It’s been a while since I updated this, but only because things have been ridiculously busy (in a good way). Earlier this month I was able to spend 8 days in China and see a part of the world that is rapidly becoming a cultural and economic powerhouse. The trip was partly due to recent progress with the development of our shower product, which we were able to make further headway on as we visited several plastics manufacturers near Hong Kong and Shanghai. Our trip started in Hong Kong, with its gorgeous skyline and mountain setting. The view from Victoria Peak was stunning, and I managed to get several good shots with my new Nikon D-90 SLR. Highlights from Hong Kong include the Art Museum exhibit on Louis Vuitton (Hong Kong after dark), dinner at Aqua on the 26th floor (overlooking the light show on the harbor), the Peninsula Hotel (including the fantastic “Felix” bar and restaurant & the hopping Salon de Ning) and probably the best peking duck I’ve ever had at “Spring Deer” in Kowloon.

several factories in Donguan (one of the major manufacturing capitals in the nation). Guangdong is one of the most prosperous provinces in all of China, with the nation’s leading GDP of $522 billion, and an economy roughly the same size as Sweden (though 9 times the population). This region, more than any other during the trip, was a true eye-opener. As the train passed by factory after factory in what seemed like endless cities that stretched for miles, one could visibly witness the evolution of the Chinese manufacturing sector. Many of these factories were already outdated and abandoned, even though most had been built (out of shoddy materials) only 20 years ago. No problem for the Chinese, who are capable of building cities in what seems like decades time and lightning speed. Take Shenzhen for example. In the late 1970s this city was nothing more than a miniscule fishing vilage. Today it stands as China’s second largest port, and a rapidly growing metropolis with over 9 million residents. Shenzhen also houses the manufacturing hub that makes the majority of Apple hardware, everything from ipods to iPhones to their notebooks.



We saved the best part of our trip for last, and frankly if I had 8 days all over again, I might spend them all in Shanghai. This city is very quickly emerging as the culutral and economic center of the world. More than anywhere else on the trip I was able to literally watch the city evolve before my eyes. Whereas Hong Kong has already defined itself as a fully cosmopolitan (one might say “Westernized” ) center on the world’s stage, Shanghai with its nearly 20 million residents is clearly still in the process of defining itself and discovering its cultural identity. That’s not to say that Shanghai is not rich in culture already. Settled in the 5th Century, Shanghai has a rich history of its own - but it is also a history and culture deeply influenced by foreign immerison. This largely started with the Opium Wars and the Treaty of Nanjing (and Wangsia) in 1843, which saw many territories of Shanghai “conceded” to foreign nations including the British, American and French. Adding to the eclectic mix were the Russians who fled during the emergence of the Soviet Union and the Japanese who exerted significant control in Shanghai after the Sino-Japanese war. The Japanese, apparently, were the first to introduce a manufacturing trade in Shanghai.

Like any good “Shanghailander” I was keen to explore these cultural influences on the cities identity. The influence is seen most obviously in the 19th & 20th century architectural masterworks that line the Huangpu River, the area known as The Bund. Walking up and down this “International Settlement” is really an architects wet dream, with countless archetypal manifestations from art deco to gothic to neoclassical all in one stretch. I would say the Customs House (circa 1927) with its imitation Big Ben was probably the highlight. Also a highlight on the trip was the famous “French Concession”, which is one of the best preserved districts in the city. With tree-lined avenues and cafes sprawling onto the street, it really did feel like I had stepped out of the futuristic megapolis and into a lazy afternoon walk in the 7th arrondissement. (For pure Paris in Shanghai, check out the “Mansion Hotel”. It was a true gem)

