THE SIGNAL from David Katznelson
"Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through."-Jonathan Swift
The kids are back to distant learning for this week, and our morning started with the internet going down in our neighborhood, kicking me out of a zoom meeting and the kids out of their classes. Luckily, my Mom was able to have us over to her house (we have been podding this holiday season)…so I loaded the kids in the car…Kaya taking a math class over my phone while driving across the Golden Gate Bridge…and are camping out at my childhood home for the day. Asher is taking his zoom classes at my Dad’s old desk, Kaya at my brothers. I am in the dining room where I am very thankful we recently fixed up my Mom’s stereo system and brought over some John Coltrane
The complex Thanksgiving holiday is behind us, yet life continues to be complex…may it be a good week!
Revisit the moment Tracey Emin interviewed David Bowie through email
Since the recent announcement of Tracey Emin’s cancer scare, the artist has been very much on my mind. I stumbled upon this article about an interview she did with Bowie…and it is very much worth a gander.
NEW Library of Congress magazine-Nov/Dec issue
My favorite governmental institution offers a free download of their newest offering which features a presentation of compelling photos from their collection including the photo above and a classic Billie Holliday snap (as well as non-music centered photographs that are equally beautiful).
Painter Ewa Juszkiewicz Wants to Shatter Conservative Ideas About Beauty
This work reminds me a little of the sentimentality of Mike Davis, but of a different era of art history. Pretty incredible stuff…
This epic article….which I guess is a part one of three…is an incredibly researched yarn that not only tells the Hollywood story of the legend Fredric March, but also discusses the history of the KKK in Hollywood and on college campuses. Was March’s legacy wrongly tarnished over the past few years because of his loose connection with the Klan while at school? The author makes a compelling argument why it was…and in truth cancel culture has witch-hunt aspects that need to be addressed. What do you think?
Dead Stars
By Ada Limón
Out here, there’s a bowing even the trees are doing.
Winter’s icy hand at the back of all of us.
Black bark, slick yellow leaves, a kind of stillness that feels
so mute it’s almost in another year.
I am a hearth of spiders these days: a nest of trying.
We point out the stars that make Orion as we take out
the trash, the rolling containers a song of suburban thunder.
It’s almost romantic as we adjust the waxy blue
recycling bin until you say, Man, we should really learn
some new constellations.
And it’s true. We keep forgetting about Antlia, Centaurus,
Draco, Lacerta, Hydra, Lyra, Lynx.
But mostly we’re forgetting we’re dead stars too, my mouth is full
of dust and I wish to reclaim the rising—
to lean in the spotlight of streetlight with you, toward
what’s larger within us, toward how we were born.
Look, we are not unspectacular things.
We’ve come this far, survived this much. What
would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?
What if we stood up with our synapses and flesh and said, No.
No, to the rising tides.
Stood for the many mute mouths of the sea, of the land?
What would happen if we used our bodies to bargain
for the safety of others, for earth,
if we declared a clean night, if we stopped being terrified,
if we launched our demands into the sky, made ourselves so big
people could point to us with the arrows they make in their minds,
rolling their trash bins out, after all of this is over?
