A year in reads: 2023

 

 

On the turntable:  Little Feat, "Little Feat"

Stuff from an Old Notebook #20

 

Random thoughts and ideas from the last year. 
 



-While pouring hot water for tea, my favorite cup gets a dark line down the side and the liquid bleeds through.  It is this kind of cold that defines Kyoto, I suppose.  And who knew porcelain cups could crack?

-Declaration of Independence as Dear John letter.    

 

-With all the bottled vitamins and pills, the medicine cabinet looked like Neil Peart’s drum kit.  

 

-Social media is like 1000 voices shouting in an empty room. 

 

-It was August, the month that Buddhist priests actually earn their living. 

-The delight I take in closing the shutters at night, always spending a few moments out on the darkened patio, the light now shut in by ancient painted wood. So many stars here. Their number is rivaled by the blinking lights of planes, of satellites, always in a hurry. Why such a rush, when surrounded by such beauty?  (France)

 

-Even in France I long for France.  Barely engaged with the outside world, didn't even dine out once.  I wasn't really in the mood for moneyed chic Riviera France.  I wanted quieter meals in the villages and towns up in the country.  But I knew from the number of ambulating tourists that I'd had to dodge in the narrow lanes of Ramatuelle that it wasn't the right year for it. Instead I passed long mornings out on the terrace and read, until the heat bullied me indoors.  My reading led me to Paris, and its writers and painters of the 1920s.  And introduced me to the familial bohemian scene at the Vila America, an hour's drive from here in Antibes.

 

-The S&M quality to election slogans:  "Allow me the privilege of being chosen to be your next abuser." 

-Near to where birds sang…

 

 

On the turntable:  The Shadows, "Reunited"

 

Reel Trouble

 

 

 Thinking about cinema on the 128th anniversary of its birth.  The so-called Seventh art has historically renewed itself every decade or so.  Origins in 1895, narrative in the 1910s, sound in 1929, color trickling in in the '40s, 3D and Cinescope (et, al) in the '50s, New Hollywood formally burying the studio system in the late '60s and '70s (further countered in the late 70's by Blockbusters, ironically ushered in by those same New Hollywood directors), video in the '80s, then digital and CGI in the early '90s (countered by a little blip of Indie film in the mid-decade).  

With no real innovations since, little wonder the product has grown so shoddy.  

 

On the turntable:  The Shadows, "Life Story."

On the nighttable:  Stephen Teo, "Wong Kar-Wai: Auteur of Time"

Sunday papers: Gustav Mahler

 

“Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.”

 

On the turntable:  Don Drummond, "Skandal Ska"

Now Rest, Ya Weary Bedouin

 

 

Last weekend's performance at the Writers in Kyoto bonenkai, with Gary Tegler on soprano saxophone. Many thanks to Gary for indulging my spoken word "solo," and apologies for the errant drumming here and there. 

 

The original piece can be found here:

https://notesfromthenog.blogspot.com/.../life-imitates...

 

 

On the turntable: Combustible Edison, "The Impossible World"

On the nighttable:  Ted Morgan, "Maugham: A Biography"