All in all, I found Shanghai (and Hong Kong) to be very dynamic cities. Even despite the pollution, I was surprised by the cultural richness of Shanghai and also the evolving art scene that is taking hold (with emerging artists like Mian Mian, Teng Kun Yen, He Jia & Sui Jianguo, I’m convinced Shanghai is poised for the next art renaissance). But the massive scale of growth was inescapable. The Pudong district of Shanghai, where we stayed, is like a glimpse into the future: supertall skyscrapers like the Shanghai World Financial Center (at 492 meters, the second tallest building in the world) and the Jin Mao Tower pierce the skyline, all the while reminding us of the great upward sweep that is taking hold in China. When you consider that Pudong itself was nothing more than marshlands 20 years ago, one begins to understand the economic transformation that is underway. But it does remain to be seen whether, with such economic growth (and thus a growing middle class and exposure to foreign cultures and politics), China will be able to maintain its strict political and oft anti-democratic ways. As a foreigner, the only way I could sense this was that sites like Twitter, YouTube and Flickr were all blocked in China (though my friend informs me these firewalls are easily breakable). But new techniques are seemingly more antediluvian - like the Chinese government’s requirement that all personal computers sold in China after July 1 must have content-control software pre-installed (known, perhaps more kindly, as Green Dam Youth Escort) that controls what Chinese webizens can do and view on their PCs. It seems to me like a paradigm that will pose some trouble from within unless the Chinese government begins to embrace more democratic ways.

Tags: China, Web Filtering, Essio, Tiananmen Square, Shanghai, Hong Kong

Most works of western tonal music are characterized by the regular recurrence of rhythmically patterned pulses. Andrew Bird’s eccentric cross-pollination of gypsy ballad violin and folk infused art-rock is defined by it. The importance of meter and repetition is clear on Noble Beast, even thematically, as whistled motifs emerge in defiant contrast to already established themes.

Noble Beast is Bird’s fourth solo album and it made its debut this past January as a live stream on NPR. While the melodic electricity from Armchair Apocrypha has been subdued, the inter-connected ambience laid out on Noble Beast is more clearly defined, and the scope of the album is decidedly more visceral than the esoteric meanderings of Bird’s prior work. Indeed, on Noble Beast, Bird has created a vivid landscape, layered by elegiac violin melodies and punctuated by pizzicato notes, plucked guitar and clip-clop percussion that is more approachable to the casual listener.

On a thematic level, Bird seems to struggle with the classification and taxonomy of the natural world. It’s probably little coincidence that Noble Beast was released right near the bicentenary of Charles Darwin’s birth. Bird elicits lugubrious and meticulous observations of the surrounding world, with scientific specificity and attention to detail as pertains to the rise and fall of species. On Souverian, he laments the inability of cyclical nature to overcome internal wounds. “while thistles will burn my feet / you promise spring, still my lover won’t return to me.” And on Anonanimal, Bird seems personally afflicted, even infected, by the evolutionary process. Singing of a sea anemone Bird predicts, “I will become this animal / anomalous appendages, anonanimal, anonanimal.” Evolution apparently comes with its own unforeseen casualties.

Bird’s drifting song structures are more coherent and sophisticated on Noble Beast than previous albums, if nothing less than for their tonal quality and gracefully collective harmony. Where Bird’s previous works presented stuffed canvases full of interesting sounds, the latest incarnation embraces the same ornamental delicacy but with a focal point. For example, on Effigy and Tenuousness, the album’s best songs, Bird uses church organs and operatic whistling not as mere sidenotes, but as compliments to vocal harmonies and intricate guitar picking. To be sure, the same affinity for odd phrases and abstruse lyrics is ever-present, but Bird seems more concerned here about creating a verbal topography, suffused with syllable play and alliterated language, than the actual meaning of words themselves. From the “calcified arythmetists” of Oh No to the decaying “anthurium lacrimae” of Natural Disaster Bird evokes an alternate version of the world as he sees it, eerily seductive as it is bizarre.

Stay tuned for pictures from tomorrow’s concert.

