stop-look-listen

Leonard Cohen almost always ends up on my Spotify Wrapped. His gritty, sensual, laconic, husky voice resonates with my melancholic spirit. His music is enduring—sardonic, philosophical, and rhetorical. It’s his refusal to be boxed in that draws me in: his waltzing numbers, pacing and bringing in the unconventional—accordion and string quartets, diverse cultural influences, the dark comedy, and, of course, a relentless inquiry. I’m also a sucker for a good synthesizer.     

I order oodles of books from the library.  

My first shazam was a Stromae banger, Alors On Danse. I was at a red light hoping Shazam would find the tune before I had to drop my phone and drive. Success! Great beat, gorgeous voice, and content that made me feel something – all the more as I translated from the French. Someone on Youtube wrote, “Guy writes one of the most genius cynical takes about the false relief of clubbing. Ironically becomes one of the biggest club hits.” Exactly. 

I’ve been reading Rob Taylor’s poetry for years and have been looking forward to his latest, Weather (Gaspereau Press, 2024). Now, once again I’m struck by his poetry’s honesty, heart, and honed insights. That’s the thing about news-- / you’ve heard it before, Taylor wrote previously (in The News) but here his poetic updates are fresh with previously unreported advancements.  

I arrived at Laura Cumming’s beautiful book, Thunderclap: A memoir of art and life & sudden death, just before it won the 2024 Writers’ Prize for Non-Fiction. I had lovingly remembered her previous book, On Chapel Sands, a story of her mother’s life. In Thunderclap, she turns her close attention to the golden age of Dutch art in the 1600s, in particular the cataclysmic gunpowder explosion in Delft that killed the painter Carel Fabritius and destroyed many precious works of art.

My album on repeat right now (it’s true, we bought a record player in 2024!) is Bleachers’ ‘Gone Now’ from 2017. I’m not always very current with music (you can’t keep up with everything) so I missed the early boat on Bleachers as a talent, but of all his albums – including his 2024 ‘A Stranger Desired’ – I find this one the most interesting and joyful (even if a lot of the songs are sadly nostalgic).

One of the poetry collections that I keep coming back to is a book of ghazals by Agha Shahid Ali, Call Me Ishmael Tonight. The beloved Kashmiri-American poet has been an absolute favorite of mine ever since I discovered him in my early twenties. His poems pave a path towards a level of lyric expansiveness with their tri-cultural — Hindu, Muslim, and for the lack of a better word, the Western — juxtaposition, which very few South Asian poets have ventured out to do. 

Thirty years ago, I read A.S Byatt’s Possession, the Booker Award winner of 1990, and was possessed by the novel. After her death, in November, 2023, I decided to revisit it, and (sorry for verbal overplay), was repossessed.  

A Few Notes on Metamorphoses 3.158 

Ovid describes the cave dwelling of the hunter-goddess Diana as: arte laboratum nulla: simulauerat artem. Made by no art: mimicking art.