Ian Janssen

Mahler 2

Philadelphia Orchestra

@nezetseguin.bsky.social

Tomorrow night

Very excited!

Album cover for Gladys Knight and the Pips, Imagination

Sitting with my beloved listening to this album and reading this Friday night. Bliss.

“In all mourning there is the deepest inclination to speechlessness, which is infinitely more than the inability or disinclination to communicate. That which mourns feels itself thoroughly known by the unknowable.”

— Walter Benjamin

BookSky: query from a friend in publishing:
What are some great small presses that do poetry?

Thanks!
📚💙

Livid … laughable … loathsome, perhaps?

Thinking of new decor …

Hangry for eels?

Why was he unpleasant? Large eels weren’t so large?

Book, The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth Century American Poetry

Getting into this lovely unexpected gift from my beloved.

She is the best present, the book a close second, though.

Book cover, The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth Century American Poetry.

Someone ( @lisasass.bsky.social ) gave me this excellent book and I now shall flood your feeds with American poetry quotations for the next year or so …

😍😍😍

Screenshot from my Bluesky page showing follower and following accounts of 500 people each.

The singularity has been achieved.

My late brother served in Iraq. He was a reservist in a support unit and a sergeant.

He was not a major league doorkicker, he did the dirty, grimy, unsung behind-the-scenes work of war. He saw ghastly shit doing vehicle recovery.

I look at these dead and I see my brother. These are who die in war.

I’m reposting this to remind myself to order this book, which looks pretty interesting. “First American gay novel” apparently, not something with which I was familiar.

My brother did not die in the war, his death came much later from unrelated causes. He would have expressed kinship with these dead.

Command officers don’t perish in war in any numbers, it’s the working people, the junior officers, noncoms, soldiers, seamen, and airmen who fill the body bags.

My late brother served in Iraq. He was a reservist in a support unit and a sergeant.

He was not a major league doorkicker, he did the dirty, grimy, unsung behind-the-scenes work of war. He saw ghastly shit doing vehicle recovery.

I look at these dead and I see my brother. These are who die in war.

In more crude terms, it’s the guy complaining about not being able to afford a new bass boat and thinking his lot is harder, because all the poor - regardless of origin - live cush lives on his tax dollars.

Illogical, yes, but we’ve all met this dude.

“American” middle working classes often seem to lack sympathy/solidarity with migrant labor in part I think due to identity.

Xenophobia aside, many can’t conceive of a life this arduous/precarious, that in a grievance driven brinksmanship they alone have it the hardest, which yields absurd claims.

Music can be a powerful tool, and for some it may cure, but it’s possible to take this too far to others’ detriment.

Be a little wary of this sort of claim. No study is cited, and people are different.

When in the depths of undiagnosed bipolar depressive states, music was an outlet for expressing emotions, but there should be no illusion that it in any sense defeated my depression. Therapy and meds did that.

Black and white selfie of a man wearing glasses and glowering.

Sometimes you lurk in the dark recesses like a character from The Third Man.

This seems interesting.

I suppose that if some portion of fatherhood isn’t terrifying, you’re not doing something right.

Umm, glorious depression, yes?

If memory serves, didn't some evangelical Christians identify Trump with the Persian king Cyrus?

Whither Cyrus now?

MASTER MASTER

MASTER OF ALBUMS

It’s a truly horrid disease.

This is a really good question.

Honestly, I plan to purchase a world band shortwave radio to listen to foreign broadcasts.

Various European news sources (mainly British), Al-Jazeera, snippets of American journalism I see cited, but I don’t trust really any American sources anymore. It’s not a great media landscape.

I plan to purchase a world band shortwave radio to listen to foreign broadcasts.

It’s a constant through history.

There are legitimate questions about the strategic goals (or even operational and tactical goals) of this conflict with Iran. They appear muddled and contrived in a charitable reading.

The thing is, I don't fucking care about the analysis. The war is to be fiercely condemned and opposed, full stop.