Brooklyn Diasporist Newsletter | 16 November 2023
§ Item 1: There’s nothing wrong with art comprehended at first glance. It doesn’t mean the art won’t reward extended or repeated viewing or contemplation. This New Yorker piece on Dan Flavin addressed such and other matters in his work.
§ Item 2: It seems each passing day/year/era makes it still clearer that being a human among other humans requires some guidance. Jason Kottke posted Chérie Carter-Scott’s 10 Rules for Being Human, among which one finds, “There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of experimentation, a series of trials, errors, and occasional victories. The failed experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that work.” I’m always conscious of the privilege in pieces like these (e.g. “Do what you love” makes less sense, to those living under threat of war or famine or in the throes of addiction or abject poverty), but here were in our privilege, and her points are well-taken.
§ Item 3: I don’t know anything about composer Vivian Fung but if this performance I stumbled across by the Jasper Quartet is any indication, I’ll know more about her very soon. Elegant, provocative, compelling music here.
§ Item 4: Do you know Mary Lou Williams’s “Zodiac Suite?” She composed it in the mid-1940s and it’s a wonderful piece of music (or, if you must, a suite of wonderful pieces of music), unique not least for it’s attempt to give musical voice to aspects of culture that are both physically verifiable, at least insofar as they are embodied in celestial constellations, and altogether spiritual, for lack of a better term.
Terrific music by an often-neglected titan in the world of jazz and modern composition. A great piano player, too. The version recently made available by Umlaut Records is arranged by Pierre-Antoine Badaroux and draws some new character from the work without abandoning its variety and dynamism.
§ Item 5: Did you forget I publish poetry? I won’t blame you if you did, or didn’t know at all. It’s not something I talk about enough but it’s been going on for a long time and continues currently with a marvelous book by Chicago-based poet Michael O’Leary called Out West. Its poetry orbits and mines the author's experience of being physically and spiritually (there's that word again) displaced from his Midwestern family and home to California for a months-long job. Powerful stuff. Purpose and beauty throughout.
§ Item 6: "I ceaselessly devote all my attention to the sounds that I have trouble grasping." -- Pascal Quignard, The Hatred of Music.