Top Songs of 2017

Haha, I guess it's been a while but I am still alive. 

Top Songs 

"Thinking of a Place" by The War on Drugs 
"New York" by St. Vincent 
"Quarrel" by Moses Sumney 
"Deathless feat. Kamasi Washington" by Ibeyi
"Deadly Valentine" by Charlotte Gainsbourg 

+ Top Music Videos (because they absolutely deserve a mention)

 Humble by Kendrick Lamar 
The Story of OJ by Jay-Z 

Honorable Mentions 

The Bus Song by Jay Som (= perfect sugary summer road trip song) 
Truth by Kamasi Washington 
Nyakinyua Rise by Jlin 

Top songs of 2015

Wow, is it that time of year again? As always, I feel like there is so much good music and so little time to listen to it all. It's especially difficult when I keep digging back through old releases ;p 

It was an abundant year for songs from all over the map. I loved the fact The Weeknd made uber mainstream Billboard's Top 100. In reality, The Weeknd's lo-fi style is the opposite of the boilerplate, commercially viable R&B. I hope his success is indicative of a shift in 'mainstream' taste. 

My electronic music tastes continued to trend toward minimal, techno and underground. I fell in love with the Romanian label a:Rpia:r which led me down a deep, dark, beautiful rabbit hole. 

My top 10 songs of the year (in no particular order): 

What Kind of Man (Nicolas Jaar remix) - Florence & the Machine
L$D (LOVE x $EX x DREAMS) - A$AP Rocky
The Hills - The Weeknd
Gosh - Jamie xx
King Kunta - Kendrick Lamar
Talk - Bob Moses
Hotline Bling - Drake
Tom's Diner (Audio) ft. Britney Spears - Giorgio Moroder
Flesh Without Blood - Grimes
Let It Happen - Tame Impala

Honorable mentions:

Trap Queen - Fetty Wap
WTF - Missy Elliott
Bitch Better Have My Money - Rihana

My top shows of the year (again, in no particular order):

The Black Madonna @ Kremwerk
Laurent Garnier @ Sonar
Dubfire:live Hybrid @ Sonar
Tycho @ Burning Man
Wildkats @ Burning Man

Top songs of 2014

In no particular order... 

David August — Set Me On (remix) 
FKA Twigs — Two Weeks 
Cathedrals — Harlem 
The Juan Maclean — The Sun Will Never Set On Our Love 
Drake — 0 to 100 
Alt-J — Hunger of the Pine 
Jon Hopkins — We Disappear feat. Lulu James 
Zhu — Faded 
Odesza — Sun Models feat. Madelyn Grant 
Kygo — Sexual Healing

9 Kisses

It has been a long time since I've seen something so creative and delightful. Eighteen actors and actresses ranging from Benedict Cumberbatch to Patricia Arquette act out nine charming scenes. Directed by fashion photographer Elaine Constantine. Cinematography by Steven Fierberg. I can't think of a better duo, or better actors, to bring us such heightened realism.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/10/magazine/this-years-best-actors-in-9-kisses.html?smid=tw-share#seeall

Beautiful ads

I can't get enough of these two beautifully filmed and directed advertisements for Prada and Louis Vuitton.

Actor Jason Schwartzman, a favourite of director Wes Anderson, starred in Castello Cavalcanti, a short film that takes place somewhere undisclosed in Italy. Schwartzman crashes a race car in a small village and realizes he may have driven not only straight into his own ancestral village, but into the company of his ancestors themselves.



In the ad for LV, singer David Bowie serenades model Arizona Muse at a lavish Venetian masked ball, directed by Romain Gavras. It is absolutely stunning.

True Lies

"I think photography has been wrestling with a burden of telling the truth, which I don't think it was ever particularly good at." Nick Knight













































Read original post here.

Inspiration

I just read an interview of poet Shinji Moon. I loved her answer to what inspires her and identified with the joy and excitement she feels when glimpsing into worlds that aren’t hers. It’s what first attracted me to journalism and why I wanted to become a design researcher and cultural anthropologist.

What things inspire you? 

“Small acts of candid humanity while walking down the street. A girl in all black carrying sunflowers at three in the morning. A man crying into a handkerchief, folding and unfolding a small piece of paper quietly to himself on the 6 train uptown. Sea glass. The slow ease from first introductions to first kiss to the first time you make love to the first time someone makes you cry. The relationship between humans and nature. The littlest things. Smaller and smaller and smaller until you don’t know if they were real or not. Glimpses into worlds that don’t belong to me. Strangers, above all: how beautifully they move when they don’t think they’re being watched.”

