New posts from jordanlee.life
Wendy Eisenberg - s/t (Joyful Noise 2026)
I’ve enjoyed seeing Wendy play guitar in a wide range of experimental contexts over the decade but this new record takes those experiences and applies them to more conventional song structures. With their cosmic lyrics and Mari’s strings, I’m totally hooked
Kevin Munger on Vilem Flusser's Communicology
In my little corner of the web there seems to be a resurgence in studying media theorists who were noticing big changes in culture happening from new media technologies like the television and extrapolating their idea for the internet age. There’s been Marshall McLuhan (the medium is the message), his student Walter Ong (we are switching from a literary society back to an oral one), Neil Postman (television forces information to be amusing and decontextualized).
But I had been a bit intimidated by the ideas of Vilem Flusser who in the 80’s was predicting machines that could generate personalized images for the user and adapt to their preferences until it becomes a feedback loop becoming stronger with each iteration.
I thought Kevin Munger’s video on Flusser’s Communicology offered a good entry point and rallying cry on how to study and escape the spiral we seem to be in.
🎵 Stan Getz Featuring Joao Gilberto - Aguas De Março (1976)
Waters of March has been billed as one of Brazil’s most popular songs but I had never paid it much attention other than as enjoyable background music. That changed recently when it played in a cafe and I was bowled over by the stream of consciousness lyrics which speak of the cycles of life and decay. Using a cascade of seemingly opposing snapshots Antônio Carlos Jobim paints a rich non-dualistic picture of life.
What makes the song resonate further for me, is that it was written during a fascistic period of Brazil where journalists and artists were being jailed and murdered for speaking out against the regime. In this tense time, Jobim was able to use the Zen-like calm of bossa nova and powerful metaphor to offer an opposing narrative to the air of inevitability that the authoritarian regime was trying to project.
A youtube comment adding some interesting context, reminding listeners that March is Brazil’s start of autumn and one of mud, rain, overflowing rivers. This is not necessarily a song of blooming but something messier, torrential.
It’s the wind blowing free,
It′s the end of the slope,
It’s a beam, it′s a void,
It’s a hunch, it′s a hope
