Trump and the True Meaning of ‘Idiot’

"In a recent Quinnipiac University poll, respondents were asked what word immediately came to mind when they thought of Donald Trump: The No. 1 response was 'idiot.' This was followed by 'incompetent,' 'liar,' 'leader,' 'unqualified,' and finally, in sixth place, 'president.' Superlatives like “great” and a few unprintable descriptives came further down on the list. But let us focus on the first. Contemporary uses of the word 'idiot' usually highlight a subject’s lack of intelligence, ignorance, foolishness or buffoonery. The word’s etymological roots, however, going back to ancient Greece, suggest that, in the case of the president, it may be even more apropos than it might first seem. ..."
NY Times

Kamasi Washington - "The Rhythm Changes"

"... Our love, our beauty, our genius
Our work, our triumph, our glory
Won't worry what happened before me
I'm here"
Genius
NOWNESS - Kamasi Washington: The Rhythm Changes (Video)
YouTube: "The Rhythm Changes" live in the KEXP studio. Recorded December 2, 2016.

2015 December: The Epic - Kamasi Washington (2015), 2016 December: Throttle Elevator Music featuring Kamasi Washington (2016), 2017 April: Harmony of Difference (EP - 2017)

Television - Little Johnny Jewel part 1 & 2 (1975)

"... The Television seed was planted in the very early 1970s, when Thomas Miller and Richard Meyers met at a boarding school in Hockessin, Delaware. Their shared love for poetry and music – as well as a growing relentlessness and displeasure regarding their educational environment – led them to make a run for it. ... From then on, the composition, tempo and rules stretch, shape-shifting from one movement into the other through crafty modulations. There is some darkness in the underbelly of this punkishly romantic beast, it is decorated with jaunty, twigly bits that morph into jazz (notably Ficca's terrific showcase of off the wall drumming extravaganza) until the dissonance takes on a very Latino, almost flamenco vibe with a resolutely electric tinge. They jump from stirring melodies to more opaque free-form, all the while the rhythm guitar soldiers on with a distortion-free hypnotic groove. Miles removed from your average gutsy punk, this is lead with artsy bravado and no economy of class. Thanks primarily to the great Lloyd, this A-side is pure joy to listen to, blissful and engaging, with sparing verses."
Dan's Rock Records
stealing all transmissions
YouTube: Little Johnny Jewel part 1 & 2, Little Johnny Jewel, Live '78 (from The Blow Up), Little Johnny Jewel - live, Little Johnny Jewel: Tom Verlaine and Jimmy Rip (2016)

2007 November: Tom Verlaine, 2010 March: Tom Verlaine - 1, 2011 October: Warm and Cool,  2012 December: Words from the Front, 2013 July: Flash Light, 2013 October: See No Evil, 2014 October: Dreamtime (1981), 2014 November: Marquee Moon (1977), January: Adventure (1978), 2015 October: Tom Verlaine (1979).

Oldest Fossils of Homo Sapiens Found in Morocco, Altering History of Our Species

An almost complete adult mandible discovered at the Jebel Irhoud site in Morocco.
"Fossils discovered in Morocco are the oldest known remains of Homo sapiens, scientists reported on Wednesday, a finding that rewrites the story of mankind’s origins and suggests that our species evolved in multiple locations across the African continent. ... Until now, the oldest known fossils of our species dated back just 195,000 years. The Moroccan fossils, by contrast, are roughly 300,000 years old. Remarkably, they indicate that early Homo sapiens had faces much like our own, although their brains differed in fundamental ways. ..."
NY Times

Iris

Siberian Iris
Wikipedia - "Iris is a genus of about 260–300, species of flowering plants with showy flowers. It takes its name from the Greek word for a rainbow, which is also the name for the Greek goddess of the rainbow, Iris. Some authors state that the name refers to the wide variety of flower colors found among the many species. As well as being the scientific name, iris is also very widely used as a common name for all Iris species, as well as some belonging to other closely related genera. A common name for some species is 'flags', while the plants of the subgenus Scorpiris are widely known as 'junos', particularly in horticulture. It is a popular garden flower. ..."
Wikipedia

