Ezra Klein: Why American Jews No Longer Understand Each Other

Ezra Klein: Why American Jews No Longer Understand Each Other

Cloisters

Manhattan, NYC

Billings Arcade, Fort Tryon Park

Manhattan, NYC

Morning Pages

Brooklyn, NY

Morning Pages

Brooklyn, NY

Carroll Gardens

Brooklyn, NY

Carroll Gardens

Brooklyn, NY

Thinking About Writing About the Salton Sea

I’ve been working on a piece about my March, 2018 visit to the Salton Sea since at least later that year. It’s not just that it’s an experience I’ve mythologized in my memory, but also that my excursion doesn’t reflect how much different Bombay Beach has become since I was there. It’s forced me to rethink much of what I had in mind for the piece, to tell of an experience devoid of the sort of artification the area has experienced in the years since then. I bring this up on the off chance that I eventually complete the thing. Perhaps this shift will be the bump I need to wrap it up. We’ll see.

Thinking About Writing About the Salton Sea

I’ve been working on a piece about my March, 2018 visit to the Salton Sea since at least later that year. It’s not just that it’s an experience I’ve mythologized in my memory, but also that my excursion doesn’t reflect how much different Bombay Beach has become since I was there. It’s forced me to rethink much of what I had in mind for the piece, to tell of an experience devoid of the sort of artification the area has experienced in the years since then. I bring this up on the off chance that I eventually complete the thing. Perhaps this shift will be the bump I need to wrap it up. We’ll see.

Third Avenue

Brooklyn, NY

Third Avenue

Brooklyn, NY

Ghazal by Agha Shagid Ali

Ghazal by Agha Shagid Ali | Poetry Foundation

The god of small things is not consoled in real time.

Friendly reminder: the brain is not a computer, the body is not a machine.

Friendly reminder: the brain is not a computer, the body is not a machine.

Funeral Home Garbage

Brooklyn, NY

Funeral Home Garbage

Brooklyn, NY

Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.

Brian Eno, A Year With Swollen Appendices

Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.

Brian Eno, A Year With Swollen Appendices

📷: solitude

📷: winding

📷: ephemeral

I was interviewed over at Crucial Tracks on the subject of my listening life, past and present. Includes a playlist of music discussed in the interview. Thanks to Jason for having me.

Crucial Tracks

I was interviewed over at Crucial Tracks on the subject of my listening life, past and present. Includes a playlist of music discussed in the interview. Thanks to Jason for having me.

📷: collective

📷: bridge

Barocas Sisters

My aunts, ~1943, Bronx, NY (l-r: Elinora, Diamante, Matilda, Rita)

Barocas Sisters

My aunts, ~1943, Bronx, NY (l-r: Elinora, Diamante, Matilda, Rita)

📷: decay

📷: bloom

📷: fracture

📷: hometown

📷: silhouette

📷: gather

Damon

Brooklyn, NY

Damon

Brooklyn, NY

📷: equal

📷: texture

📷: warmth

📷: blur

📷: tie

📷: twilight

📷: pathway

📷: hidden

📷: brick

📷: rail

📷: wood

📷: travel

To have a life or a place or a poem that is formless — into which anything at all may, or may not, enter — is to be condemned, at best, to bewilderment.

— Wendell Berry

To have a life or a place or a poem that is formless — into which anything at all may, or may not, enter — is to be condemned, at best, to bewilderment.

— Wendell Berry

📷: switch

📷: contrast

📷: reflection

📷: nostalgia

Records that made no apparent history other than their own, the faint marks they left on the charts or someone’s memory, might count for more than any master narrative that excludes them.

— Greil Marcus, The History of Rock ’n’ Roll in Ten Songs, 2014.

Inspiration: Greil Marcus

The History of Rock ‘n’ Roll in Ten Songs

Records that made no apparent history other than their own, the faint marks they left on the charts or someone’s memory, might count for more than any master narrative that excludes them.

