♘ Prose
Excerpt from “Rooms” in Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein (1914)
A light in the moon the only light is on Sunday. What was the sensible decision. The sensible decision was that notwithstanding many declarations and more music, not even withstanding the choice and a torch and a collection, notwithstanding the celebrating hat and a vacation and even more noise than cutting, not withstanding Europe and Asia and being overbearing, not even withstanding an elephant and a strict occasion, not even withstanding more cultivation and some seasoning, not even with not drowning and with the ocean being encircling, not even with terrific sacrifice of pedestrianism and a special resolution, not even more likely to be pleasing. The care with which the rain is wrong and the green is wrong and the white is wrong, the care with which there is a chair and plenty of breathing. The care with which there is incredible justice and likeness, all this makes a magnificent asparagus and also a fountain.
♘ Poem
River to River by Hai-Dang Phan (2019)
♘ Picture
Celeste Dupuy-Spencer, Don’t Lose Your Lover, 2018, oil on linen
♘ Five Things
“The Collective Work of Abolition” — Mariame Kaba interviewed by Claire Schwartz for Jewish Currents. You can buy Kaba’s recently published book, We Do This ‘Til We Free Us, here.
History feels fungible for me. I go to the moments that I want to pay attention to. If I didn’t know that prisons, in the way we know them, are a relatively recent invention, I would be seduced by the attempts to naturalize these institutions, to make them appear as though they’ve always existed, and therefore you should expect them to always exist. But knowing history enables me to say: It’s not in any way “natural” that prisons exist. They are not inevitable. If they’re so recent, and if they were created by somebody, then surely they can be destroyed, and we can build other things in their place.
Although there’s a lot I don’t understand about music, I’ll occasionally read something about electronic music technology in an attempt to learn how it works. This piece on decolonizing electronic music software by Tom Faber was interesting and accessible even if you don’t understand music software (like me).
Unassuming as they may seem, these technologies are far from neutral. Like social media platforms, dating apps, and all data-driven algorithms, music production tools have the unconscious biases of their creators baked into their architecture. If a musician opens a new composition and they are given a 4/4 beat and equal tempered tuning by default, it is implied that other musical systems do not exist, or at least that they are of less value.
Recently in Richmond:
Please text or call Mayor Stoney on his cell and demand that the city replace lost items and publicly apologize to the homeless residents who had items destroyed today. 804-426-8899. Email all council members as well.
A collection of beautiful early illustrations of the nervous system by Camillo Golgi and Santiago Ramón y Cajal
Volume on!
That’s all for this week ~~ spring is finally in the air! (at least here in Virginia) ~~ love you, miss you <3 Ava