summer in the city
Outkast, live, Chicago (Lollapalooza), 8/2/14
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lagniappe
found words
These rules will be strictly enforced. Please ensure your adherence and remain within these guidelines so as to avoid any misunderstanding or an uncomfortable situation.
—FCI Coleman Low (federal prison), visitors’ waiting room, sign
sounds of Chicago
Fred Anderson Trio (FA, tenor saxophone; Tatsu Aoki, bass; Hamid Drake, drums), live, Netherlands (North Sea Jazz Festival), 2000
summer in the city
Chance The Rapper (1993-), “Wonderful Everyday: Arthur,” live, Chicago (Lollapalooza), 8/3/14
***
Another take (recording with Wyclef Jean, Jessie Ware, et al., 2014)
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lagniappe
reading table
the only hope is to be the daylight
—W. S. Merwin, “Living with the News,” last line (New Yorker, 7/28/14)
What would it be like to live in a world without music?
back to church
“Wade in the Water,” St. James Missionary Baptist Church, Canton, Miss., 1978
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lagniappe
reading table
Serenity
by Nina Cassian (1924-2014)There’ll be a time, serene, a time for hymns.
I’ll underline the air with just one gesture,
and I will utter stainless words.I will say “sky” and “brook” and I’ll say “sun”
and “tear” and “music” and “immunity.”
There’ll be a time, a time when memory
of massacres won’t reach me anymore,
turning instead into a distant breeze of poetry
as sometimes blood itself exhales.From all that once had been promiscuous,
only the sacred will remain, and I will praise
the contrasts, reconciled, forgiven and forgiving.
So I’ll say “sky” and “sun” and “music”
and sky will be, and sun will be, and music
will be around me and around the world.
I’ll let the vowels all regain their halo.And it will come, that bright, sonorous time,
a time solemn and pure, a time for hymns,
and it will come, that time. Indeed, it will!
summer in the city
Chvrches, live, Chicago (Lollapalooza), 8/1/14
Nas, “Daughters,” 2012
My sons, now in their twenties, I love to pieces. But loving my guys doesn’t keep me from wishing I had a daughter, too.
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lagniappe
reading table
The funeral director opened the coffin
And there he was alone
From the waist upI peered down into his face
And for a moment I was taken aback
Because it was not GabrielIt was just some poor kid
Whose face looked like a room
That had been vacated.—Edward Hirsch (1950-), opening lines of “Gabriel,” a forthcoming book-length elegy for his son, who died in 2011 at the age of 22 (quoted in Alec Wilkinson, “Finding the Words,” New Yorker, 8/4/14)
Who needs coffee?
Witold Lutoslawski (1913-1994), Variations on a Theme by Paganini
Martha Argerich & Gabriela Montero, pianos, live
sounds of Zimbabwe
Bhundu Boys, “Hupenyu Hwangu,” live, 1980s
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lagniappe
reading table
Yesterday’s email brought this from a reader.
The Layers
by Stanley Kunitz (1905-2006)I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.
