BURNING BOOKS PRESS

Burning Books was founded in 1979 by writer/editor Melody Sumner Carnahan and artist/designer Michael Sumner and is dedicated to avant-garde fiction, music, and art. Author/Artist/Collaborators include John Cage, Yoko Ono, Laurie Anderson, Robert Ashley, Madeline Gins, Joan La Barbara, Larry Polansky, Mark Weber, Barbara Golden, Toma Longinovic, Steina, Woody Vasulka, Charles Amirkhanian, Michael Peppe, K. Atchley, Sheila Davies, Patrick Sumner, Laetitia Sonami, Susan Stone, Charles Shere, Dino J.A. Deane.


Designated by the NEA in 1987 as one of the "best independent press books of the year," this book is compilation of the texts, scores, and ideas of seven American composers who use words as an integral part of their compositions. Each chapter includes a text in the form of libretto or lyrics, often with complete score. Also included are interviews with each composer about her or his ideas on music, daily life, consciousness, the future, and possibilities.

Check them out here : http://www.burningbooks.org/

Leighton Pierce - The Back Steps

Leighton Pierce is a child.

His works are filled with perceptions that only the most embryonic of minds can take hold of. Blurs of light and texture that go mostly unnoticed by the constant motion of the adult world become alien universes of the familiar. Minuscule swatches of time mimic the environmental landscape of information discerned by the guiltless innocence of the child. A child’s mind holds a near real-time version of memory, the only past is that of the immediate, the future is not yet a concept beyond a matter of minutes. It is with these eyes that Pierce builds a Midwest mythology of the elevated ordinary, creating a new, uncorrupted grammar.

In The Back Steps, Pierce holds captive two little girls inside a twist of time, both in constant departure from Leighton’s back porch steps into the yard beyond. This restless escape creates an orographic cyclogenesis, the night becoming the mountainous walls that hold in the whirlwind of Halloween costumes and scurrying feet. Time folds in on itself, a panorama of endless disappearances, each scherzo slightly askew from the previous, following an internal logic of it’s own, unshared design.

“Time is, in fact, what I see as my main material.” – Leighton Pierce

TheBackStepssample.m4v

THE PODCAST IS UP AND RUNNING!!!

After a short but much needed hiatus, The End of Being has returned and we have brought our PODCAST with us! We have been recording them since Jan this year and we will have them all up shortly.

Look below for a list of each episode and look in the sidebar to the left and click on an episode to hear it.
















Episode #01 – Grab Bag #1
Fever Ray - If I Had A Heart
Cold Cave - Our Tears Help the Flowers Grow
Giuseppi Logan Quartet -Dialogue
Tony Schwartz - Sounds Outside My House
Starter - Part Of You
Archie Bronson Outfit - Cherry Lips
Inflatable Boy Clams - Skeletons
Beirut - The Akara
Gregory Warner - Afghanistan Accordion Journey
Elvira Rios - Noche De Ronda
Blackout Beach - Cloud of Evil
USAF Recruiting Spot - Planes (I'm Only A Girl)
Adult Rodeo - Jesus, He Loves LSD + Me
Taken By Trees - Sweet Child O' Mine

Episode #02 – Grab Bag #2
Arthur And Martha - Autovia
Michael Proft - Learn To Speak Hawaiian
Capri - Computer
Unit 3 With Venus - Pajama Party
Greg Bartholomew - No! George! No!
Dum Dum Girls - Ship Of Love
Unknown Artist - When Robots Have Ghosts (Empire State Observatory Souvenir Acetate)
The Chatham Singers - Evil Thing
Billy Ward and his Dominoes - The Bells
This Heat - Shrink Wrap
Ed Curran Quartet - Cire
Cal Andrews - Sundown At Sea
Woody Vasulka / Ernest Gusella - The Commission (Excerpt)
The Splatter Trio - 6 Things To A Cycle Part 2 (by The Residents)
John Zorn - Demon Sanctuary
Uncle Burt - The Amazing Adventures of Johnny
Kim Gordon - Song for Reverse Karaoke
Timber Timbre - Demon Host
Allen Brothers - Prisoner's Dream
George Kent - Hello, I’m_a_Jukebox
The Cramps - Love Me

Episode #03 – Grab bag #3
Buraka Som Sistema (ft. M.I.A. & Dj Znobia) - Sound of Kuduro
Unknown Artist - Oh Mother, The Handsome Man Tortures Me
Bing Crosby - Waste Kitchen Fat (1943)
Lou Reed - Dirt
The Fall - Eat Y'self Fitter
The Munsters Soundtrack - Knock Upon Our Door
Fabulous Diamonds - LP3
Dragons - Here Are The Roses
Shelley Hirsch - Sliced Open
Vivian Girls - Tell The World
Alex Chilton - Bangkok
Chuck Jones and the Links - Sputnik Hit the Moon
NHK - 07414 0833
Anna Domino - Pome On Doctor Sax
Patty Waters - Moon, Don't Come Up Tonight
The Red Krayola - Paris
Cat Power - It Ain’t Fair (by Aretha Franklin)

