a coherent collection of random statements regarding God, words and tunes

Bullet Points

And that's what they is... starting with the longest one....

• Reading (for a second time, having just finished the first go-round) Robert Gelinas' Finding the Groove: Composing a Jazz-Shaped Faith. Applies the jazz-as-faith metaphor to community, spiritual disciplines, calling, outreach, etc., and it works very naturally every time. I tracked with this very easily, even though my jazz fandom pretty much begins & ends with Coltrane. Being a musician probably helps, but I don’t think there’s anything that’d go over people's heads here. I like it so much I've offered to buy it for co-workers (and 5 have taken me up on it). Simple Spirituality is still my favorite book so far this year, but Gelinas' creativity is just rubbing off as I read it (and in some cases, being blatantly lifted :D). And being not even 2/3rds of the way into a 78-lesson curriculum (and yes, Seasons 5 & 6 are looking pretty good for approval just now), I could sure use the spark right now.

• As a consequence, been checking out Ken Burns' Jazz. Yeah, it's 20 hours long, but great storytelling. In a big way, it's the real story of racial equality and music as the universal language, but all big themes aside, it's worth watching just to see the joy on Louis Armstrong's face (and, of course, hear the music). And Duke Ellington gets more fascinating as we go along (yeah, I'm still on Part 4 of 10/mid-'30s right now).

• Speaking of music, got the new Willie Nile and Slaid Cleaves CDs, and haven't worked up the inspiration to write about either as of yet, though both are pretty decent. The Slaid one may grow on me further, too, as it's much more subdued than his earlier stuff. If nothing else, great title: Everything You Love Will Be Taken Away. We'll see.

• Fueled by tim's enthusiastic thumbs-up -- and the dual knowledges that a new album is due in the fall and that the first one of this decade is still so far the best by ANYONE this decade -- I may very well do a Divine Comedy discography soon. Especially having discovered 1998's Fin de Siecle and "Sunrise," which -- and I'm not exaggerating -- may be the most beautiful 3:17 of pop music I've ever heard.

• And as for said curriculum, Seasons 1 & 2 just got out of copy-edit. FWIW, the copy editor really likes them. :)

As always and again, we'll see.

Posted by: burninglight at 02:44 | link | comments