Events Unnerve Me

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Phyllis Bierman

Rest In Peace

One Dream For Them, Another For Us

"Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun."

From God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, or Pearls Before Swine, 1965

No More Blues

The Dizzy Gillespie Quintet — Dizzy with Rudy Collins on drums, Christopher White on bass, Kenny Barron on piano, and James Moody on flute and saxophone — bringing the house down on the BBC's Jazz 625 in 1966. From the performance to the exquisite filming, this is some of the greatest live jazz footage ever recorded.

Because The Past Is Just A Good-Bye

"The guillotine is the

masterpiece of the plastic arts

Its click

Creates perpetual motion."

Poetic excerpt from "The Head" taken from

Dix-Neuf Poèmes Élastiques de Blaise Cendrars (1919)

Day 42

I keep wondering if I’m sick with the virus or if it’s seasonal allergies. I also keep wondering if the reason all I want to do is sleep all he time is due to the virus or depression, which in turn makes me more depressed.

Damn The Reason Why

 An achingly beautiful six minute sonic masterpiece; best listened to on headphones at a healthy volume. True isolation sounds.

Stories Behind The Scars

Eleanor Oliphant is not completely fine, but it is easy to develop a relationship with her. At first glance Eleanor is a snobbish, socially awkward wallflower. Through the book and the beauty of human compassion, the reader will fall in love with Eleanor. It is a book that quietly reminds us that everyone has a story behind the scars.

This look at therapy through a therapist's eyes, both as a patient and a professional, is both heartwarming and heartbreaking. I felt myself going through what one might go through in their own therapy session: laughter, anger, denial, insecurity, sadness, and acceptance. It's a memoir that reads like a self-help book that reads like a novel.

Reviews by Elizabeth Lord

Wasted On The Way

My first exposure to The Byrds was via Untitled (handed down to me by my pops), and to this day it remains one of my favorite albums. This song in particular really resonates as of late.

The Words Of The Prophets

So many losses in the last few days from the scene that was everything to me growing up. Graffiti both enriched and fucked up my life, and still informs who I am. (Some of my closest friends to this day I know through graf.) Fare thee well to all the writers we lost to this horrible virus. You all made your mark on the city we love.

Photograph by Henry Chalfant

Let's Not Talk Of Love And Flowers

"Look, we're all the same; a man is a fourteen-room house — in the bedroom he's asleep with his intelligent wife, in the living-room he's rolling around with some bareass girl, in the library he's paying his taxes, in the yard he's raising tomatoes, and in the cellar he's making a bomb to blow it all up."

Untitled woodcut by Félix Vallotton

Quote from Arthur Miller's The Ride Down Mount Morgan

I Can't Be Satisfied

Do you remember the days of discovering a band, digging deep into their influences and having a world of new music open up for you? When I was a kid there were a few main gateways to new sounds: interviews, concert films, books, liner-notes/thank you lists, and mixed tapes. I recall when I finally bonded hard with my dad over music — he brought me to see The Last Waltz in the theater and it was a total eye-opener. Through the film I discovered The Staple Singers, Neil Young and Dr. John, and dug deeper into Muddy Waters (who I really only knew at that point via covers by the likes of the Rolling Stones). A few years later when I got into punk and hardcore, it was all about the thank you lists where you'd read the names of all the other bands mentioned, and fanzine interviews, which I poured over. Of course one of the biggest game-changers were the mixed tapes that circulated among friends (and those weren't just the fabled hardcore/punk mix tapes, but '60s rock and soul as well). I am really not trying to be that old guy yelling at a cloud, but I feel bad for kids in the age of Spotify and lack of printed fanzines (at least the music books keep coming at a good rate). Getting back to my pops: I was very fortunate to grow up in a house where music was always playing, the majority of it being jazz. It's funny, at the time I don't know how much I really appreciated it, but as I got older I did the same with jazz that I did with all other genres, searching out the influences and associated artists. So yeah, another big gateway is other people and luckily the kids still have that

I ❤️ NY

"A city that ultimately cannot be anticipated."

Shortly after 9/11, Milton Glaser updated his classic logo for the moment. If there was ever a time to bring it back again, it's now.

NY Kicks Coronavirus

In a show of solidarity, the New York City football community is joining together to help raise cash for NYC Health + Hospitals, whose mission is to "empower every New Yorker — without exception — to live the healthiest life possible by providing equitable, high quality, culturally responsive and affordable health care in every community."

Search For The New Land

“Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.”

Photograph by Lee Greenfeld © 2020
Words by Arundhati Roy from The Pandemic Is A Portal

What The Future Brings