Irises, 1889, Vincent van Gogh

Art on the Front Lines

Vitaly Komar, New Yalta, 2017
"Ronald Feldman Gallery presents Art on the Front Lines, a sprawling exhibition of more than fifty artists in response to the dark realities of the recent election. The exhibition includes both established and emerging artists. Within the traditional relationship between the artist and institutional power often lies an inherent tension, but the present political climate ups the ante. In response, artists let loose, conceptualizing strategies in all media. The exhibition is not only about what is happening in America, but intersects with what artists are doing in other parts of the world. The works address hot button issues: war, feminism, race, climate change, refugees, inequality, technophobia, and most recently, abuse of power. As you would expect, the President appears many times – It's a "star" performance. Armageddon meets the absurd. Experienced in its entirety, the exhibition presents a dizzying cacophony of sounds, moving parts, weird sights, and protest signs that evokes a crazy funhouse. Capturing the present moment, the exhibition places the spectator on the front line."
Feldman Gallery
Artsy
YouTube: King Trump and Co. at the opening of the group exhibition, "Art on the Front Lines"

Thomas Trosch

Musical Comedy Medley #1,1996
"... I was particularly struck by the fact that no writer I came across mentioned Thomas Trosch’s paintings. Perhaps that’s because he is so good at what he does, reviewers might have mistakenly thought they were actually looking at Stettheimers. ... Her palette ranges from high-key to pastel, all of which Trosch pushes to the point of courting the sickly sweet, as in the largely pink encaustic, 'Two Ladies' (2013). The other reason that writers might not have singled out Trosch is because he has not had a solo show in New York since 2009, which is more than a generation and nearly a lifetime in art-world years. So you can imagine my delight when I learned of Thomas Trosch: Paintings New and Old at Fredericks & Freiser (April 20 – May 26, 2017). ..."
Thomas Trosch’s Pointed Confections
The Very, Very Best of Thomas Trosch At Fredericks Freisure Gallery
YouTube: Thomas Trosch Spring in Park Lane at FREDERICKS & FREISER GALLERY

Accumulated Vision: Trisha Brown and the Visual Arts By Susan Rosenberg

"In the 1970s, Trisha Brown’s investigation of the question 'what is choreography?' paradoxically brought her work into intimate conversation with the visual art practices of her time. Enamored of the ideas of John Cage, she strove to invent methods of dance making that did not appear to be merely the result of subjective criteria of composing. If, in retrospect, Man Walking Down the Side of a Building (1970) bears close affiliation to site-specific practices in contemporary sculpture, Brown was not emulating visual artists’ work. Rather, she considered a dancer’s promenade down the façade of a seven-story building to answer essential choreographic problems: where to start, what to do, and where to end. ..."
Walker Art
amazon: Trisha Brown: Choreography as Visual Art - Susan Rosenberg
YouTube: Set and Reset: Trisha Brown’s Postmodern Masterpiece - Susan Rosenberg

2008 May: Trisha Brown, 2010 December: "A Walk Across the Rooftops", 2011 January: Trisha Brown - Floor of the Forest (1970), 2011 March: Pioneers of the Downtown Scene, New York 1970s, 2012 February: Dance/Draw, 2016 January: Dance, Valiant & Molecular, 2016 February: Set and Reset (1983), Newark (1987), Present Tense (2003), 2017 March: Trisha Brown, Choreographer and Pillar of American Postmodern Dance, Dies at 80, 2017 April: From Stage to Page: Unpacking a Shelf of New Dance Publications.

Au Pairs - Diet / It's Obvious (1980)

"... They were clearly angry about sexism and patriarchy, and possibly angrier still about the right-on discourse of socialist feminism. All this in a wrapper featuring a gorgeous Eve Arnold photograph of female combat soldiers in the People's Liberation Army – a clear allusion, I felt, to feminist philosopher Julia Kristeva's volume on women in post-Maoist China, Des Chinoises. "It's Obvious" is one of the longest songs on the album, a centrepiece that stands for all. With its insistent drum beat, foregrounded bass line and jangling, rhythmic guitar riff, it has obvious kinship with Joy Division and Gang of Four, but more stripped-back and staccato. Lesley Woods' ringing enunciation, with its mocking tortured twists, transfixed me: I had to play this song again and again, to the point of masochism. ..."
Guardian - Old music: Au Pairs – It's Obvious
YouTube: Diet / It's Obvious

2008 May: Au Pairs, 2012 October: Au Pairs @ Pinkpop 1982, 2014 August: Stepping Out of Line: The Anthology (2006), 2015 March: "Inconvenience" / Pretty Boys (12"), 2015 August: Peel Session 1981.