Happy holidays!

Things that make me smile

I am going to constantly update this post with all the things that make me laugh out loud. The barrier is pretty high, but simple enough. No matter what mood I'm in, these will ALWAYS make me smile. I hope they bring infinite joy to your life as well :]

First Walk on Ice


The Most Popular Girls in School series


Nyan Cat


Gangnam Style


Parallel Parking


Parallel Parking from Yum Yum London on Vimeo.

Listening with an Awakened Heart

Namaste beautiful ones! I hope this finds you happy and well.

I've been working on this post for a long time. The subject is so important to me and there was so much I wanted to say, it was honestly a challenge to write and include everything in a succinct manner. I really hope you like it and find the wisdom as helpful and inspiring as I did.

The theme of this post is listening: listening to ourselves and listening deeply to others with an open receptivity and interest that nourishes and allows for true communicating.

I'll start with a quote by Henry David Thoreau:

“Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?”

Several weeks ago, Tara Brach gave an amazing lecture on Listening with an Awakened Heart. It came at the perfect time for me as I was finding myself struggling to empathize with and show compassion toward someone in my life. My problem? I wasn't truly listening to that person.

Deep listening is like an art and it takes practice. 

There are many things that keep us from deep listening. We have habits of being preoccupied, or having an agenda, or being self-conscious or rehearsing what we want to say. Perhaps we have a need to prove ourself as somebody, or to come up with the right thing or to defend ourself. Finally, our culture is more ADD than ever before. Everything in our environment is clamoring for our attention.

The challenge is that we have huge conditioning to do anything but just be; to control what’s happening instead of just allowing.

How does this conditioning play out? We quickly have to insert our "self" into situations rather than just hanging in that openness. In communication, shared reality breaks down when we add on our interpretation, when we take it through our own filter and we project what’s going on. Instead of wanting to know what’s true, we assume we already know. We've all been in situations when our assumptions and our interpretations cover over what’s real. As soon as somebody starts talking, we use the filter of our own experience. “Oh yeah, as a mom, I know what that’s like” or whatever.

There are three conditionings that cause us to break connections.

-Wanting: Wanting something different, so we can’t just listen.
-Aversion: We don’t like what’s happening so we have to control. 
-Neutrality: It doesn’t matter to us.

When it’s wanting, sometimes it’s wanting something from that person and sometimes you’re wanting something that has nothing to do with that person. 

Maybe we’re wanting that person to have a certain experience of us. It’s rare when we’re not attached to having them have a certain kind of experience of us. Sometimes we’re really wanting their approval or wanting them to think we’re helpful or wanting them to think in some way we’re interesting. Ask yourself: Are we wanting the conversation to go in a particular direction? Are we wanting some affirmation, some result?

On the flip side (aversion), if in some way we're feeling threatened by somebody, it's also very hard to have an opening, listening presence. When there’s fear--when in some way having a real contact with somebody is threatening--it’s like we’re in fight/flight mode. We’re not open, we’re tight. Ask yourself: Is there something you’re organized around that’s keeping you from that openness? Is there some fear you won’t have the right response? Some fear of another’s judgment, or some anger or dislike of how that person’s behaving so you can’t just listen? Are you fearing that they’re going to get their way if you just listen? Or that they’re going to get away with something if you listen?

When you don’t listen, people feel like they don’t matter. You can’t know or be close with a person if you don’t listen.

The key is to listen without controlling, to listen with a receptivity that really wants to know. When we offer a listening presence, it creates an atmosphere of love and safety. Our attention is the purest expression of love. 

Listening is the pathway to intimacy. If we can pause and listen inwardly, we can become intimate with our inner being. If we can listen to each other, we find out who we are together. 

Finally, I'd like to recommend an article by Tara which talks about cultivating compassion, allowing for close connections and trusting our own goodness in relationships. It's called "A More Perfect Union."

Caroline

Choreographics

I love the intersection of different forms of art.

Black Sun is a meticulously choreographed projection of motiongraphics onto dance, combining traditional and modern elements of Japanese culture and martial arts.



Don't you just wish you could see this on an IMAX screen?

Caroline

Old friend

This is an incredible image submitted to the Nat Geo Traveler photo contest.



