Category: Music

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C.P. Cavafy In Translation With A French Press Steeping One Hundred Percent Arabica Coffee Beans From South And Central America, And East Africa.

A well-balanced, smooth taste of sweet earth, wild berries and chocolate from Löfbergs EKO Dark Roast begins the morning with an aging paperback copy of Constantine P. Cavafy’s Collected Poems translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. A moment to consider longing. Like the beautiful bodies of those who died before growing old,  sadly shut … Continue reading C.P. Cavafy In Translation With A French Press Steeping One Hundred Percent Arabica Coffee Beans From South And Central America, And East Africa.

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In Praise Of Love With Roberta Flack, Heraclitus, Apuleius, Pseudo-Dionysus The Areopagite, Jalaluddin Rumi, Johnny Cash, Rabia Basri, Allan Bloom, Bob Dylan, Scarlett Rivera And A Cup Of Instant Coffee Before I Go To The Valley Below.

A love song can devastate, render us a pool of ache and tears.  A love song may speak to our love in this world, and our desire to claim love beyond physical and temporal bounds.  A love may hunger for the divine.  I first heard “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” in the … Continue reading In Praise Of Love With Roberta Flack, Heraclitus, Apuleius, Pseudo-Dionysus The Areopagite, Jalaluddin Rumi, Johnny Cash, Rabia Basri, Allan Bloom, Bob Dylan, Scarlett Rivera And A Cup Of Instant Coffee Before I Go To The Valley Below.

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More Terror and Terroir Of Love As We Still Ascend, As We Must Ascend With Dante Alighieri, PJ Harvey, Diotima And Her Ladder, The Supremes, Jacques Lacan, Edgar Allan Poe, Nick Cave, Jaufre Rudel and R.E.M. With A Pour Of Caol Ila And A Slice Of Smoked Eel.

Last I left Love, I considered Nick Cave’s dark turnings of the lover’s call, playing off of Dante’s first sonnet of beatific and cannibalistic vision.  Yet, Dante a few sonnets on in Vita Nuova, also broods on the havoc Love causes, so one might say with Marc Antony in Shake the Spear’s Julius Caesar, “Cry … Continue reading More Terror and Terroir Of Love As We Still Ascend, As We Must Ascend With Dante Alighieri, PJ Harvey, Diotima And Her Ladder, The Supremes, Jacques Lacan, Edgar Allan Poe, Nick Cave, Jaufre Rudel and R.E.M. With A Pour Of Caol Ila And A Slice Of Smoked Eel.

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Musing On The Heart With John Of The Cross, Dante Alighieri, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, Sappho And Julia Child. A Most Monstrous and Wondrous Orgy With Recipe.

My devotion to offal, especially heart, has appeared frequently throughout this blog.  Recipes for this great, bloody muscle resurrect my body and spirit, piercing my tongue and thoughts with recipes revealing its divine aroma and taste.  I have worshipped lamb hearts.   I have worshipped smoked reindeer heart. I have smoked a heart myself. I have … Continue reading Musing On The Heart With John Of The Cross, Dante Alighieri, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, Sappho And Julia Child. A Most Monstrous and Wondrous Orgy With Recipe.

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A Bog In Saint Clair Shores Surrounds White Castle, While Danger Doom Stirs The Pot.

Time to cook for the family, which means sledging the bog, digging the swamp, pouring the fat. Off to Eastern Market to gather onions, carrots, parsnips, garlic, mushrooms, potatoes, herbs, and oxtails and short ribs. Yes, oxtails and short ribs. Produce from local Michigan farmers gleams aisle after aisle. All that grows in the dark … Continue reading A Bog In Saint Clair Shores Surrounds White Castle, While Danger Doom Stirs The Pot.

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Traveling Through Winter Dark and Light With Samuel Beckett And Assorted Food Options.

Hours from now I’ll look at my aisle window and believe it’s Venice instead of Stockholm, eighteen-hundred and forty-six instead of two thousand and nineteen, and I’m navigating channels on a gondola in the “City of Water” on my way to a ball in ‘Going to the Ball (San Martino)’.  Also, my name is Joseph … Continue reading Traveling Through Winter Dark and Light With Samuel Beckett And Assorted Food Options.

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Goodbye To Two Thousand And Eighteen With Three Single Malt Scotch Bottles From The Southern Coast Of Islay As The Sky Burns Over Nacka And I Listen To Vic Chesnutt And Elf Power.

The sunset burns the sky.  Such mysteries occur all the time.  I might think the world’s on fire, a revealing and ending through flames silhouetting branches, trunks and needles; but no, sadly apocalypse will have to wait for another year.  Still, world-altering changes have taken place, at least for the family.  I moved with Gabriela … Continue reading Goodbye To Two Thousand And Eighteen With Three Single Malt Scotch Bottles From The Southern Coast Of Islay As The Sky Burns Over Nacka And I Listen To Vic Chesnutt And Elf Power.

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Cooking the Bog. Day Two With Rust Cohle And Bosnian Rainbows. Darkness In The Wetlands.

Outside the winter wetlands of Sweden continue to breakdown animal and vegetal matter into a rich loam feeding tree, deer, duck and wandering humans.  Inside, I continue to enhance the decay of the world in a pot. A crucial step in the final bog, that rich gumbo broth, occurs with the making of a roux, … Continue reading Cooking the Bog. Day Two With Rust Cohle And Bosnian Rainbows. Darkness In The Wetlands.

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An American Cooks Gumbo In Nacka, Reveling In Migration And Public Transportation, While Surrounded By Cuisines And Travelers Of All Kinds And Sorts.

Out and about on a day of shopping for my first gumbo in Sweden, which affords a moment to celebrate living in such a cosmopolitan, community-friendly city as Stockholm.  For instance, I’ve found public transportation in the Greater Stockholm area affordable, clean, efficient, quick and yes, multicultural.  I pay two hundred and fifty dollars for … Continue reading An American Cooks Gumbo In Nacka, Reveling In Migration And Public Transportation, While Surrounded By Cuisines And Travelers Of All Kinds And Sorts.

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A Cup Of Coffee While Translating Tomas Gösta Tranströmer . . . Well, Not All Of Him, Just One Poem And An Appearance By Bob Dylan.

My days begin with coffee.  For close to forty years, my days begin with coffee.  In a previous life, I’m sure I frequented London Coffeehouses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  Am I dependent on coffee?  Yes, yes I am.  And yes, since I drink coffee I am cosmopolitan, I believe in the free flow … Continue reading A Cup Of Coffee While Translating Tomas Gösta Tranströmer . . . Well, Not All Of Him, Just One Poem And An Appearance By Bob Dylan.