alone
This is something I would never tire of hearing, not even if I were to live a thousand years.
Johann Sebastian Bach, Violin Sonata No. 1 in G minor, 2nd movement (fugue)
Henryk Szeryng (1918-1988), violin
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Music offers a respite from the mind’s incessant chatter.
sounds of Chicago
Edward Wilkerson, tenor saxophone (with Kidd Jordan, tenor saxophone; Henry Grimes, bass, violin; Isaiah Spencer, drums, et al.), live, Chicago, 2010
alone
Paal Nilssen-Love (drums), live, Norway (Kongsberg Jazzfestival), 2011
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lagniappe
reading table
Faces are motion, which is why all the photos of you are bad. Even the most natural-looking portrait is a sentence interrupted, one note of an aria, held. Though faces themselves hide a deeper motion. You seem to sit there and meet my eyes across the table, but you are so many other places, clinging here for a moment against all the currents that will soon sweep you onward. We are so moved by the faces caught in the windows of trains going the other way because they tell us how all faces really are.
—James Richardson, “Ten-Second Essay #134”
Why not start the week with a slap in the face?
Savages, “City’s Full,” “Shut Up,” “She Will,” “Husbands,” live (studio performance), Seattle, 2013
two takes
“Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen”
Bessie Griffin (with Charles Barnett, piano), live, Switzerland (Montreux Jazz Festival), 1981
*****
Albert Ayler (AA, saxophone; Call Cobbs, piano; Henry Grimes, bass; Sunny Murray, drums), recording, 1964
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lagniappe
reading table
To live is to lose ground.
—E. M. Cioran (1911-1995; translated from French by Richard Howard)
My son Luke, now twenty-two and living in Kansas City, checks in:
Just got done with an assessment and had some time to listen to some music. Really digging this song lately—thought you might.
Wale (featuring Sam Drew), “LoveHate Thing,” 2013
Today, our fourth birthday, we revisit our first post.
*****
One left Cuba after the revolution, the other stayed. Here they play together: pianists—father and son—Bebo and Chucho Valdes.
*****
taking a break
I’m taking some time off—back soon.
After hearing Molly, it seems hard—no, impossible—to listen to him without thinking of her.
Nick Drake (1948-1974), “Day Is Done” (Five Leaves Left, 1969)
alone
Jürg Frey (1953-), A Memory of Perfection (2010)
Mira Benjamin (violin), live, London, 2013
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lagniappe
reading table
Two more words from Seamus Heaney, who died Friday in a Dublin hospital:
noli timere
[don’t be afraid]—text message to his wife minutes before his death
this morning
I seem to be falling in love with someone who’s been dead twenty years.
Molly Drake, 1916-1993 (mother of singer-songwriter Nick Drake, 1948-1974)
“I Remember”
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“The First Day”
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“How Wild The Wind Blows”
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lagniappe
found words
Yesterday, walking in the garden at Chicago’s Millenium Park, I came upon a small sign, close to the dirt, that read:
THIS AREA
IS IN
TRANSITION.WE APPRECIATE
YOUR
UNDERSTANDING.CHECK BACK
SOON.
music clip of the day 