David Kirby
in The Integrated Global Creative Economy
When David Kirby comes up, the Recôncavo & the sertão, Salvador, Bahia and Brazil come up too.
Curation
CURATION
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from this page:
by Title Holder
Matrix Page
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Name:
David Kirby
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City/Place:
New York City
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Country:
United States
Current News
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What's Up?
David Kirby spent considerable time rubbing elbows with the social elites who comprise the world of “Upper East Bride.” As Press Secretary at the American Foundation for AIDS Research, he accompanied Elizabeth Taylor around the globe, mixing with movie stars, TV celebrities, royalty and other very rich people, most of whom were quite nice. He has written for The NY Times, Huffington Post, UPI, Discover, Glamour and others, and published four nonfiction books with St. Martin’s Press. UPPER EAST BRIDE is his first novel. He lives in NYC (of course).
Life & Work
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Bio:
David Kirby is an investigative journalist and author who was a regular contributor to The New York Times, Huffington Post and TakePart, where he covered health, science, politics, the environment, green technology, art and culture. In the 1980s he was a wire-service correspondent covering the wars in Central America and political unrest in Mexico.
He has also published four non-fiction books: “Evidence of Harm,” (a NY Times bestseller, winner of the 2005 Investigative Reporters and Editors Award for Best Book and one of five finalists for the 2005 Helen Bernstein New York Public Library Award for Excellence in Nonfiction), “Animal Factory,” “Death at Seaworld” and “When They Come For You.” In 2015, he won the Southern California Journalists Association’s award for Best Environmental Reporting. His article for Discover Magazine about toxic pollution crossing the ocean from China was selected as one of the 20 of the year in the book “Best American Science And Nature Writing -2012.” He has also contributed to a number of other major magazines.
David has extensive experience in public speaking on a variety of topics at major venues and has been interviewed by or made appearances at venues such as The New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, Associated Press, CNN, MSNBC, FOX, ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR and many others.
My Writing
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Publications:
FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF “DEATH AT SEAWORLD,” OPTIONED FOR A MAJOR 10-PART NETWORK SERIES.
Love, Life and Loss in the Upper Stratosphere of High Society New York. A comedy.
Megan O’Malley is a working-class, aspiring journalist from Ypsilanti who moves to New York City and is unexpectedly hurled into the madness of uber-rich Manhattan, with its competitive consumption, preposterous pretensions, massive financial fiefdoms, and the over-indulged wealthy, whose hordes of help keep the silver polished, the chateaubriand perfectly cooked and the martinis exquisitely dry.
Megan is soon swept off her feet by the city’s most celebrated wealthy bachelor, Rexford Bainbridge, III, better known as “Sexy Rexy.” When he proposes to her, Rex’s stunned circle of friends, a cabal of Type-A socialites, reluctantly agree to take the decidedly down-market Midwesterner under their comically pompous wings and guide her through a massive makeover.
As Megan pursues her dream of journalism, she must navigate a brave new life of ridiculous opulence, relentless snobbery and stinging ridicule, mostly directed at her. When everything comes crashing down, she is shunned by the ladies who lunch. Megan must now claw her way back to respectability and financial stability, while also delivering a fitting comeuppance to her mentors-turned-tormentors. This rags-to-riches-to-rags social satire unearths the dark, hilarious underbelly of class warfare in contemporary Manhattan.
Few people know that the Bay of All Saints was final port-of-call for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. And few people know the transcendence these people, and their descendents, wrought. That's where this Matrix begins...
Wolfram MathWorld
The idea is simple, powerful, and egalitarian: To propagate for them, the Matrix must propagate for all. Most in the world are within six degrees of us. The concept of a "small world" network (see Wolfram above) applies here, placing artists from the Recôncavo and the sertão, from Salvador... from Brooklyn, Berlin and Mombassa... musicians, writers, filmmakers... clicks (recommendations) away from their peers all over the planet.
This Integrated Global Creative Economy (we invented the concept) uncoils from Brazil's sprawling Indigenous, African, Sephardic and then Ashkenazic, Arabic, European, Asian cultural matrix... expanding like the canopy of a rainforest tree rooted in Bahia, branches spreading to embrace the entire world...
