Hendrix 40 Years Later

Are You Experienced? During Black History Month in February, it seems it would have been appropriate to point out that this figure appears to have been the greatest Black electric guitarist of all time. For sheer soaring, manic intensity, his solos rank among the great virtuoso performances for their breathless desire to reach climactic power unparalled in modern rock.

From "Einsteinn's Dreams" by Alan Lightman

The world will end on 26 September 1907. Everyone knows it.
In Berne, just as in all cities and towns, schools close their doors.
Why learn for the future, with so brief a future?
One month before the end, businesses close.
At the outdoor cafes on Amthausgasse, people sit and sip coffee
And talk easily of their lives.
A liberation fills the air.
In the shadows of a street off Aarbergergasse, a man and a woman
Lean against a wall, drink beer and eat smoked beef.
Afterwards, she will take him to her apartment.
She is married to someone else, but for years
She has wanted this man,
And she will satisfy her wants on this last day of the world.
A few souls gallop through the street,
Doing good deeds, attempting to correct their misdeeds of the past.
Theirs are the only unnatural smiles.
One minute before the end of the world,
Everyone gathers on the grounds of the Kunstmuseum.
Men, women and children form a giant circle and hold hands.
No one moves.
No one speaks.
It is so absolutely quiet that each person can hear the heartbeat
Of the person to his right or to his left.
This is the last minute of the world.
A cloud floats in the sky.
A sparrow flutters.
No one speaks.
In the last seconds, it is as if everyone has leaped
Off Topaz Peak, holding hands.
The end approaches like approaching ground.
Cool air rushes by, bodies are weightless.
The silent horizon yawns for miles.
And below, the vast blanket of snow
Hurtles nearer and nearer
To envelope this circle of pinkness and life.
.
[Einstein's Dreams, a novel, reads like verse
and was published in 1995]

Considering You

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;
But THY eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall Death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st.
- So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
- So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
.
. From a sonnet, remarkably left untitled,
. by William Shakespeare. Inserted capitals by Jim.

"Soldier Of Love"

Sade's hits, like "Smooth Operator," "No Ordinary Love" and "The Sweetest Taboo," were ubiquitous through the 1980s and 1990s, purring out of radios and lending ambience to countless lounges . . . As far as the music business was concerned, Sade might as well have been in some cave after 2002, when she and her band finished touring for their 2000 album, "Lovers Rock." She vanished from stages . . .

. "I love writing songs," she said. . . . For Sade, reticence is a matter of both temperment and songwriting strategy, "That's the trick in a way, like conjuring," she said. "You've got to allow so much to go in there. But it isn't just your own, because then it's T.M.I."---too much information---"and when you listen to the song you're thinking of the person rather than your own emotions." "If it's too attached to the performer," she added, "it pushes you away, it's a bit repulsive. Because that's theirs---it's not yours." [The new] "Soldier of Love" is another collection of slow, pensive songs, mostly in minor keys, often pondering lost love and uncertain journeys. The band takes pride in being proficient but not flashy . . .

. When Sade talks about songwriting she turns mystical. "It's "alchemical," an "out of body experience," an attempt to preserve insights from the "etheric moment" between wakefulness and dreams. And with the band working together where they can record at all times, "we are able to capture that in the studio, to capture it technically in the right frame so it sounds good," Sade said. "If you're only making an album every 10 years, it better be good," Sade said. [She worked in secret] Eventually Sony Music executives did learn that Sade was working again, and wanted the album released before Christmas of 2009. That deadline passed; The band finished the last mix of "Skin"---a song about a reluctant breakup, with acoustic guitars and Sade's close-harmony vocals in the foreground as eerie electronics and percussion ping in the distance . . .

. "If it's like a llighthouse to guide someone past the rocks, that's a great thing," she said.

[music news from "A Reluctant Return to the Spotlight", from the Arts in the New York Times of Feb 7, 2010.]

Have You Been Here?

Choose one of the several rocks for sitting.