music clip of the day

two takes

Oliver Messiaen (1908-1992), O sacrum convivium (1937)

Susan Alcorn (1953-, pedal steel guitar), live, 2011

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Ensemble Aedes, live, France (Compiègne), 2013

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lagniappe

random sights

yesterday, Chicago (Columbus Park)

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reading table

So you must not be frightened . . . if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloud-shadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any agitation, any pain, any melancholy, since you really do not know what these states are working upon you?

—Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), Letters to a Young Poet (1929, translated from German by M.D. Herter Norton)