Nothing If Not Eclectic
Two CDs I ordered came in the mail today, Bob Dylan’s Christmas in the Heart and The Gyuto Monks Tantric Choir. I got the monks for meditation–it’s extremely low frequency chanting in very slow rhythm that I find very soothing. This particular recording was made by Mickey Hart, the Grateful Dead’s drummer, and is exquisitely [...]
My Favorite Songwriter Who Isn’t Bob Dylan
A portrait of the young poet as an old man, or perhaps the old man as a young poet. In any case, here is an admiring profile of Leonard Cohen in the New Yorker.
Stone Age Flutes
Human beings seem to be inveterate makers of pattern, whether musical, visual, or verbal. The people who hollowed out the bird bones and cut holes at regular intervals were also making stunning pictures on the walls of caves and, I have no doubt, singing songs to their children and telling each other stories. All of [...]
And it’s Not a Dry Heat (VN Diary No. 31)
I’m in Hue now. This morning Lan’s friend (now my friend) Tran Thu Mai took me to a beautiful pagoda in the mountains northeast of Hue, then on a tourn of the Nguyen court’s citadel, where many of the palaces and temples have been beautifully restored. After a brief rest and cool down at my [...]
This Is Your Brain On Poetry
I’m not big on biological reductionism when it comes to the arts, especially when the evolutionary biologists start talking about the “evolutionary value” of this or that cultural practice, making up their little just-so stories. But I was intrigued the other day by this article describing the way the brain processes jokes. It occurred to [...]
Wish I’d Been There
Leonard Cohen gave his first US concert in 15 years the other night down in New York. I don’t really go to concerts any more, but this is one I’d have tried to go to if I had been just a bit closer. (Cohen will be up this way, in Ottawa in late May, but [...]
Sleep
I wonder what it would be like to be one of those people who sleep soundly virtually every night of their lives. I never have, not since I was a kid. Last night, though, I slept deeply & almost continuously. The extent to which sleep, or my waking relationship to sleep, has directed the currents [...]
There’s a Bailout Comin’ But it’s Not for You
Via Scott McLemee’s blog Quick Study, some trenchant social criticism from Neil Young:
