If you haven't heard it listen to Out of This World, the opening track of Coltrane's self-titled release on Impulse! — Srap Tasmaner

Thanks for the recommendation, I hadn't listened to that album before.

Cool to read your personal jazz story.

I have mixed feelings about Sanders. Some of it I love (or loved; it was in my twenties and I'm now trying to remember the bits I liked), and some of it sounds weak and rambling. It could be that my expectations are wrong, as they were when I first listened to Ornette Coleman after having listened to Coltrane for a while.

Mason & Dixon is wonderful — Manuel

I agree. I've found it fairly easy to get back into the language, although I've forgotten some of the characters. I reckon I'll re-read it in the near future.

Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon.

I thought I ought to finish it before starting Against the Day. It's good to be back into it.

Ubik by Philip K. Dick. I think I'm finally beginning to appreciate his work.

Just got a copy of Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon. That's 1232 pages that will keep me occupied for a while.

Listening now :cool:

May you be restored to full auricular health very soon.

Being, as I am, a tad peeved at always hearing the opinion that music isn't as good as it used to be, I've been listening to some new and newish music.

"Invest in Breakfast" by Bent Knee:


"I'll Wait For Your Visit" by Daniel Rossen:


"Eraser" by Katie Kim:


"The Softness of The Present" by The Comet is Coming:


"Transformer" by Owen Pallett:


"In These Times" by Makaya McCraven:


"U Don't Have to Rob Me" by Domi and JD Beck:


"Diminished Returns" by Android Trio:


"New Life" by Nick Prol & The Proletarians:


@Noble Dust Agree? :wink:

Good stuff. Very modern sounding. At times it reminded me of Riley and Reich.

I've been getting myself back into jazz. I've always liked Wayne Shorter, not only for his playing but also for his composition. No matter how primary the improvisation might be in jazz, everyone likes a good tune, and the harmonic simplicity of the compositions in modal jazz just sounds great to me; I never really got into the busier styles of bebop (or hard bop), aside from Charlie Parker (for me, Miles Davis and John Coltrane come alive around the Kind of Blue era, when they move away from those crazy bebop changes).

This is from Shorter's album Juju and features McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones, and Reggie Workman, all from John Coltrane's group. But in contrast with sixties Coltrane, to whom he was often compared at the time this album was recorded, Shorter doesn't have the desperate searching quality that can get a bit much if you're not in the mood. And I do love Elvin Jones's drumming. I can't really get my head around it but the mercurial, impressionistic, responsive way he plays is amazing.



A couple of years later Shorter played in McCoy Tyner's band on one of my favourite albums, Expansions. Again, it has a similar modal approach, and again with good tunes. Shorter's playing is fantastic throughout.

This is "Peresina":



The album begins with a classic, "Vision". It's heavier and faster than, e.g., "Peresina", but still has the expansive, open and soaring sound that I like in this kind of jazz.



Those solos by Shorter and Gary Bartz, not least because of the help of Freddie Watts's drums, are really something.

@schopenhauer1

First, it's not just antinatalism: we do try to merge discussions on the same topics if they're happening simultaneously, or if they're asking the same questions or making the same points.

Second, the site guidelines specify that evangelists are not welcome on TPF. There is some leeway there, because some members of an evangelistic bent have been around a long time and are polite and thoughtful despite having only one interest.

Mikie had our full support.

Gong, "Wingful of Eyes", from the album Shamal.

I find the "Jazz and Classical" a bit restrictive, because a lot of the music I like doesn't quite fit in either. I'm going to assume that the other interesting kinds of music I like are welcome here--I'm coming round to the view that the other thread is too rock/pop-centric.

Fred Frith might be neither jazz nor classical, but his music has aspects of both. Today I've been listening to my favourite two of his albums. The first, the album Gravity, inspired by Eastern European folk music, has been called "avant-garde dance music", which gets the idea across; and the second, Traffic Continues, is a long multipart composition played primarily by the Ensemble Modern on oldy worldy orchestral instruments.





Also Pat Metheny's The Way Up

Don't worry: Agent Smith hasn't either.

There are a couple of sections in the book that I did find a bit tedious, but on the whole I thought it was intelligent, insightful, inventive, and, most importantly, playful and light, though not in a remotely stupid or trivial way.

