One Moment, One Morning gives readers the chance to do something few novels do—take a step back and really think of how delicate life is, and how quickly it can change from moment to moment. Rayner writes realistic, relatable characters who are simply trying to deal with the overwhelming feelings sudden change can bring, and she writes them well.
A review of The Last Storyteller: A Novel of Ireland by Frank Delaney
Each line that makes up The Last Storyteller is tight, poetic, and so delicately dense that I suspect I could go through the short chapters with the same careful attention that Delaney is showing James Joyce in his Re:Joyce unpacking of Ulysses, and continually find new references and rhythms.
Sounds, Fragmented and Whole: Elastic Aspects by the Matthew Shipp Trio
On Elastic Aspects by the Matthew Shipp Trio, featuring bassist Michael Bisio and drummer Whit Dickey, the composition “Mute Voice” is a pretty piece, although its notes seem half-articulated, clipped before they are allowed to achieve fullness or resonance. Banging, rumbling, sounding more like experimental music than traditional jazz is “Explosive Aspects.”
A review of Charles Dickens: A Life by Jane Smiley
The biography is drawn around Dickens’ novels, which become the timeline for his life. This makes for fascinating reading, coupling literary criticism with a deep analysis of the relationship between life and art. In particular, the book explores the maturation of Dickens’ vision and maps the development of his work to the events in his life, attempting to find answers to the question of who Dickens was, through the material he left us.
Sound and Sensibility: Britten, Bach, and Ligeti, performed by violoncellist Miklos Perenyi
The sound is exalted and exultant but it also seems focused on something troubled, worrying—as if a great spirit had been hurt and was grappling with the pain. Complex emotion, complex sounds—the many labels for structural movements in classical composition are an indication of how difficult it is to organize and perceive complexity.
Pianists Greg Anderson & Elizabeth Joy Roe’s When Words Fade, with work by Vivaldi, Mozart, Bizet, Schubert, Radiohead, Coldplay and more
The Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff’s always wordless “Vocalise” is, also, a bit heavy, somber. Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) used modern harmony within traditional form, writing songs, concertos, and operas (one opera was The Miserly Knight, and he created a cantata based on Edgar Allen Poe, The Bells).
Hateful Inspirations: the album Evryman for Himself by Daniel Knox
Daniel Knox is a bit of a paradox, presenting to the world songs that speak of the hopelessness of self and society. “Ghostsong,” with its old-fashion masculine voice, is a hateful tribute. The attitude is one that recurs throughout the album. One imagines that there must be some truth to the attitude, but, also, that the attitude is heightened for dramatic effect. “I make enemies everywhere I go” and “it’s human to feel cheated” and “I leave victims in my path” are some of the assertions in the song “I Make Enemies,” which is given a jaunty rhythm, akin to a brassy anthem from a theater musical. The narrator of the song feels crowded, inconvenienced by other people.
A Link Between Gershwin and Rock: Billy Joel, 52nd Street, featuring “Big Shot” and “My Life”
Billy Joel claims that tenderness is more common than truth in his downbeat, string-laden ballad “Honesty,” which he sings with a full-throated intensity that verges on bombast, although the simplicity of the theme, the actual necessity of truth, justifies the expression of passion. Paul McCartney’s influence is perceptible in the piano arrangement in the story-song “My Life,” about the sudden shifts, the instability, in American lives as well as the quest for individuality (there is a direct relationship between the quest and the instability; and the song’s observations are funny).
Who by Fire and Ice Calls: If Grief Could Wait by harpist Giovanna Pessi and singer-songwriter Susanna Wallumrod, performing Henry Purcell and other composers
Spiritual desolation is expressed by the lonely simplicity of “The Plaint,” written by Henry Purcell, containing the lines, “I’ll hide me from the sight of day, and sigh, and sigh my soul away.” We may want to be alone, but others do not always let us alone. The question “Who shall I say is calling?” is asked in the composition “Who by Fire.” In Leonard Cohen’s “Who by Fire,” a well-known song, incantatory, the lyrics suggest the different circumstances of address, as if in private or public ritual; and it is great having it near the beginning of If Grief Could Wait, adding energy and mystique.
Hop Over the Squares: Black Lace Freudian Slip by Rene Marie
In the song the time is late and Rene Marie is ready for home, love, rest, as “tomorrow is already today.” I began by commenting that Black Lace Freudian Slip is a master class in good, possibly great, singing; and my hesitation was due to my perception that a definitive assertion of rare and important quality—of greatness—can be off-putting when it comes blunt and fast, but this is what I think: Rene Marie is a great singer.