I was in an elevator with several others, coming down from the penthouse floor of an ordinary building on 32nd Street. My companions for the ride spoke in Spanish, lovely currents of flowing sound like:
1. The secret beaches of Aguadilla
2. The shuffling and chatter of the smiling patrons at Rolon's Tavern in Jersey City
3. A game of dominoes in the garage of 852 Devon Street in Kearny
Though I only recognized a very few random words, I knew from their accents, from their rhythms, from the music of their speech, that these people were Puertorriquenos.
They were…
Alexander Zakharov posts, well, a Soviet poster every day. Best of all, he provides a lot of useful historical and artistic context for them. I've always been fascinated by the visual bravura of these posters, now I get to discover the "hidden" meaning to them, which, of course, weren't hidden to the proletariat .
Bryson writing about Shakespeare, that is. The Times offers an excerpt from Shakespeare.
Or, in my case, doesn't. Gary Lynch thinks he has the answer.
Journalist Malcolm McPherson has become satiric novelist Malcolm McPherson. How come? Because the best stories in his reporter's notebook stayed in his reporter's notebook.
"What are you going to do with this anecdote? Time, believe me, doesn’t want to hear about it, because it does not easily illustrate anything and is not news. In the notebook it goes. And stays."
Thus, novels are born.
Sky Blue, Maria Schneider’s sixth album in 13 years, is at once her most ambitious and most fulfilled, a sweeping, gorgeous work about memory, dreams, love, life, death, the joys of birding…but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Schneider is that rare creature these days: the composer, arranger, conductor, and manager of a working 17-to-20 piece jazz orchestra. She studied with Gil Evans and Bob Brookmeyer, and her work reflects their penchants for stacked harmonies and swaying rhythms. A jazz critic I know once said of some of her earlier pieces, “Too much vertical, not enough horizontal”—…
Hola Familia.
I hope you're all doing very well. It's an unusually cool and rainy day here in NJ/NYC.
I'm not sure if you all know, but part of my job at Stereophile involves keeping a blog. I'm supposed to write about my interaction with high-end audio, but I often extend the focus into my personal relationship with music and beyond into my everyday relationships with friends and family.
I think you all do know that lately, even more than ever, my relationship with my father has been under a lot of pressure. The good news is I've told him exactly how I feel, so there's…
According to an AP poll, one out of every four Americans hasn't read a single book in the last year. Okay, maybe I can believe that, but whenever I read articles like this, they inevitably include some guy (and yes, it is always a guy) who says something like, "I just don't have time for fiction, when I read I want to learn something."
Oh really? I re-read Huckleberry Finn this year. It's "just a story" and it wasn't even the first time I've read it. Did I really learn nothing? What I thought I'd noticed for the first time was Twain's finely nuanced description of a far-from-homogeneous…
Memory
All alone in the moonlight
I can smile at 10 minutes ago
I was beautiful then
I remember the time I knew what happiness was
Let the memory live again
For 10 whole minutes. . . .
Nick Hornby gets an unusual request.
Hat tip to Blog of a Book Slut.
