James > Recent Status Updates

So much of Dexter Gordon’s enduring greatness as an artist involved his unsurpassed abilities as an eloquent speaker and singer on his instrument. His inimitable introductions to songs—“suddenly . . . I saw . . . polka dots and moonbeams . . . all around a pug-nosed . . . dream . . .”taught me so much about the magical dance of poetry and melody that is at the core of the music that moves us most deeply. Todd Barkan

Bebop at Work

Deep down into life in the jazz lane reveals a community.

Deep down into life in the jazz lane reveals a community.

There are more people in prisons and jails today just for drug offenses than were incarcerated for all reasons in 1980.4 Nothing has contributed more to the systematic mass incarceration of people of color in the United States than the War on Drugs (pp. 60-61).

The summoning of a story, the water, and the object that made memory real as a brick: that was Conduction. What I might to with such power was not my immediate concern, so much as making it through that day. . . And when supper came, there was a part of me then that glowed bright as Conduction itself, for I knew that I would see Sophia there. And when I did, that evening, I felt myself waling in some​ other world.

The Conductions were frequent now . . . The world would suddenly and randomly fall away and moments later I would return . . . Every Conduction seemed activated by a memory, . . . [S]omething was trying to reveal itself to me that some part of my mind, long ago locked away . . . Conduction felt like the breaking and resetting of a bone. . . This no longer felt like freedom, not anymore.

The Conductions were frequent now . . . The world would suddenly and randomly fall away and moments later I would return . . . Every Conduction seemed activated by a memory, . . . [S]omething was trying to reveal itself to me that some part of my mind, long ago locked away . . . Conduction felt like the breaking and resetting of a bone. . . This no longer felt like freedom, not anymore.

The Conductions were frequent now . . . The world would suddenly and randomly fall away and moments later I would return . . . Every Conduction seemed activated by a memory, . . . [S]omething was trying to reveal itself to me that some part of my mind, long ago locked away . . . Conduction felt like the breaking and resetting of a bone. . . This no longer felt like freedom, not anymore.

The Conductions were frequent now . . . The world would suddenly and randomly fall away and moments later I would return . . . Every Conduction seemed activated by a memory, . . . [S]omething was trying to reveal itself to me that some part of my mind, long ago locked away . . . Conduction felt like the breaking and resetting of a bone. . . This no longer felt like freedom, not anymore.

The Conductions were more frequent . . . The world would suddenly and randomly fall away and moments later I would return . . . Every Conduction seemed activated by a memory, . . . something was trying to reveal itself to me that some part of my mind, long ago locked away . . . Conduction felt like the breaking and resetting of a bone. . . . This no longer felt like freedom, not anymore.

beautiful

Ah, the Arthurian legends told in the beautiful language.

What makes life worth living?

Early 1970's. . . There was a war going on . . .the United States versus Vietnam . . .war of consonance against dissonance, electric against acoustic, written against improvised, rhythm against melody, shock against decency, long hair against longhair, past against future, rock against folk against jazz against metal against funk against blues agaisnt pop against gospel against country, black against white.

We walked down Beale Street, where the baby Blueswssleft out howling. The street felt self-conscious--two blocks of music bars looking like a theme park, the Colonial Williamsburg of the one true American​ art (p.308).

On August 28, 1963, one-quarter of a million people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. They heard Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s "I Have a Dream" speech. This author observes that "not a single drop of blood falls for all the violence of four hundred years (p. 270)." As I read this novel, I guess that maybe each page contains an equally valuable insight that I hold dear.