reading table | music clip of the day

Sunday, 9/9/12

Rarely has dying sounded so joyous.

Glen David Andrews, “I’ll Fly Away”
Live, New Orleans (Zion Hill Baptist Church), 2008

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[P]eople exist for us only in the idea that we have of them.

—Marcel Proust, The Fugitive (translated from French by Peter Collier)

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Each year on this auspicious day, alone and foreign
here in a foreign place, my thoughts of you sharpen;

far away, I can almost see you reaching the summit,
dogwood berries woven into sashes, short one person.

—Wang Wei (701-61), “9/9, Thinking of My Brothers East of the Mountains” (trans. from Chinese by David Hinton)

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Monday, 9/3/12

joy, n. listening to Paul Motian play Monk.

Paul Motian Trio (PM, drums; Joe Lovano, tenor saxophone; Bill Frisell, guitar), “Misterioso” (T. Monk), live, New York (Village Vanguard), 2005

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art beat: yesterday at the Art Institute of Chicago

Jasper Johns, Corpse and Mirror II (1974-75)

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up to today
such a healthy singer . . .
katydid

—Kobayashi Issa, 1813 (translated from Japanese by David G. Lanoue)

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Monday, 8/27/12

Everybody knows the boat is leaking . . .

Leonard Cohen, “Everybody Knows,” live, London, 2008

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lagniappe

talking (Canadian TV, 1997)

(Yeah, the interviewer is often obnoxious; but, despite [because of?] that, this is one of the more intriguing “celebrity interviews” I’ve heard.)

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Returning To My Cottage
by Wang Wei (699-759 [trans. David Young])

A bell in the distance
the sound floats
down the valley

one by one
woodcutters and fishermen
stop work, start home

the mountains move off
into darkness

alone, I turn home
as great clouds beckon
from the horizon

the wind stirs delicate vines
and water chestnut shoots
catkin fluff sails past

in the marsh to the east
new growth
vibrates with color

it’s sad
to walk in the house
and shut the door.

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radio: 72 hours of Pres & Bird

Celebrating the birthdays of Lester Young (8/27) and Charlie Parker (8/29), WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University) will be playing their music all day today, tomorrow, and Wednesday.

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Thursday, 8/23/12

Music, for some people, is no less vital than oxygen.

James Rhodes, talking and playing (2010)

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To Praise the Music
by William Bronk (1918-1999)

Evening. The trees in late winter bare
against the sky. Still light, the sky.
Trees dark against it. A few leaves
on the trees. Tension in their rigid branches as if
–oh, it is all as if, but as if, yes,
as if they sang songs, as if they praised.
Oh, I envy them. I know the songs.

As if I know some other things besides.
As if; but I don’t know, not more
than to say the trees know. The trees don’t know
and neither do I. What is it keeps me from praise?
I praise. If only to say their songs,
say yes to them, to praise the songs they sing.
Envied music. I sing to praise their song.

(Want to hear Bronk, a MCOTD Hall of Famer, read this? Here.)

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art beat: more from Tuesday’s stop at the Art Institute of Chicago

Roy Lichtenstein, Mirror #3 (Six Panels) (1971)

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2012

Saturday, 8/11/12

Sometimes what you’re looking for—when, say, your hard drive crashes (as mine just did)—is something where not much seems to happen, beautifully.

John Luther Adams, “The Farthest Place” (2001); piano (Clint Davis), vibraphone (Brian Archinal & Andy Bliss) bass (Satoru Tagawa), violin (Lydia Kabalen); University of Kentucky (Lexington), 2008

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lagniappe

There are all kinds of music.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, “The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo”
Richard Burton

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2012

Friday, 8/10/12

summer in the city

The Black Keys, Lollapalooza, Chicago (Grant Park), 8/3/12

“Howlin’ For You”

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“Little Black Submarines”

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“Lonely Boy”

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

What, if anything, does it mean that, in the year 2012, not one but two of the headliners at Lollapalooza—Jack White and the Black Keys—are deeply influenced by blues?

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Life had begun to demand lies in order to be workable.

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At the crest of the hill where the road went up, was an abandoned house, and beyond it the road disappeared off into the blue sky.

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It’s odd, though, what makes you think about the truth. It’s so rarely involved in the events of your life. I quit thinking about the truth for a time then. Its finer points seemed impossible to find among the facts. If there was a hidden design, living almost never shed light on it.

—Richard Ford, Canada (2012)

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2012

Tuesday, 7/24/12

George Lewis (1952-), “Will to Adorn” (2011)
International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Chicago, 2012

[W]hen writing “The Will To Adorn,” Lewis was especially “interested in this idea of adornment—color, color, color everywhere.” The piece represents Lewis’ current musical goal to get “more color energy into the pieces.”

—Joe Bucciero, Columbia Spectator, 11/10/11

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

In February, when I left this concert, which took place on a Sunday afternoon at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, I felt both exhilarated and wistful. This performance, which had been such a joy to hear, I would never be able to experience again. Or so I thought, until, just the other day, I discovered this recording online. Young people, many of them, anyway, would see nothing remarkable in being able, thanks to the ’net, to return to a musical experience whenever, and wherever, you want. To me it seems a small miracle.

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I was trying to assert myself as the man in the house, taking charge of things no one could control.

—Richard Ford, Canada (2012)

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2012

Friday, 7/20/12

two takes

Robert Glasper Experiment, “Always Shine” (feat. Lupe Fiasco & Bilal)

TV show (David Letterman), 2/29/12

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Recording, Black Radio (2012)

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

Jazz, classical, R&B: so much great music, no matter the genre, shares a particular quality—density.

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reading table

It’s as if your body were itself a person
And the person wasn’t you.

—Frederick Seidel, “Track Bike” (excerpt), London Review of Books, 7/19/12

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art beat: yesterday at the Art Institute of Chicago (between court hearings at the nearby federal court building)

Willem de Kooning, Untitled XI (1975)

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2012

Tuesday, 7/10/12

keep on dancing

Sometimes I don’t want to listen.

What I want are sounds washing over me.

Theo Parrish, “Summertime Is Here” (originally released 1999; reissued 2006)

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

[W]hat we find in our mind and our thought is the same as what we find in our ear and in sound: an ocean in constant flux. Just as our ear turns out to be nothing but a construct, and likewise sound, neither can we isolate anything we might call our mind or thought, much less our self.

—The Heart Sutra, translation (from Sanskrit) and commentary (from which this is drawn) by Red Pine, AKA Bill Porter (2004)

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