Michele Roohani

Paris was a woman.

that’s my story and i am sticking to it!

the painting is Domenico Ghirlandaio’s “young woman” (1485), with some fresh INK on it.

I am in love with my iPod. One fabulous podcast i listened to last week brought tears to my eyes and inspired me to make this image.

the radio program was the one about the “Musical DNA” from WNYC’s Radiolab. David Cope , a composer and professor at UCSC, talks about how a computer program he wrote, can imitate the musical DNA of great artists; “His program, named EMI (Experiments in Musical Intelligence - pronounced Emmy), deconstructs the works of great composers, finding patterns within their compositions, and then creates brand new compositions.” Imagine some undiscovered pieces from Mahler or the Almighty Bach…Life can be amazing. We have worshiped dead musicians for ever, can we admire their ghosts’ music now?

I love this picture of Gary Oldman playing a near deaf Beethoven in Immortal Beloved. I often wonder how different his music would have been were he not deaf…

I just discovered this great image from Paul Louis Villani, a photographer and digital artist, i met on redbubble.

We had no say in how/when/where we were born but i think we should definitely have a say in our death. Nietzsche was right when he wrote, “there is a certain right by which we may deprive a man of life, but none by which we may deprive him of death.” I have never contemplated suicide but the very freedom to do so seems liberating. This doesn’t mean that i don’t believe in suicide prevention in most cases, but I am convinced that Life’s quality is way more important than a few miserable extra years. The final exit remained a NY Times best seller for a long time in spite of the U.S. being a fundamentally religious country. I find this glossary very interesting and i suppose clarifying the terms may help us not to consider the subject as taboo. Imprisoning Dr. Kevorkian (for eight years) just because he helped people with long histories of suffering was unjust even absurd. Life is beautiful but it is sublime if you have some control over it.

i decided to add something to this post after i read all the comments -i must admit that the issue of insanity in relation to suicide didn’t cross my mind before Yves mentioned it; the case of a young life ended because of depression is very different to me than the one ended based on insanity - and insanity is so subjective that i am not sure if i want anybody but the fairest of the judges to decide who’s sane and who isn’t. who would be the “guardian”? would a “philosopher king” do? is the society to decide or the government? who is to judge if i am sane enough to end my life when/how/where i decide to do it? is old age a necessary condition? is is sufficient though? who has the right to prolong someone else’s suffering/misery?

i’ve been to Venice, Italy some years ago but i think that i would probably not go back to this beautiful but over-crowded city for a while - as usual i like it better when it’s empty of the unwashed masses. Venice has been home to the great Titian, Veronese and Tintoretto (cinquecento Venice) and Casanova…

i was moved by Venice and its 120 islands on the Adriatic sea but i loved it most at 5:30 in the morning. after years i still like these pictures i took one foggy morning when everybody was asleep.

“I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs, a palace and prison on each hand” Lord Byron

i never particularly liked Turner - i didn’t know him much and i found it exasperating that 10 of his paintings were hung side by side in a museum in london (all yellow seas) - it all changed the day that i bought (in 2004) a book called Turner and Venice. i was humbled by the beauty of his paintings (all blue skies) and sketches. i’ve been watching Simon Schama’s “Power of Art” on pbs and he talks about Turner in one of the eight episodes (among other giants like Picasso, Rembrandt, David and Rothko).

i would love to go back to Venice one day when it snows and everybody else is at Disneyland.