The Wilderness Downtown

Here's a link to a fascinating piece of interactive media.  Type in your home address (or any address) and the program downloads a number of Google map images and turns them into a dynamic, multi-window film with a cool soundtrack (We Used to Wait).  Flocks of birds crossing from one screen to another, a wonderful wilderness at the end - very much a greening.

 The film has been made by Chris Milk with help from Google and states a preference for Google Chrome, but worked well for me without it.  It sent up a message or two suggesting it didn't have enough images to make the film, but I selected the TRY ANYWAY option and it ran superbly.  While it will create a number of pop-up windows for the different film displays, these all disappear at the end of the film.  Here's the link to www.thewildernessdowntown.com .

I enjoyed it.  I hope you do too.

Listening to Washington

At the same time as receiving Laura Marling's excellent I Speak Because I Can (see earlier post) I was lucky enough to be given Washington's I Believe You Liar.  Megan Washington is currently based in Melbourne, so has been claimed as a 'local gal', and I'd already enjoyed a couple of tracks I'd bumped into on Triple J radio before I unwrapped this wonderful gift.

Recent Reads: Franny and Zooey by J.D.Salinger

I've enjoyed The Catcher in the Rye so many times, I thought it was time to read some of Salinger's other work, which led me into Franny and Zooey.  Interestingly (for me), because it touches on several similar ideas, it provided fresh insight into Catcher.  A bit more introspective, perhaps.  What I particularly like is that Franny and Zooey makes you work as a reader, but in a way that is ultimately very worthwhile.

I also like J.D.Salinger's epigraph:

As nearly as possible in the spirit of Matthew Salinger, age one, urging a luncheon companion to accept a cool lima bean, I urge my editor, mentor, and (heaven help him) closest friend, William Shawn, genius domus of the New Yorker, lover of the long shot, protector of the unprolific, defender of the hopelessly flamboynat, most unreasonably modest of born great artist-editors, to accept this pretty skimpy-looking book.

Some lima bean!