"I WAS THE MORNING AFTER..."

LEONARD COHEN BORN SEPTEMBER 21 1934
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE

At North Farm
Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you,
At incredible speed, traveling day and night,
Through blizzards and desert heat, across torrents, through narrow passes.
But will he know where to find you,
Recognize you when he sees you,
Give you the thing he has for you?

Hardly anything grows here,
Yet the granaries are bursting with meal,
The sacks of meal piled to the rafters.
The streams run with sweetness, fattening fish;
Birds darken the sky. Is it enough
That the dish of milk is set out at night,
That we think of him sometimes,
Sometimes and always, with mixed feelings?

John Ashbery
born july 28 1927

CY TWOMBLY RIP

i think it may be impossible to understand what visual artists were faced w/at the end of the 20th century after pollock & warhol had answered picasso & duchamp. i'm not even sure a lot of them knew that pollock & warhol had answered the old man & the scamp. pollock's solutions seemed more of a cul de sac, while warhol seemed to open a lot of possibilites while closing off where & what an "artist" might do to "create art". the bone had really been gnawed nearly bare.

i think ellsworth kelly & cy twombly had some answers that kept them operating in an area that pushed irony away & still embraced art & the project of the artist. tracking the evolution of "olympia" from manet through dubuffet to twombly is a way of getting a sense of how visual artists approach the issue of tradition, innovation, & how working both produces a real & true advance.



http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/06/arts/cy-twombly-american-artist-is-dead-at-83.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries

FROM THE CORNER TO THE BLOCK

it does not seem a distant memory seeing carrie dancing to the dirty dozen brass band down in sarasota at the ringling art museum & thinking that this music would lift new orleans & it's incredible music scene up into the big time. at the time, james booker was still alive & katrina existed only as an abstact possibility in a world of seemingly deeper & clearer certitude.

booker died soon after & the dozen never exploded onto the music scene the way that anyone & everyone just knew they would if only anyone & everyone could see them perform live. we also know now that possibilites spin through the certain world in endless combinations but every so often they manifest in astonishing ways both good & bad.

before all that, right about the time carrie was dancing away, a group of young black kids started playing together in the treme neighborhood. they would take the lessons of the dirty dozen & move them further into contemporary music & on into the 21st century. the marching brass bands of new orleans would begin to incorporate funk & modern jazz & hip-hop while working within the brass band tradition. following the great modern dictum, they were making their tradition new. in fact, they were making "it out of a mouthful of air."

just last year, nan & i got to see the rebirth at the ogden museum of art in new orleans. to say that they rocked the joint is indulging in understatement. what struck me most about their nearly flamable performance was the mix of the crowd. high school kids, tulane preppies, businessmen & the blue bloods of new orleans high society were not just tolerating the rebirth while sipping cocktails; they were dancing their asses off.

i suppose i could write more here about the need to see new orleans music live but i'll save that for another time. right now, i just want to salute the rebirth on their 28th birthday. most marriages don't last that long nowadays.

we're hoping to see them in a second-line next year during mardi gras.

PORCHETTA PLEASE

apparently, this dish is all the rage at the moment. making it in the tight confines of our ridiculous apartment kitchen made it a little harder to knock out than usual, i suppose, but i'm still not following why it's considered such a daunting task.

i brined the pork belly, cooked it slow & low, & then, let it sit in the refrigerator weighted down over-night. the next day, i wrapped the pork loin in the pork belly &, once again, cooked it low & slow. when done, the pork got to spend another night in the fridge, this time unweighted. this made it easy to slice into perfect serving pieces that i crisped in a skillet. i guess that's a lot of time consumed(though most of it didn't require me to be engaged at all)but the end result is worth it.

this was ann's dinner just prior to the chaos that opened up to swallow us both alive. there were other variations on this theme & then there were the porchetta sandwiches which she took on the plane back to north carolina. so a little work went a long long way, both literally & figuratively.

GIL SCOTT-HERON RIP

THE PALE KING

ROBERT ZIMMERMAN, 70 YEARS OLD TODAY.
"MAY YOU STAY FOREVER YOUNG"


"More than thirty years ago, when a world now most often spoken of as an error of history was taking shape and form--and when far older worlds were reappearing like ghosts that had yet to make up their minds, cruel and paradisiac worlds that in 1965 felt at once present and impossibly distant--Bob Dylan seemed less to occupy a turning point in cultural space and time than to be that turning point. As if culture would turn according to his wishes or even his whim; the fact was, for a long moment it did." GREIL MARCUS