Tags: Andrew Bird, Music, Noble Beast, NPR

You know how when you want to see a movie before anyone else has the chance you go on opening night at your local theater? Afterall, it’s the only place you can see it, and you’ve got to be the first... This windowed model of exlusivity is rapidly becoming a new form of early distribution for artists hoping to capitalize on an alternative way to deliver their art to fans who care intimately about a direct connection with the musicians they love. It’s also the latest distribution method used by Brian Eno and David Byrne on their latest album “Everything that Happens Will Happen Today”.

We saw this first with Radiohead’s “In Rainbows”, a pay what you want model that was overwhelmingly successful in terms of conversion (despite the fact that Radiohead refuses to give data on sales, know that this first experiment was very successful). Radiohead was followed up by NiN with a truly original offering, which saw Reznor & Co. offer their fans a variety of bunled offerings - everything from 9 free tracks to digital ownership ($5), to digital + physical ($10), to value add offers including blu ray discs and signed LPs, costing upwards of $250 for the most expensive offer. The effort by NiN was hugely successful and embraced by a music industry hungry for a new method of music delivery and discovery beyond the colluded offer of traditional radio and the impersonal presentation of traditional physical retail. Check out some great google maps screenshots here that demonstrate the global potential brought on by self-distribution and disintermediation.

As for the Eno/Byrne collaboration released this past Monday on Topspin’s platform - I would say I am pleased with the outcome, though not floored. “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts”, their 20 year old previous collaboration is the far more challenging and diverse of the two albums, infused as it is more by Byrne’s 80’s-infected instatiable pop rhythm than Eno’s more reserved and electronically (over)-produced soundscapes and sonic curiosities. That said, the album is hugely important as a defining mark towards artists owning their relationships with fans, instead of handing off their rights to corporate behemoths. To be sure, songs like “Life is Long”, and “Strange Overtones” represent Byrne and Eno at their very best. For those interested, the digital album costs $8.99. The CD and the digital album together go for $11.99. For the deluxe package, including a film about the album, it’s $69.99.

Tags: NiN, Radiohead, Topspin, Brian Eno, David Byrne

On Sunday, Nobel Laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died at age 89. His more famous works include One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich and the Gulag Archipelago, which documented the Soviet forced labor and concentration camp system using primary research material as well as Solzhenitsyn’s own experience from a Gulag camp. Indeed, Solzhenitsyn is most famous for his role as an outspoken critic of the Soviet regime, but his writings also include some fascinating criticism of the Western socio-political system to which he was eventually forced to flee.

In particular, I find his Harvard Commencement Address speech in 1978 to be one of the most perceptive critiques of Western Society. Many of the questions he poses I think have yet to be resolved, even 30 years later. One of his more probing assertions is that Western Society, which was founded upon the notion of a “pursuit of happiness” has come to define that pursuit, rather narrowly, as the desire for physical objects or “well being”.

Notions of right and wrong, according to Solzhenitsyn, have been trumped by the freedom of the individual and the ascension of the legalistic framework of his society. But does “the law” ipso facto define moral standards or does a suspension of legal precedence exist in a higher ethical realm?

“An oil company is legally blameless when it purchases an invention of a new type of energy in order to prevent its use. A food product manufacturer is legally blameless when he poisons his produce to make it last longer: after all, people are free not to buy it.”

Solzhenitsyn can be heuristic at times, if not downright prophetic in the manner typical of the Russian literary tradition, and his assessment of US foreign policy and the anti-Vietnam movement comes across as outdated. Compelling, however, is his criticism of Western journalism, which is supposed to represent the highest mark of freedom in our society.

“Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic disease of the 20th century and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press. In-depth analysis of a problem is anathema to the press. It stops at sensational formulas.”

In my view, journalists have an unwritten duty to society to provide an in-depth depiction of the truth, yet that obligation has largely been sidestepped by a more pervasive concern surrounding ratings and what I call “news as sports”, less about informing people than about entertaining their every whim with pornographic pop culture pizzaz.

