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Patty Griffin: Impossible Dream Patty Griffin can do everything. She has one of the best voices in popular music, going with apparent effortlessness from a fully sung whisper to a bluesy croon to a roof-lifting shout to a Dolly Parton warble. If she chose to specialize in blues or country or rock, she’d be in…
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No, not Russell—Rashaan Roland. I seem to be getting into the habit of posting a music video every weekend. One of my offspring sent me this one. As I said to him, I heard a little of Kirk’s music years ago, and I knew he was playing two horns, but it’s another thing to see…
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I first read Love in the Ruins around 1976 or 1977, and I think I was completely enchanted by the time I reached the second page, where the following paragraph appears. I’ve remembered it ever since as the first of many instances of Percy’s gift for portraying the deep South with a vivid and accurate…
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My son-in-law, Gabe Tynes, a very fine photographer, took this rather chilly-looking picture of a sunflower. You can click on the image for a bigger version at his Flickr site. I think it's a sort of deliberately lo-fi effect (to use an audio term) obtained by using a cheap camera. When I saw it I…
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Sounds like a suicide attack to me. They're testing our defenses. I've always known they couldn't be trusted. Pre-TypePad http://js-kit.com/for/lightondarkwater.com/comments.js
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The relationship of the human will to God’s is a puzzle upon which theologians have expended a great deal of labor. With all due respect for that labor, I’ve never felt very satisfied with the attempt to make it comprehensible to human reason. Among other things, it raises the problem of free will, which I…
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Fear of Beauty All the world like a woolen lover once did seem on Henry’s side. Then came a departure…. What he has to say now is a long wonder the world can bear & be. Once in a sycamore I was glad all at the top, and I sang. Hard on the land wears…
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I expect that the number of people who read this blog and are also interested in last night's defeat of Alabama by LSU is somewhere between zero and very small. (For you non-USA readers: I'm talking about football–American football–the University of Alabama, and Louisiana State University.) Still, I have to pass on the best description…
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Swans: The Burning World For reasons not known to me this group is called “Swans,” not “The Swans.” I had heard of them here and there, usually described in terms such as “dark,” “scary,” “aggressive,” “noisy,” and so forth: terms which don’t exactly attract me but make me curious. I wouldn’t have gone to much…
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I remember vividly the first time I heard Nick Drake. It was in the mid-’70s, probably ’75 or ’76. I had gone over to visit my friend Robert, whom I had known for two or three years at that point; he had already introduced me to some good music and has continued to do so…