S.T.H.O.L.T.B.I.D.
(songs to hear one last time before i die)
-by jaco pastorius
How to express how this pulls my heart out of my chest...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2R7eR1s9sjQ
Tuesday, November 27, 2018
Wednesday, November 21, 2018
"Untrue"
(Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust, and Infidelity Is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free)
-by wednesday martin
2018
Sometimes, when a subtitle is so spot-on, a review can feel almost superfluous. What else needs be said?
I tend to prefer science books by scientists, but occasionally there's a brilliant exception - step right up, wednesday (author of "Primates of Park Avenue")! She synthesizes the newest research, and offers interviews of both researchers and ordinary (mostly female) people caught up the struggle of trying to be free, self-determined sexual humyn beings. She mines nuggets from her own life, and renders all in beautiful prose. In short, this is THE book to give to anyone eager (or willing) to question the ancient scripts we keep teaching ourselves about wimyn's "natural" sexuality. Wimyn are passive, shy, and highly selective, seeking only that one "perfect" mate to be true to?
Well...
We keep trying to contort ourselves into that model...an easier task for men, for whom it grants infinitely more sexual freedom and variety. Wimyn who would claim their own sexual autonomy face enormous censure at best - and at worst, unending economic obstacles or punishments plus violent, even fatal retribution.
Martin shows how wimyn have always embraced the opportunity to pursue sexual variety when cultural conditions shift to give them more freedom. She shows the wild worlds of female "promiscuity" which can be found in pre-agricultural (or pre-plow) cultures. She rolls out a parade of statistics which have been glacial in surfacing, because few secrets are more destructive than sexual truth...but new studies show that men and wimyn cheat at roughly the same rates. She explores the realities of non-binary people, and people of color. She offers the latest research on the sex lives of other primates. She describes cultures where monogamy is an option, but considered "stingy". She investigates the ever-increasing numbers of polyandrous families and consensually non-mongamous couples. She attends a Skirt Club party, where wimyn go to socialize, network, and have casual canoodlings. She explores the flourishing online worlds where wimyn seek sexual satisfaction outside their mated unions, plus cuckoldry sites where men encourage, facilitate, and participate in their wives being "untrue". She invokes MHC studies, which show that sex is all about smell, and smell is about perceiving which mate would be best for offspring. She shows studies which show that wimyn may have greater sex drives than men. And she ultimately offers the largest truth, that we all basically want the same things - great sex and deep connection. The sooner we acknowledge this, the sooner we step out of the shadows of hypocrisy, double standards, and life-crushing repression.
A fantastic book for awkward teens, exhausted geriatrics, and everyone in between.
-by wednesday martin
2018
Sometimes, when a subtitle is so spot-on, a review can feel almost superfluous. What else needs be said?
I tend to prefer science books by scientists, but occasionally there's a brilliant exception - step right up, wednesday (author of "Primates of Park Avenue")! She synthesizes the newest research, and offers interviews of both researchers and ordinary (mostly female) people caught up the struggle of trying to be free, self-determined sexual humyn beings. She mines nuggets from her own life, and renders all in beautiful prose. In short, this is THE book to give to anyone eager (or willing) to question the ancient scripts we keep teaching ourselves about wimyn's "natural" sexuality. Wimyn are passive, shy, and highly selective, seeking only that one "perfect" mate to be true to?
Well...
We keep trying to contort ourselves into that model...an easier task for men, for whom it grants infinitely more sexual freedom and variety. Wimyn who would claim their own sexual autonomy face enormous censure at best - and at worst, unending economic obstacles or punishments plus violent, even fatal retribution.
Martin shows how wimyn have always embraced the opportunity to pursue sexual variety when cultural conditions shift to give them more freedom. She shows the wild worlds of female "promiscuity" which can be found in pre-agricultural (or pre-plow) cultures. She rolls out a parade of statistics which have been glacial in surfacing, because few secrets are more destructive than sexual truth...but new studies show that men and wimyn cheat at roughly the same rates. She explores the realities of non-binary people, and people of color. She offers the latest research on the sex lives of other primates. She describes cultures where monogamy is an option, but considered "stingy". She investigates the ever-increasing numbers of polyandrous families and consensually non-mongamous couples. She attends a Skirt Club party, where wimyn go to socialize, network, and have casual canoodlings. She explores the flourishing online worlds where wimyn seek sexual satisfaction outside their mated unions, plus cuckoldry sites where men encourage, facilitate, and participate in their wives being "untrue". She invokes MHC studies, which show that sex is all about smell, and smell is about perceiving which mate would be best for offspring. She shows studies which show that wimyn may have greater sex drives than men. And she ultimately offers the largest truth, that we all basically want the same things - great sex and deep connection. The sooner we acknowledge this, the sooner we step out of the shadows of hypocrisy, double standards, and life-crushing repression.
