A PLACE FOR SIDEWAYS TRAINS OF THOUGHT
Listen to this (Dinah Washington- This Bitter Earth as she sang it in 1960 )for thirty seconds https://youtu.be/DKV2zYv1h9g?list=RDDKV2zYv1h9g Now listen to a few bars of Max Richter's "On the Nature of Daylight". Now hear how Max Richter combined them. I think you will listen all the way to the end.
Berlin, Altes Museum, Egyptian Section
Nabokov's most beautiful passage of prose
listen to the poem The art of conversation isn't rugby, I must remind myself at times, or even shooting grouse, deer, moose or peccaries If anything it is a bit like dominoes with tiles you didn't know you had, whose shapes do tricks with space and time .Lay down a one and six, and see... Continue Reading →
I have an irrational passion for phrase- books. Whenever I go to a country where I don't know the language I take along a phrasebook. I often take one with me even when I go to a country where I do speak the language. Sometimes in a foreign country I suddenly stop in the middle... Continue Reading →
Here are the first three chapters of my novel Vinylia. Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three
Some time ago I posted an article on my liking for random walks, in which I outlined an insanely complicated method to get to places you weren't planning to see. Recently I found another way to go to randomly explore the world, without getting up from my chair. A few days ago, as I was... Continue Reading →
I met a guy playing the kora on the street last night. It is such a beautiful instrument to look at and to listen to. Here's a description. I asked the musician whether he was a griot. He pointed to the card in front of him with his name and said "My father was a... Continue Reading →
(listen to the poem here) Sometimes arriving time-zonked, tweedle-kneed and nearly dumb in Frankfurt or in London or in some other airport where people seem to have been stranded many months ago on strangely molten furniture, I stumble into a counter which claims that it provides espresso. As I go grimly inching up the North... Continue Reading →