:cool:

I know you have a cherished dislike of emojis, so I’ll translate: cool.

Yeh, I forgot you already responded to that post.

this sounds all post-modernist and self-referential and stuff — T Clark

Yep, I like that kind of thing.

It seems like it might be fun and funny, but I could also see it might be tedious and obvious. From your emojis it seems like it's not that. — T Clark

I loved it, but I gather that several other intelligent readers do indeed find it tedious and obvious.

EDIT: Incidentally, I posted something about it in the Shoutbox a few hours ago. It’s also relevant to your discussions of literary interpretation.

Current
Jorge Luis Borges, Fictions :up: :sparkle:

Recent
Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveller :up: :sparkle:
Christopher Priest, The Dream Archipelago :up: :sparkle:
Robert Silverberg, Downward to the Earth :up: / :meh:

Day in Autum

BY RAINER MARIA RILKE
TRANSLATED BY MARY KINZIE

After the summer's yield, Lord, it is time
to let your shadow lengthen on the sundials
and in the pastures let the rough winds fly.

As for the final fruits, coax them to roundness.
Direct on them two days of warmer light
to hale them golden toward their term, and harry
the last few drops of sweetness through the wine.

Whoever's homeless now, will build no shelter;
who lives alone will live indefinitely so,
waking up to read a little, draft long letters,
and, along the city's avenues,
fitfully wander, when the wild leaves loosen. — Tom Storm

This hits hard for me. It encapsulates my own mixed feelings about autumn. The third stanza expresses the feeling that it's now too late for projects, for any positive change. The year's production is done and all you can do is fitfully wander as life is gradually drained away around you.

Talking of poems about poems--and apologies to Moliere if this is off-topic--I recently read the "The Thought Fox" by Ted Hughes. It's a poem about writing poems, or about creativity, and foxes:

I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow
A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.

Nevertheless, and knowing that a complete bias free reporting is not possible, what sites are you all using? — Manuel

Meduza, Al-Jazeera, Reuters, AP, Deutsche Welle, France 24, BBC world news, NPR.

No source is free of bias, but some are more reliable and professional than others.

The Grayzone is a far-left news website

known for misleading reporting and sympathetic coverage of authoritarian regimes, in addition to its denial of the Uyghur genocide

Yes, they're tankies all right. But I'd like to address "far-left". While I'm not denying that it's a far left website in some sense, or even that tankies are far left, I'd like to point out that one can be far left but also against authoritarian regimes like China's or Russia's. It's sad that so many on the left fall for the pro-or-soft-on-Putin crap, but not all do.

Although it's true that people like Isaac do have a serious problem:

On the international left, almost nobody knows Russian, and even less Ukrainian; so when the left wants to know what is happening in Ukraine, it finds itself in a catastrophic situation. So as not to depend on the Western media, it is condemned to have recourse to the English-language propaganda of the Putin regime and to that of the so-called “anti-imperialist networks” which are pro-Russian (often “red-brown” or downright brown) — Zbigniew Kowalewski

This is quoted in an article on anti-Stalinist far left website libcom.org, which traces the history of red-brown alliances (alliances of the far left and far right). I'm not unreservedly endorsing the view that pro-or-soft-on-Putin leftists are necessarily in alliance with fascists, or that there's much of a link between, say, Aleksandr Dugin and Western Leftists, but the article is at least an example of a left-wing history and critique of the authoritarian tendencies on the left. (Though to be honest it's too boring and full of links to read in full)

This seems like a pretty good article on Grayzone and Blumenthal:

Grayzone, Grifters and the Cult of Tank

Jamal do you have any sense about sentiment in the Russian population? Some "resistance" seems quite well organised but no clue how big or small it is. — Benkei

My geographical location unfortunately gives me no special knowledge. I have a sense that people are increasingly scared (for example, many of my wife's colleagues originally came from distant parts of the country and have young male relatives there who now face the prospect of going to war), but I don't really know how people are thinking because those who openly express their opinions are usually either supporters of the war or critics of the government from an even more bellicose nationalist position. Opponents of the war and the depoliticized bulk of the population are mostly silent, or else they're in another country.