Episode #04 – When R&B Meant Rhythm & Blues #1
Moose Jackson with Tiny Bradshaw's Orchestra - Big Ten-Inch Record
Bo Diddley - (You Better) Do What I Say
Herbert Beard With Bob Carter's Orchestra - Gal! You Need A Whippin'
Louis Jordan And His Tympany Five - Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby
Chuck Willis - Can't You See
Slim Gaillard - Mean Mama Blues
Chuck Willis - It's Too Late
The Detroit Cobras - Cry On
Gayle Brown - Gone Are The Days
Guitar Slim - Trouble Don't Last
Billy Ward and his Dominoes - I'm Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town
Jimmy Preston - Credit Blues
Jack McVea & His Door Openers - Open The Door Richard!
Percy Mayfield - Hopeless
Calvin Boze and his All-Stars - Waiting And Drinking
The Ray-O-Vacs - Wine-O
Jack McVea & His All Stars - Wine-O
Pee Wee Crayton - Wine-O
Buddy Tate - Good Morning Judge
The Larks - When I Leave These Prison Walls
Jack McVea & His All Stars - The Key's In The Mailbox

Episode #05 – Grab Bag #4
Jenny Wilson - The Path
Burbuja - iJUSTwannaRIDEmyBICYCLE
Two Fingers - Better Get That (Feat. Ms. Jade)
Laurie Anderson - New York Social Life
Tony Da Gatorra - Mue Nome E Tony
Piero Piccioni - Main Title - The Tenth Victim
Serge Franklin - KKK
Northern Portrait - Two Seconds
Anni Rossi - Wheelpusher
Harry Nilsson/John Lennon w/Masked Alberts Orchestra - Don't Forget Me
Neko Case - Don't Forget Me (by Harry Nilsson)
Frank Lambert - Talking Clock (1878)
Plastics - Diamond Head
Pillow Talk - Teenage Shut-In
The Golden Filter - Solid Gold
Miss Kittin & The Hacker - Suspicious Minds


Episode #06 – Grab Bag #5
Akron/Family - Last Year
The Links - Vehicle
Midori ミドリ - First
George Johnson - Garbage Man
Mirah - The Forest
Depeche Mode - Wrong
Moderat - A New Error
Dobie Red/Foots - Hollers
Dumbo Soundtrack - When I See an Elephant Fly
The Ideal Husband - I'll Stop To Play With You
McLusky - KKKitchens
Byetone - Black Is Black
Black Dice - Nite Creme
James Chance & Ron Anderson & Jac Berrocal - I Wanna Be Your Dog
Blank Dogs - Calling Over
Bama - I'm Goin' Home
Cal Massey - Whats Wrong?
Ken Nordine - Reaching Into In
Bat For Lashes - Moon And Moon

ONE OF THE GREATS IS DEAD - LUX INTERIOR DIES AT AGE 60

I knew Lux, and although I had not spoken with him in many years, my world will have a giant empty hole in it. Goodbye Lux, I miss you already.

FRENCH GAS MASK MALITIA

Seriously---Click on each picture to see a much better quality image of either one. The bottom pic is truly exceptional.

BABY DOLL ISSUE #2

I can not find out anything online about or any other issues of this awesome looking Men's Mag.

If you have any info, please let me know!

SUBMISSION AND COFFEE - BDSM PODCAST

Ultra cool BDSM podcast, Submission and Coffee, is coming to an end after 2 years and 184 hour long episodes including actual recordings of bondage sessions and interesting conversations with a 24/7 lifestyle couple and the occasional threesome. They have uploaded torrents of all the episodes, so you can check it out.

LINK: SUBMISSION AND COFFEE - 184 EPISODE CATALOGUE

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALEX CHILTON

The man who wrote "The Letter" with The Box Tops, produced The Cramps first album, Gravest Hits (released 1979, recorded 1977) starred in super group Big Star and popularized skinny white boy R&B to 80s indie-hipsters, was born today in 1950.

Please enjoy this fan made video of the Alex Chilton classic, Bangkok!
LINK: Bangkok Video

JOHN O'REILLY

"There's an element of gay culture that only wants to look at and glorify beautiful men, but I'm much more interested in presenting a realistic image of the male body."--JOHN O'REILLY

Using razor blades, paper clips and an old Polaroid camera, O'Reilly has spent the past several decades constructing visual passion plays and elaborate fantasy scenarios in which he mingles with such esteemed company as Goya and Caravaggio. O'Reilly also has appropriated photos of queer icons such as Walt Whitman, Benjamin Britten and Jean Genet, transforming them into droll self-portraits by pasting his own bespectacled mug onto their bodies, or by paper-clipping their famous faces to his refreshingly pale, scrawny torso.

