I’ll be honest, I can’t wait to see the new Muppets special. Based on the glowing NYT review, it’s just what I need at the moment:
There’s no newfangled hook, no contrived rationalization to bring the characters up to date, no pretensions toward heft or hipness. There are songs and slapstick and jokes, and nobody, blessedly, stayed up too late thinking about the reasons why. (Because Muppets, that’s why.)
Finished reading: In the Dark Places of Wisdom by Peter Kingsley. The pre-Socratics as you’ve never seen them before. (Plato & Aristotle are the villains.) 📚
Finished reading: Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis. A much stranger & more interesting book than I remembered! 📚
Currently reading: Against the Machine by Paul Kingsnorth 📚
The poor chickens… 🏡
It’s… cold today in Minnesota. ❄️ 🏡
A beautiful morning here in Minnesota 🏡
Brothers, hunting 🏡
Incredible day for new jazz releases—a posthumous live set from Al Foster, albums from Sam Yahel & Thomas Strønen, then finally the excellent new album from super group Out Of / Into. Happy Friday! 🎶
View from my window. Yesterday morning there wasn’t a snowflake in sight. Snow day for the kids—or as the school calls it, “e-learning.” 🙄
A good day for baking bacon sourdough for Thanksgiving, blasting the Brandenburg Concertos, and playing board games.
Between the bookstore, Bandcamp, & the good ol’ USPS, Christmas came early for me today! 🎶📚
Current listening: Aaron Parks’s new quartet album By All Means—beautiful music; delightful cover art. I’ve been waiting for this one for a couple months and it’s worth the wait! 🎶
Current listening: Charles Lloyd’s beautiful new album, Figures in Blue, which kicks off with a haunting, spacious rendition of “Abide with Me” and never lets up. Very highly recommended. 🎶
Here’s a wonderful guest post from jazz bassist Thomas Morgan on Ethan Iverson’s Substack.
Morgan draws out the connections between jazz and hacker culture:
Whatever is shared, discovered, or invented has the potential to be applied in the very same moment or soon after. With such a tight feedback loop, ideas can compound, and the music is essentially optimized for learning as much as possible every time you play.
The essay goes deep into the weeds on how Morgan created his strange digital instrument WOODS, featured on Morgan’s new album Around You is a Forest. 🎶
Currently reading: Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow 📚
Two miserable chumps hanging out together, plotting devious methods of destroying a beloved global sporting event. ⚽️
Currently reading: In Search of Lost Time, Volume II by Marcel Proust 📚
Currently reading: The Disappearance of Rituals by Byung-Chul Han 📚
Finished reading: Frost: Poems by Robert Frost.
I don’t think I ever really realized how powerful & profound Frost is—until this reading. The simplicity of his diction both masks & reveals a vision of strange, silent, often terrifying loneliness, along with rare moments of profound connection with other people & the natural world. I will be returning to Frost much more regularly in the future. 📚