I always like to remind people that the real, legal, birth-certificate name of Blossom Dearie was … Blossom Dearie.
Austin Kleon’s great newsletter edition on the objects we love and live with reminds me that we still use our metronome, some sixty-plus years after Teri’s mom bought it.
The most Arsenal thing ever would be for Spurs to beat Man City today and then Arsenal lose to Everton on Sunday. ⚽️
This by Rob Chapman is one of a zillion videos encouraging me to ask whether I’m a beginner, intermediate, or advanced guitar player. “Beginner” is a bad word here, because no one who has been playing for a long time (in my case, 20 years). The better word is basic. Also, I think “advanced” should be distinguished from “professional.” So I think we need five categories:
- beginner
- basic
- intermediate
- advanced
- professional
I think I’m a basic/intermediate player, and will probably not get much better. It’s hard to progress when you start an instrument in your forties, and I have the added handicap of some permanently damaged fingers on my left hand (thanks to a habit, common among basketball players, of breaking them and then not having them properly set). But it would be silly to call myself a “beginner.”
A Dissertation on the Clowns and Fools of Shakspeare
By the way, if I could belong to one of the London livery companies, I would certainly choose the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers.
If you happen to be a Freeman or Freewoman of the City of London, then you may exercise your ancient right to take sheep across London or Southwark Bridge without paying a toll. That right is protected by the Worshipful Company of Woolmen, so now you know whom to thank.
“The secret of good cursing lies in cadence, emphasis, and and antiphony. The basic themes are always the same. Conscious striving after variety is not to be encouraged, because it takes your mind off your cursing.“ – A. J. Liebling
I’m old enough to remember when I could say “Hey Siri, play [X]” and get the song I asked for.
‘Interior of Tintern Abbey, Monmouthshire’, watercolour by J. M. W. Turner, 1794
Apple may just have created the most tone-deaf advertisement in the history of advertising. I think I’m gonna go outside and smash my iPad with a trumpet.
R.I.P. Steve Albini — a wonder of a recording engineer who had a simple and clear and unshakable commitment to what he thought recorded music should sound like: a live performance. Human beings playing their instruments and singing, in the earth’s atmosphere, surrounded by a built environment.
Me, a couple of years ago, stating a thesis that I’m still committed to: “In any given community, there will be a profound divide between those who believe that the most dangerous lies are the ones told by our enemies and those who believe that the most dangerous lies are the ones we tell ourselves.”
Laura Brown, The Great Lakes of North America
I just posted a new letter to my BMAC supporters.
Playing this morning: Khruangbin’s A LA SALA. ♫
This from Austin Kleon is great:
One of the reasons I didn’t connect with writer Nicholson Baker’s recent book about learning to draw, Finding a Likeness, is that he couldn’t seem to enjoy the process of drawing unless the drawing resulted in what he felt was visual accuracy. I remember watching him learn to draw on Twitter and Instagram and noticing a point at which he seemed to get much better, and saying so. Upon reading the book, I realized that point was when he started tracing photographs to begin his drawings….
I admire Baker greatly as a fiction writer, and we have the same general idea about the value of drawing as a way of noticing the world. But how you get there… that’s where we differ wildly. The last way I personally want to spend my time drawing is by taping a piece of paper to a computer screen and tracing a digital image with a pencil. I want drawing to take me out into the world, away from my screens and get me to look at it with my own eyeballs.
It’s pub day for my critical edition of Auden’s The Shield of Achilles!
Our new bee attractor.
