THE SIGNAL from David Katznelson
“They call this war a cloud over the land. But they made the weather and then they stand in the rain and say 'Shit, it's raining!” ― Charles Frazier
I was of two minds to include the above quote in this newsletter. Right now, where we are today…at this moment…using the word WAR in any context is so damn loaded (the quote comes from birthday boy Charles Frazier’s COLD MOUNTAIN). And even though we have seen in the past week a movement of people taking to the streets in SUVs and Trucks to show signs of solidarity and force for a white supremest ideology carried by our commander and chief, we are not in a civil war by any means. But shit, it is raining.
I’m just sitting here hoping to get out of the rain. Although while it seems like no matter what happens with the election, as Dylan said, the hard rain is gonna fall.
But hope will get us through.
On 'Swirling,' Marshall Allen Keeps The The Sun Ra Arkestra Soaring Through Space
I missed Marshall Allen’s 96th birthday last week, but can still still shout with awe at the fact that this Sun Ra Arkestra veteran, now long-lived band leader, is still touring and putting out records. For those who do not know the work of Sun Ra…you are in luck. THERE IS MUCH GREATNESS to dive into and a legend to get to know, and the Arkestra is always a treat to see. This article features their classic tune Angels and Demons. I saw them play this at Glastonbury a few years back. They played it as a storm came over…they battled the storm with their joyous music and when the song ended, the last note resounded over the crowd, a hard rain (yup, again) came down so ferociously, that for the first time in 40+ years the folks at Glastonbury had to shut down their stages. What would have happened if Marshall and band had kept on playing!?!?
Ask a Curator: Francesco Bonami on the Guston Postponement, Deaccessioning, and More
A great read…and follow up…to the Guston story about postponing his exhibit because of museum’s fears around the reaction to his KKK caricatures. But Bonami has much more to say about other interesting subjects too…
I am a huge fan of DEAD SOULS and very much looking forward to these new translations of Nikolai Gogol stories. As usual, the New York Review Of Books offers a great preview.
Light
By C K Williams
Another drought morning after a too brief dawn downpour,
unaccountable silvery glitterings on the leaves of the withering maples—
I think of a troop of the blissful blessed approaching Dante,
“a hundred spheres shining,” he rhapsodizes, “the purest pearls…”
then of the frightening brilliants myriad gleam in my lamp
of the eyes of the vast swarm of bats I found once in a cave,
a chamber whose walls seethed with a spaceless carpet of creatures,
their cacophonous, keen, insistent, incessant squeakings and squealings
churning the warm, rank, cloying air; of how one,
perfectly still among all the fitfully twitching others,
was looking straight at me, gazing solemnly, thoughtfully up
from beneath the intricate furl of its leathery wings
as though it couldn’t believe I was there, or were trying to place me,
to situate me in the gnarl we’d evolved from, and now,
the trees still heartrendingly asparkle, Dante again,
this time the way he’ll refer to a figure he meets as “the life of…”
not the soul, or person, the life, and once more the bat, and I,
our lives in that moment together, our lives, our lives,
his with no vision of celestial splendor, no poem,
mine with no flight, no unblundering dash through the dark,
his without realizing it would, so soon, no longer exist,
mine having to know for us both that everything ends,
world, after-world, even their memory, steamed away
like the film of uncertain vapor of the last of the luscious rain.