Having said that, there is a strong sense that debates are heating up. The mere fact that pro-Kremlin politicians are voicing their frustration and anger is probably a sign of a roiling mass of resentment and fear (there has been open criticism of the way the mobilization has happened).

But I don't know to what extent the mobilization is actually causing the hitherto indifferent majority to change their minds about the war. That may develop. So far the anger is about the fact that the government has messed up and might be losing control; they've always tolerated Putin because he's strong and stable.

The other thread has plenty of music that's not rock and pop. Maybe you've just been looking at the last few pages.

Be that as it may, I was just listening to "The Creator has a Master Plan" by Pharaoh Sanders.

Yes, the referendums will be used as propaganda. But that doesn't make them a real democratic referendum. And that's my point. — ssu

We know that's your point. It's such an obvious and uninteresting point that I question what you're in this discussion for.

Obviously the referendums are not legitimate.

I’m not a big fan of boethius’s view, but I have to say, your reaction to his statements of fact is just bizarre. Whether or not the referendum results are legitimate, they will be used by the Russian regime to justify further escalation of the conflict. This seems to be what boethius was saying, and I don’t know why you’d object to it.

A significant sentence in that article comes after it says that the authorities, according to law, cannot just round people up in airports, train stations, or on the streets, and send them to the front:

"Still, what’s unlawful is not always impossible"

But a lot of the commentary is that he seems to actually believe in Eurasianism and suchlike these days — apokrisis

I’ve found it difficult to tell. Vlad Vexler—who you linked to above and whose videos I think are pretty good—plausibly says no, Putin has no ideological commitment to that stuff; he just wants more territory (that he genuinely believes that acquiring Ukrainian territory is in some sense defensive is beside the point here, incidentally).

Putin has been struggling against nationalists for at least ten years. In the Russian context he’s centre-right, and wants to neutralise opposition from the left and the right, either by direct repression or appeasement.

This doesn’t contradict his use of nationalist rhetoric, but note that his variety of nationalism is opposed to the extreme ethnic nationalism that characterises his right-wing opponents. He’s always been careful to prevent anything that risks a breakup along ethnic lines.

But right now, extreme nationalist opposition to Putin is quite vocal in Russia, and is tolerated perhaps partly because it currently serves the aggressive aims of the regime, but maybe also because the regime will seem reasonable and moderate to the bulk of the population, who are not extreme nationalists.

Stating the obvious: Putin’s allergy to extreme nationalism does not imply that he and his regime are not imperialist or do not reject Ukrainian nationhood. Even more obvious: I am not defending Putin. The main point is that Benkei’s quote about nationalism doesn’t contradict apokrisis or ssu.

:lol:

Murun Buchstansangur.

No, but those who practice it according to their traditions, while the partnerships are not legally recognised, are not committing a criminal offence. Muslims are 10% (maybe much more) of the population and some of them belong to cultures in which polygamy is customary. Some Caucasian (from the Caucasus) and Mongol peoples practice it, I believe.

What are logic and mathematics? How are they related? How do they relate to human reason and to the world? — Amity

I've since realized that's an inadequate description for the category. It's also, perhaps primarily, for problems in logic itself.

Current
Christopher Priest, The Dream Archipelago

Recently read
Christopher Priest, The Glamour :up: :sparkle:
Gene Wolfe, The Urth of the New Sun :confused:
Robert Silverberg, The Book of Skulls :up: :sparkle:
Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake :meh:

Soon to read
Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveller
Thomas M. Disch, Camp Concentration
Michel Houellebecq, Submission
José Saramago, The History of the Siege of Lisbon
Vladimir Nabokov, Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle
Bob Shaw, The Palace of Eternity

Most interesting.

What are you getting at? Do you suspect that ’ is a tiny glimpse of the language of the universe?

I suppose you've got a bad epub conversion, one that couldn't deal with curly quotes.

A poignant moment

Hi everybody, I'm new to the forum so I'm dropping an introduction post. I hope I've found the right subsection for it. — Astro Cat

Welcome!

The Lounge is an okay place for an introduction but it's not as active as the main forum so you might not get many responses. Don't conclude that we're just unfriendly :grin:

Posting in the Shoutbox would work too.

Good to have you on board.

:up: