alone
Jürg Frey (1953-), A Memory of Perfection (2010)
Mira Benjamin (violin), live, London, 2013
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lagniappe
reading table
Two more words from Seamus Heaney, who died Friday in a Dublin hospital:
noli timere
[don’t be afraid]—text message to his wife minutes before his death
If I were to compile a short list, numbering, say, six or seven, of folks I wish I could’ve heard live, this guy, whom I’ve been listening to for over forty years, would be on it.
Blind Willie Johnson (1897-1945), singer, guitarist
“God Don’t Never Change” (New Orleans, 1929)
*****
“It’s Nobody’s Fault But Mine” (Dallas, 1927)
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“Jesus Make Up My Dying Bed” (Dallas, 1927)
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“John The Revelator” (Atlanta, 1929; with Willie B. Harris, his wife)
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“The Rain Don’t Fall On Me” (Atlanta, 1929; with WBH)
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“Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground” (Dallas, 1927)
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lagniappe
reading table
Seamus Heaney (April 13, 1939-August 30, 2013), “The Given Note,” Paris, 2013
***
On the most westerly Blasket
In a dry-stone hut
He got this air out of the night.Strange noises were heard
By others who followed, bits of a tune
Coming in on loud weatherThough nothing like melody.
He blamed their fingers and ear
As unpractised, their fiddling easyFor he had gone alone into the island
And brought back the whole thing.
The house throbbed like his full violin.So whether he calls it spirit music
Or not, I don’t care. He took it
Out of wind off mid-Atlantic.Still he maintains, from nowhere.
It comes off the bow gravely,
Rephrases itself into the air.
*****
Last October, with my son Alex, I heard him read at the Art Institute of Chicago. Nobel Prize winner, Professor of Poetry at Oxford, Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard—none of that was on display. He seemed not the least self-impressed, nor even much interested in himself. What interested him, it was clear, was language. With each poem, he seemed to be saying: “Come in, sit down. Let’s listen, together.”
For over thirty years he’s been taking me places no one else does.
Henry Threadgill’s Zooid, live, New York, 2013
#1
#2
*****
It’s not just notes on a page. Threadgill really reaches out and grabs you by the lapels. Someone else described it to me as ‘every time Threadgill enters, it’s like the curtains just parted.’ He has this way of cutting right through the texture of the music.
—pianist Vijay Iyer
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lagniappe
reading table: passings
Between my fingers and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.—Seamus Heaney (April 13, 1939-August 30, 2013), “Digging” (excerpt)
alone
If you’re in the mood for his music, as I often am, nothing else will do.
Morton Feldman (1926-1987), Triadic Memories (1981); Louis Goldstein, piano
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lagniappe
reading table
In the summer rain
the path
has disappeared.—Yosa Buson (1716-1783; translated from Japanese by Robert Hass)
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musical thoughts
What would it be like to live in a world without sound?
Stevie Wonder with Prince, “Superstition” (S. Wonder), live, Paris, 2010
Not many stars would handle this the way Prince does. Actually, what’s most impressive is what he doesn’t do. Given a guitar solo, he doesn’t try to steal the show—or even draw attention. Instead, he feeds the groove.
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lagniappe
reading table
Sophistication is upscale conformity.
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What is more yours than what always holds you back?
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The heart is a small, cracked cup, easy to fill, impossible to keep full.
—James Richardson, “Even More Aphorisms and Ten-Second Essays from Vectors 3.0” (excerpts)
can’t wait: Chicago Jazz Festival, 8/29-9/1
Wadada Leo Smith, trumpet (8/30), Louis Moholo, drums, Steve Noble, drums, live, London, 2010
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#2
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lagniappe
reading table
What a glut of books! Who can read them?
—Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621)
can’t wait: Chicago Jazz Festival, 8/29-9/1
Hamid Drake, drums (artist-in-residence at this year’s festival) and Pasquale Mirra, vibraphone, live, Sardinia (Osilo), 2012
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lagniappe
reading table
In this mortal frame of mine, which is made of a hundred bones and nine orifices, there is something, and this something can be called, for lack of a better name, a wind-swept spirit, for it is much like thin drapery that is torn and swept away by the slightest stirring of the wind.
—Matsuo Basho (1644-1694), “The Records of a Travel-Worn Satchel” (excerpt, translated from Japanese by Noboyuki Yuasa)
Strangeness, in today’s musical world, is sadly undervalued.
Daniel Higgs (vocals, banjo), live, London (Cafe Oto), 2011
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lagniappe
art beat: Tuesday at the Art Institute of Chicago (after a hearing at the nearby federal court building)
Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), Cranes at Umezawa Manor in Sagami Province (from Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji)
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reading table
Speaking of insomnia, last night I came upon this.
Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.
—Herman Melville (1819-1891), Moby-Dick
alone
Earl Hines (1903-1983; piano), “I Ain’t Got Nobody,” 1928
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lagniappe
reading table
“At Lake Haptacong” (excerpt)
By David Ferry (1924-)The trees look thinly leaved, as if it were
Late autumn, early spring, or winter in a place
Where dead leaves cling to trees all winter long.You cannot tell what weather or season it is.
My mother, as in all those early pictures,
Although in this one already having lostHer girlish slimness, looks sexually alive,
Full of energy, her hair dark, abundant,
Her smile generous (though maybe less so thanIn the pictures taken a few years earlier).
Somewhere in this picture there is inscribed
The source or secret, somewhere inscribed the cause,Of the anxious motherly torment of disapproval,
The torment not resisted by my father,
Visited by my mother on my sister,The baby in the picture, torment that was
Perhaps in turn the cause of the alcoholism
That, many years later, the baby in the pictureWon out over. But it’s all unreadable
In this charming family photograph which, somehow,
Perhaps because of the blankness of the sky,Looks Russian, foreign, of no country I know.
Repeat them often enough and words lose their literal shapes, dissolving into pure feeling.
Heavenly Gospel Singers, “I Stepped in the Water One Day,” live, St. James Missionary Baptist Church, Canton, Mississippi, 1978
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lagniappe
reading table
. . . Heaven have mercy on us all—Presbyterians and Pagans alike—for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly needing mending.
—Herman Melville (1819-1891), Moby-Dick
music clip of the day 