I've been through a lot, and I want to make something of it, musically.
Ten real things I found this week.
Series A5: Skyline, by Erin Garcia
1. Fred Hersch - Alone At The Vanguard
“I expected the virtuosity—Hersch, after all, is a living legend. What I didn’t expect, and what floored me, was how personal and transporting it all felt.”
In 2008, legendary jazz pianist Fred Hersch spent two months in a coma. When he regained consciousness, he could no longer play the piano.
Over years, he taught himself to play again, and in 2011, performed a week of shows at The Vanguard. The last of which, he recorded. When you know what he went through to play that night, it makes this concert all the more transcendent.
Related: Nardis and the curious history of a jazz obsession.
A Small Needful Fact
Is that Eric Garner worked
for some time for the Parks and Rec.
Horticultural Department, which means,
perhaps, that with his very large hands,
perhaps, in all likelihood,
he put gently into the earth
some plants which, most likely,
some of them, in all likelihood,
continue to grow, continue
to do what such plants do, like house
and feed small and necessary creatures,
like being pleasant to touch and smell,
like converting sunlight
into food, like making it easier
for us to breathe.
3. Nina Simone - How It Feels To Be Free
I wish I knew how
It would feel to be free
I wish I could break
All the chains holding me
I wish I could say
All the things that I should say
Say 'em loud, say 'em clear
For the whole round world to hearI wish I could share
All the love that's in my heart
Remove all the bars
That keep us apart
I wish you could know
What it means to be me
Then you'd see and agree
That every man should be freeI wish I could give
All I'm longin' to give
I wish I could live
Like I'm longin' to live
I wish I could do
All the things that I can do
And though I'm way over due
I'd be starting anewWell I wish I could be
Like a bird in the sky
How sweet it would be
If I found I could fly
Oh I'd soar to the sun
And look down at the seaThen I'd sing 'cause I know, yea
Then I'd sing 'cause I know, yea
Then I'd sing 'cause I know
I'd know how it feels
Oh I know how it feels to be free
Yea yea! Oh, I know how it feelsYes I know, oh, I know
How it feels
How it feels
To be free, Lord, Lord, Lord
4. It was our life, but larger than life’: how La Haine lit a fire under French society
When, in June 1995, Paris’s eastern suburb of Noisy-le-Grand began rioting after the death of a 21-year-old French-Arab in a police chase, politicians and the media asked if a film released the previous week, La Haine, had sparked the mayhem.
La Haine is still one of the best movies I’ve ever watched. I spent a year in France in 2001, just a few short years after Zinedine Zidane’s two goals in the 1998 World Cup final had given the entire country a moment of rapturous unification.
Watching La Haine helped me to understand the complex tapestry of modern France. It also helped me learn to speak the French I was hearing in real life every day. A French that was very different to the one taught in textbooks.
Sometimes life seems really short, and other times it seems impossibly long. But this chart helps to emphasize that it’s most certainly finite. Those are your weeks and they’re all you’ve got.
The COVID-19 lockdown has taken up 12 squares now.
“When it ain't that bad
It could always be worse
I'm running out of gas, hardly anything left
Hope I make it home from work
Well, so tired of being so tired
Why I gotta build something beautiful just to go set it on fire?”
Mac Miller died of a drug overdose in September, 2018. In January of this year, his sixth albums ‘Circles’ was released. I recently came across the song ‘Good News’ which he was recording around the time of his death, and combined with the visuals, found it particularly moving.
There's a whole lot more for me waiting on the other side
I'm always wondering, if it feel like summer
I know maybe I'm too late, I could make it there some other time
Then I'll finally discover
That there's a whole lot more for me waiting
That there's a whole lot more for me waiting
Reading the comments gives you a sense of what this song means to his fans.
7. Annie Lennox surprises Sting at the Polar Music Prize
On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star
Like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are
How fragile we are
How fragile we are
How fragile we are
John Watson runs the record label Eleven, and is probably most well known for managing Silverchair. I once had a conversation with him about the different motivations of founders and artists. He observed that for an artist, often the peak of creative satisfaction is writing a song that other artists admire.
I think that’s what makes this Annie Lennox performance so special. First, a transcendent voice. And second, the creative drive to deliver a song to a peer she so deeply admires.
8. Aretha Franklin - ‘(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman’
Carole King’s overwhelming joy at seeing Aretha Franklin cover ‘(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman’ is a sight to behold. It even brought a tear to Obama’s eye.
9. “To be really human is probably to be unavoidably sentimental.”
If Aretha made you feeeel, then that’s OK. Let DFW comfort you.
“What passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naïve and goo-prone and generally pathetic.”
― David Foster Wallace
10. BB King live at Sing Sing prison… is just extraordinary.
“I was told that some of you dudes don’t know anything about blues. So I came to swap some with you. I imagine quite a few of you dudes have the blues already.”
Most clicked link last week (16% of readers): The Three Sides of Risk, by Morgan Housel
“Well, let me take this to a dark and tragic place,” I said before telling a group of 500 strangers a story I hadn’t talked about in almost 20 years.”
Real quick:
Today’s newsletter is late because we had a family trip to find mushrooms with Blackbird portfolio company Fable Food. Delicious.
Not much else to say this weekend, so I’ll leave you with ‘Ocean’.
“The most important thing in living was to reach out and touch perfection in that which they most loved to do.”