moon traveller herald

Leonard Cohen is out of the stupa, out and about again. Thought about seeing him yknow. BUt the freight was heavy and it wasnt in the cards. So there I was. Yknow. And I saw a DVD at the Video Underground in Jamaica Plain. This DVD was a serious dissappointment. If I had time to rag on it I would. But suffice it to say that I liked Leonard's brief intermediary commentary. And I liked his one number [The Tower of Song] he did at the closing with U2. So go to try and buy it as an iTune. Nope, buddy, no luck, got to buy the whole soundtrack album to get that one. And why not? The parade of muscians in the movie proper are a bunch of turds that. taken together, do not make one shit. I shook hands I suppose with Leonard Cohen once..it was the Mercer Center in NYC, on an intermidable intermission waiting for the New York Dolls to wake up or hop up and go on finally. "I really like your music," I said. He was polite. Ok. So I am listening to the old birdon the wire's records...

Recently looking at some writing by Charles Simic on the poetry of the blues. Simic is a very lyrical, imagistic and accomplished poet, who also writes criticism. His steady stream of work has always impressed me, especially the reimaging work on the life of artist Joseph Cornell that he produced in 1992 [“Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell [NYR Book]. The pieces recently read were selections from Simic’s “The Unemployed Fortune-Teller: Essays And Memoirs” [U of Mich Press, 1994]. As Blues Poetry has at times been focused on my blog, I thought I’d riff a bit on it. The blues belongs to a specific time, place and people but it in turn transcends those limits, writes Simic. He continues: “The secret of its transcendence lies in its minor key and its poetry of solitude.” And yes, it was that odd key that first captured my imagination, I’d agree. It conjured up a world that could address one’s most elemental feeling – loneliness, let’s say. “Lyric poetry has no closer relation ...

Norbert Weiner [1894? -1964?] is definitely the father of cybernetics – and an influential thinker on the phenomenon of feedback. He was a brilliant mathematician, and, just like a movie math genius in his day and others, he was a little batty. A diminutive Belmont, Mass. Jew with a prince nez, Harvard grad and M.I.T. prof - he was absent of social artifice - as he would creatively and readily follow lines of thought and forgo the important social and practical niceties – unlike thus in manner to a lot of his competetive colleagues during the defining experience of World War II. Now, cybernetics - the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems - never became much of a science unto itself, except, for a while, in the Soviet Union. Some of its interests informed AI which never became much of a science either. But regulatory system study continues, and people continue to find out things, and they generally should thank Weiner for in some way setting the stage. My take...

ART: JAKE VAUGHAN If the Southside of Chicago were to suffer a catastrophe like Katrina, news organizations would deploy and the wider nation would soon learn more about its art and spirit, its sense of decor, and the Southside’s many frames of reference. But without such catastrophe, the nation is now finding the ways of the Southside. And this includes the ways of pickup basketball. It is game different than the professional game, For one, the pickup game has no referees – it finds its morals and regulations in a heated scrum that becomes consensus. Barak Obama found his true home on the Southside of Chicago, and now as he comes to Washington, the U.S. is discovering more about this essential part of the Second City, and how it comes to view the world. Climbing up the political ladder in Chicago, Obama developed a certain degree of street savvy. There as well he came to understand the ways of basketball. As it is in parts of New York City, basketball is one of the essential elements ...

Remembering last March, a year ago ... Cecelia’s mother Westein Boston Estrada died March 14 in Pasadena. Of course, my great debt to Wes is that she brought Cecelia into the world. She also let me into her world, which was a hard working positive place. Thought we'd post to last year's site eulogy for Wes's marvellous spirit. You can Read the story .

We put a bunch of family fotos up in the Hall. I filmed them. So we had a motion picture as well as snapshots.

“Some truththing has burst fake and cold upon me” - Gregory Corso, Mutation of the Spirit A box of glass eyes At the Harvard museum Glass eyes look at me with all the tenderness of The glass Sea anemone Or the violent topor of the glass squid Or the hissing imperative Of the nitrous spew scorpion The dusty whimsy Of the visible golden rod As well I see the eyes Thinking about me Like the pacing Dingos caged or The butterflies cased before Jerry Lewis comes dustingWaiting. When the bones in the Valey jump up and start Dancing. When Sammy Davis Jr waddles agin. The glassine eyballs too will fly To their souls’ brilliant pyramids For now there is The pleasant rest of chocolates In a box residing Eyes Made by Von Meyer The pipette wizard Visage manifestor Alchemist maker of the glass flowers people will visit Mélange, transparent, fragile Until the great day of rumbling. Of great spirit dancing Day of glass eyes leaving their box Their case and t...