Practice maketh perfect maybe but the innate talent in these kids is amazing..

a violin virtuoso

a young tabla ustad

a great voice

jazz pianist

another pianist

These and more at this Mefi thread

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“If I were to begin life again, I would devote it to music. It is the only cheap and unpunished rapture upon earth.” -Sydney Smith (quote from this page)

Just started reading Best American Essays 2006 and came across a couple sentences in Poe Ballantine's piece 501 minutes to Christ*, which I would classify as quotable quotes.

"Like pornography, the news is a lurid concoction that panders to the basest emotions."

True indeed of much of what is on TV these days!

Another good quote (written in the context of a crazy woman, narrating weird tales to fellow passengers on a bus, being on the wrong bus...but I think it applies more widely to life in general!)

"I suppose the joy of finding an appreciative audience is better any day than some feeble notion of a destination."

Also, a few sentences from the Introduction by the editor, Laura Slater, that one can appreciate in our darker cynical moments: (emphasis mine)

"Sickness is the natural state in which we humans reside. We occasionally fall into brief brackets of health, only to return to our fevers, our infections, our rapid, minute mutations, which take us toward death even as they evolve us, as a species, into some ill-defined future.

The essays in this volume are powerful, plainspoken meditations on birthing, dying, and all the business in between. They reflect the best of what we, as a singular species, have to offer, which is reflection in a context of kindness......"

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* I just found out that the essay can be read online (pdf) for free at its original publication in The Sun Magazine. Do read it...the author takes you on a wild weird ride on the kind of journey we'd never take, to places we'd never go to...and yet can associate with its basest moments! Isn't that what reading is all about? :)

Art is born of the observation and investigation of nature. - Cicero

1) Life in 4 pictures (more of the artists work here.) Poignant and conveyed in such a beautiful way!

2) 3-D Glass-Art

3) The International Illustrated is a free e-zine, collaboration effort of international illustration artists around the world to create and submit an artwork on every issue’s topic. - via

4) Paper Art

5) I'll add something here later...gotta run!
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Many more interesting art work, if you be so inclined, at a post where I compile interesting art and photography from around the web.

Perusing through the Pulitzer prize winning pictures by Renée C. Byer (found via Amit Varma's blog today), I got all teary-eyed by the time I got through the first half a dozen pictures!

A dose of perspective early in the morning as sulky-me wakes up to another day... this one supposed to be special in some way because its a birthday and all! And what a day it's already been - between the pictures and the Stephen Dunn poems I read this morning! (The poem that resonated the most is reproduced below for your pleasure. A great beginning and a delectable ending... hallmarks of a good great poem - not the rest of the poem was any less enjoyable! Now I know what tristesse feels like!

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Emptiness

I've learned mine can't be filled,
only alchemized. Many times
it's become a paragraph or a page.
But usually I've hidden it,
not knowing until too late
how enormous it grows in its dark.
Or how obvious it gets
when I've donned, say, my good
cordovans and my fine tweed vest
and walked into a room with a smile.
I might as well have been a man
with a fez and a faux silver cane.

Better, I know now, to dress it plain,
to say out loud
to some right person
in some right place
that there's something not there
in me, something I can't name.
That some right person
has just lit a fire under the kettle.
She hasn't said a word.
Beneath her blue shawl
she, too, conceals a world.

But she's amazed
how much I seem to need my emptiness,
amazed I won't let it go.

(c) Stephen Dunn
Published in his book of poems, Everything Else In The World.
The poem previously appeared in the Summer 2005 issue of Prairie Schooner .

While listening to some jazz music on Last.fm, I heard a piece just now called Shuba Yatra*, from the album, Outdones by Bela Fleck and the Flecktones and though what I heard was NOT jazz, in my opinion, my interest was piqued as it sounded like Indian classical music, mixed in with some western classical music. (*You can listen to it on Rhapsody - free subscription required.)

I had never heard of Bela Fleck and so looked him up. Seems, Bela has associated with musicians from around the globe -- hear, for example, the album Tabula Rasa, with the musical genius Vishwamohan Bhatt and famous erhu player, Jie-BingChen)...and that explains the Indian music influence!

Anyways, their Greatest Hits Of The 20th Century album should be a good introduction to their music though there is a good sampling of a live performance available at the Internet Music archive.

Do read this post from the Presentation Zen blog.

Happiness, decisions, & the paradox of unlimited choices

It is a follow-up to a previous post at the blog and mentions a presentation from TED on the "liberating effects of constraints." It also mentions a 2004 book, The Paradox of choice by Barry Schwartz, where he put forth ideas on how pursuing the maximizing of choice is not as liberating as one may believe but in fact is a cause for unhappiness.

Aah... don't we all ride the satisfaction curve!

Also read this Business Week article the post links to…
Creativity Loves Constraints ...but they must be balanced with a healthy disregard for the impossible.

…and a response to the article: Opportunities, Constraints and Barriers affect Creativity

Also see this great cartoon - Less is More is Less

April is celebrated (not by all!) as National Poetry Month since the Academy of American Poets started

My myriad interests and lack of focus will prevent a poem-a-day feature that many sites are hosting for the month, but here is a quote that signifies the importance of poetry in my life.

Poetry exists not to simplify our sense of life and death but to absorb its complexities and mixed tones. - W. S. Di Piero