music clip of the day

basement jukebox

The Falcons (feat. Wilson Pickett, lead vocals; Robert Ward, guitar)
“I Found A Love” (1962)

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Albert Washington (feat. Lonnie Mack, guitar)
“Hold Me Baby” (1969)

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lagniappe

reading table

[T]he greatest reading pleasure has an element of self-annihilation. To be so engrossed that you barely know you exist. I last felt that in relation to a poem while in the sitting room of Elizabeth Bishop’s old home in rural Brazil. I stood in a corner, apart from the general conversation, and read “Under the Window: Ouro Preto.” The street outside was once an obscure thoroughfare for donkeys and peasants. Bishop reports overheard lines as people pass by her window, including the beautifully noted “When my mother combs my hair it hurts.” That same street now is filled with thunderous traffic — it fairly shakes the house. When I finished the poem I found that my friends and our hosts had left the room. What is it precisely, that feeling of “returning” from a poem? Something is lighter, softer, larger — then it fades, but never completely.

—Ian McEwan, New York Times Sunday Book Review, 12/9/12