“a selection dictated by fashion and the need to match mass standards frequently prevent independent-minded people from giving their contribution to public life. There is a dangerous tendency to form a herd, shutting off successful development. I have received letters in America from highly intelligent persons, maybe a teacher in a faraway small college who could do much for the renewal and salvation of his country, but his country cannot hear him because the media are not interested in him. This gives birth to strong mass prejudices, blindness, which is most dangerous in our dynamic era.”

Solzhenitsyn puts the blame of what he calls “psychological weakness” and “spiritual exhaustion” on a fundamental flaw in the humanistic tenets that our society is founded upon, namely the notion that mankind in a natural and free state is good and rational, and that only a flawed society will corrupt him. He clearly sees the disease as endemically related to the core of our system’s fundamental belief in the freedom of the individual. I would say, instead, that morals and ethics are strongly tied to the notion of collectivity, which in our society at least is often displaced by individualistic priorities such as material possession and status. In other words I don’t necessarily think individual freedom is inherently problematic, but when coupled with a system that more or less ignores the importance of social duty, the higher ethical spirit of man is diluted.

“If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding... Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism.”

In almost half a century, more than 30 million of Solzhenitsyn’s books have been sold worldwide and translated into some 40 languages. In 1970 he was awarded the Nobel prize for literature.

Tags: Solzhenitsyn

To my loyal readers: For those of you who are unaware, I have been working on a side project for some time now. My father developed and patented the technology behind a device that attaches to shower pipes, reaches over your shower head and releases blends of essential oils at an extremely small rate into the shower flow. The result is an amazing aromatherapy experience, all in the comfort of your own personal shower.

Anyway, we have completed patent, prototype design and extensive product testing and we’re now at the stage where we are working to take the product to market. We’re in talks with mass market retailers as well as the upscale spa and hotel market. To help refine our understanding of the product I have developed a comprehensive concept test that I have now built online. If you’re reading this, please check out the survey at lavitashower.com. It takes no more than 3 minutes to complete and would helpe us tremendously. Also, if you can forward it on to a few people, I’d be much obliged.

Thanks, and I will keep everyone posted.

Tags: Shower, Aromatherapy, Survey, Essential Oils

A poem from last summer:

Every day I count the states
of mind, fragile and endless
the states, built up like burnt plaque
the forest fire echoes through the tundra
and the quiet trembling harlequin winces
Every day I count the states
7 of them to be exact
slammed together by borders
where glue trickles down in the form of rivers
and the heart drips like an archipelago
my tongue a peninsula for your aqueous,
open mouth
Every day I count the states
Texas bulges like a fat cowboy
a stomach the size of El Paso
and an appetite that grinds the heartland
and churns out the savory sediment of rebellion
rolling down the rio grande
Every day I count the states
fraught with urgent letters
spelling out names of cities
like corpus christi
the body a pale entity
breathing in topography
like oxygen, fingers tasting
the papered method,
the lay of the land
Every day I count the states
Arizona sparks the orange based
silhouette sometimes wearing a purple cloak
so hard to look past the transparent
superhighway of Phoenix,
flying toward Albuquerque,
the marsh land waiting with wet
anticipation, your moist palms
the dearest things
Every day I count the states
Maddening outbursts of spitfire
Louisiana and Mississippi
Tank topped and alive
nose in mouth and the cantankerous
rickshaw twiddlin' my message
with lackluster echoes
bouncing from inside the spittoon
Every day I count the states
of shattered love, the ghost of you
somewhere in my voice, crawling out my mouth
in the crudest form, the veins of your skull
shining through shoe polished countryside
shining through trailer land, and Alabama
glistening with the sweat of your mind
the rind of your cerebrum tasting how
hunger must feel
Every day I count the states
7 of them to be exact
the states of mind, caught in between
rubbing up like a prickled backscratch
fighting the flaring sirens of
interspersed distance.
Somewhere down below
the pacific floods inside the atlantic
down there in panama
but for my blood
i must count the states
perched in mental holograms
the finest memory
just a bleached out
corollary of your
alabaster artifact.