The Fabled Flatbreads of Uzbekistan

Left-to right from top: Tashkent-style; Samarkand-style with nigella seeds; Samarkand engagement bread, Siab bazaar; Bukhara-style, Kritiy bazaar; Tashkent-style, Chorsu bazaar (2).
"The sun was coming up as I followed the scent of wood smoke and freshly baked bread that drifted down a chilly dirt lane in an aging neighborhood on the outskirts of Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. Working my way against rush-hour traffic of bicycle-mounted bread-delivery men and bundled-up children carrying home stacks of steaming bread in plastic bags, I turned into an unmarked open gateway in a mud-plastered wall. In the courtyard I found fifth-generation baker Raushanbek Ismailov with his entire upper body inside the opening of his 315-degree centigrade tandoor oven. ..."
Aramco World
Uzbek Bread
The art of Uzbek flatbread

How Cold Brew Changed the Coffee Business

At All Day, a coffee shop in Miami that’s on the must-visit list of coffee fanatics, cold brew is the foundation of the menu.

"Summer officially starts this year on June 21, but that’s only the solstice, the day when the sun reaches its highest position in the sky. Down on street level, summer really begins on the first humid, sun-streaked day, when even the thought of sipping a hot cup of coffee is too much to bear. It’s as if, just as birds know instinctively when to migrate, we wake up one bright morning and agree that it’s iced coffee season. Gregory Zamfotis, the owner of Gregorys Coffee in New York City, which is about to open its 24th location, starts tracking the temperature in early May. ..."

NY Times

2010 September: Espresso, April: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World, 2013 May: Coffeehouse, 2015 June: Barista, 2015 August: Coffee Connections at Peddler in SoHo, 2015 November: The Case for Bad Coffee, 2016 January: 101 Places to Find Great Coffee in New York (2014).

Errol Dunkley - Cinderella b/w Version (1972)

"In 1972, when Jimmy Rodway showed Errol Dunkley a poem he had written, Dunkley was already a bona fide music star. After Dunkley had made some adjustments to the lines to hone them into a song, recorded at Dynamic Studios, he became the singer of an enduring reggae anthem which has long outlasted the number-one position it held on the charts for some weeks. The song is Black Cinderella, which came out on Rodway's Fimi Time label and is embraced as a tribute to black women. ..."
'Black Cinderella' developed from a poem
W - Errol Dunkley
YouTube: Cinderella b/w Version (Fe-Me-Time)

Truth flies (PoemTalk #113)

"Brian Teare, Jed Rasula and Kristen Prevallet joined Al Filreis to talk about Robin Blaser’s 'A Bird in the House.' The poem appears on page 359 of The Holy Forest: Collected Poems of Robin Blaser and dates from the late 1980s or possibly the early 1990s. The text of the poem is now available at the Poetry Foundation. Blaser’s PennSound page includes two performances — one from a reading (introduced by Robert Creeley) which Blaser gave in Buffalo in September of 1993, the second from a visit to the Writers Institute in Albany on October 26, 1994. ..."
Jacket2

November 2007: EPC, November 2009: Robin Blaser (1925 - 2009), March 2010: The Moth Poem, Les Chimeres, 2011 February: The Holy Forest, 2011 July: "Image-Nation 21 (territory", 2010 April: Manroot and Acts,  2015 January: 'Absolutely temporary': Spicer, Burgess, and the ephemerality of coterie, 2015 March: San Francisco Renaissance, 2016 March: The Astonishment Tapes: Talks on Poetry and Autobiography with Robin Blaser and Friends, 2017 May: The Pacific Nation

