Five Bullets 5.12.23
This week: Vieux Farka Touré, Noted, Looty & more
Hello and Welcome Back to Circles In Space for Five Bullet Friday, where each Friday I share interesting stuff collected during the week.
If you’re new to Circles In Space, I wrote a bit about myself and this newsletter.
Good morning and happy Friday all! It’s another beautiful warm day here in New York City. A quick update: I’ll be taking some much-needed time off next week so the newsletter will resume the following week with our 1 YEAR anniversary on May 26th! Much more to come!
This week’s bullets:
Last night I had a chance to check out Malian guitarist Vieux Farka Touré at Brooklyn Bowl. I was introduced to his music via his collaboration with funk band Khruangbin on Ali, an album of covers in tribute to Touré’s father, the legendary Ali Farka Touré. Touré’s guitar playing is a fusion of Malian folk, blues and rock. Touré moved from delicate, bluesy tunes to heavy, energetic rock jams with a solid backbeat before jumping into a double time African rhythm. I’ll definitely be exploring more of Ali and Vieux’s music.
Thanks to Substack’s recent Notes feature I’ve discovered several publications to follow. My new favorite, Noted by Jillian Hess, dives into note-taking, journaling, and marginalia. I especially enjoyed recent posts on Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘Godfather’ notebook and Kurt Cobain’s spiral notebooks. I was inspired to thumb through my copy of Jean Michel Basquiat’s The Notebooks which contain doodles, phone numbers, poetry, notes and phrases the artist was working on or wanted to remember. As a fastidious note taker and journaler, I think a lot can be gained by taking a look at how other people notate which might then open us up to new ways of thinking.
Indie rocker Mac DeMarco released a 199 song album! Why? DeMarco said: “If I’m going to write something, I need to move forward…I like this stuff. I’d like to share it. I don’t really know how. I might as well just give it all at the same time.” In the past, Demarco has released demo tapes following several albums including Salad Days, Another One, and Here Comes the Cowboy. Perhaps new album One Wayne G will offer another peek into the musician’s songwriting process. I like the creative ethos behind this release: do it, share it, and move on.
Looty is a collective repatriating looted artifacts by capturing 360° photos of the artifacts, including the Rosetta Stone, and creating an NFT “in order to digitally liberate it into the metaverse”. Read more about recent repatriation attempts in my 4.7.23 newsletter.
I rewatched a Tom Hanks classic this week, Sully about the harrowing ‘miracle on the Hudson’. Hanks plays Captain Sullenberger who on January 15, 2009 safely landed a plane full of passengers on the Hudson River after birds caused both of the plane’s engines to stop functioning. Hanks is impeccable and the film is worth a rewatch if you haven’t seen it lately. Sully has a book out about the events which I’m interested to read.
Got something to share?
Thank you for this! I love Noted, as well. Definitely going to give Mac DeMarco a listen.