drmstream[writing]

She was born Malka Opiekun in 1898 in New York and made her debut on stage when she was six.  In the 1920’s she was the doyenne of the Yid­dish The­ater; her first Eng­lish role didn’t come until she was in her early 40’s. You might rec­og­nize her…she was Yente the Match­maker in Fid­dler on the […]

Do not play what’s there; play what’s not there. Miles Davis

The paint­ing is Olympia by Edouard Manet. In 1865, it was pil­lo­ried by peo­ple of good sense as depraved and immoral. A jour­nal­ist wrote: If the can­vas of the Olympia was not destroyed, it is only because of the pre­cau­tions that were taken by the admin­is­tra­tion. Years later, Manet’s paint­ing has been pegged as the start […]

Yes­ter­day I flew from the east coast to Los Ange­les and watched two movies that were uncanny in the sim­i­lar­ity of their view of the human con­di­tion. The moral syn­chronic­ity was more star­tling for the cul­tural chasm between the two films: the uber-Wasp cor­po­rate real­ity of the Reit­man broth­ers’ Up in the Air and the […]

There was a time once when the open­ing bars of this song — almost any by the Pogues, really — would bring the sense of tears to the cor­ners of my eyes, a tight­ness across my chest.  There was so much Love that had been lost, so much yearn­ing that had been mis­placed, too many […]

A per­for­mance with John Cale in 1972 and with Pete Town­shend in 2007 of Wait­ing for The Man.  Watch both and reflect on what changes with age and what stays the same.

The impulse in song What wants to sing, to thresh the air with sound and watch the chaff rise, lift, grab, ele­vate, erupt Into a line of song that makes me want to swing my legs to and fro, snap my fin­gers like this? The ball of my foot pushes on the wood floor so I can see […]

via youtube.com A great taste of what NY felt like 100 years ago, with a lit­tle com­edy thrown in. The energy and the bus­tle of today has a long his­tory. from Dan McCarthy’s Stream

via slog.thestranger.com “I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own plea­sure.” A hint to why Sey­mour Glass died: the search for per­fec­tion is doomed by the real­ity of the audi­ence. What­ever explo­ration Salinger was on, it was private.

Have always loved this tune, for its har­mon­ics, its melod­ics and the way it makes you feel.  Great filmed performance.