The caption:

Good Bye Old Friend: Elephants are legendary for their memory and intelligence including attributes associated with grief, making music, altruism and compassion. We came across this elephant whose corpse was overcome by vultures and jackals. From a distance we heard and then saw another elephant approaching at a fast pace. She was successful at chasing away the predators and then very slowly and with much empathy wrapped her trunk around the deceased elephants tusk. She stayed in this position for several hours guarding her friend. (© John Chaney/National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest)

Genuine Acceptance

Namaste chickens!

I've been reading a lot of really interesting things lately, ranging from major issues facing America's children (such as health, education, and workplace policies that aren't family-friendly) to behavioral and cognitive therapy (because I find it fascinating/I'm a nerd). If you're curious about the former, I've been posting some articles to my 'professional' Facebook page. If you're curious about the latter then read on :)

My amazing roommate Liz is currently studying for her PhD in Clinical Psychology and focusing her research on mindfulness, which is apparently a hot topic in the field right now. (PS She knows all about Tara Brach and tries to go to meditation once a week herself!)

Liz recommended me a mindfulness workbook she found really helpful during her studies called, "Get Out of Your Mind & Into Your Life." I've made my way through a few chapters and already found it very insightful and helpful! Here are a few concepts the book puts forth:

--Psychological pain is normal, it is important and everyone has it
--You cannot deliberately get rid of your psychological pain, although you can take steps to avoid increasing it artificially
--Pain and suffering are two different states of being
--You don't have to identify with your suffering
--Accepting your pain is a step toward ridding yourself of your suffering

Pretty bold, right? Not usually what you hear from those self-help books which is exactly why it's awesome.

This makes for a great segue into a recent lecture I listened to by Tara Brach on Genuine Acceptance. Here's a description of the talk:

"Our capacity to accept this life is key to our freedom, yet there are many misconceptions about acceptance: People wonder if acceptance makes us a doormat in relationships? Isn't acceptance akin to resignation? Doesn't it make us passive when what is needed is action? This talk explores some of the misunderstandings about acceptance and offers teachings on the nature of genuine and liberating acceptance."

This is what I learned:

Acceptance is being open to the hurt and anger of this particular moment and being willing to just feel it. Feel it in your body, your mind, your heart.

The three reactions humans tend to have that most challenge our ability to accept are:

-To fight. (i.e. lashing out, blaming)

-To run. (i.e., instead of being with our pain, we ignore or deny it or distract our attention.)

-To freeze. This is where the feeling of being a doormat arises. There is a fear of confronting, a fear of dealing. So we pretend to accept, when really, we’re just pushing our feelings down.

Obviously, it’s very hard and even courageous to be willing to sit with your pain. The self/ego is designed to fight, run or freeze.

Recently, I have really been trying to sit with my feelings instead of let them push me around like waves. I have been trying to understand and accept them. Brach says acceptance doesn’t mean allowing yourself to be a doormat. It can be accepting that this hurts, stop pushing it down, leave this situation.

“When we think we accept another, what we really accept is what’s coming up in us. It has nothing to do with the other person. Our capacity for acceptance is our capacity to be with whatever comes up within us in relation to that person. Our biggest domain is accepting what comes up in ourselves. That’s the hardest domain.” – Tara Brach

Brach says authentic acceptance is allowing space for who another person is. In its purity, it’s no different than love.

“Opening to whatever is present can be heartbreaking business. But let the heart break, for your breaking heart only reveals a core of love unbroken.”

I'm happy to report that during this process of accepting my feelings--some of which have been quite painful and unpleasant--I have also felt an immense outpouring of love. Just goes to confirm I'm a living, breathing human being, right? PS That rhymed.

Caroline

Recognizing our vulnerability and basic goodness

Namaste poodles!

I went to another phenomenal meditation session with Tara Brach. This time, she focused on the concept of spiritual sovereignty. But before I share her message, I must give context for why her lecture was so meaningful to me.

My friend Matt Medved is currently in Nigeria working for Search for Common Ground, an NGO that focuses on conflict resolution. His Project Director Chom is perhaps one of the wisest men he's ever met. Last week, he and Matt had one of those amazing and enlightening conversations where epiphany after epiphany was had (I love those). 

Chom said that everyone walks around with "smoke and mirrors." You will never know how another person truly thinks about you or sees you. Even if you were cognizant of all of your interactions with a person, that person's own smoke and mirrors could influence how they receive you, completely independent of you. 

It reminded me of something my friend Zack said once: You can never truly know another person. So, especially in the case of romantic partners, your job is to try your best to communicate with and understand your partner.

