Stories To Read While The World Is On Fire
“Show us not the aim without the way. For ends and means on earth are so entangled That changing one, you change the other too; Each different path brings other ends in view”― Arthur Koestler
Back in 2009, when Barb and I had just moved in together, she agreed to work on a boxset I was co-producing around Alan Lomax’s trip to Haiti in the 1930s. It was a massive undertaking: 10 CDs of music, each representing a different style recorded by Alan on the trip during a time that Haiti was a multi-cultural hub in the Atlantic, each song painstakingly restored by equipment similar to what the CIA uses to isolate conversations from a crowd of people. I have been working on it for a few years, and needed help figuring out what it would look like.
The two boxsets that we focused on when dreaming of what the Alan Lomax in Haiti boxset could look like were the Charlie Patton Screamin’ and Hollern’ The Blues on John Fahey’s Revenant label, and the epic Goodbye, Babylon gospel overview that Dust-to-Digital had released. Those two box sets to us were of the highest of standards of which to model our work. Within a week of taking on the project, Barb came up with a beautiful cover, color scheme and concept for the box that resulted in an absolutely amazing reissue that was nominated for two Grammys. And while we lost in both categories in which we were nominees (one to the Beatles) something else even better came from the project.
Shortly after the Haiti box came out, Barb was contacted by Lance and April Leadbetter of Dust-to-Digital records. They had seen the Haiti box and wanted to talk to Barb about designing projects for them: the folks we had revered had come callin’. Since then, Barb has worked on many incredible projects for April and Lance, who have become our friends. The box sets Barb has worked on have been nominated for Grammys in the historical category many a time, with even a few wins, the most recent being the Voices of the Mississippi boxset documenting William Ferris’ life work of recordings.
Last year, Dust-to-Digital was nominated for a boxset they had only released digitally (a first for the category), another that Barb had designed called Excavated Shellac, which is a curated deep dive into international music recorded and released dating from the early turn-of-the-last century to the 1960s. The music is just incredible—with sounds that have been truly excavated (rarely heard before) offering a new look into the history of world music…and the visuals (along with the fantastic liner notes and annotations) really helping to bring the listening experience to life. Dust-to-Digital decided to release a physical copy of Excavated Shellac, which Barb has been working on with them, and a few days ago announced its release as well as did an “unboxing” of the item, to peacock the release’s style and beauty.
The announcement was made on their new substack newsletter, The World Of Dust-To-Digital, which I encourage all of you to check out. Knowing Lance and April, the newsletter will be chock full of incredible stories around the music they are unearthing, around artists they are interested in and past projects they have worked on through their label and through their non-profit Music Memory. Lance and April are crown jewels in the field of music appreciation, research and restoration and I am looking forward to digging into their newsletter.
Happy Labor Day! Happy Birthday +2, Mom! Stay cool (damn is it hot here)!
The super-rich ‘preppers’ planning to save themselves from the apocalypse
Douglas Rushkoff uncovers the dystopian ambitions of the uber-rich as they plot their future after destroying our world with their businesses: “Tech billionaires are buying up luxurious bunkers and hiring military security to survive a societal collapse they helped create, but like everything they do, it has unintended consequences”. A horrifying and compelling read.
Small Faces’ Kenney Jones: “I feel like the keeper of the flame”
Be warned: there is a fire wall around most of this article, but the stuff that IS there for the reading is great, including commentary by Peter Frampton. Ah, Kenny Jones: I learned about you as a kid when you tried your best to take over for Keith Moon of the Who only to learn later that you were a king in your own right with the great Small Faces.
Egregious viceroys: the Uzbek impact on chess
The surprise winner of the most recent world rapid chess championships was the new 17-year-old superstar Nodirbek Abdusattorov from Uzbekistan…Uzbekistan has scarcely figured previously in the annals of chess cartography, but in a sense (the footballing analogy) chess has now “come home”. During the Golden Age of Islam around a thousand years ago, the Uzbekistan region was the cradle of that great Moslem philosopher known in the West as Avicenna….”
