sounds of Chicago
Before “A Change Is Gonna Come,” before “Chain Gang,” before “You Send Me,” before . . .
Soul Stirrers (feat. Sam Cooke [1931-1964])
“Touch the Hem of His Garment,” 1956
***
“Nearer My God To Thee,” live, Los Angeles, 1955
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lagniappe
reading table
Gray hairs being plucked,
and from below my pillow
a cricket singing—Matsuo Basho (1644-1694; translated from Japanese by Sam Hamill)
sounds of Chicago
Edward Wilkerson Jr.’s Shadow Vignettes, “Defender” (E. Wilkerson Jr.), live
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lagniappe
random thoughts
What would it be like to live in a world where each moment was a small, but undeniable, miracle?
sounds of Chicago
Oshwa, “Old Man Skies,” live (recording session), Chicago, 2013
alone
There are all kinds of lullabies.
Tamio Shiraishi (alto saxophone), live, New York, 1/26/14, 1 a.m.
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lagniappe
random thoughts
Yesterday, while I was shopping at Trader Joe’s, a youthful Mick Jagger jumped out of the speakers. “I can’t get no . . . satisfaction . . .” In 1965, when I was twelve years old, if someone had said that in 2014 this would be the soundtrack to buying grapefruit, I would have thought they were nuts. “When I’m drivin’ in my car and that man comes on the radio . . .” Sometimes I wish my generation would just get the hell off the stage.
alone
Clarity, mystery: they often act like strangers—not here.
Anton Webern (1883-1945), Variations for Piano, Op. 27 (1936)
Andy Costello (piano), live
alone
Jason Adasiewicz (vibraphone), “Stake,” live, Chicago, 2009
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lagniappe
reading table
Dream Song 1
By John Berryman (1914-1972)Huffy Henry hid the day,
unappeasable Henry sulked.
I see his point,—a trying to put things over.
It was the thought that they thought
they could do it made Henry wicked & away.
But he should have come out and talked.All the world like a woolen lover
once did seem on Henry’s side.
Then came a departure.
Thereafter nothing fell out as it might or ought.
I don’t see how Henry, pried
open for all the world to see, survived.What he has now to say is a long
wonder the world can bear & be.
Once in a sycamore I was glad
all at the top, and I sang.
Hard on the land wears the strong sea
and empty grows every bed.
Happy (99th) Birthday, Billie!
Billie Holiday, singer, April 7, 1915-July 17, 1959
“All of Me” (G. Marks, S. Simons),* New York, March 21, 1941
Yesterday, I listened to this. Then I listened again. And again.
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lagniappe
radio
WKCR-FM (Columbia University): all Billie, all day.
*****
reading table
The Day Lady Died
By Frank O’Hara (1926-1966)It is 12:20 in New York a Friday
three days after Bastille day, yes
it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine
because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton
at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner
and I don’t know the people who will feed meI walk up the muggy street beginning to sun
and have a hamburger and a malted and buy
an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets
in Ghana are doing these days
I go on to the bank
and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)
doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life
and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or
Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres
of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandarinessand for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE
Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and
then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue
and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and
casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton
of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on itand I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing
*****
*With Lester Young (tenor saxophone), Kenny Clarke (drums), et al.
old school
Golden Gate Quartet, “Golden Gate Gospel Train” (1937), “Rock My Soul” (1938), “Noah” (1939), “Ride Up in the Chariot” (1941)
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lagniappe
reading table
his peach sapling
has blossomed . . .
though he never prays—Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827; translated from Japanese by David G. Lanoue)
alone
Gyorgy Ligeti (1923-2006), Piano Etudes (Book 1), No. 6 (Automne a Varsovie [Autumn in Warsaw]); Susanne Anatchkova (piano), live
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lagniappe
reading table
[N]othing has ever been—nor will it ever be—the way it used to be.
—Aleksandar Hemon, The Book of My Lives
*****
yesterday
Some things cannot be planned for, nor can they be explained. Such was the case this week when a friend of my son Alex—someone who was in our house, full of conversation, just a few weeks ago—killed himself. The funeral was yesterday. Before it began Alex and I talked briefly with the mother and father, whom I had never met. I told them one of the things I appreciated about their son was that he wasn’t merely polite to me, his friend’s father. He wanted to connect. A greater sorrow a parent could not know.
only rock ’n’ roll
The War On Drugs, “Under the Pressure”
Live, Philadelphia, 3/14/14
***
Recording (Lost in the Dream), 3/14
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lagniappe
reading table
Now, unlike then—sixty years ago—we know so much more about others . . . . [t]hough, of course, we know not much more of the important things—what’s in others’ hearts; and if their hearts are broken or damaged or full.
—Richard Ford, “A Symposium on Magic,” The Threepenny Review, Spring 2014
music clip of the day 