I feel like Chom's words of advice complemented Tara's concept of spiritual sovereignty. 

***The following are my notes from her session. I tried my best to accurately record everything she said, but please don't take my words or interpretation as truth! As always, I recommend you check out her recorded sessions for yourself and draw your own conclusions.***

Tara defined spiritual sovereignty as the freedom from any limiting sense of who we are; the freedom to live from our heart. Luckily, we do have the capacity to see past the smoke and mirrors (as Chom would say). She outlined three ways of training oneself to achieve spiritual sovereignty:

1. Recognize that everyone is insecure. Once you do that, compassion can follow.

2. See the goodness in people.

3. Experience beingness instead of letting the waves push and pull you (drawing on the duck poem here; link takes you to her meditation session last week).

It's human nature to become fixated on what's wrong. We're vulnerable, so our natural reaction is to camouflage ourselves, or cover up. With mindfulness, we become more transparent. When we're not mindful, we get identified with our cover. It becomes MY jealousy versus THIS jealousy. Being mindful removes the sense of "this is me" or, as Chom might say, clears away yourown smoke and mirrors. 

Tara said one way we get into a trance (aka create smoke and mirrors) is when we really want something. When we really want something from someone, how much do we really see of that person? She used love as an example. I know when I've really liked someone, I've put up smoke and mirrors because I want them to see me in the best way possible. Said differently, I am trying to "control" how that person thinks of me; I want to make them think a certain way (that I'm awesome and the best thing ever, obviously). 

Another way we fall into a trance is when we are thick in hate and judgement. What's your sense of who you are then? When in this trance, it's very narrowing; we can't see the other person and we have no empathy.

In essence, if we're not aware, we can become needy or nasty. 

The feelings we experience when in these trances are totally real; but they're not true. The trance is our interpretation of the situation, but the content (ie the smoke and mirrors) isn't true. We fall under this trance when we start to believe it and take it personally. It's when you learn to pause that you can then recognize the trance. The trance will start to soften, a shift will occur and a space will open. When that happens you can actually begin to relate because it will no longer be relating from ego to ego.

Finally, I want to end with a routine I've started following after being inspired by Chom.

Chom said he begins each day by waking up and texting a friend a positive message. Sometimes he receives a positive text back and other times his friend's texts are negative; sometimes he doesn't even get a text in return. In the beginning, he felt hurt or disappointed when he didn't receive a reply. But now it's not about receiving. Chom said he established such a strong routine to start each day off on a positive note, that he's gained immeasurable mental and spiritual benefits. It's so simple to do! I challenge each of you to pick someone special and try this out for yourself. :)

Caroline

Cultivating Equanimity

Namaste y'all!

Yesterday I saw Tara Brach, a renowned Vipassana meditation instructor. Tara is a psychologist and expert on Buddhist meditation. It was my first time attending anything of the like and it was amazing. 

She began by sharing a poem called "The Little Duck" by Donald C. Babcock.

Now we are ready to look at something pretty special.
It is a duck riding the ocean a hundred feet beyond the surf, and he cuddles in the
swells.
There is a big heaving in the Atlantic.
And he is part of it.
He can rest while the Atlantic heaves, because he rests in the Atlantic.
Probably he doesn’t know how large the ocean is.
And neither do you.
But he realizes it.
And what does he do, I ask you.
He sits down in it.
He reposes in the immediate as if it were infinity – which it is.
That is religion, and the duck has it.
I like the little duck.
He doesn’t know much.
But he has religion.

She went on to compare the continuous waves to life--we can either fight it or we can sit down in it. As humans, we're wired to want to push away or fight unpleasantness and hang on to pleasantness. It's very hard to sense when we're getting pushed and pulled around by waves but when it happens, the best thing to do is to start naming what's going on and be open to how that feels. The duck can move with the swells of the waves (as opposed to being pushed and pulled) because it's not taking anything personally.

She also shared a quote I really liked: "A truly happy person is someone who can enjoy the scenery on a detour." It's the realization and acceptance that those moments are just as valuable. A heart that is ready for everything.

Finally, the last story she shared that I'll include here was about a man who accepted the impermanence of life and found profound love in his acceptance.

"Do you see this glass? I love this glass. It holds the water admirably. When I tap it, it has a lovely ring. When the sun shines on it, it reflects the light beautifully. When the wind blows and the glass falls off the shelf and breaks or if my elbow hits it and it falls to the ground I say, of course. But when I know that the glass is already broken, every minute with it is precious." 

