This, I just found, has more than 21 million views. (Where have I been?)
Florence and the Machine, “Cosmic Love”
Live (studio performance), Seattle, 2010
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I had been happy, happy enough, but now I often found myself uttering a spontaneous prayer that went, simply: She is here, still here.
—George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo
Sometimes I just want to be swept away.
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937), String Quartet in F major (1903), 1st Mvt.
Takács Quartet, live, New York, 2017
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cloud becomes a mountain
becomes
a cloud—Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827), translated from Japanese by David G. Lanoue
more
Tank and the Bangas, “Quick,” 2017
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It seems unlikely that so much literature
could be made from twenty-six letters.—Brenda Shaughnessy, “Card 12: The Hanged Man,” fragment (Our Andromeda)
what’s new
Oumou Sangaré (feat. Tony Allen, drums), “Yere Faga,” 3/30/17
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First cherry blossoms
just came out
pretty good day!—Matsuo Basho (1644-1694), translated from Japanese by David Young
timeless
Ann Peebles, I Can’t Stand the Rain,* 1974 (Hi Records)
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The only thing worse than trying to look younger than you are is trying to look wiser than you are.
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*Track list (courtesy of YouTube):
“I Can’t Stand The Rain” (Don Bryant, Bernard “Bernie” Miller, Ann Peebles)
“Do I Need You” (Bryant, Peebles)
“Until You Came into My Life” (Bryant, Miller, Peebles)
“(You Keep Me) Hanging On” (Ira Allen, Buddy Mize)
“Run Run Run” (Bryant, Darryl Carter, Peebles)
“If We Can’t Trust Each Other” (Earl Randle)
“A Love Vibration” (Bryant, Miller, Peebles)
“You Got to Feed the Fire” (Bryant, Miller, Peebles)
“I’m Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down” (Earl Randle)
“One Way Street” (Bryant, Peebles)
more
Yasmine Hamdan, “Beirut,” 2014
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No Romance sold unto
Could so enthrall a Man –
As the perusal of
His Individual One –‘Tis Fiction’s – to dilute to plausibility
Our – Novel. When ’tis small eno’
To credit – ‘Tis’nt true –—Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), 590 (Franklin)
Soundtrack for a man in a box trying to escape.
Ab Baars (tenor saxophone), “Asor,” live, Amsterdam, 2014
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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 Mali
Salif Keita, live, London, c. 2002
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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
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), Piano Concerto No. 26 in D major (“Coronation”); Munich Philharmonic Orchestra with Friedrich Gulda (conducting, piano), live, 1986
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How I wish I’d been a painter . . . that must really be the best profession—none of this fiddling around with words—there are a couple of Daumiers at the Phillips that make me feel my whole life has been wasted.
—Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), letter, 1977
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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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
