Put As Much As You Can Into Your Heads – Nobody Can Take That Away From You

“Every day in life is beautiful. Every day. It’s beautiful.”

Alice Herz-Sommer’s stellar heath at the age of 109 is not the only thing that makes her special. She is the oldest living pianist and Holocaust survivor, and arguably one of the most optimistic people you may ever meet. This touching preview for the upcoming documentary following her life,  “The Lady In Number 6,” shows how music not only saved her life in the camp, but also continues to carry her through each day after the ordeal.

The camp in which she was placed is a terrifying example of the ultimate living-theatre experiment. In 1944, the German leaders created a propaganda film and presented Theresienstadt as a model Jewish settlement to the visiting Red Cross; it was all an elaborate hoax.

The Germans “beautified” the ghetto, planting gardens and painting houses. Individuals received roles to play and the Nazis staged social and cultural events for the visiting dignitaries. Hints that all was not well included a bruise under the eye of the “mayor” of the “town.”  In the Nazi propaganda film, Theresienstadt was cynically described as a “spa town” where elderly German Jews could “retire” in safety. Once the visit was over, the Germans resumed deportations from Theresienstadt, which did not end until October 1944.

And yet still, shining examples like Alice appear, wielding hope as an impenetrable shield:

“I have lived through many wars and have lost everything many times — including my husband, my mother and my beloved son. Yet, life is beautiful, and I have so much to learn and enjoy. I have no space nor time for pessimism and hate.”

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Celebrating Our Human Freedoms

Dr. Viktor E. Frankl was psychiatrist and a concentration camp prisoner during WWII. His work, Man’s Search for Meaning, has invigorated and inspired with its tips for spiritual survival in the some of the darkest hours. His book is a testament to the power of the human spirit, with moments that capture something innate in our shared resilience:

“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through huts, comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Other wise passages include:

Playing an Instrument Like It Will Save Your Life

Because, who knows? It just might.

Watch Colin Stetson, a saxophonist known for touring with Arcade Fire, Bell Orchestre and Bon Iver, barely pause for a breath as he creates a wonderwall of sound underneath the city.

A reminder that whatever you choose to do, do it wholeheartedly. Because passion like that is infectious. 

What Is Essential Is Invisible To The Eye

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly” – Saint Exupéry

Deconstructing opera’s mega-material roots is a challenge.
Sharing an opera live with a group of roving wireless-headphone-wearing audience members? Sounds near impossible.
And yet, The Industry ambitiously tackled all this and more through its Invisible Cities project in LA’s Union Station.

Composer and librettist Christopher Cerrone’s adapted a 1972 novel of the same name by Italo Calvino. The story depicts a host of fantastical cities the explorer Marco Polo narrates to Kublai Khan – unreal cities of desire, of memory, of the imagination.

You check in and trade your license for a pair of headphones before following a drove of listeners into a large room where an orchestra sits, no singers in sight. The overture sounds forth and even before the final notes of this first movement end, individuals exit through the large glass doors to search for the rest of the opera. There’s no traditional stage here. The train station itself houses the characters, and like a living giant that seems to expand and contract as singers reveal themselves from the shadows.

A man hunched over in a wheelchair, dressed like many of the homeless souls that take shelter in the station, begins to sing. And you realize that the performers are not so much hidden at all. Instead, you did not know what you should have been seeking.

  A lofty soprano tone sounds from another room. Many turn to rush to find the source of the music and discover a janitor – with a voice of gold.

You traverse cities of the living, cities of the dead.

You follow in Polo’s footsteps and happen upon a dance core (seven dancers from LA Dance Project) as they guide and affront the viewer through a collection of miniature vignettes.

You wander into a hallway – the station’s old ticket lobby – and see no action, just a mist of light fog…

…Only seconds later to be bombarded by a procession of singers and dancers as the opera’s final scenes culminate around you.

You notice how each person in the room is now a character in the piece as well. An old man in his own wheelchair is not altogether different from the singer at the start.

The piece challenges the viewer to realize that the eye creates what it wishes to see. At every new port – there is a promise of hope, discovery, release. But we bring ourselves with us wherever we go, thus in order to find new things, we must truly see with new eyes.

The Most Mindblowing Use of Looper Pedals You’ve Ever Seen

Bernhoft hails from Norway and can layer a song like nobody’s business. See how Mr. LoopsALot makes one man sound like a full band. 

Ol’ Bag o’ Bones

Happy Halloween!