Recent Visitors Map
Great culture is great power.
And in a small world great things are possible.
Alicia Svigals
"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
—Alicia Svigals (NEW YORK CITY): Apotheosis of klezmer violinists
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers (BOSTON): Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory ... Former personal recording engineer for Prince; "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"
"Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched!"
—Julian Lloyd Webber (LONDON): Premier cellist in UK; brother of Andrew (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Phantom of the Opera...)
"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))"
—Clarice Assad (RIO DE JANEIRO/CHICAGO): Pianist and composer with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world
"We appreciate you including Kamasi in the matrix, Sparrow."
—Banch Abegaze (LOS ANGELES): manager, Kamasi Washington
"Thanks! It looks great!....I didn't write 'Cantaloupe Island' though...Herbie Hancock did! Great Page though, well done! best, Randy"
"Very nice! Thank you for this. Warmest regards and wishing much success for the project! Matt"
—Son of Jimmy Garrison (bass for John Coltrane, Bill Evans...); plays with Herbie Hancock and other greats...
I opened the shop in Salvador, Bahia in 2005 in order to create an outlet to the wider world for magnificent Brazilian musicians.
David Dye & Kim Junod for NPR found us (above), and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (he's a huge jazz fan), David Byrne, Oscar Castro-Neves... Spike Lee walked past the place while I was sitting on the stoop across the street drinking beer and listening to samba from the speaker in the window...
But we weren't exactly easy for the world-at-large to get to. So in order to extend the place's ethos I transformed the site associated with it into a network wherein Brazilian musicians I knew would recommend other Brazilian musicians, who would recommend others...
And as I anticipated, the chalky hand of God-as-mathematician intervened: In human society — per the small-world phenomenon — most of the billions of us on earth are within some 6 or fewer degrees of each other. Likewise, within a network of interlinked artists as I've described above, most of these artists will in the same manner be at most a handful of steps away from each other.
So then, all that's necessary to put the Brazilians within possible purview of the wide wide world is to include them among a wide wide range of artists around that world.
If, for example, Quincy Jones is inside the matrix, then anybody on his page — whether they be accessing from a campus in L.A., a pub in Dublin, a shebeen in Cape Town, a tent in Mongolia — will be close, transitable steps away from Raymundo Sodré, even if they know nothing of Brazil and are unaware that Sodré sings/dances upon this planet. Sodré, having been knocked from the perch of fame and ground into anonymity by Brazil's dictatorship, has now the alternative of access to the world-at-large via recourse to the vast potential of network theory.
...to the degree that other artists et al — writers, researchers, filmmakers, painters, choreographers...everywhere — do also. Artificial intelligence not required. Real intelligence, yes.
Years ago in NYC (I've lived here in Brazil for 32 years now) I "rescued" unpaid royalties (performance & mechanical) for artists/composers including Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Mongo Santamaria, Jim Hall, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd (for his rights in Bob Marley compositions; Clement was Bob's first producer), Led Zeppelin, Ray Barretto, Philip Glass and many others. Aretha called me out of the blue vis-à-vis money owed by Atlantic Records. Allen Klein (managed The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Ray Charles) called about money due the estate of Sam Cooke. Jerry Ragovoy (Time Is On My Side, Piece of My Heart) called just to see if he had any unpaid money floating around out there (the royalty world was a shark-filled jungle, to mangle metaphors, and I doubt it's changed).
But the pertinent client (and friend) in the present context is Earl "Speedo" Carroll, of The Cadillacs. Earl went from doo-wopping on Harlem streetcorners to chart-topping success to working as a custodian at PS 87 elementary school on the west side of Manhattan. Through all of this he never lost what made him great.
Greatness and fame are too often conflated. The former should be accessible independently of the latter.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay (they paid).
Matrix founding creators are behind "one of 10 of the best (radios) around the world", per The Guardian.
Salvador is our base. If you plan to visit Bahia, there are some things you should probably know and you should first visit:
www.salvadorbahiabrazil.com
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