mushin no shin

we needed about three songs before we got our heads around the fact that yes, we were actually here. In the same room with Leonard Cohen. Leonard Cohen! And he was onstage singing these songs to us.
Yep, that about sums it up. I’m still buzzing from one hell of a fantastic show.

how do I explain
when I in pain
fail to refrain,
as even yet
it remains,
that I at best can claim,
to be insane?
No, the gaping whole, the vacuum abhorred,
the discipline — bored;
Oh sure, I agree, superficially –
I just wish I knew
how to share with you
the frozen crystal tear to which I cling,
my only rock within this thing.

So big congratulations to my dear little sister who ran off and got married last week! Nothing fancy, they did a little private pseudo-eloping thing, honeymooned for a week, then had a family lunch reception today. Met the new in-laws and my new step-niece, they all seem nice.
This of course leaves me as the last [...]

Holy shit. Let me tell you how in love I am with the movie Once.
It would be hyperbolic of me to say that it has paralleled my life — but absolutely it tangentially intersected enough to feel like a 90 minute sucker punch to the heart.
I do have to share one particular scene, in [...]

Friday night was a real treat, as the phenomenal percussionist Evelyn Glennie performed a concerto for percussion and strings with the Nashville Symphony. It was an interesting piece, working in three movements — wood, metal, and skin, each focused around instruments of the named varieties. What I didn’t realize until a friend mentioned it during [...]

the poet? laughing, hardly.
words like jazz; the river’s water
rampaging through his submerged hands
he captures by cupping
very little
oh certainly he assuredly
plays with placement and pronunciation,
enunciation; still an actor though at core,
a vaudeville comic skilled
in serving satire
in surreal sincerity;
loving language, and — its sensuality
But poetry?
Not me.
Not, at least, in that which I
know how to let you see.

So I’ve been in the house for about a year now, which means I’ve had my piano back for about a year as well. When I say “my piano”, what I really mean is my grandmother’s piano, which I’ve been banging on in one house or another since I was about four. It has survived [...]

How very cool! Winston just introduced us to The Blog of Henry David Thoreau.

It’s the waiting that’s so hard,
or so they say, but it makes sense –
when we Know but want to question anyhow;
the sane approach I’m sure, but sanity?
Not our suit.
Can we explain
what we don’t understand?
When all we know is wind,
but we’ve no doubt that wind uplifts?
No, we can but feel,
and though feeling brings the fear we [...]

savoring this time
thrilled and frightened, as we find
that yes, we reflect