Wilfrid

I also use a coupe out of the freezer, which kind of makes cloudiness irrelevant. The glass itself becomes cloudy when it encounters room temperature. My strainer deals with shards of ice for the most part.

Every time.

The Gates, unforgettable.

The VU were that, but LOL The Stooges. Julius Eastman, If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?. I remember being intrigued by the New Yorker profile, but I guess I omitted to follow up by listening.

I’ve been working through my collection of art books, as another way of filling time. Of course, it makes me miss galleries, because while some beautifully produced catalogs really are a credible substitute for seeing works (Auerbach, for example), many aren’t. Anyway, I have this hefty two volume Picasso which I’ve never thumbed through from beginning to end before. The effect of doing so is absolutely overwhelming. There are the famous works, sure, but there are hundreds of works one barely remembers or hasn’t seen which would be the masterpiece of any other modern artist. This was one of those, oh he really was that good experiences.

This is valuable to me, because I’ve never written about the kind of music we’re discussing, and I don’t have anyone in my non-virtual social circle who is interested (not that I consider you virtual). It is helpful to see that some of the “classical” music I do like is in a similar space to free jazz and the avant garde reaches of rock. Rock? I hate “progressive music” as a phrase. We seem to have a lousy vocabulary for this, so I wondered if I was simply ignorant of the right term.

Northanger Abbey. Very funny.

Coolio.

Lee led to Marion Brown, Afternoon of a Georgia Faun/Djinji’s Corner, and although this sits in the free jazz category because of those involved the first of those two pieces also sits with what I think of as modern/avant garde classical. The second no, because there’s a frontal assault of saxophones. Sneak, do you have better vocabulary for what I’m trying to say?

I was wrong. I assumed this was a reissue of one of McKay's lesser known novels -- but no, previously unpublished.

Jeanne Lee was regrettably unknown to me, until I read the long profile in the current NYRB. So: Jeanne Lee and Ran Blake, The Newest Sound Around For all the comparisons with Billie Holliday, what a Brit hears in her pitch and timbre is Cleo Laine. (Wow, still going strong at 92.)

That's an erudite way of saying what I would say, which is that I shake cocktails because it makes them colder than stirring them.

Last of my ramps went into a braised beef shank dish last night.

I just discovered he died on May 12, aged 94. Made a lot of very good movies.

I finished Nunquam, which was at least better than Tunc, even though the story is familiar (The Future Eve, Bride of Frankenstein, etc). Poetry: Jack Spicer's Collected Books.