Comey Testimony: Special Counsel Has All the Memos

"... Mr. Comey said Mr. Trump lied to the American public when he said that the F.B.I. was in disarray and that agents had lost confidence in Mr. Comey. 'Those were lies, plain and simple,' Mr. Comey said in brief opening remarks. Mr. Trump made that claim when he fired Mr. Comey last month. Mr. Comey said he was confused and concerned by Mr. Trump’s changing explanation for why he fired him. Mr. Comey learned of his firing from the news media. He offered a heartfelt farewell to his former employees. 'I am so sorry I didn’t get to say goodbye to you publicly,' Mr. Comey said. ..."
NY Times (Video)
NPR: Comey Accuses White House Of 'Lies, Plain And Simple' (Video)
LA Times: Comey opens testimony, accusing White House of telling 'lies' (Video)

Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre - Humility in the Light of the Creator (1969)

"In the 1960s, bop snobs who condemned avant-garde jazz made comments that were not only uninformed and narrow-minded, but sometimes, their attacks on jazz's "new thing" (a term that was used to describe free jazz and Chicago AACM jazz as well as a lot of modal post-bop) were even mean-spirited and hateful. Such bop snobs loved to ridicule and mock the spirituality that characterized a lot of modal and avant-garde jazz; they treated it like a joke and a fad. But spirituality in music is hardly faddish; when explorers like John Coltrane, Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders, and Yusef Lateef were influenced by traditional Hindu, Islamic, or Jewish music, they were drawing on musical traditions that had been around for centuries. Spirituality is a big part of Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre's Humility in the Light of the Creator, a superb inside/outside date that is arguably his finest, most essential album. ..."
allmusic
a ballad for kalaparusha maurice mcintyre (Video)
New Yorker - Postscript: Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre, 1936-2013
W - Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre
amazon
YouTube: Humility In The Light Of Creator (1969) 34:03

Clarence Garlow

"Clarence Garlow (February 27, 1911 – July 24, 1986) was an American R&B, jump blues, Texas blues and cajun guitarist, singer and songwriter. He is best known for his recording of the song 'Bon Ton Roula', which was a hit single on the US Billboard R&B chart in 1950. One commentator noted the track as, 'a rhythm and blues laced-zydeco song that helped introduce the Louisiana music form to a national audience.' ... After learning the rudiments of fiddle playing as a youngster, in his teenage years Garlow learned to play both the guitar and accordion. ..."
Wikipedia
Discogs, Spotify
YouTube: Bon Ton Roula, She's So Fine, Crawfishin´ , I'm In A Boogie Mood, I'm Hurt, No No Baby, Train Came Rolling Down The Track, Blues As You Like It, Route 90, Jumpin' For Joy, Made Me Cry, Nothing To Talk About, Carry On, I Don't Know, Clarence Garlow Band with vocals by Anna Mae Rogers - I Called You Up Baby

Jean-Pierre Melville’s Cinema of Resistance

"This is how you should attend the forthcoming retrospective of Jean-Pierre Melville movies at Film Forum: Tell nobody what you are doing. Even your loved ones—especially your loved ones—must be kept in the dark. If it comes to a choice between smoking and talking, smoke. Dress well but without ostentation. Wear a raincoat, buttoned and belted, regardless of whether there is rain. Any revolver should be kept, until you need it, in the pocket of the coat. Finally, before you leave home, put your hat on. If you don’t have a hat, you can’t go. Melville was born almost a hundred years ago, on October 20, 1917. The centennial jamboree starts on April 28th and ends on May 11th, followed by a weeklong run of 'Léon Morin, Priest' (1961), starring Jean-Paul Belmondo in the title role. ..."
New Yorker
The Essentials: The 10 Greatest Jean-Pierre Melville Films
senses of cinema
Guardian: Poet of the underworld
W - Jean-Pierre Melville
The Criterion Collection (Video)
Jean-Pierre Melville: Criminal Codes (Video)
Jean-Pierre Melville: The Moral Dimension of Crime
vimeo: To Become Immortal… and Then Die: A Jean-Pierre Melville Primer
YouTube: Jean-Pierre Melville, Interview (1970)

Jean-Pierre Melville in his own film, Two Men in Manhattan

Robert Polidori

"Considered one of the world’s leading architectural photographers Robert Polidori creates meticulously detailed, large-scale color photographs that transcend the limits of pure architectural photography. He is fascinated by the remnants and traces of life that he finds scattered in hallways, left in back rooms and worn on facades. His quietly expressive photographs portray the rich colors and textures of neglected and estranged cities, including Chernobyl, Versailles, Havana and most recently New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Through the photograph’s ability to mummify the present moment, Polidori’s work eschews nostalgia in favor of the poignancy of absolute reality. ..."
Arthur Roger Gallery
Remnants of Life
Bomb — Artists in Conversation
amazon

Karriem Riggins and J Rocc - What's In My Bag?