— Greil Marcus, The History of Rock ’n’ Roll in Ten Songs, 2014.

📷: shadow

📷: curve

📷: tree

Dug this oldie out. I still feel most of it. zachbarocas.com/notes-on-…

Lieu and Theo

March 15, 2017

Lieu and Theo

March 15, 2017

Roman

Brooklyn, NYC

Roman

Brooklyn, NYC

Sebastian and Frederic

Brooklyn NYC

Sebastian and Frederic

Brooklyn NYC

The Cultural Society, a poetry-publishing imprint of mine since 2001 (!) is (finally?) firing up a newsletter. You can subscribe here if you like. We’d be happy if you did. You can see some of our books via the link at our site.

Closing up shop here for the time being. I’ll still be at zachbarocas.com if you want to stay in touch.

East Village

Manhattan, NYC

East Village

Manhattan, NYC

East Village

Manhattan, NYC

East Village

Manhattan, NYC

Dave

Brooklyn, NY

Dave

Brooklyn, NY

Cobble Hill

Brooklyn, NY

Cobble Hill

Brooklyn, NY

Might delete this (who would care?), but: ​

1. that we continue to discuss Trump’s victory in spite of contrary confession (Russian admission of meddling) and statistical near-impossibility (taking all of the swing states that have Democrat governors) is as baffling to me as the lack of investigation into the so-called assassination attempt(s). There is no chance that he won as many votes as are attributed to him without manipulation. ​
2. He’s already given away or sold so much of our national security and stability that the results are both stunning and vertiginous. I’m not sure this affects the current moment of his office and Republican collusion but I hope someone with power or influence sheds some light on at least these phenomena at some point soon. If we continue to legitimize this Presidency we will bury ourselves before we find our footing to change it.

Edward Hopper Light

Brooklyn, NY

Edward Hopper Light

Brooklyn, NY

My Mother’s Kitchen

Rochester, NY

My Mother’s Kitchen

Rochester, NY

Sales tip: do not try to keep a small business owner on the phone during business hours. It keeps them from their existing work and there’s very little chance your pitch will impress them more than the customer they’re already serving. Email them instead.

Coming up

Manhatan, NYC

Coming up

Manhatan, NYC

When it comes up, I still calculate grams to ounces conversion via weed bag increments. 28 grams to an ounce. Fruit of a misspent youth.

(S)enators are uniquely empowered to speak up. Also it’s their job, and they took an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, and the domestic enemies are in their face right now, and as obvious as can be.

Rebecca Solnit

Eid Mubarak!

Discos Fuentes

The American people have spoken – and we have heard them. Yes, indeed, there is a ‘new sheriff in town.’ Which has made it a very different ‘town’ — one that some of us no longer wish to visit. It is no longer obligatory. Thank you for your friendship and continued support. Let’s not give up hope for better times.

— András Schiff (via Alex Ross)

I imagine the Tesla protests are so much more effective than the social media exoduses in large part because their impact is seen and felt more widely and directly. In the end, leaving a platform or service for any reason other than one’s preference isn’t particularly helpful for the anti-Trump/Musk cause. I’m still glad I deleted my Substack account and deactivated or deleted my X and Meta accounts, but I’m not sure it accomplished anything.

The United States has long bought into the idea that freedom is endless expansion. But slouching across land simply because it is there uplifts neither the land nor the people on it.

via kottke.org

Looking at the past, I see, if I may oversimplify the picture, a mixture of failures and achievements. The failures were due to well-meaning but shortsighted thinking, to a pedestrian ideology; the achievements were due to a magnanimity of spirit, to the heaven in the heart.

Abraham Joshua Heschel, “Existence and Celebration”

Looking at the past, I see, if I may oversimplify the picture, a mixture of failures and achievements. The failures were due to well-meaning but shortsighted thinking, to a pedestrian ideology; the achievements were due to a magnanimity of spirit, to the heaven in the heart.

