Soundtrack for a man in a box trying to escape.
Ab Baars (tenor saxophone), “Asor,” live, Amsterdam, 2014
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lagniappe
reading table
I thought that you were an anchor in the drift of the world;
but no: there isn’t an anchor anywhere.
There isn’t an anchor in the drift of the world. Oh no.
I thought you were. Oh no. The drift of the world.—William Bronk (1918-1999, MCOTD Hall of Fame), “The World”
sounds of Flint*
Tunde Olaniran, “Namesake,” 2016
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lagniappe
reading table
viewing fireflies
he takes a tumble . . .
There’s one!—Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827), translated from Japanese by David G. Lanoue
*****
*Michigan.
what’s new
Tank and the Bangas, live (“Boxes and Squares,” “Quick,” “Rollercoasters”), Washington, D.C., 3/6/17
Steve Reich (1936-), Mallet Quartet (2009), So Percussion
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lagniappe
reading table
At worst, one is in motion; and at best,
Reaching no absolute, in which to rest,
One is always nearer by not keeping still.—Thom Gunn (1929-2004), “On the Move” (fragment)
sounds of Mali
Salif Keita, live, London, c. 2002
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lagniappe
reading table
What one seems to want in art, in experiencing it, is the same thing that is necessary for its creation, a self-forgetful, perfectly useless concentration.
—Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), letter
more
William Parker’s In Order To Survive (WP, bass; Hamid Drake, drums, MCOTD Hall of Fame; Cooper-Moore, piano, vocals; Lewis Barnes, trumpet; Rob Brown, alto saxophone), “Hymn,” live, New York, 2013
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lagniappe
reading table
He isn’t doing that right—that was a very important one. It was what Astaire claimed he was thinking whenever he watched himself onscreen, and I noted that third-person pronoun. This is what I understood by it: that for Astaire the person in the film was not especially connected with him. And I took this to heart, or rather, it echoed a feeling I already had, mainly that it was important to treat oneself as a kind of stranger, to remain unattached and unprejudiced in your own case. I thought you needed to think like that to achieve anything in this world. Yes, I thought that was a very elegant attitude.
—Zadie Smith, Swing Time
MCOTD Hall of Fame
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
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lagniappe
radio
Today—his birthday—it’s all Ornette Coleman all day on WKCR-FM (Columbia University).
*****
*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.
sounds of Detroit
John Lee Hooker (1912-2001), “Boom Boom” (J.L. Hooker), live, 1960s
The world may be going to hell, faster than ever, but in the meantime, at YouTube, this has over 11 million views.
sounds of Eau Claire*
Bon Iver, live, New York, 2016**
*****
*Wisconsin.
**Set list (courtesy of YouTube):
00:16 “10 d E A T h b R E a s T ⚄ ⚄”
02:58 “33 ‘GOD'”
06:45 “Heavenly Father”
10:50 “29 #Strafford APTS”
15:34 “Beach Baby”
18:31 “666 ʇ”
23:42 “715 – CRΣΣKS”
26:20 “Calgary”
31:01 “22 (OVER S∞∞N)”
34:42 “8 (circle)”
40:54 “Minnesota, WI”
48:13 “____45_____”
54:15 “Creature Fear”
1:00:35 “00000 Million”
tonight in Chicago
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.
music clip of the day 