"Karriem Riggins is a jazz drummer, DJ, and hip-hop producer originally from Detroit. As a child, he played drums with his musician father and began producing hip-hop when he was in middle school. After high school, he moved to New York City, where he joined the Ray Brown Trio. His production and performance credits include work with Kanye West, Paul McCartney, Oscar Peterson, Esperanza Spalding, Roy Hargrove, The Roots, Common, Erykah Badu, Talib Kweli, KAYTRANADA, and J Dilla. His debut LP, Alone Together, was released on Stones Throw in 2012; his follow up, Headnod Suite, landed in early 2017. ..."
Amoeba (Video)

The Best Little Bakeshop In America Is Right Here In Vermont

"Remember old cartoons where a character would waft through the air following the scent of a delicious treat? Well, that’s pretty much how you’ll enter Mirabelle’s Cafe and Bakery in Burlington. From the fruit tarts to chocolate cakes to their iconic buttercream-almond honeybee, the treats here taste just as sweet as they look. One bite and you’re hooked! Let’s take a look at the best bakeshop in VT. Mirabelles is just a stone's throw from the bustling open air mall on Church Street. ..." (sara m.)
Only In Your State

The little old brick building on Nassau Street

"Country music’s first hit record was made in an unassuming office building in Downtown Atlanta, but proposed construction for a new Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville location could erase this bit of history forever. The building, located at 152 Nassau St., currently houses a small law firm but was once the location of a temporary recording studio set up by New York-based Okeh Records executive Ralph Peer. Plans for the development of a Downtown home for the Margaritaville restaurant chain, which boasts more than 30 outposts in the U.S. and abroad, was unveiled summer 2016. ..."
Creative Loafing

This Ever New Self: Thoreau and His Journal

Earliest surviving journal notebook, open to entries from November 1837.
"Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) occupies a lofty place in American cultural history. He spent two years in a cabin by Walden Pond and a single night in jail, and out of those experiences grew two of this country’s most influential works: his book Walden and the essay known as 'Civil Disobedience.' But his lifelong journal—more voluminous by far than his published writings—reveals a fuller, more intimate picture of a man of wide-ranging interests and a profound commitment to living responsibly and passionately. This Ever New Self: Thoreau and His Journal brings together nearly one hundred items in the most comprehensive exhibition ever devoted to the author. Marking the 200th anniversary of Thoreau's birth and organized in partnership with the Concord Museum in his hometown of Concord, Massachusetts, the show centers on the journal he kept throughout his life and its importance in understanding the essential Thoreau. ..."
The Morgan Library & Museum
The Morgan Library & Museum: The Protester: April 1851, Etc. (Audio)
The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau
"When my father was in high school he worked summers as a lifeguard at Walden Pond. As a kid, I used to hang out there, bird-watching, reading from a slender volume of Henry David Thoreau’s journal and soaking up Transcendentalist vibes from the big glacial bowl of clear water ringed with firs and footpaths. Even off-season I wasn’t alone. Pilgrims kept turning up in search of Thoreau. The little cabin — he called it a house — that he’d built there in 1845, furnished with a green-painted pine desk, and lived in for two years, was long gone. But a cairn of loose stones marked the site, and each visitor would, by tradition, toss a fresh stone on the pile. Doing so gained you a little hit of Thoreau; a moral lesson (give, don’t take); and a sense that you’d added something to history. ..."
NY Times - Thoreau: American Resister (and Kitten Rescuer)

amazon: The Journal of Henry David Thoreau, 1837-1861

2009 April: Henry David Thoreau, 2012 September: Walden, 2015 March: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849), 2017 March: Civil Disobedience (1849), 2017 April: The Maine Woods (1864)