Tara has many of her sessions available for free to listen/watch on her site. So far, I've listened to "Be Who You Are" and was moved to tears at least once. 

Finally, I learned of Tara through my amazing friend Zack Beach. Zack is the same friend who recommended me the life-changing book "Non-Violent Communication" by Marshall Rosenberg. I highly recommend checking out the book and Zack's blog!

Caroline

Falling stars

The theme of this post is 'falling from great heights.' I will continue to update this post as I find new amazing videos of people falling in various, epic ways. Feel free to leave suggestions of other videos in the comments section.

Austrian stuntman Felix Baumgartner stepped off a platform attached to a helium balloon 127,850 feet over New Mexico and fell more than 24 miles straight down. He breaks the sound barrier at 46 seconds in and reaches speeds of more than 830 miles per hour.



Another stuntman, Gary Connery, fashioned a suit that made him look like a flying squirrel.


World champion free diver Guillaume Nery base jumping at Dean's Blue Hole, filmed on breath hold by Julie Gautier. Music by Archive, song "You Make Me Feel."



Video made by FroschYankee from the movie Adrenaline Rush (The Science of Risk). Location: Eikesdalen, Norway. Music by Bryan Hollon aka Boom Bip, remixed by Boards of Canada.


Last Walk Around Mirror Lake - Boom Bip (Boards of Canada Remix) from FroschYankee on Vimeo.

Chilean Stuntman Julio Munoz BASE jumped off a 3,300-foot cliff in the Andes. To get the speed he wanted he did it with a motorcycle. The stunt cost Munoz more than $100,000 and required three helicopters to carry equipment.



Paris Mavroidis made an experimental animated short called "Divers." He says that he was inspired by Busby Berkeley, mass gymnastics and experimental cinema from the 20s and 30s. It was created while he pursued an MFA in Digital Arts at Pratt.


Divers (Short Animation) from Paris Mavroidis on Vimeo.

Wholphin + brain scans

Wholphin is a quarterly DVD magazine published by McSweeney's. McSweeney's is a publishing house founded by Dave Eggers. You might recognize Eggers as the author of "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" and as the screenplay writer for "Where the Wild Things Are" by Spike Jonze.

Anywho, the idea of a DVD magazine is pretty unique to me! For example, the current issue runs 2 hours, 40 minutes, has 11 films and features:

"The Duplass Brothers celebrating friendship, Selma Blair and Jeremy Davies celebrating an awkward romance, the haunting prequel to the indie-hit Martha Marcy May Marlene, Antonio Campos' Cannes-winning Buy It Now, a couple who eat each other's pain, Jonathan Lisecki'sGayby, and seven contestants going neuron-to-neuron in a love competition!"

To pique your interest, here's one of the included films by Brent Hoff, editor of Wholphin. The video documents a love competition. The contestants are strapped into an MRI machine and asked to think about love. Scans of the contestants’s brains track activity in the brain, with special interest in a specific region called the nucleus accumbens, where three neurological pathways associated with love converge. The video briefly introduces the contestants, who explain their strategies for winning while Dr. Melina Uncapher prepares each for their scans.


The Love Competition from Brent Hoff on Vimeo.

Caroline

Long exposure photographs of fireflies

These are the most hauntingly beautiful photographs I have seen in a long time. Photographer Tsuneaki Hiramatsu took long exposure photographs of fireflies. Hiramatsu has been shooting fireflies for about 8 years now, many of which are shot in Okayama where they have firefly season

You can find more at his blog. I definitely recommend clicking on them to see their true size.

Caroline

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day to my friends, family and loved one :)

Caroline

PINA

My friend Allie gave me the heads up about this film. Here's a brief description.

PINA is a feature-length dance film in 3D with the ensemble of the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, featuring the unique and inspiring art of the great German choreographer Pina Bausch, who died in the summer of 2009. PINA is directed by Wim Wenders (Buena Vista Social Club, Wings of Desire), who was a long-standing friend of Pina's.Wenders takes the audience on a sensual, visually stunning journey of discovery into a new dimension: straight onto the stage with the legendary ensemble and follows the dancers out of the theatre into the city and the surrounding areas of Wuppertal - the place, which for 35 years was the home of Pina Bausch. PINA reinvigorates the way 3D film technology can be used.

Maybe this will be the first movie that gets me to watch something in 3D!

Caroline