When David Crosby saw the great John Coltrane perform in a toilet
“He never stopped soloing. He’s still soloing. And he’s like burning in this bathroom. He doesn’t even know I’m there. He never even saw me. I’m thinking, ‘I’m gonna slide right down this tile’. I’m thinking, ‘my nose is gonna open, and my brain is gonna rush out onto the floor’. It was so intense. I never heard anyone be more intense with music than that in my life”.
A Tour-de-Force Moon Shin Retrospective in Seoul Highlights One of Korea’s Most Underrated Artists
“Seoul’s Korea Art Week is in full swing, and one of the best shows to see during it is a recently opened Moon Shin retrospective at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea’s Deoksugung branch. Marking the centennial of Moon’s birth, this retrospective incisively charts the uncategorizable work of an artist ‘who took up a challenge in the new world in the midst of tumultuous times in Korea,’ as Hong Nam-pyo, the Mayor of Changwon City, writes in a foreword the exhibition catalogue….Put simply, the show is a stunner. It’s a testament to the true tour de force of an artist that Moon was.”
How To Paint Sunlight
By: Lawrence Ferlinghetti
“I asked a hundred painters and a hundred poets
how to paint sunlight
on the face of life
Their answers were ambiguous and ingenious
as if they were all guarding trade secrets
Whereas it seems to me
all you have to do
is conceive of the whole world
and all humanity
as a kind of art work
a site-specific art work
an art project of the god of light
the whole earth and all that’s in it
to be painted with light
And the first thing you have to do
is paint out postmodern painting
And the next thing is to paint yourself
in your true colors
in primary colors
as you see them
(without whitewash)
paint yourself as you see yourself
without make-up
without masks
Then paint your favorite people and animals
with your brush loaded with light
And be sure you get the perspective right
and don’t fake it
because one false line leads to another
And then paint the high hills
when the sun first strikes them
on an autumn morning
With your palette knife
lay it on
the cadmium yellow leaves
the ochre leaves
the vermillion leaves
of a New England autumn
And paint the ghost light of summer nights
and the light of the midnight sun
which is moon light
And don’t paint out the shadows made by light
for without chiaroscuro you’ll have shallow pictures
So paint all the dark corners too
everywhere in the world
all the hidden places and minds and hearts
which light never reaches
all the caves of ignorance and fear
the pits of despair
the sloughs of despond
and write plain upon them
“Abandon all despair, ye who enter here”
And don’t forget to paint
all those who lived their lives
as bearers of light
Paint their eyes
and the eyes of every animal
and the eyes of beautiful women
known best for the perfection of their breasts
and the eyes of men and women
known only for the light of their minds
Paint the light in their eyes
the light of sunlit laughter
the song of eyes
the song of birds in flight
And remember that the light is within
if it is anywhere
and you must paint from the inside
Start with purity
with pure white
the pure white of gesso
the pure white of cadmium white
the pure white of flake white
the pure virgin canvas
the pure life we all begin with
Turner painted sunlight
with egg tempera
(which proved unstable)
and Van Gogh did it with madness
and the blood of his ear
(also unstable)
and the Impressionists did it
by never using black
and the Abstract Expressionists did it
with white house paint
But you can do it with the pure pigment
(if you can figure out the formula)
of your own true light
But before you strike the first blow
on the virgin canvas
remember its fragility
and remember its innocence
its original innocence
before you strike the first blow
Or perhaps never strike it
And let the light come through
the inner light of the canvas
the inner light of the models posed
in the life study the inner light of everyone
Let it all come through
like a pentimento
the light that’s been painted over
the life that’s been painted over
so many times
Let it all surge to the surface
the painted-over image
of primal life on earth
And when you’ve finished your painting
stand back astonished
stand back and observe
the life on earth that you’ve created
the lighted life on earth
that you’ve created
a new brave world”
