oti0sus

Gita is her nick-name, from the famous poems of Tagore. I especially like this one:

Mind Without Fear

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;

Where knowledge is free;

Where the world has not been broken up

into fragments by narrow domestic walls;

Where words come out from the depth of truth;

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;

Where the clear stream of reason

has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action---

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

Gita's looking a little fearful there in the photograph, but she's only a month old, 2100 grammes, and 52 cms from nose tip to tail tip. She's a mutt bought from the owner of a dog meat restaurant last week and just now getting used to her new home.

I have mixed feelings about personal audio equipment like the Walkman or the MP3 player. I have only the slightest experience using a Walkman, but I remember going to work on the subway with a Walkman which I must have borrowed, and being amazed at how it recontextualized both the ride and the music. Even so, I have always had the opinion that we are exposed to too much music and instead made a habit of carrying books, magazines or newspapers wherever I went. I also felt that the earphones were anti-social and pre-empted any attempts to make contact.

I've led a nomadic life since that subway ride, and any LPs or cassette tapes I had then have long since disappeared. Recently though, I've been reconstituting my music collection in the form of MP3 files and only now bought an MP3 player. The player pictured above has a capacity of one gigabyte. That was what I was waiting for. That's about 15 to 20 record albums, and anything smaller would lead to frustration. It's slightly larger than the AA battery that powers it. It can also do voice recording and handles file formats such as .ogg. It's really quite marvelous.

I'm offering two torrents here, an audiobook (another novelty for me) by Bob Dylan, and Captain Beefheart's notorious Trout Mask Replica. Dylan's book, narrated by Sean Penn, is fascinating. I haven't followed Dylan's career closely since Blonde on Blonde, so it's good to hear his characteristic phrasing and choice of words in prose - not a typical autobiography, more of a release of reminiscences that have, over the years, accreted to powerful and Dylanesque images. Dylan has history of being pretty cagey with details on his personal life and past. Here he is generous, honest and open.

I am new to Trout Mask Replica. I've had some exposure to Captain Beefheart over the years, but only in the past few months did I come across what most claim to be his best record. Many also say that Trout Mask Replica is one of the finest bits of music of the 20th century. It is very good. Listen a few times before dismissing it. It took 3 or 4 times before it started to grow on me. It is avante garde at its best and is still, after some 35 years, remarkably fresh today.

Bob Dylan - Chronicles Volume One

Captain Beefheart - Trout Mask Replica

I'm hosting torrent files on my own computer for the first time so I hope all goes well. Comments are open to those who have special requests.