Hiroyuki Ito

"One night it was Pierre Boulez at Carnegie Hall. On other nights it was John Zorn at the old Knitting Factory, or Devo in Central Park or Anna Netrebko at the Metropolitan Opera House. Maybe it was the punk band Atari Teenage Riot in the legendarily trashy dressing room at CBGB, or Ornette Coleman at Jazz at Lincoln Center. The photographer Hiroyuki Ito stitched together 25 years of these nights, shooting wherever The Village Voice or The New York Times chose to send him. He went with open ears, figuring that life had handed him a chance to hear something new and serendipitous. ..."
NY Times: His Camera Has Ears
New Yorker: Hiroyuki Ito’s City Nights

Peace and Noise - Patti Smith (1997)

"Patti Smith, who was 50 when 'Peace and Noise' was released, looks both backward and forward in her seventh studio album. '1959,' the album's single and signature track, commemorates the Tibetan uprising against occupying Chinese forces that year: 'China was the tempest / Madness overflowed / Lama was a young man / And watched his world in flames.' She contrasts the bloodshed in Tibet with mindless bliss in America, represented by, believe it or not, cars with big fins: 'Wisdom and compassion crushed / In the land of Shangri-La / But in the land of the Impala / Honey, well, we were lookin' fine // 'Cause we built that thing and it grew wings / In 1959.' ..."
Listening to Patti Smith: 'Peace and Noise' (Video)
W - Peace and Noise
Rolling Stone
amazon, Spotify, iTubes
YouTube: Peace and Noise (Full Album) 10 videos

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith - EARS (2016)

"Composer, performer, and producer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith's new album EARS is an immersive listening experience in which dizzying swirls of organic and synthesized sounds work together to create a sense of three-dimensional space and propulsion. Dense and carefully crafted, each of the songs on EARS unfolds with a fluid elegance, while maintaining a spontaneous energy, and a sprightly sense of discovery. Listeners familiar with her previous album Euclid (an album that prompted Dazed to call her '…one of the most pioneering musicians in the world.') will no doubt notice her heavier use of vocals on EARS. On all but one song, her gently ecstatic swells of vocals emerge to soar over a dense jungle of synths and woodwinds. Much of the album's warmth and energy stems from Smith's use of the versatile analog synthesizer, the Buchla Music Easel. ..."
bandcamp
Pitchfork
All About Jazz
amazon, Spotify
Soundcloud: Arthropoda
YouTube: EARS (Full Album) 38:43

My Own Mag (Nov 1963-Sept 1966)

My Own Mag #13 - August 1965
"In the introduction to the bibliography of his work prepared by Joe Maynard and Barry Miles, William Burroughs spoke about how the 'little mags' were a lifeline for him at a time when he had very few hopes for publishing his work. One of the most important of these independent publications was Jeff Nuttall’s My Own Mag: '1964… No. 4, Calle Larachi, Tangier. My Own Mag… smell of kerosene heaters, hostile neighbors, stones thudding against the door. Jeff Nuttall sent me a copy of My Own Mag and asked me to contribute. I recall that delivery of the first copies to which I had contributed was heralded by a wooden top crashing through the skylight.' RealityStudio is proud to present a comprehensive archive of Jeff Nuttall’s influential zine. This archive features every page of every now rare issue, bibliographies, context and discussion by Jed Birmingham and Robert Bank. ..."
RealityStudio
Nuttall edited and published My Own Mag from Nov 1963-Sept 1966, a total of 17 issues.
W - My Own Mag

2009 May: Cut-up technique - 1, 2010 March: Cut-up technique, 2010 December: The Evolution of the Cut-Up Technique in My Own Mag, 2012 August: The Nova Trilogy, 2014 February: William Burroughs at 100, 2014 September: The Ticket That Exploded, 2014 November: What Is Schizo-Culture? A Classic Conversation with William S. Burroughs, 2015 June: The Electronic Revolution (1971), 2015 August: Cut-Ups: William S. Burroughs 1914 – 2014, 2015 December: Destroy All Rational Thought, 2016 January: Commissioner of Sewers: A 1991 Profile of Beat Writer William S. Burroughs, 2016 June: Nothing Here Now But The Recordings (1981), 2016 September: # 1 – A Descriptive Catalogue of the William S. Burroughs Archive, 2016 December: #6 – Call Me Burroughs LP, 2017 January: A Visit to William S. Burroughs at the Beat Hotel in Summer, 1958.

