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Angine De Poitrine

Jon and Megan

Brooklyn, NY

☀ / 103 ℉

New Post for the New Month

It’s heatwave summer in the city. There’s at least one song mashup to pursue in that statement but unless it offers reprieve from the current state of things, I can’t see how it’s worth the effort. As we near the 250 years milestone of our Declaration of Independence, it’s difficult to muster much enthusiasm for the festivities, such as they are. Here in New York there will be Tall Ships and fireworks and surely more celebration. Broadly speaking, we’ve had a good year: new mayor, an overall increase in sociability and regard for others ,¹ and, of course, The Knicks, whose prowess and victory have been shared by veteran basketball enthusiasts and non-fans alike. We deserve it. New York can be a very difficult place to live and if it seems like our good stuff is especially local in light of our shameful national and international scenes, I’ll take it. So from Brooklyn, New York City, here’s to wishing everyone a safe and healthy Fourth of July, looking forward to more agreeable, less conflicted, and peaceful celebrations in the years to come.

New Post for the New Month

It’s heatwave summer in the city. There’s at least one song mashup to pursue in that statement but unless it offers reprieve from the current state of things, I can’t see how it’s worth the effort. As we near the 250 years milestone of our Declaration of Independence, it’s difficult to muster much enthusiasm for the festivities, such as they are. Here in New York there will be Tall Ships and fireworks and surely more celebration. Broadly speaking, we’ve had a good year: new mayor, an overall increase in sociability and regard for others ,¹ and, of course, The Knicks, whose prowess and victory have been shared by veteran basketball enthusiasts and non-fans alike. We deserve it. New York can be a very difficult place to live and if it seems like our good stuff is especially local in light of our shameful national and international scenes, I’ll take it. So from Brooklyn, New York City, here’s to wishing everyone a safe and healthy Fourth of July, looking forward to more agreeable, less conflicted, and peaceful celebrations in the years to come.

☀

“Sail On, Silver Girl”

Sail On, Silver Girl

I’ve commenced my roughly quintennial reacquaintance with “Bridge Over Troubled Waters,” a song I believe to be irrefutably and uniquely powerful, but I can never get my head around the mix in the last section. I’m not sure where such a song is supposed to “go” but near-incoherence doesn’t seem quite right. But then, there I am, at the end of this breathtaking song, awash in cosmic reverb and a kind of asynchrony, and I think, “well, yes.”

The Weird Soul of Placeless America

I can’t remember how I found “American Diner Gothic” but anything with a tagline like “In the 2020s, the weird soul of placeless America is being born on Discord servers” will at least tickle my attention, and this piece, which folds alternately into anxious sociology and a kind of copped-out insider pov, turned out to be a wonderful read.

Guerrilla Girls in New York Review of Books

I didn’t know there were active offshoots or versions of the Guerrilla Girls but the original efforts remain inspiring. This kind of protest seems mostly impossible to me in our current moment. Too much info flows through specialized scrolling for their type of production and interference to touch anyone who isn’t already looking for it.

Photo Site Update

The photo site continues to be a work-in-progress. Which is to say, I continue to work on it and am making progress.

In Memoriam: Lieu

I made a memorial page for our cat, Lieu, to whom we said goodbye yesterday. Dearly missed.

New Photos Section

I’ve added a new photos section to the site. it functions independently from the main site in some ways, e.g. the site’s search function does not extend to the photos subsite. Neither does the “photography” tag search the subsite. The photos site also has its own RSS feed. I might learn to remedy these distinctions in the future but for now it’s like an attached garage for photos. I’ll be organizing them by theme or location and adding photos when I can.

Another Blue Chair

Brooklyn, NY

Blue Chair

Brooklyn, NY

Harmony > Unison

Fugitive Recording, Brooklyn, NY

Not yet sure why I’m enjoying Inkwell so much so I’ll just roll with it. Nice work, @manton! Looking forward to its further development.

Life Notebooks Assembly

Every year.

Corporate Bonuses Rise Like Smoke

Gowanus Canal

Brooklyn, NY

The Way Things Are, It’s More Than Sin

Court Street Last Sunday Night

Brooklyn, NY

Catherine Norris

Or Kathy Norris,¹ was a cellist here in New York for a few years in the mid- to late-1960s. She played on two of my favorite records, At Judson Hall by Noah Howard and Intents And Purposes by The Bill Dixon Orchestra.² She also appeared on a Dixon-produced record by The Robert F. Pozar Ensemble, whose namesake was also known as Cleve Pozar. I came across Cleve Pozar via this terrific piece by Hank Shteamer and some other info at 50 Feet of Elbow Room, and to be frank, Pozar is a whole rabbit hole of his own, worth pursuing but not so deeply with regard to cellist Catherine or Kathy Norris.

In a way, it’s no surprise that I can’t find anything about her or evidence of further recording sessions. To those of us who listen to Noah Howard or Bill Dixon or Cleve Pozar, these musicians are titans, progenitors of music that pushed the boundaries of both jazz and solo and ensemble improvisation. But they’re either major minor figures or minor major figures in the broader history of creative music. Their current stature is defined by their status as makers of nearly irretrievable music, makers of records lost to the fray of their original moment. That is, this is not music that was ever popular, and however much “everything” is available online, anyone who has spent anytime looking for these outside, fugitive recordings knows this isn’t true. Collector’s prices can be prohibitive for titles that were privately printed in small numbers, and unless a fellow traveler has made a rip available, there’s maybe YouTube and probably nothing. And if one is looking for a session player, there’s little or no chance at all of finding them elsewhere.

But for the moment, I wonder if Ms. Norris is easy to find but not where I’m looking, or if she left New York and stopped playing music, or perhaps she’s due for renewed interest and someone is working on it right now?

Noah Howard at Judson Hall

Favorite Spot

Brooklyn, NY