I stumbled across German photographer Michael Wolf‘s photography this morning. Fascinating stuff. He uses mega cities as a concrete palette, mixing the colors, geometries and human faces of urban life into images that vibrate tensely between order and chaos.
I particularly liked Architecture of Density and Tokyo Compression …
Thanks to Slate for pointing me Wolf’s way …
We saw the Globe Theatre’s production of Hamlet last night at the Folger here in D.C. Wonderful production. It also was my first time seeing a play at the Folger, which is a fantastic space despite the fact that some sight lines are obstructed. (That’s the Capitol at right as viewed from the entrance to the Folger.)
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Hamlet: A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.
Claudius: What dost thou mean by this?
Hamlet: Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar.
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Wendell Berry was hitting stride while delivering the 41st annual Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities at Kennedy Center last night. The great agrarian poet was calling out the excesses of corporate America, technology, capitalism and our rampant disregard for nature. Our wanderlust has destroyed our rootedness, our sense of place.
It suddenly dawned on me that his overly simplified assessment of 21st century life really wasn’t all that original. Blue Öyster Cult beat him to it.
History shows again and again
How nature points out the folly of men
Berry was just one umlaut short of tearing those high-tension wires down …