passings
Jimmy Scott, singer, July 17, 1925-June 12, 2014
“Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” live, New York (Birdland), 2000
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lagniappe
reading table
If you were to open up Iona’s chest and pour all the grief out of it, you would probably flood the entire planet, yet it is not visible.
—Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), “Grief” (often rendered as “Misery”; translated from Russian by Rosamund Bartlett)
never enough
Same composer, same pianist—23 years earlier.
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), Piano Sonata No. 29 in B-flat major (“Hammerklavier”), Friedrich Gulda (1930-2000), live, Germany (Bonn), 1970
1st & 2nd movements
3rd movement (beginning)
3rd movement (end), 4th movement
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lagniappe
art beat
Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004), Seville, Spain, 1933
alone
Searching, searching—never finding.
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), Piano Sonata No. 31 in A-flat major (Third Movt.), Friedrich Gulda (1930-2000), live, Japan, 1993
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lagniappe
reading table
Imaginary Number
by Vijay Seshadri (1954-)The mountain that remains when the universe is destroyed
is not big and is not small.
Big and small arecomparative categories, and to what
could the mountain that remains when the universe is destroyed
be compared?Consciousness observes and is appeased.
The soul scrambles across the screes.
The soul,like the square root of minus 1,
is an impossibility that has its uses.
Ornette, at 84, still plays some of the most haunting blues I’ve ever heard.
Ornette Coleman (alto saxophone), with Henry Threadgill (alto saxophone), David Murray (tenor saxophone), Savion Glover (tap dance), et al., live, New York (Prospect Park), 6/12/14
*****
With Don Cherry (trumpet), Charlie Haden (bass), Billy Higgins (drums), The Shape Of Jazz To Come, 1959
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lagniappe
art beat
Bruce Davidson (1933-), East 100th St., New York, 1966
back to church
Bozie Sturdivant, “Ain’t No Grave Can Hold My Body Down,” live, Clarksdale, Miss. (Silent Grove Baptist Church), 1942
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lagniappe
art beat
Bruce Davidson (1933-), East 100th St., New York, 1966
passings
Bob Abrahamian, soul music DJ (WHPK, Sitting in the Park), historian, archivist, September 25, 1978-June 5, 2014
Dolores Gibson, “I Got A Feeling,” 1960
*****
Byrdie Green, “Tremblin’,” 1962
*****
Deanie Parker, “Each Step I Take,” 1964
*****
These tracks opened his last radio show (5/4/14).
sounds of Brazil & Jamaica
Slavish imitation. Contrived reinvention. Tributes usually leave me wondering why they even bothered. Not this.
Gilberto Gil (1942-), Tribute to Bob Marley, live, Brazil (Sao Paulo), 2001
sounds of Chicago
One-word review: mesmerizing.
Art Ensemble of Chicago, live, France (Chateauvallon), 1970
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Despite all my inner crumblings,
I’m still able to recognize a perfect day:
sea without shadow,
sky without wrinkles,
air hovering over me like a blessing.—Nina Cassian (1924-2014), “Summer X-Rays” (fragment)
voices I miss
Rahsaan Roland Kirk, live, Switzerland (Montreux Jazz Festival), 1972
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lagniappe
art beat
Bruce Davidson (1933-), New York, 1980s
Why not listen to something new?
Ellen Fullman (1957-), long string instrument (with Theresa Wong, cello; Abby Alwin, cello; James Cornish, trumpet), live, Detroit, 2013
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reading table
Lost really has two disparate meanings. Losing things is about the familiar falling away, getting lost is about the unfamiliar appearing. There are objects and people that disappear from your sight or knowledge or possession; you lose a bracelet, a friend, the key. You still know where you are. Everything is familiar except that there is one item less, one missing element. Or you get lost, in which case the world has become larger than your knowledge of it. Either way, there is a loss of control. Imagine yourself streaming through time shedding gloves, umbrellas, wrenches, books, friends, homes, names. This is what the view looks like if you take a rear-facing seat on the train. Looking forward you constantly acquire moments of arrival, moments of realization, moments of discovery. The wind blows your hair back and you are greeted by what you have never seen before. The material falls away in onrushing experience. It peels off like skin from a molting snake. Of course to forget the past is to lose the sense of loss that is also memory of an absent richness and a set of clues to navigate the present by; the art is not one of forgetting but letting go. And when everything else is gone, you can be rich in loss.
—Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost
