../melody in chaos
“So Tom Cruise enjoys the intimate company of a grapefruit cocktail?” Luna piped up, inquisitive, as we lingered over some new sidewalk scrawl on 4th Avenue.
We had just walked through an adjacent park that contains our neighborhood’s biggest playground, a full soccer pitch, 8 handball walls, a skate park, a dog run, six basketball courts, and two small community gardens.…
continued...
This week’s theme: Dinners and a Movie
Wendy Carlos’s follow-up record to her inspired and celebrated Switched On Bach, The Well Tempered Synthesizer comes with Glenn Gould’s proclamation on its rear cover: “Carlos’s realization of the Fourth Brandenburg Concerto is, to put it bluntly, the finest performance of any of the Brandenburgs – live, canned, or intuited – I’ve ever heard.”…
continued...
Twice in the early 2010s, I lost all my drafts in the Twitter app after running my phone through TSA airport X-ray conveyors. So I began to write potential tweets in an MS Word file, away from the app. I appended new drafts to the same file for a few years.…
continued...
Trendy is the last stage before tacky.
— Karl Lagerfeld
True style is timeless. In theory, there’s no such thing as “poor” style.
You either have style or you don’t.…
continued...
Every year since 2018 (save 2020), Cat & I have returned to her hometown of Chicago to visit her father, Steve, her step-mother, Marcia, her sister, Ellen, and a rotating cast of cousins and old friends. They’ve been in their house in the Beverly neighborhood since 2002. Prior to that, they had a house in Hyde Park, off the U of C Midway, where Cat grew up.…
continued...
TV Series Premise: “Karma”
Massive text messaging glitch, across every SMS platform, sends “Hey! 👋” to every person everyone has ever texted with – from spouses to kids to Amazon drivers to old lovers. As a result, everyone also realizes the last time they interacted.
All these last times will be recalled anew, and all will find out who never erased their number.…
continued...
There are no sorrows
Nor joys either
In our life.
So let us learn,
Thoughtlessly wise,
Not to live it,
But to flow down it,
Tranquil, serene,
Letting children
Be our teachers
And our eyes be
Filled with Nature.
—
Fernando Pessoa
Master, serene are
Dec 1914
One of my favorite spins of 2022 was Pigments, a collaboration between neo-classical composer Spencer Zahn and electro-funk-soul artist Dawn Richard. Zahn and Spencer’s interplay unfolds with each listen, and escalates tracks like Cerulean and Saffron into time-stretching cosmic slurries, with not a shred of bombast, ennui, or self-consciousness. Different parts will recede or dominate depending on your context.…
continued...
Eastern Wall of the Richmond Police Department Headquarters
Grace and Jefferson Streets
Richmond, VA
20230624.0735
Sculpture
“Thin Blue Line,” Michael Stutz (2005)
Public Art Commission
Plaque
“Site Of The House In Which
Samuel Preston Moore
Surgeon General
Confederate States of America
Lived From 1863 To 1865
—
This Tablet Is Placed By The
Confederate Memorial Literary Society A.D.
Spotify playlist #105 for June 2023 reflects movements in space, internal and external:
listening to jazz with my father on the lanai
stories of my parents’ meeting in 1969
my mother’s covid while recovering from a broken hand
my father’s pneumonia while recovering from covid
the WGA strike and potential SAG-AFTRA walkout suspending Cat’s latest gig, extending our trip by 3+ weeks
finding peace between the days of Luna’s now kinda-regular bi-weekly epileptic seizures
the kinetic calmness in the chaos of a tennis court
weekly quests for the perfect mango
the road from Florida back to NYC
Not bummed to be back in NYC, but I don’t return home after being away with unbridled excitement anymore, either.…
continued...
Digital currencies are formed of energy. Every eCoin is, in essence, nothing more (or less) than captured electricity. Inasmuch as the energy required to “mint” an electric dollar is trapped, never to be re-released into the world as actual power, the value of it is measured against what its captive energy otherwise could have powered.…
continued...
…Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.
Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road (1957)
In December 2020, Cat & I decamped to Lowell, Massachusetts for almost 9 months as she costume designed the return of the Showtime series Dexter.
Our temporary home, give-or-take 4 hours north of New York City, was a charming, modern 1-bedroom 5th Floor apartment in a 75-unit rental complex called the Thorndike Exchange.…
continued...
AI doesn’t know from dumb luck or smart devices. It has no reference point on which to center its intelligence or judge its progress. It doesn’t know from vacations or personal life / work life balance. It doesn’t exist in a linear universe.
In time, it will assume we live in its universe, flipping the script.…
continued...
Down in Florida now for a couple, maybe a few weeks, to visit my parents and retrieve our car to drive back to NYC. We expected to be on the road back already, because Cat’s latest job on Amazon’s The Peripheral has enough scripts locked to shoot a few episodes, despite the WGA strike.…
continued...
All episodes here:
https://westy.substack.com/t/tennis
Intention is always more important than outcome.
– Winston Ramsay –
The internet from the start offered a grand social paradox. Everything’s apart together, but also together apart. And everyone’s alone together, but also together alone.
Fwiw, pandemic lockdowns aligned our interactions in the physical world to how we interact with each other on the internet. Everyone alone together, and together alone.…
continued...
Rainy NYC Saturday weekly post that skipped a week. This set’s theme: Feeling 6 decades time in 6 days, in the good way.
:^D
People Under The Stairs “O.S.T.” (2002) was Thes One and Double K’s 3rd release, & one of my fav 2000s spins in any style. Over a master class in sampling, a surgical economy of rhyme here creates negative space that also flows.…
continued...
Spotify Playlist #104
For ~10 years going, I launch a playlist the 1st week of a month (sometimes bi-monthly, originally seasonally) to collect tracks that inspire me. It’s not always “where my head is at,” so much as “where my ears are at” and “what’s commanded my attention.” As always, however, we cast a wide wide net.…
continued...