Abraham Joshua Heschel, “Existence and Celebration”

Church isn’t a showcase for saints, it’s a hospital for sinners.

Black youth, A Time for Burning

Church isn’t a showcase for saints, it’s a hospital for sinners.

Black youth, A Time for Burning

John’s of 12th Street

East Village, NYC

Sort of Floating

Manhattan, New York City

Sort of Floating

Manhattan, New York City

I appreciate the thought behind the spending boycott tomorrow but urge shoppers instead to spend at non-corporate businesses. I’m a small-business owner myself and we can’t afford a day of no customers. Hopefully, some people already have this in mind. Amazon and the like shouldn’t get any of your money anyway. every day might be a boycott day where they’re concerned.

I appreciate the thought behind the spending boycott tomorrow but urge shoppers instead to spend at non-corporate businesses. I’m a small-business owner myself and we can’t afford a day of no customers. Hopefully, some people already have this in mind. Amazon and the like shouldn’t get any of your money anyway. Every day might be a boycott day where they’re concerned.

The word “devotion,” as I am using it, need not refer to the embodiment of a specific religious form. Rather, it is the opening or the interruption that allows us to experience what is hidden, and to accept with our hearts our given situation.”

— Nathaniel Dorsky, [Devotional Cinema]

It’s been nearly impossible to write anything here. I say nearly but of course I mean impossible. The last few months — and more so the last few weeks — have left me baffled and stunned, despairing and frightened. My usual complaints against social media and the like seem to be both confirmed and irrelevant. Even my repeated use of both and or or or else don’t present sufficient range to join the commentary. I am not articulate in my anger, not eloquent or concise in my fear. And there are plenty of people out there who are suited to addressing these matters with passion and authority and they are a source of fleeting comfort and inspiration. I can’t keep pace with up-to-the-minute news in its form or content or temperament. I’m getting most of my news from print editions of the publications I read (The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, The New York Review of Books) and prefer the pace. I definitely don’t have a point here except that I feel I should crack the seal and post something, let anyone wondering know that I’m very much still out here, wishing you peace and progress.

Caspar

Brooklyn, NY

Situate It

How to make art:

1. Recognize an idea
2. Situate it aesthetically
3. Give it an identifiable form

Subway Yard

Manhattan, NYC

Voicemail from the library is always good news.

Matthew and Ruby

Brooklyn, NY

Little Sale Tags

The more I think about songs, the more mysterious they become. They stand in our minds as spiritual histories of certain times; they represent in their lyrics and lines of melody wars and other disasters, moral process, the fruits of experience, and, like prayers, the consolations beyond loss. Peoples are brought into being by them. They are a resource both for the loyalists defending their country and the revolutionists overthrowing it. Yet they are such short and linear things. Little sale tags on life. It is essential for their effect that they not go on and on. Not only their single-mindedness but their brevity makes them instantly accessible as no other form is.

— E.L. Doctorow

Dissolves Difference

The smartphone is what you get when the architecture of media collapses. It’s a black hole full of light: information supercompressed but radiant. In its singularity, it might be described as the first postmedia medium. Its circuitry dissolves difference, renders all content equal and equally disposable. Media becomes medium.

Nichlolas Carr

Thinking about the difference between knowing how to do something and knowing how it’s done.

‘President Biden Is Bowing Out After One Term. He’s Not the First.’ 🔗 Chris Cameron / nytimes.com

The Guy Who Did This

‘We’re All Trying to Find the Guy Who Did This’ Charlie Warzel / theatlantic.com

That Zuckerberg should look out over his kingdom and see it as “out of touch” isn’t a criticism of “woke” Democrats or a regulation-crazy government: It’s a criticism of the way he himself capitulates.

Best Of 2024

BrooklynVegan.com

My some-of-my-favorite-records-from-2024 list is live at BrooklynVegan. Thanks again to the editors for inviting me to take part.

Queens Local

Queens, New York, 2023