Nov 9 2005
The CM Blog Index
Can we learn a blogspheric zeitgeist through blog searching? Here are some numbers.
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Nov 9 2005
Reporter Relates the News
Here’s a winning headline, if I ever saw one: “Local author puts thoughts on page.” It’s for an article on Leslie Miklosy, who was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and lives in Fayetteville, NC. Maybe the headline writer thought this one would be a little funny. What the alternatives? “Author Pens Words on Screen.” “Man Writes After Thinking.” “Flip Marlding Crab Winsting.” Hmm, the last one has a nice poetic ring to it.
Nov 5 2005
What Is Writing Like?
“I don’t write to be happy or to receive any sort of satisfaction, I write because I have to, because for me writing is like breathing.” — Mempo Giardinelli, Santo Oficio De La Memoria/the Memory’s Saint Job
“Rationally persuasive writing is like house painting: it’s all in the preliminaries.” — Joel Jay Kassiola, San Francisco State University
“For me, writing is like sledding down a wide, steep slope. You can carefully pick your launching point, but often you don’t know exactly where you’ll end up until you’re already halfway down.” — Greg, The Writing Center, UNC-CH
“Writing is like walking in a deserted street. Out of the dust in the street you make a mud pie.” — John LeCarre, Absolute Friends
In case you forgot, whether you care or not, November is National Novel Writing Month.
Nov 4 2005
The Greatest Saxophone Solo
For gifts and all things jazz, turn to Jerry Jazz Musician. I was told of this site, online since 1998, when Brandywine Books was added to a page of literary and jazz blogs. Maybe Collected Misc. will be added too when you click through these links to read more.
The site publishes music opinions in its monthly “Reminiscing in Tempo,” which currently asks a handful of people in the world of jazz, “What is the greatest saxophone solo in the history of jazz?” Answers vary.
Composer and saxophone musician Salim Washington replies, “The obvious answer is that there is no such thing. There can be no such thing as the greatest saxophone solo, for several reasons. First, after a certain point the level of excellence achieved by some artists is so great, that the profundity of their contribution to the record of human feeling and experience renders it meaningless to subject their work to an hierarchical evaluation that is more akin to a sporting event than an artistic endeavor.” But he does choose John Coltrane’s 1963 “I Want to Talk About You.” The members of The Bad Plus also pick that song, but from a different performance.
Coleman Hawkins’ “Body and Soul” comes up a few times. Terry Teachout chooses Charlie Parker’s “Parker’s Mood,” and David Amram picks Charlie Parker’s “Night in Tunisia.”
About that first Hawkins piece, Kitty Margolis says, “It was so influential in my understanding of this music and specifically how a solo can be so logically constructed yet have an utterly transcendent effect. As a singer, hearing the original alongside Eddie Jefferson’s lyric version helped me connect the dots between voice and wind instrument, a concept which has informed my work ever since I started to grasp it.” But she concludes her opinion on sax solos with “The ‘greatest’ solo is the favorite one you’re listening to right now.”
Oct 31 2005
As I Was Saying
Alan of Thinklings points out some humorous statements by theologian Herbert McCabe:
McCabe was a Dominican priest, theologian, and editor of New Blackfriars and author of God Matters. He lived from 1926-2001, and was shaped by the 1960′s, with its clashes over situation ethics and the rise of liberation theology. Unfortunately, he was much taken with the latter, although he fought unwaveringly against the former. He would not tone down any expression of his convictions. His radical politics got him into trouble, but he was unrepentant:
He was sacked as editor of New Blackfriars in 1967 for remarking in one of his widely anticipated monthly editorials that the church “is quite plainly corrupt.” After his reinstatement three years later he began his first editorial, “As I was saying before I was so oddly interrupted.”
I remember that John Calvin did something similar after he returned to Geneva, having been kicked out due to a firm hold on Biblical doctrine. He had been in the middle of a long exposition of one of the books of the Bible, and when he returned after several years, picked up the exposition as if he’d never left. I wonder if he said, “You may remember in my last sermon . . .”