"The self-portraits try to establish both a self-identity and a social identity. I attempt to counter the sense of imprisonment, the feelings of marginalization, by insisting that my private world exists as an integral part of the larger social context."--JOHN O'REILLY

As a bemused gate-crasher through the annals of art history, O'Reilly has produced an aesthetically dazzling, thematically rich body of work that addresses issues of sexuality, creativity and self-definition. For many years O'Reilly conducted his artistic exploration in private. Such is his career-shunning modesty that for several decades the Massachusetts-based artist-now nearing seventy-only showed his work to close friends. Not until his celebrated inclusion in the 1995 Whitney Biennial did O'Reilly achieve belated "overnight success" as a pioneer of elegant, witty, often erotic gay imagery.

JASPER JOHNS & ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG - THE ART OF CODE

From: The Art of Code -Jonathan Katz

---

Almost from the very beginning of their relationship, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg were linked together, usually by people who had little or no idea of what they really meant to each other. Early critics tagged them both with the same facile labels--neo-Dada, assemblage, junk art--and viewed and reviewed them as a pair. They showed together, were discussed together, even discovered together by their dealer. Still later, they would be declared Pop, or more subtly, proto-Pop, and credited with the development of the first American style that led away from Abstract Expressionism. Artistic movements generally involve more than two artists: theirs was confined to them alone.

All the more remarkable then that the work of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg is so completely distinct; one could simply never mistake one artist's hand for the other's. It seems that the fact that Johns and Rauschenberg were involved together determined to some extent how they were understood. And yet, paradoxically, while their partnership was widely acknowledged, few comprehended what it really meant, and fewer still knew that it transcended simple friendship. John and Rauschenberg are in the curious position of being understood as a pair, but not a couple. Yet they were a couple; and the rather obvious silences, ellipses, and omissions that permeate the usual accounts of their history make no sense unless arrayed against an insistent and damaging homophobia that has led both artists to actually deny the substance of what they had together. LINK: The Art of Code Essay

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HENRY MILLER

Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.

*****
Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.
*****
An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.
*****
I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.
Every man with a bellyful of the classics is an enemy to the human race.
*****
Instead of asking 'How much damage will the work in question bring about?' why not ask 'How much good? How much joy?'
*****
Example moves the world more than doctrine. The great exemplars are the poets of action, and it makes little difference whether they be forces for good or forces for evil.
*****
Moralities, ethics, laws, customs, beliefs, doctrines - these are of trifling import. All that matters is that the miraculous become the norm.
*****
Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself.
*****
All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAO TSE-TUNG!

THE DOUBLE NINTH

-To the Tune of Tsai Sang Tzu
(October - 1929 - 36 Years Old)

Man ages all too easily, not Nature:
Year by year the Double Ninth returns.
On this Double Ninth,
The yellow blooms on the battlefield smell sweeter.

Each year the autumn wind blows fierce,
Unlike spring's splendour,
Yet surpassing spring's splendour,
See the endless expanse of frosty sky and water.

-Máo Zédōng (Mao Tse-tung)

A WINTER THANK YOU

Merry Winter to all our readers.
Thank you for the kind notes and well-wishings.

IMAGE LINK: FLESH AND THE DEVIL _ 1926

GOODBYE ANN SAVAGE!

Ann Savage died on Christmas morning. She was the over-smoked twist in Detour and Guy Maddin's mother in My Winnipeg. Goodbye, Ann!

EARTHA KITT DIED TODAY AT AGE 81

Orson Welles once called Eartha Kitt, “The most exciting woman alive.”

LINK: Eartha Kitt - "I Wanna Be Evil"

JAPANESE CLAPPER

CIGARETTE GIRL

RUTH WALLIS DIED 1 YEAR AGO TODAY

Ruth Wallis, infamous risqué cabaret singer well known for her self penned satirical songs, died 1 year ago today.

LINK: Ruth Wallis - Psycho Mambo

JUKE JOINT DRUMMER

BETTIE PAGE DIED TODAY AT AGE 85

GOODBYE BETTIE, YOU WILL BE MISSED.

OLIVIER MESSIAEN - 100 YEARS ON DEC. 10

Olivier Messiaen often went out into the wild to transcribe bird songs and then incorporated the sounds into his music. A detailed look at the score of Quartet for the End of Time reveals palindrome layered rhythms with a clarinet bird call floating above the hundreds of harmonies interlaced in mathematical intricacy. His students included Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, George Benjamin, Iannis Xenakis and McCoy Tyner.

LINK: Livre D'Orgue - OLIVIER MESSIAEN.

DANIEL GOLDSTEIN - THE ICARIAN SERIES

These skins have literally recorded it all, and they speak to us with
quiet eloquence about beauty and vanity, exertion and exhaustion,
vitality and mortality. It is through the gradual destruction of the
skins that we eventually perceive our own image: our hopes and
passions and follies. It is in their preservation under glass that we
confront the amazing transformation that has taken place within
them, and ourselves. Artist:DANIEL GOLDSTEIN