The United House of Prayer Band, live, Charlotte, N.C., 2012
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lagniappe
random sights
yesterday, Oak Park, Ill.
*****
reading table
Goodbye to forever now.
Hello to the empty present and.
—Mary Jo Bang (1946-), from “No More” (Elegy, 2007)
*****
streaming
Bang on a Can Marathon: today, six hours, beginning at 3 p.m. (ET). Meredith Monk, Vijay Iyer, George Lewis, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, John Adams, Mary Halvorson, et al. If this turns out to be even half as good as it might be, it’ll be monumental. (In the department of delicious serendipity, I just learned about this, waiting for tea water to boil, here.)
Listen to this drummer without feeling lighter, livelier.
Tony Allen (drums, vocals) & Band, live, Luxembourg, 2011
*****
9/22/12
Questlove (:10-) & Tony Allen (1:25-), live, Paris, 2011
What a contrast. Questlove, focusing on power and momentum, pushes the beat. Tony lies behind it, skips ahead, lies back again, favoring suppleness and elasticity.
Jeremy Denk (1970-, piano), playing, and talking about, Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier (excerpts), live, 4/7/20
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lagniappe
reading table
North Haven
by Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)
In Memoriam: Robert Lowell
I can make out the rigging of a schooner a mile off; I can count the new cones on the spruce. It is so still the pale bay wears a milky skin; the sky no clouds except for one long, carded horse’s tail.
The islands haven’t shifted since last summer,
even if I like to pretend they have—
drifting, in a dreamy sort of way,
a little north, a little south, or sidewise—
and that they¹re free within the blue frontiers of bay.
This month our favorite one is full of flowers:
buttercups, red clover, purple vetch,
hackweed still burning, daisies pied, eyebright,
the fragrant bedstraw’s incandescent stars,
and more, returned, to paint the meadows with delight.
The goldfinches are back, or others like them,
and the white-throated sparrow’s five-note song,
pleading and pleading, brings tears to the eyes.
Nature repeats herself, or almost does:
repeat, repeat, repeat; revise, revise, revise.
Years ago, you told me it was here
(in 1932?) you first “discovered girls”
and learned to sail, and learned to kiss.
You had “such fun,” you said, that classic summer.
(“Fun”—it always seemed to leave you at a loss . . .)
You left North Haven, anchored in its rock,
afloat in mystic blue . . . And now—you’ve left
for good. You can’t derange, or rearrange,
your poems again. (But the sparrows can their song.)
The words won’t change again. Sad friend, you cannot change.
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