New York Stories

"The magazine’s first-ever all-comics issue, with 12 tales of the city based on stories from The Times’s Metro desk."
NY Times

Jah Wobble - The Legend Lives On… Jah Wobble In Betrayal (1980)

"The first big solo effort of Jah Wobble would be the pronounced reason he got the boot from PiL under orders from long-time buddy John Lydon. There was probably word of build up to the acrimonious departure, but it would depend on who you asked. Apparently Lydon didn’t like the fact that Wobble’s album used pieces of scrap from Metal Box, and pulled the trap door. Funny really, considering PiL was meant to be an umbrella for all sorts of weird, vague projects that tended to never, ever get made. Wobble went and did it though, and it’s even funnier because what little fragments do come from Metal Box / Second Edition were all just fragments to begin with at that point. Punks in the studio using whatever they could fashion together as avant-garde. ..."
Jive Time Records
W - The Legend Lives On... Jah Wobble in "Betrayal"
amazon
YouTube: Betrayal, Blueberry Hill (Computer version), I NEED YOU BY MY SIDE, SOMETHING PROFOUND, Battle Of Britain

2011 February: Plight & Premonition, 2011 June: Persian Love, 2013 October: Flux + Mutability - David Sylvian and Holger Czukay (1989) , 2014 June: Holger Czukay - Der Osten Ist Rot, Rome Remains Rome (1984/7), 2016 March: Invaders Of The Heart - Jah Wobble (1982), 2017 April: Jah Wobble, The Edge, Holger Czukay - Snake Charmer (1983).

Inside Sonny Rollins’s Jazz Archive, Headed Home to Harlem

Photographs, notebooks, calendars, magazines and hundreds of recordings are part of the archive.
"The saxophonist Sonny Rollins, perhaps jazz’s most respected living improviser, is also one of its most relentless seekers. But that’s well known; what’s not as widely recognized is the diversity — and the depth — of his inquiry. Yes, there’s his herculean practice regimen (upward of eight hours a day, even into middle age) and the yearslong sabbaticals he took from performing to hone his craft. But Mr. Rollins, 86, has also maintained a vigorous, syncretic spiritual practice, and he has written hundreds of pages of personal notes over the years — reflecting on music technique and the music business and expressing social laments. He even started writing an instructional saxophone book but dropped that project. ..."
NY Times (Spotify, Video)

2012 September: The Singular Sound of Sonny Rollins, 2012 December: Village Vanguard, 2015 September: Rollins Plays for Bird (1957), 2016 February: Saxophone Colossus (1956), 2016 May: Plus 4 (1956).

The Opinion Pages: Our Disgraceful Exit From the Paris Accord

"Only future generations will be able to calculate the full consequences of President Trump’s incredibly shortsighted approach to climate change, since it is they who will suffer the rising seas and crippling droughts that scientists say are inevitable unless the world brings fossil fuel emissions to heel. But this much is clear now: Mr. Trump’s policies — the latest of which was his decision to withdraw from the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change — have dismayed America’s allies, defied the wishes of much of the American business community he pretends to help, threatened America’s competitiveness as well as job growth in crucial industries and squandered what was left of America’s claim to leadership on an issue of global importance. ..."
NY Times

The Wild Palms - William Faulkner (1939)

Wikipedia - "If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem is a novel by the American author William Faulkner published in 1939. The novel was originally published under the title The Wild Palms, which is the title of one of the two interwoven stories. ... Each story is five chapters long and they offer a significant interplay between narrative plots. 'Wild Palms' tells the story of Harry and Charlotte, who meet, fall in forbidden love, travel the country together for work, and, ultimately, experience tragedy when the abortion Harry performs on Charlotte kills her. 'Old Man' is the story of a convict who, while being forced to help victims of a flood, rescues a pregnant woman. They are swept away downstream by the flooding Mississippi, and she gives birth to a baby. He eventually gets both himself and the woman to safety and then turns himself in, returning to prison. ..."
Wikipedia
Esoteric Symbolism and Allegory in Faulkner’s Old Man
amazon

