Lea Bertucci (flute, alto saxophone, electronics) with Bradley Eros (visuals), live (Quarantine Concert presented by Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago), 4/7/20
Center Baptist Church Hymn Choir, “What a Time,” live, Gastonia, N.C., 2009
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lagniappe
random sights
yesterday, Oak Park, Ill.
*****
reading table
Windowed I observe
The waning snow
As rain unearths
That raw clay—
Adam’s afterbirth—
No one escapes
I lie down, immerse
Myself in sleep
The windows weep
How about a little vacation from your little self?
Tatiana Nikolayeva (1924-1993, piano), live, Moscow, 1990 (program: 00:40: Ravel, Miroirs, Oiseaux tristes//04:15: Ravel, Miroirs, Une barque sur l’océan//11:52: Scriabin, Prelude and Nocturne for the left hand, op. 9//19:41: Scriabin, Poeme Tragique, Op. 34//24:51: Borodin, Petite Suite, In the Monastery, Au couvent//30:25: Mussorgsky, Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks//33:03: Prokofiev, Prelude op. 12 no. 7, Harp)
Four Tet (aka Kieran Hebden, 1977-, DJ), live “from the middle of nowhere,” streamed 4/3/20
**********
lagniappe
random sights
yesterday, Oak Park, Ill.
*****
reading table
[E]very reading of every poem, regardless of language, is an act of translation: translation into the reader’s intellectual and emotional life. As no individual reader remains the same, each reading becomes a different—not merely another—reading. The same poem cannot be read twice.
—Eliot Weinberger (1949-), 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei
John Prine, singer, songwriter, October 10, 1946–April 7, 2020
Prine’s stuff is pure Proustian existentialism. Midwestern mindtrips to the nth degree. And he writes beautiful songs. I remember when Kris Kristofferson first brought him on the scene. All that stuff about “Sam Stone” the soldier junky daddy and “Donald and Lydia,” where people make love from ten miles away. Nobody but Prine could write like that. If I had to pick one song of his, it might be “Lake Marie.” I don’t remember what album that’s on.