Friday, March 31, 2017

Defecting Grey

Photo:

Photograph by Lee Greenfeld © 2017

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

Like A Suicide


"I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief."

Words by Franz Kafka from a letter to a Oskar Pollack, 1904
Woodcut by Frans Masereel from The Passion Of Man, 1918

Saturday, March 25, 2017

Heart Of The City



Photograph by Lee Greenfeld © 2017

Sunday, March 19, 2017

If Ever I See You Again


"When you leave New York you ain't going anywhere."

Jimmy Breslin
Rest In Peace

Saturday, March 18, 2017

Just Like A Ringing A Bell


Chuck Berry
Rest In Peace

"Of all the early breakthrough rock'n'roll artists, none is more important to the development of the music than Chuck Berry. He is its greatest songwriter, the main shaper of its instrumental voice, one of its greatest guitarists, and one of its greatest performers."

Words by Cub Koda from the All Music Guide To Rock

Sunday, March 12, 2017

What Goes On In Your Mind?

Photo:

Art by Stephen Altobello and Bill Cawley
From Guide To the Velvet Underground And Andy Warhol's Factory

Wednesday, March 8, 2017

Burning Down The House


American Pastoral is undoubtably one of the greatest American novels of all-time, and to say this 2016 film does the book an injustice would be an understatement of epic proportions. A horrendous adaptation with terrible casting, acting, and pacing. In a final slap to the face to Philip Roth, they even truncate one of his most brilliant quotes in the voiceover at the end.

Monday, March 6, 2017

Into The Known


"We generally give to our ideas about the unknown the color of our notions about what we do know: If we call death a sleep it's because it has the appearance of sleep; if we call death a new life, it's because it seems different from life. We build our beliefs and hopes out of these small misunderstandings with reality and live off husks of bread we call cakes, the way poor children play at being happy. But that's how all life is; at least that's how the particular way of life generally known as civilization is. Civilization consists in giving an innapropriate name to something and then dreaming what results from that. And in fact the false name and the true dream do create a new reality. The object really does become other, because we have made it so. We manufacture realities. We use the raw materials we always used but the form lent it by art effectively prevents it from remaining the same. A table made out of pinewood is a pinetree but it is also a table. We sit down at the table not at the pinetree."

Photograph by Lee Greenfeld © 2017
Words by Fernando Pessoa from The Book of Disquiet, 1920s

Thursday, March 2, 2017

45 Revolutions: Terry Callier



"I've seen a sparrow get high, and waste his time in the sky.
He thinks it's easy to fly. He's just a little bit freer than I."

Terry Callier's music is the first that I can recall me and my pops truly bonding on; I remember him bringing home the Fire On Ice LP when I was a kid, and us listening to it together, entranced. This was the pre-internet days when it was beyond difficult to find out anything about the man and his discography, which it turned out was extensive and stunning. Flash forward to 1998 when Callier played his first New York City show in 25 years: to say it was a magical evening would be an understatement. When Callier performed "Ordinary Joe" there was barely a dry eye in the house, and to this day, every time I spin the 45 I can conjure up that night perfectly.

There are certain songs that no matter how many plays, one never tires of; the ones that reach deep inside your chest and either crush or massage. "Ordinary Joe" is one of those songs.