William Parker’s In Order To Survive (WP, bass, composition; Hamid Drake, drums, MCOTD Hall of Fame;* Lewis Barnes, trumpet; Rob Brown, alto saxophone; Cooper-Moore, piano), “Criminals in the White House,” live, New York, 2013
*With saxophonists Von Freeman and Henry Threadgill; trumpeter Lester Bowie; gospel singer Dorothy Love Coates; composer Morton Feldman; poets John Berryman, William Bronk, and Wislawa Szymborska; and photographer Helen Levitt.
These guys, from Australia, are playing at Constellation.
The Necks, live, London, 2016
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lagniappe
reading table
The Imaginary Iceberg
by Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)
We’d rather have the iceberg than the ship,
although it meant the end of travel.
Although it stood stock-still like cloudy rock
and all the sea were moving marble.
We’d rather have the iceberg than the ship;
we’d rather own this breathing plain of snow
though the ship’s sails were laid upon the sea
as the snow lies undissolved upon the water.
O solemn, floating field,
are you aware an iceberg takes repose
with you, and when it wakes may pasture on your snows?
This is a scene a sailor’d give his eyes for.
The ship’s ignored. The iceberg rises
and sinks again; its glassy pinnacles
correct elliptics in the sky.
This is a scene where he who treads the boards
is artlessly rhetorical. The curtain
is light enough to rise on finest ropes
that airy twists of snow provide.
The wits of these white peaks
spar with the sun. Its weight the iceberg dares
upon a shifting stage and stands and stares.
The iceberg cuts its facets from within.
Like jewelry from a grave
it saves itself perpetually and adorns
only itself, perhaps the snows
which so surprise us lying on the sea.
Good-bye, we say, good-bye, the ship steers off
where waves give in to one another’s waves
and clouds run in a warmer sky.
Icebergs behoove the soul
(both being self-made from elements least visible)
to see them so: fleshed, fair, erected indivisible.
Howlin’ Wolf (vocals, harmonica; 1910-1976), “How Many More Years,” “Moanin’ at Midnight,” 1951
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lagniappe
reading table
We drew from the models, and you cannot imagine how fantastically boring it can be to look hour after hour at a beautiful body. But an ugly body can be fascinating.
—photographer Lisette Model (1901-1983), quoted in Colm Toibin, “That Little Minx” (reviewing Diane Arbus: Portrait of a Photographer and Silent Dialogues: Diane Arbus and Howard Nemerov), London Review of Books, 3/2/17
The other day I bumped into this guy in New York, at The Guggenheim, where we were both seeing the Agnes Martin exhibit. We talked for a moment—I told him how much I like his music. Then our eyes went back to the paintings.
Clickety Clack! Clickety Clack!
What is this madness that Nixon has put upon us?
Clickety Clack! Clickety Clack!
Won’t someone bring the spirit back?
—Rahsaan Roland Kirk (1935-1977), 1973
Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Bright Moments, recorded live (San Francisco), 1973*
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*Track list (courtesy of YouTube):
A1. Introduction
2. Pedal Up
3. You’ll Never Get To Heaven
4. Clickety Clack
5. Prelude To A Kiss
6. Talk (Electric Nose)
7. Fly Town Nose Blues
B1. Talk (Bright Moments)
2. Bright Moments Song
3. Dem Red Beans And Rice
4. If I Loved You
5. Talk (Fats Waller)
6. Jitterbug Waltz
7. Second Line Jump
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