still here

.

Driving into work the other morning with 'Village of the Sun' playing & humming & drumming along  & thinking there really isn't anything or anyone to touch Zappa when he is in this kind of form when ... what do I discover but ... a 7CD box set of the Roxy residence had been releazed ... releazed? ... released.

Could I justify it? No.

& so, of course, I bought it. 

At the time of writing I haven't listened any further that Disc One, Track Two - Cosmik Debris - but that alone is justification enough. Highly essential. Trust me. 

Still wearing in fifty-four. It feels OK ...

Here are three more additions to the current Ear Food ...

.

.

these two featuring the utterly wonderful Patricia I-always-need-to-check-the-spelling- Kopatchinskaja

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... to be honest ... not as good as I'd hoped ... but the last three tracks (Eat That Question, Peaches en Regalia & Uncle Meat) are pretty spiffy. To my mind & ears the drums are too up front in the mix.

bottled over the yes but only 

cold of anyhow cracking 

beneath assumptions

                       you’re crumbling mountains

dear friend, 

                      & the rain drops ache with forbidden words

unfortunate,

                       poetry will always adore you 

                          

.

Began my 54th year with a quick jog followed by a swim. Glorious sunny morning with snow like a mild case of dandruff.

The Wales win yesterday counted as an early birthday present. Sadly Italy didn’t cause the upset I was hoping for against England.

Rumours afoot that a ‘dream team’ is being formed to depose May - Boris plus Gove & the Rees-Mogg. Just imagine ...

New month. New notebook.

“Be there but out of the way” as working principle.

Yes?

And he showed me more, a little thing, the size of a hazelnut, on the palm of my hand, round like a ball. I looked at it thoughtfully and wondered, ‘What is this?’ And the answer came, ‘It is all that is made.’ (Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, 5)

Sunday Breakfast on Radio 3 with Elizabeth Alker.

Startling, but gratifying nonetheless, to hear a micro tribute to Mark E. Smith.

The predictable phrase “he will be sorely missed” does, though, strike a false note. Were he listening (who knows what the dead get up to?) I can imagine the guffaw.

“Another fookin pint, Gabriel, and switch that bollocks off.”

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.

I bog down    dusk evidence

cross my palm for sighs

totalized wholes reflected in the kitchen windows

rhythm fresh as ankles legging it

grammar & referent

the burgeoning twig

“things”

                  thrust into an aggregated phrase

(i.m. Mark E. Smith)