Liberty is not a woman walking the streets, she is not sitting on a bench waiting for an invitation to dinner, to come sleep in our bed for the rest of her life.
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Music
I've had a pretty complex relationship with music over the years... ought to write about that sometime. Anyways: I listen to a lot of it, in genres like "rock" and "pop" and "folk", and play some of it, primarily in the genres "old-time" and "classical".
A mix tape (is mix tape the right term here? Something like a playlist but including readings and videos as well as music...) (and whew! there is something unfamiliar about blogging in English!): The ordering of the playlist is my own chain of memory (with proddings from others) starting from chapter 7, "More than love", of The ground beneath her feet.
Ormus speaks. I have been liking this novel while being rubbed a little the wrong way by the narrator's voice -- Rai seems a little off to me, a little cynical and annoyingly, smugly verbose. I found quite striking the short piece in the middle of this chapter that shifts into Ormus' voice, and into him quoting his father's voice. His mention of vultures and of Attar, and of Prometheus, got me into a "classical birds" frame of mind. Ormus speaks, read by The Modesto Kid
Attar's poem in Fitzgerald's stellar translation, The Bird Parliament. (This would be an amazing poem for reading out loud -- I tried that earlier and got about a ¼ of the way into it... I may have to upload a recording of this to SoundCloud.)
I'm also put in mind a little of Borges' mysticism, in a way I have not been by this novel so far -- the bits of magic in Rai's narration have been undone by his glibness. Specifically The Theologians I guess, though I don't recall there being birds in that.
Today I finished mixing Mountain Station's set for Lazlo's Blow Up Radio (where NJ rock lives) -- very happy with it. We'll make a podcast of this at some point, after it has aired on Lazlo's show. Tracks:
Mountain Station *¡LIVE!* at Lazlo's Den: a Rollo and Crazy Grady production
All Around You (0:00)
NJ Transit (3:29)
Up to Valhalla (6:37)
East Tennessee Blues (trad.) (11:39)
Take Me to the River (Al Greene) (13:35)
Come Down Easy (Howard Eliott Payne) (16:36)
Red Overalls (20:01)
23 ½ minutes! And it seems to hold together pretty well, it is a nice listen.
John came over today and we played a Dylan-heavy set of new-to-us songs...
Gates of Eden (John singing)
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll (me singing, a couple of times in a couple of different keys...)
Weary Day (a Delmore Bros. tune, with me singing -- we have played this before but not for a long time...)
For years now I've been hearing of Baby Gramps, every now and then someone would tell me I ought to check his music out. Shockingly, reprehensibly, I ignored this great advice every time it was offered me, and I did not hear a note of his music until last weekend, when I went down to Bordentown to hear Peter Stampfel performing, with Baby Gramps on the same bill.
Turns out they have released a record together, Outertainment, and it blew my mind. There are traditional tunes freaked out beyond all recognition, some fantastic covers (Gramps singing "Surfin Bird" is truly amazing), originals sarcastic, whimsical, sincere. Every song will draw you in and through it.
posted evening of September 6th, 2012: Respond ➳ More posts about The Blues
(chain of YouTube "similar videos" associations that got me here: Movin' Day -> Walk Right In -> Ray Wylie Hubbard in concert at Tennessee State Museum. Jackpot!)
posted evening of September first, 2012: 1 response
El caballo loco gritaba y