2011 September: Southern Gothic, 2014 February: William Faulkner, 2015 October: William Faulkner Draws Maps of Yoknapatawpha County, the Fictional Home of His Great Novels, 2015 November: Interviews William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12, 2016 April: Absalom, Absalom!! (1936), 2016 May: The Sound and the Fury (1929), 2016 October: The Snopes Trilogy (1940, 1957, 1959), 2016 December: Light in August (1932), 2017 February: As I Lay Dying (1930)

Afrobeat Airways 2: Return Flight to Ghana 1974-1983

"In his introductory essay to Afrobeat Airways 2: Return Flight to Ghana 1974-1983, Afropop Worldwide editor Banning Eyre interviews some of the compilation’s featured artists, including the legendary Ghanaian guitarist and bandleader Ebo Taylor. ... Hearing James Brown in the late 60s, Taylor adds, reminded a generation of Ghanaian musicians that lamentation was just as potent as exultation. That dichotomy of major and minor, happy and sad, haunts Return Flight. Overwhelmingly the tracks are lambent and melancholy, sunsets made sonic. Still, they teem. Swarms of organ notes and stinging guitar licks turn the African Brothers’ 'Wope Me A Ka' — one of the most irrepressible tracks on the 13-song collection—into a connect-the-dots funk-puzzle whose final form only begins to coalesce after a shuffling, skeletal break. ..."
Pitchfork
Discogs
YouTube: Afrobeat Airways 2 - Return Flight To Ghana 1974-1983 1:01:04

BBC: Paris - City of Dreams

"Few cities boast the romantic allure of Paris: its charm, its energy, its style. Sandrine Voillet reveals how Paris battled through turmoil and trauma to become the city of dreams – the capital of the world in all but name, in this BBC/OU series. We first meet Sandrine in the Louvre, the world’s most famous museum of art and the place where she studied the history of art. Before it was a museum, the Louvre was a splendid palace. That all changed with the French Revolution of 1789 and that is when Sandrine begins her story of Paris. From the blood-soaked streets of revolution Paris rose up to become the world’s first truly modern city – the place where the way we work, live and play in cities today was born during the 19th century. ..."
OpenLearn
YouTube: Paris - The City of Dreams 59:09

Gustav Wunderwald’s Paintings of Weimar Berlin

Unterführung in Spandau, 1927
"Berlin in June 1945 was not at all a pleasant place to be. As the dust settled on what was left of the city, blown to smithereens and now occupied by Russian and Allied forces, the landscape painter Gustav Wunderwald died from water poisoning in a hospital in the western suburb of Charlottenburg. He was sixty-three years old. In the seventy years or so that have passed since his death, the city that Wunderwald painted over and again during the years of the Weimar Republic has been divided, rebuilt, reunified, and revived. And yet, despite the waves of history that have beat relentlessly, remorselessly against Berlin, were he alive today, Wunderwald would still recognise many aspects of the city that he painted during the late twenties. ..."
Public Domain Review
W - Gustav Wunderwald
Artworks

New Art, New Money (February 10, 1985)

"When Jean Michel Basquiat walks into Mr. Chow's on East 57th Street in Manhattan, the waiters all greet him as a favorite regular. Before he became a big success, the owners, Michael and Tina Chow, bought his artwork and later commissioned him to paint their portraits. He goes to the restaurant a lot. One night, for example, he was having a quiet dinner near the bar with a small group of people. While Andy Warhol chatted with Nick Rhodes, the British rock star from Duran Duran, on one side of the table, Basquiat sat across from them, talking to the artist Keith Haring. Haring's images of a crawling baby or a barking dog have become ubiquitous icons of graffiti art, a style that first grew out of the scribblings (most citizens call them defacement) on New York's subway cars and walls. ..."
NY Times
artist-timeline - Jean-Michel Basquiat
YouTube: Jean Michel Basquiat Fun Gallery Crosby St Studio 1982

2013 April: Saving Basquiat: Seeing the Art Through the Myth-Making at Gagosian, 2015 February: Now's the Time, 2015 May: Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks, 2015 December: The Notebooks