alone
John Cage (1912-1992), In a Landscape (1948)
Anton Batagov (1965-, piano), live, Moscow, 2014
**********
lagniappe
art beat: yesterday at the Art Institute of Chicago
Paul Cezanne, The Bay of Marseilles, Seen From L’Estaque, c. 1885
This, too, I never tire of.
Sounds echo across generations. Here, on the 88th birthday of my long-gone father, are sounds I first heard through my sons.
TV on the Radio, live (studio performance), Santa Monica, 2014
otherworldly
Turgut Ercetin (1983-), String Quartet No. 1 (“December”); The Jack Quartet, live, Stanford University, 2011
**********
lagniappe
reading table
Lacan said that there was surely something ironic about Christ’s injunction to love thy neighbour as thyself—because actually, of course, people hate themselves.
***
We know almost nothing about ourselves because we judge ourselves before we have a chance to see ourselves.
***
Self-criticism is an unforbidden pleasure: we seem to relish the way it makes us suffer.
—Adam Phillips, “Against Self-Criticism,” London Review of Books, 3/5/15
Feeling glum?
Not for long.
Jim Campilongo & Honeyfingers,* live, New York, 2013
*JC, guitar; Luca Benedetti, guitar; Jonny Lam, lap steel guitar; Catherine Popper, bass; Shawn Pelton, drums.
sounds of Chicago
Tweedy, live (studio performance), Seattle, 3/12/15
**********
lagniappe
random sights
How reassuring to find this four blocks from home.
sounds of Chicago
Jack DeJohnette (drums) with MCOTD Hall-of-Famer Henry Threadgill (reeds), Roscoe Mitchell (reeds), Muhal Richard Abrams (piano), and Larry Gray (bass), Made in Chicago, 2015
**********
lagniappe
art beat: more from the other day at the Art Institute of Chicago
This, too, I never tire of.
Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), Greyed Rainbow, 1953
sounds of Chicago
Caravans (feat. Shirley Caesar, lead vocals), “God Don’t Need No Coward Soldier” (J. Herndon), live (TV show), early ’60s
**********
lagniappe
reading table
You can live three days without bread—without poetry never.
—Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867; quoted in Julian Bell, Van Gogh: A Power Seething)
sounds of Detroit
Don Was/Sweet Pea Atkinson, “Slow Down,” recording session, 2007
**********
lagniappe
art beat: more from the other day at the Art Institute of Chicago
This I never tire of.
Joan Mitchell (1925-1992), City Landscape, 1955
only rock ‘n’ roll
Sleater-Kinney, “A New Wave,” 2015
never enough
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), Suite No. 5 in C minor for Unaccompanied Cello; Anner Bylsma, live, 2000
**********
lagniappe
reading table
I haven’t got a kopeck, but as I see it, it’s not the person with a lot of money who is rich, but rather the one who has the wherewithal to be alive here and now in the lush, bountiful setting bestowed upon us by early spring.
—Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), letter to Lidia Avilova, April 29, 1892 (trans. from Russian by Cathy Popkin [Anton Chekhov’s Selected Stories, Cathy Popkin, ed.])
music clip of the day 