Feel like getting lost?
Navpične misli (Vertical Thoughts), Karmina Šilec (original idea and music direction), !KEBATAOLA! (performers), Morton Feldman (music: Three Voices, excerpts; MCOTD Hall of Fame), 2010
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lagniappe
reading table
New Year’s morning—
everything is in blossom!
I feel about average.—Kobayashi Issa, 1763-1827 (translated from Japanese by Robert Hass)
more
The Pure Heart Travelers, “I Like to Talk About Jesus,” live, Detroit, 7/12/17
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lagniappe
reading table: variations on a theme
History is approaching a speechless end,
As Henry Adams said. Adams was right.—John Berryman (1914-1972, MCOTD Hall of Fame), “The Moon and the Night and the Men,” excerpt
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Never has human extinction seemed so richly merited . . .
—A.O. Scott, New York Times, 12/10/17
more
Moses Sumney, live, Washington, D.C., 11/29/17
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lagniappe
reading table
Nature is a Haunted House – but Art – a House that tries to be haunted.
—Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), letter (459A, Thomas H. Johnson, ed.)
more
Miles Davis (with John Scofield, guitar; Darryl Jones, bass, et al.), live, Montreal, 1985
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lagniappe
reading table
“Living here is like a joke without a punch line.”
—Bulgarian bar owner, quoted in New York Times Book Review, 12/3/17, review of Border: Journey to the Edge of Europe
what’s new
Brian Eno with Kevin Shields (My Bloody Valentine), “Only Once Away My Son,” 11/6/17
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lagniappe
reading table
It is like the story of the Chinese Zen Master Dongshan, who was asked, “Is there joy in your practice?” He replied, “It is not without joy. It’s like sweeping shit into a pile and then picking up a precious jewel from within it.”
—Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara, “Simple Joy”
what’s new
Björk, “Blissing Me,” 11/16/17
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lagniappe
reading table
Mortality is fatal
Gentility is fine
Rascality, heroic
Insolvency, sublime—Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), 2 (Franklin), excerpt
trumpet festival
day three
Lester Bowie (1941-1999), trumpeter—and so much more*
Lester Bowie Brass & Steel Band, live, Italy (Umbria), 1996
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lagniappe
reading table
Together, We All Go out under the Cypress Trees in the Chou Family Burial Grounds by T’ao Ch’ien (AKA T’ao Yuan-Ming), 365-427 A.D. (translated from Chinese by David Hinton)
Today’s skies are perfect for a clear
flute and singing koto. And touchedthis deeply by those laid under these
cypress trees, how could we neglect joy?Clear songs drift away anew. Emerald wine
starts pious faces smiling. Not knowingwhat tomorrow brings, it’s exquisite
exhausting whatever I feel here and now.
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Happy Thanksgiving!
This holiday, recovering from pneumonia, I’m more thankful than ever for family, for art, for poetry and, yes, for music.
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*Lester is a member of the MCOTD Hall of fame, along with saxophonists Von Freeman and Henry Threadgill; drummer Hamid Drake; gospel singer Dorothy Love Coates; composer Morton Feldman; poets John Berryman, William Bronk, and Wislawa Szymborska; and photographer Helen Levitt.
old school
Lee Williams and The Spiritual QC’s, “Running for My Life,” “Let’s Get Down,” live, c. 2010
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lagniappe
reading table
The autumn chill becomes part of me
in the bedroom I step on a comb
that belonged to my dead wife—Yosa Buson, 1716-1784 (translated from Japanese by W.S. Merwin and Takako Lento)
what’s new
Magically Inclined (Sean Sonderegger, tenor saxophone, compositions; Curtis Fowlkes, trombone; Kamala Sankaram, voice; Harvey Valdes, guitar; Shawn Lovato, bass; Joe Hertenstein, drums), “anyone lived in a pretty how town” (words by E.E. Cummings), live, New York, 10/15/17
three takes
“I Won’t Be Back” (AKA “Sweepin’ Through the City”)
Caravans (feat. Shirley Caesar, 1938-)
Live, Boston (Boston University), 1960s
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Recording, 1962
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Shirley Caesar
Live, Tulsa, Okla., 2001
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lagniappe
reading table
They end their flight
one by one—
crows at dusk.—Yosa Buson, 1716-1784 (translated from Japanese by Robert Hass)
music clip of the day 