New Year Rising
I am busy getting ready for some family and friends to come over to toast the new year together tonight…so this will be a quick one. It has been a crazy week that found me at The Vice President’s house in DC for a Rosh Hashanah celebration. I had helped the team putting it together (namely The Schusterman Foundation) through my work with Reboot, booking Regina Spektor to perform Alvenu Malkeinu (and a few of her own songs) before the comments from the Second Gentleman and the Vice President.
While I was in Washington, I had a free hour to visit the Phillips Museum, which identifies as the first Modern Art museum in the country. The museum boasts an incredible collection of many eras of modern art, from Goya to the present with a highlight being a “chapel” of Rothko paintings: a small room with each wall featuring a beautiful, giant Rothko. Sitting quietly surrounded by these big paintings boasting rich colors triggered a very calming experience for me…totally unexpected, but ultimately uplifting. Later on during the tour, I encountered Wolfgang Laib’s Wax Room, which a docent told me was inspired by the Rothko Room, which constitutes a small space covered everywhere by a layer of yellow-ish wax. The light reflects off its walls in a subtly muted way instigating a slight change in mood while standing within it. The Phillips Museum was just a great experience (and everyone who worked there just emitted great vibes as your walked from gallery to gallery).
More soon. L’Shana Tova. Happy New Year (and to those who do not observe Rish Hashanah, have a great weekend!).
Bay Area Readers: Come to Reboot's Tashlique event THIS ROSH HASHANAH Saturday (NOTE NEW, EARLIER TIME…SAME PLACE FROM LAST YEAR)
Every year for over a decade Tashlique brings together a huge band of horns and bag pipes and shofars to call in the Jewish New Year on the beach. The Sun Ra-inspired joyful noise created by The Church of John Coltrane, The Jazz Mafia, The San Francisco Bag Pipe Orchestra is a thing to behold. No sound like it. And their call marks the moment when we take all of the bad vaggum (to quote Captain Beefheart) from the previous year and throw it into the ocean. Saturday Sept. 16th, 3pm Chrissy Field East Beach (earlier time).
The Chris Strachwitz interview of THE STAPLE SINGERS
Thanks to Josh Rosenthal for sending me this incredible Staples Singers interview.
Roebuck Staples: I feel that they’re, folk music, and gospel music, coincide together. I feel that we’re mostly singing folk music. We’re mostly singing folk music all the time anyway. Lot of traditional stuff that we used, material that we used. Each to his own. If a blues singer … blues has a lot of soul, lots of soul in blues singing, and when you hear a person singing the blues, there’s something that he has to express himself. You can sing the blues, and you know what you’re singing, but it means a lot when you know. Just like gospel music. Our religion, we believe in the gospel, and we sing gospel. We know what we’re singing about, more or less, but a blues singer, when he’s singing the blues, he’s telling you something that has happened to him. That’s deep down. That’s coming out, and sometimes that throws off a lot of his burden if he can just…yeah. Throw if off.
I never knew the details of this case. Great article….might have to read the book!
What a crazy story. Cocaine Bear=fiction….cocaine shark=fact. My wife and I were wondering if the Orcas and the seals and the walruses are all hopped up too!
While sorting donations, a Goodwill manager found a human skull
…and I was only looking for records!
Jennifer Nansubuga to chair 2024 Commonwealth Short Story Prize judging panel
The author of Kintu, one of the great 20th century novels, most recently released a book of short stories…and now is a part of the Commonwealth Short Story prize.
San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel Concierge Spills on Lifestyles of the Rich and Demanding
Nothing here is shocking…but a great entertaining read.
Dionne Warwick reflects on career
With Doja Cat hitting the #1 spot this week with a song that hangs on the chorus of Dionne Warwick’s big hit Walk On By, the old soul singer is having a moment…and a reflection point.
No Encore
BY BETTY ADCOCK
I'm just an assistant with the Vanishing Act.
My spangled wand points out the disappeared.
It's only a poor thing made of words, and lacks
the illusive power to light the darkling year.
~
Not prophecy, not elegy, but fact:
the thing that's gone is never coming back.
~
Late or soon a guttering silence will ring down
a curtain like woven smoke on thickening air.
The audience will strain to see what's there,
the old magician nowhere to be found.
~
For now, I wear a costume and dance obliquely.
The applause you hear is not for me, its rabid sound
like angry rain—as one by one the known forms cease to be:
childhood, the farm, the river, forested ground;
the tiger and the condor, the whale, the honeybee;
the village, the book, the lantern. Then you. Then me.
