The READIN Family Album
Me and Sylvia (April 4, 2002)

READIN

Jeremy's journal

Finding a way to talk about the reading experience is, I've realised, the greatest pleasure of writing; where it ends is of no importance.

Stephen Mitchelmore


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Thursday, February 14th, 2013

posted evening of February 14th, 2013: Respond
➳ More posts about Pretty Pictures

Sunday, February 10th, 2013

🦋 Lonesome Nickel

In later years music historians would speak of the Lonesome Nickel tapes as the birthplace of the Mountain Station sound.



Lonesome Nickel:


Circle be unbroken -- traditional
Green Eyes -- Coldplay
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll -- Bob Dylan
conversation
"ten little monkeys" jam
500 Miles -- traditional
God-damn Lonely Love -- Drive-by Truckers
Lonesome Nickel -- Jeremy Osner
Lonesome Nickel 2:

That's Alright, Mama
Clean Break
Lonesome Nickel

posted afternoon of February 10th, 2013: 6 responses
➳ More posts about Mountain Station

Saturday, February 9th, 2013

🦋 What lovely resonance!

Have never played with the capo so high up the neck before -- it is unexpectedly liberating.

posted afternoon of February 9th, 2013: Respond
➳ More posts about Guitar

🦋 Jade Dragon Mountain

Everybody should go listen to this song by Steve Espinola. It is Steve's rendering of the Suicide Lovers' funerary scroll from the Dongba religion:
According to a 1955 assessment of the Library's manuscripts for the Bulletin of the Institute of Ethnology Academia Sinica (Taipei, Taiwan, 1958) by art historian Li Lin-Ts'an, "The Yunnan Province was famous for Yunnan pines. Their wood, after being set on fire, liberates a soot which is easy to collect. This soot, when mixed with some glue and water, forms an excellent ink. During winter, the leisure season for farmers, the [Naxi] sorcerers, without any farming work to do, sat down by their fireplace and using a bamboo pen dipped it into their ink while humming to themselves, and they began to write a Sacred Book for pleasure or for some special festival usage."

Mr. Li wrote: "The books for sacrifices to those who committed suicide from frustrated love are the most romantic and poetic of the [Naxi] people. The [Naxi] youth all believe that at the upper part of the Jade Dragon Mountain, just under the white snow peaks, there is a wonderful land, with thousands of kinds of flowers covering its fields, called 'The Kingdom of the Suicide Lovers.' If any couple, who because of love frustration, climb to this wonderful place and kill themselves, they will never part from each other again and will keep their youth and beauty forever, and will be happy always."

Mr. Li reported that 440 of the volumes in the Library's collection were for funeral ceremonies. "This great number is due to the fact that the [Naxi] people look upon death as an affair of great moment." The Naxis believe the soul goes immediately to hell. One of the Dongbas' primary duties is to lead souls out of hell. Another 74 volumes were used for divination, wrote Li. "The [Naxi] people are a tribe whose members like divination above all other things."

posted morning of February 9th, 2013: Respond
➳ More posts about Music

Monday, February 4th, 2013

🦋 Good King Krazy

I picked up Fantagraphics' Krazy and Ignatz (b/w Sunday pages, 1933-34) yesterday evening -- reading along on my commute and I am amazed to see this strip, which I feel just sure is a direct inspiration for Dr. Seuss' Good King Looie story. (Or I will think that absent any evidence to the contrary anyway.)

posted evening of February 4th, 2013: 2 responses
➳ More posts about Comix

Saturday, February second, 2013

🦋 A little fiddle music...

Hm, haven't posted any fiddling in a while. Here is me playing an arrangement of "This land is your land" by Woody Guthrie.

Mountain Station played a song today at the Saturday Afternoon Song Swap in Millburn, and it was a lot of fun. Highlight of the afternoon was (maybe) the song (by a musician whose name I did not catch, rats) based on a Chinese funeral scroll that I need to find out more about.

posted evening of February second, 2013: 1 response
➳ More posts about Fiddling

🦋 The bard turns 131 today, in China

Happy Birthday James Joyce! (And Happy Birthday, and thanks for the link, to Aaron as well!) You are a bestseller in China these days.

posted morning of February second, 2013: Respond
➳ More posts about Birthdays

Thursday, January 31st, 2013

🦋 Shadow and halo

Late evening on Meeker Street:

You have to look at it for a while to make them out, but there are some interesting patterns in the blackness. The image is my neighbor's house across the street, a tree in his front yard, and behind his house a light shining on the westbound platform at Mountain Station. There is enough of a mist in the air to give the lamp a nice halo.

posted evening of January 31st, 2013: Respond
➳ More posts about the Family Album

Wednesday, January 30th, 2013

🦋 El monstruo de colores no tiene boca

posted evening of January 30th, 2013: Respond
➳ More posts about Dreams

Sunday, January 27th, 2013

🦋 New Shelves

The READIN family abode is newly embookcase'd, courtesy of the Swedes.

posted evening of January 27th, 2013: 2 responses

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