Moving & Music

Packing the books, what’s the first thing to do? To set aside my copy of Walter Benjamin’s Denkbilder so as to be able to reread “Ich packe meine Bibliothek aus (I unpack my library)” during the necessary breaks between boxes. Might as well keep out Jean-Luc Nancy’s On the Commerce of Thinking: Of Books & Bookstores (translated by David Wills), just out from Fordham University Press, as I’ve been playing with the idea of doing the unthinkable: selling some books. That would indeed amaze the family who have known me as a relentless book hoarder (I do still own those German prose translations of the Iliad and Odyssey, as well as Hauff’s Fairy Tales and the 1001 Nights in the same editions, given to me when I was around 10). Well, we’ll see, I probably won’t sell off a single book, just put more boxes into storage…

The family amazed me last night at the trad open mic marvelously run as ever by our friend Caroline, a.k.a. Mother Judge, at Tess’ Lark Tavern here in Albany. Nicole & Miles sung & played 2 pieces, the first by Nicole based on my poem “the voices fade,” and the second a beauteous solo offering by Miles of a song he wrote recently. Don’t have a recording, but here are two photos of the event, grainy things taken with an iPhone:

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