In honor of today’s terrorfest, it’s time to delve into the archives for some unsettling photos from decades now past.

Enjoy (or reel in horror at) these shots from  Narre Tod, Mein Spielgesell (Fool Death, My Playmate), a series of portraits of a love affair between a female model and a skeleton. The set is by eccentric photographer Franz Fiedler, 1921.

The look of love.

Image Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

How to See The Stars When the Sun’s Still Up

Take to the streets of Paris

Gather round

Create your own

Reach out and catch the edges

Spell it out… in amino acids

Image Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Want It More Than You Fear It

Because there will always be one to fifty excuses to find.

Because your mind will rummage around and dig these up, presenting them to you with urgency.

Because you may forget, if only for a moment, that this new pile of worries are a gift from an anxious visitor who didn’t know exactly what to get you – so opted for this, and hoped you’d enjoy something to think about versus nothing.

Because you never liked stagnation anyway.

Because there will be days when your fear will masquerade as sensibility, never removing the mask to reveal its tiny, unsubstantial frame.

Because the voice of your deepest desires speaks in dulcet tones, quiet murmurs that could be drowned out by the cries of a doubtful side of you.

Because you will remember that acknowledging this concern always silences it, like a mother finally attending to a child.

Because you deserve to come alive, to set yourself ablaze with wonder, and never stop seeking.

Because there’s solid ground on the other side, no matter how many obstacles stand in the way.

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Stunning Images of Your Heart

In reality, heartstrings are just a tad different than those imagined in Brontë’s Jane Eyre:

“Because, he said, “I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you – especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles or so of land some broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I’ve a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you, – you’d forget me.” 

Although they’re not connected to another’s frame, these closeups show just how stunning our own heartstrings (tendons and blood vessels) can be. Especially when they’re working overtime to pump life & love all over the body.

Image Sources: 1, 2

It’s Always Been the Whispers

More beauty at Tyler’s online home

Bite-sized Wisdom: Keller

Doubt sneaking in? Remember that you have a powerful tool at hand that is ready to go into action for you at any time. Words from this wise and empowering woman:

“Doubt and mistrust are the mere panic of timid imagination, which the steadfast heart will conquer, and the large mind transcend.”

– Helen Keller

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Bite-sized Wisdom: Seneca

Do you go to a theatrical experience for the length of the piece or the quality? A simple question that may sneak up and inform the way you live:

“As it is with a play, so it is with life—what matters is not how long the acting lasts, but how good it is.”

– Seneca

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Good Things Develop in Time

No Theatre No Problem

There’s a Fine Line Between Existing and Living

Happy Birthday Kafka

While some posit that you could never be truly happy about anything, we know you’ve got a bit of an optimist hiding deep down inside.

Just look! You once said:

“By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.”

and:

“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”

and of course:

“Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.“

Those that have dubbed you the eternal pessimist have refused to acknowledge this believer within you. Like so many others, what little was published during your lifetime garnered little public attention. Now people throw around the word Kafkaesque to sound cultured and in-the-know.

If you had known what would follow, would you still have left most of your full-length novels unfinished? Would you still have  burned 90 percent of your work?

Time’s funny that way. Happy birthday Kafka. We’re celebrating you now.

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Bite-sized Wisdom: Oates

Here’s to a beautiful weekend ahead. May the universe surprise you in wonderful ways.

“Nothing is accidental in the universe – this is one of my Laws of Physics – except the entire universe itself, which is Pure Accident, pure divinity.”

– Joyce Carol Oates 

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5 Simple Ways to Start Leading the Good Life

1. Celebrate the ordinary and less than extraordinary. Because you can’t win the Nobel Peace Prize every day of the year. Cheer on the small moments in between the large ones, and you’ll start to notice how those peaks will advance towards you in rapid succession.

2. Get outside when it’s still light out. Summer’s official start date is tomorrow. How are you going to revel in it?

3. Make time for yourself. A whole good amount of it. Come to know yourself better than the tabloids know Justin Bieber’s whereabouts. Treat yourself to that manicure, bask leisurely for an hour doing absolutely nothing, and recharge. No point in running on empty.

4. Sing and dance like no one is watching/like the entire world is watching. These two should be one in the same. It’s often assumed that the scrutiny of many is a negative thing. If you truly approach whatever the task at hand is with gusto, people will notice, take note and maybe get a little bit inspired. Don’t apologize for loving the things that you do.

5. Unplug. From your cell phone, Facebook, from the endless internet to-do list. Go have an adventure. It’ll be there when you come back.

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