Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996), And then I knew ’twaswind (1992)
Aureole Trio, New Hampshire (Monadnock Music), 2011
My life sometimes seems to consist of a series of trips, back and forth, between the sublime and the wretched. Yesterday afternoon, for instance, I stumbled upon this—a piece I’d never heard before—during a break from work. What was I working on? An oral argument I’ll be presenting this morning before a three-judge panel of the federal court of appeals in Chicago, on behalf of a guy, now in his mid-50s, who spends each day, as he has for decades, in a cell about 45 miles southwest of the city, where he’s serving a sentence of “natural life.”
Listening to his stuff, which I’ve been doing for over thirty years, is like eating a particular fruit, a strawberry, say, or a plum—there’s nothing else like it.
Henry Threadgill’s Society Situation Dance Band
Live, Germany (Hamburg), 1988
A lot of stuff like this, at least on the surface, I can’t stand. This I love. Why? Well, for starters, there’s the way the voices interweave. Then there’s the way the words sound. Take the hook, for instance: “I want to be surrounded by the sound.” And, too, there’s the presentation, disarmingly modest. Nothing’s oversold.
There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.
Her life, she said, was an out-of-tune piano played with passion.
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This evening I sat listening to five presidential candidates offering their imaginary solutions for a country that doesn’t exist.
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“Imaginary maladies are much worse than the real ones, because they’re incurable,” an old friend who walks with difficulty was telling me.
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Much of what our eyes see and our ears hear is lost in translation.
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“An alarm clock with no hands, ticking on the town dump,” is how he described himself.
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They gave the nice old gentleman I met at the bake sale several medals for the misery he caused in some country that no one could find any longer on the map.
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I bet all our elected representatives in Washington spend a great deal of time in front of mirrors admiring themselves. They lift their noses and chins, stare straight ahead without moving an eyebrow or a muscle, then nod their heads gravely and smile to themselves as they go out to meet the people.
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He sat on a bench in Washington Square Park whispering something extremely confidential to his dog, who sat before him with ears perked, wagging his tail cautiously from time to time.
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The crosses all men and women must carry through life are even more visible on this dark and rainy November evening.
Fontella Bass, singer, July 3, 1940-December 26, 2012
“Rescue Me,” TV Show (Shindig), 1965
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“Theme De Yoyo,” with the Art Ensemble of Chicago, 1970
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“God Has Smiled On Me,” with mother Martha Bass, brother David Peaston, Amina Claudine Myers (piano), Malachi Favors (bass), Phillip Wilson (drums), 1980
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“All That You Give,” with The Cinematic Orchestra, 2002