A fantastic book for awkward teens, exhausted geriatrics, and everyone in between.
Monday, November 5, 2018
miles' smilestones in the sky
How did a player of middling range and precision become the greatest trumpeter ever? Sorry louis and maynard...but miles (or in Europe, kilometers davis) knew how to shape the sound like no one else. He experimented, he reinvented, he redefined jazz (oops, i mean "social music") over and over. Has anyone else ever done so more than once? Where he went, the rest followed (though sometimes not for years). Rick wright was copying miles on "Dark Side of the Moon". The Grateful Dead were mortified to be on the same bill. He would have collaborated with hendrix, had jimi not died.
A sterling composer as well, though arranging may have been his greatest genius.
And i heard him live.
If you know how unhip i was as a teenager, you'll appreciate my incredible good fortune. I didn't seek it out, it fell into my lap. I'd been a schoolboy trumpeter who peaked at fifteen, and ran out of steam post-braces when i failed to make the high school jazz band. I turned to acting, and didn't look back. But even though i knew of miles, i'd never owned or heard a full album (we suburban trumpet geeks were more hip to maynard ferguson and chuck mangione). So perhaps the greatest gift my father ever gave me, was that day in 1989 he said we were going to the Mellon Jazz Festival in Philadelphia. There are few things in this world as good as advertised, and even less that are greater.
Miles was greater.
The music did things to me i'd never experienced before, and only once since. It took me to a place outside space and time.
And now, i've finally heard the entire davis discography. Here are the masterpieces, the nearly-so, and essential strays. A friend who grew up in the city told me there were only two things in every black household - the bible and "Kind of Blue". Insanity, and its antidote?
THE BEST
1959 - Kind of Blue
1969 - In a Silent Way
1970 - Bitches Brew
1975 - Agharta
1989 - Amandla
ALMOST...
1955 - Blue Moods
1968 - Miles in the Sky
1970 - Tanglewood Live
1971 - Live-Evil
1977 - Dark Magus
1986 - Tutu
1993 - Miles! Miles! Miles!
1995 - Avignon - The Last Concert
STRAYS
"Milestones"
"Mood"
"Autumn Leaves" (for cannonball adderley)
"Go Ahead John"
"He Loved Him Madly"
"Calypso Frelimo"
"Ascent"
A sterling composer as well, though arranging may have been his greatest genius.
And i heard him live.
If you know how unhip i was as a teenager, you'll appreciate my incredible good fortune. I didn't seek it out, it fell into my lap. I'd been a schoolboy trumpeter who peaked at fifteen, and ran out of steam post-braces when i failed to make the high school jazz band. I turned to acting, and didn't look back. But even though i knew of miles, i'd never owned or heard a full album (we suburban trumpet geeks were more hip to maynard ferguson and chuck mangione). So perhaps the greatest gift my father ever gave me, was that day in 1989 he said we were going to the Mellon Jazz Festival in Philadelphia. There are few things in this world as good as advertised, and even less that are greater.
Miles was greater.
The music did things to me i'd never experienced before, and only once since. It took me to a place outside space and time.
And now, i've finally heard the entire davis discography. Here are the masterpieces, the nearly-so, and essential strays. A friend who grew up in the city told me there were only two things in every black household - the bible and "Kind of Blue". Insanity, and its antidote?
THE BEST
1959 - Kind of Blue
1969 - In a Silent Way
1970 - Bitches Brew
1975 - Agharta
1989 - Amandla
ALMOST...
1955 - Blue Moods
1968 - Miles in the Sky
1970 - Tanglewood Live
1971 - Live-Evil
1977 - Dark Magus
1986 - Tutu
1993 - Miles! Miles! Miles!
1995 - Avignon - The Last Concert
STRAYS
"Milestones"
"Mood"
"Autumn Leaves" (for cannonball adderley)
"Go Ahead John"
"He Loved Him Madly"
"Calypso Frelimo"
"Ascent"
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