serendipity
Late yesterday afternoon, at my local grocery store, as I was hunting for my son Alex’s Multi Grain Cheerios, this came over the speakers. The temptation to put walking on the shelf—to start dancing my way down the cereal aisle—was strong. Mighty strong. But it was resisted, successfully if not happily.
Macy Gray, “I Try” (1999)
keep on dancing
Theo Parrish, “Dan Ryan” (1998)
Repetitive?
Yep.
That’s the idea.
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lagniappe
reading table
There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.
My heart’s on fire . . .
Nona Hendryx (with Ronny Drayton, guitar), Philadelphia, 2012
“Temple of Heaven”
*****
“Rock This House”
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lagniappe
reading table
Her life, she said, was an out-of-tune piano played with passion.
***
This evening I sat listening to five presidential candidates offering their imaginary solutions for a country that doesn’t exist.
***
“Imaginary maladies are much worse than the real ones, because they’re incurable,” an old friend who walks with difficulty was telling me.
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Much of what our eyes see and our ears hear is lost in translation.
***
“An alarm clock with no hands, ticking on the town dump,” is how he described himself.
***
They gave the nice old gentleman I met at the bake sale several medals for the misery he caused in some country that no one could find any longer on the map.
***
I bet all our elected representatives in Washington spend a great deal of time in front of mirrors admiring themselves. They lift their noses and chins, stare straight ahead without moving an eyebrow or a muscle, then nod their heads gravely and smile to themselves as they go out to meet the people.
***
He sat on a bench in Washington Square Park whispering something extremely confidential to his dog, who sat before him with ears perked, wagging his tail cautiously from time to time.
***
The crosses all men and women must carry through life are even more visible on this dark and rainy November evening.
—Charles Simic, “A Year in Fragments” (excerpts), New York Review Blog, 12/31/12
passings
Fontella Bass, singer, July 3, 1940-December 26, 2012
“Rescue Me,” TV Show (Shindig), 1965
***
“Theme De Yoyo,” with the Art Ensemble of Chicago, 1970
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“God Has Smiled On Me,” with mother Martha Bass, brother David Peaston, Amina Claudine Myers (piano), Malachi Favors (bass), Phillip Wilson (drums), 1980
***
“All That You Give,” with The Cinematic Orchestra, 2002
two takes
How To Dress Well (Tom Krell), “& It Was U” (2012)
***
Bear//Face, “Taste My Sad” (2012)
Nineteen-year-old Bear//Face—his nonvirtual self, that is—lives in Belfast.
basement jukebox
The Falcons (feat. Wilson Pickett, lead vocals; Robert Ward, guitar)
“I Found A Love” (1962)
***
Albert Washington (feat. Lonnie Mack, guitar)
“Hold Me Baby” (1969)
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lagniappe
reading table
[T]he greatest reading pleasure has an element of self-annihilation. To be so engrossed that you barely know you exist. I last felt that in relation to a poem while in the sitting room of Elizabeth Bishop’s old home in rural Brazil. I stood in a corner, apart from the general conversation, and read “Under the Window: Ouro Preto.” The street outside was once an obscure thoroughfare for donkeys and peasants. Bishop reports overheard lines as people pass by her window, including the beautifully noted “When my mother combs my hair it hurts.” That same street now is filled with thunderous traffic — it fairly shakes the house. When I finished the poem I found that my friends and our hosts had left the room. What is it precisely, that feeling of “returning” from a poem? Something is lighter, softer, larger — then it fades, but never completely.
—Ian McEwan, New York Times Sunday Book Review, 12/9/12
two takes
Stephanie McDee, “Call the Police”
Recording (Living The Blues), 2002
***
Live, Baton Rouge, 2012
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lagniappe
reading table
We know we are very special. Yet we keep trying to find out in what way: not this way, not that way, then what way?
—Lydia Davis, “Special” (The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, 2009)
keep on dancing
Theo Parrish, Detroit-based DJ/producer
“Smile,” 1997
***
Talking music (record digging, technology, DJing, etc.), 2012
The body knows things the mind will never understand.
D’Angelo (with Jesse Johnson, guitar; Pino Palladino, bass; Chris “Daddy” Dave, drums, et al.), “Chicken Grease,” live, Switzerland (Zurich), 2012
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lagniappe
art beat: Saturday at the Art Institute of Chicago
Morris Engel, Harlem Merchant (1936)
Film and Photo in New York (through 11/25/12)
Bobby testifies.
The Womack Brothers (with Bobby, then 17, on lead vocal), “Couldn’t Hear Nobody Pray” (SAR Records [Sam Cooke’s label]; rec. 6/28/1961, Universal Recording Studios, Chicago)
*****
The next year, as the Valentinos, they recorded this.
The Valentinos (with Bobby on lead vocal), “Lookin’ For A Love” (SAR Records, 1962)
music clip of the day 