I was gonna start this Substack . . .
My idea for this platform was to list with little or no comment titles of notable articles, books, songs, shows I'd plow through in a day. Each day. Then I got busy writing something . . .
. . . and I put Substack aside for a couple months (eight, to be precise), because I dunno, is it necessary? Wise? Self-indulgent to spin out on yet another platform? (And how long will it take to link it up, make it pretty? Cf. Louis Sullivan’s wrought-iron Carson, Pirie Scott & Co. building facade, Chicago).
Sullivan design, 1903, photo © Terence Faircloth
After all I have a blog (artsjournal.com/jazzbeyondjazz), an all-but-abandoned website (howardmandel.com), and for the Jazz Journalists Association edit JJANew and JJAJazzAwards as well as produce media events like the JJA Books Bash on March 26 on the unique virtual reality site SyncSpace.live and oversee the JJA Youtube channel and podcast The Buzz; take assignments (recently appreciations of music by Avishai Cohen/Abraham Rodriguez, Jr. — lively and funky bass/congas/vocals on Ikoro — and of Catching Ghosts, a live performance by German saxophonist Peter Brotzmann, Moroccan gnaou artist Majid Bekkas and Chicago-rooted drummer Hamid Drake; also reviewing 10cds of Classic Jazz at the Philharmonic Jam Sessions, 1950 to ‘57 for DownBeat,) plus I’m writing some fiction, and Tweet and Facebook, and . . .
Y’know, how much is too much? Self-promotion, throat clearing, all that above. Who cares, I can hear Bukowski say. I’d agree. And yet there’s something. . .
Charles Bukowksi © Thomas Cizauskas
How ‘bout if we/I just let it hang out here, don’t write slowly but rather quickly, don’t promise to be honest — if you have to promise, are you saying you’re not always to be trusted? — instead reserve the right to lie or be ironic, sarcastic, satiric? Would that be transgressive, taboo — interesting? Can I be that interesting?
Ok, facing up to it: What media did I consume today? Usual a.m. NYT, WaPo, ArtsJournal.com, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times and not much memorable but Lynn Sweet on Chicago getting Midwest governors’ boosts for host of 2024 Dem convention. Of course it’s interesting Chicago will have Nascar tearing up downtown and closing off parts of Lake Shore Drive while the City is doing road work on the Expressway feeding it from the North, and we’re learning the Aquarium and Planetarium project big losses from the race blocking them off during the summer weeks. Nevermind.
Article in the New Republic about the lost murals of Bruno Schultz. Michelle Mercer’s debut SubStack post on building a Dementia Playlist (take me out on Kind of Blue, Coltrane’s Impressions with Eric Dolphy, Wayne Shorter’s mid ‘60s Blue Note albums, After Bathing at Baxter’s, Axis: Bold as Love, Hoodoo Man Blues, Roscoe Mitchell’s Sound, Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite and Petruchka, Fats Waller piano solos, Monk . . .)
And reading so far about half a dozen personality profiles of Jazz Heroes — “activists, advocates, altruists, aiders and abettors of jazz” to be honored by the JJA (the 501 (c) (3) professional organization I’m pres of), a slate of more than 30 in the U.S. to be announced April 3. These personality profiles, 250 - 350 words each, are written by community members who know and love the Heroes, but that’s not a guarantee they write well about them. . .
Day’s not done and I will watch Wolfie on CNN, Joy Reid on MSNBC, probably take an old movie. Last night’s was The Black Glove, a waste-of-time noir from 1954 about an American trumpet player tracking down a murderer while on tour in England, but the night before I enjoyed Ernst Lubitsch’s The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) in which
Claudette Colbert really seemed to have a hot thing with Maurice Chevalier. And then a couple pages of Vanity Fair by Thackery, which is very funny social satire, although presently I’m in episodes that have strayed from the heroine (?) Becky Sharp.
So see, that’s a column. Just throw it down. Put there regularly, the words will stack up. And then? Read or unread, here they’ll lie. We can publish anything today. Why not do so? Every day? Like, tomorrow? Maybe, maybe not. We’ll see. . .