor II-level earworm that had infested my mind for absolute months. Couldn’t find it anywhere and looking for “Amy Winehouse-sounding voice” or “black-sounding voice”, or downloading Adele’s discography didn’t take me very far.

How I solved the problem? I took the situation apart and thought that, if anywhere, I would have probably heard the song on En Lefko, one of the best radio stations in Athens and the only one I keep having on while driving important military people around. I found the collection they published with the songs they allegedly popularised in Greece. I found Kovacs and Diggin’ and the rest was easy. After I found it, I could clearly remember listening to it once while running sometime in Summer 2015. That’s when, you know, Greece was apparently ready to collapse. Honestly, I’m gonna have to dedicate another couple of posts to the songs that became my earworms thanks to En Lefko.

Sweet relief. This woman is jaw-dropping, and I’m not just talking about her voice.

REVIEW: ON HAPPINESS

Mark Manson on HappinessMark Manson on Happiness by Mark Manson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Get it here. If you don’t want to give out your e-mail address, wearing a peg leg, an eye patch and dying of vitamin C deficiency might work for you.

We’re very, very bad at judging what makes us happy.
No matter what happens, everything’s going to be okay.
Be creative. Be grateful.

Sounds clichay, but it’s advice I’d love to be able to keep in mind always. and to his credit, Mark Manson made it sound profound. It is, actually, and it takes skill to turn a well-meaning but worn saying into something usable. The guy writes well and he seems to have a knack for the self-development genre, as his best articles comfortably show.

How long was that little .pdf pf the book? 30 pages? Something like that. Read it. I hope it’s as good for you as it was for me. Even half that would be great. Won’t take you more than an hour.

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TALES OF MERE EXISTENCE

“You know, there’s a slight possibility I’m so used to not saying what I mean that I don’t really even know what I mean anymore.”

I wanna be like this guy. Preferably his creative side, not his depressive side.

 

SHARY-CARY TAB RELEASE: CHARLIE KAUFMAN, MIND CONTROL, ZOMBIE ANTS, FUNGI AND ALCOHOL

Challenge: spot the single thematic thread running through these two videos.

By the way, that ant fungus is 100% creepy, man…

REVIEW: TAO TE CHING: A BOOK ABOUT THE WAY AND THE POWER OF THE WAY

Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the WayTao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way by Lao Tzu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is an edition of the Tao Te Ching adapted by Ursula K. Le Guin.

I was tempted to end my review here and now so as not to break the perfection of the above sentence. It’s an edition made with affection, seriousness and awareness of the changing permanence that has led us people of the 21st century looking for guidance and wisdom in books set in the distant future (Le Guin’s novels) and in the distant past (this book).

Tao Te Ching adapted by Ursula K. Le Guin. It’s as good as it sounds and then some: in my mind the definitive version of this widely-translated ancient book of wisdom for the contemporary person.

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