Adam O'Farrill's Elephant

Thanks to Mark Weiss's Earthwise Productions, this amazing quartet came to boring little Palo Alto yesterday. This is a band playing in the current jazz idiom, at the highest level. Intricate polyrhythmic compositions punctuated by episodic collective improvisation. Repetitive elements reminiscent of Steve Reich or Aphex Twin; trumpet textures using the mute and the synthesizer. Instrumental mastery by all players goes without saying. Great show... definitely seek them out... although to be honest, I find them more compelling recorded than live. So, enjoy:

Reading roundup

The Conservationist
Nadine Gordimer

An excellent novel about a despicable man. The book is told in the third person largely from the perspective of our anti-hero, Mehring, whose bigotry, misogyny, greed, self-delusion, and – perhaps – ignominious downfall might be taken as an allegory for the plight of South Africa under apartheid. And yet... his rich inner life and powers of observation, depicted by Gordimer in poetic stream of consciousness, somehow redeemed him for me, if only a little. Splendid.

As I Lay Dying
William Faulkner

Have you read it? If so, read it again. Powerful, bleak, musical, funny. Yes, I laughed out loud at that final sentence. Meet Mrs. Bundren, indeed. At least this one probably didn't smell as bad as her predecessor. One of the best.

Little, Big
John Crowley

When I read the obit of Crowley, who died in August, I had never heard of him. That he was famous for writing fantasies – a genre I have never taken to, except maybe some by Phillip Pullman – was not likely to motivate me to pick up one of his books. And yet, Harold Bloom is right there on the cover blurbing, "the most enchanting twentieth-century book I know." So I committed myself to its 500+ pages. Not for me, I confess. The odd thing is that nothing much fantastical really happens for the majority of the book. Sure, faeries seem to be afoot, and gradually we learn of an epic battle of some sort between faerie factions... I think... but then, it may be that I missed something important as I was repeatedly nodding off. The writing is not bad, and the characters are somewhat charming. I can't recommend it, but your mileage may vary.

Can Music Be Perfect? Vol. 110

I'm a sucker for Earth, Wind, & Fire (I added the Oxford comma!), and this is their best song. The slow groove, the syncopated whole-tone horn riff, the sweet vocals, the five-bar repeats at the end. The perfect pop-funk song.

Meanwhile, over at the Weirsdale Community Cemetery

The 300 yards of dirt track that connect Forest Hill Cemetery (the "white" cemetery) to the Weirsdale Community Cemetery (the "Black" cemetery) were particularly overgrown on my recent visit. Not much traffic, it seems, heads to this very quiet corner of central Florida. As I waded through the grass and weeds I worried just a little about the coral snakes that inhabit these parts – Dad saw one out here once – but these potentially deadly snakes are too small and shy to be a menace. And it really is a pleasant stroll, even on a muggy late afternoon in August. To your left, the currently vacant cattle pasture with its seasonal marshy pond, greened up after the recent thunderstorms; to your right, the back yards of Stonecrest's comfortable and well-maintained ranch houses for the 55 and over. They enjoy their active lifestyle, with golf and pickleball, but I wonder how many appreciate the quiet beauty of their local graveyards.

Florida's hills are pretty humble, being flattened old sand dunes as far as I can tell, but the contours create their own micro-habitats. Forest Hill Cemetery, for example, on its little rise, is shaded by pines. The Weirsdale Community Cemetery, more flat and low-lying, is shaded by live oaks draped in Spanish moss. I'm an oak man myself. The mushrooms agree. 

The dead and the gone

On my recent visit with the parents, I dropped by the cemeteries located near their former house in Summerfield, FL. The folks have moved to a more convenient and accommodating apartment building nearby, but their old neighborhood beckons. Their house was located in the Stonecrest gated community, and, being gated, it is now off-limits to me. But the cemeteries lie just outside Stonecrest, with access via bumpy SE 170th St., which skirts the development's northern periphery and is maintained by... who knows?

Forest Hill Cemetery, the "white" cemetery, occupies a little slope up from the road's dead end just outside my parents' old back yard. For the roughly 15 years my folks lived there, a pair of bald eagles maintained a nest near the top of a longleaf pine in the cemetery and raised cohorts of eaglets. I say "a pair," but there was some turnover, as at least once the female apparently died from one cause or another, and the forlorn widower had to find another mate. Or at least, that's what the human eagle-watchers inferred. My parents watched them daily, if not hourly, from the back porch.

In recent years the pine died, and the enormous, untidy nest in a crook of the tree's skeleton finally succumbed to hurricanes and decay as did, ultimately, the tree itself. The eagles, who fed on fish from nearby Lake Weir, have moved on. It was some comfort to me that my parents departed before their beloved eagles... or around the same time, in one of those strange coincidences. 

Forest Hill has graves dating back to the late 19th century, and is still used today. Graves are fascinating, and sad, of course. On this visit, a couple in particular struck me, along with the memorial placed at the stump of the eagle tree. Mattie Barker's marker is in too good condition to be the original. One wonders who is maintaining the grave of an infant who died 136 years ago. It is only few miles from the location of "Ma" Barker's famous last shootout across Lake Weir in Ocklawaha... another coincidence.

Reading roundup

Love in the Time of Cholera
Gabriel García Márquez

My second reading of this one. It's a wonderful book, exquisitely translated by Edith Grossman. Although Márquez is famous for his magical realism, there is not much magic here. Behavior and incidents are occasionally implausible, but hardly fantastical. The battle between the powerful and capricious forces of inevitable death and uncertain love drives the narrative, along with numerous picaresque set pieces.

The Beauty of the Death Cap
Catherine Dousteyssier-Khoze

Knowing my love of all things mushroom, MK couldn't resist gifting this one to me. It's a novella in the tradition of French noir thrillers about nasty characters, a la Jean-Patrick Manchette. Our protagonist narrator Nikonor is indeed a nasty fellow who loves mushrooms too. His obsession, it turns out, is not with the death cap, but with the highly prized edible cep (porcini), although he doesn't eat mushrooms himself. That doesn't prevent him from putting the death cap to other purposes. Funny and well-written, if not up to Manchette's standard.

Good People
Patmina Sabit

This is a novel about a crime (maybe) and assimilation (or maybe not), taking place in a fictional Afghan-American family/ community. Was it an accident or an honor killing? Was the investigation driven by a search for truth and justice, or by racism and xenophobia? Written as a sequence of interviews with acquaintances and witnesses, it has a Rashomon vibe that won it a good bit of praise. Although the plot will keep you going, I found the style and tone of the "interviews" implausible, and the characterizations a bit one-dimensional. 

'Sierra Blue,' RIP

This Ceanothus 'Sierra Blue' was one of the first California native shrubs I planted in the yard, about 20 years ago, and one of my favorites. Last year it started looking a little rough, and this spring it simply expired, after its final impressive display of the large sky-blue flowers that were always as popular with the pollinators as they were with me. There was no obvious event or disease that did it in – perhaps simply old age. It always received my benign neglect: no summer water, no fertilizer, limited pruning. Just what is supposed to keep a ceanothus happy. I'll miss it.

James Blood Ulmer, RIP

His synthesis of blues and free jazz was unique. Like many jazz guitarists, it seems, he followed an inner flame.