alley filled with public creative expression
ever-evolving
ever-powerful
—
“i’m a great believer in poetry out of the classroom, in public places,
on subways, trains, on cocktail napkins.
i’d rather have my poems on the subway than around the seminar table at an mfa program.”
-billy collins
—
ann arbor, michigan, usa
summer 2021
the wizard house
the purple house with the sun
—
so many stories here
—
“every spirit makes its house,
and we can give a shrewd guess from the house to the inhabitant.”
-ralph waldo emerson
—
images: Ann Arbor, Michigan – Traverse City, Michigan
standing by what could be the longest word in the universe.
—
‘this universe can very well be expressed in words and syllables
which are not those of one’s mother tongue.’
-tahar ben jelloun
i hear the grandies’ voices
one reads words out loud
while the other
writes ‘created words’
and mentions,
“maybe i should take a writing class.”
—
handwriting is so cool
because it is like
the written equivalent of someone’s voice.
-word porn
and upon happening behind
this van covered in peace and love
and words galore
complete with notes
“listen to your mother” – love, mom
“make good choices” – love, dad
and a peace sign and a smile
flashed to me by the driver
when finally side by side
i knew i was at my exit
and almost home.
—
“there are a thousand thoughts lying within a man
that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write. ”
-william makepeace thackeray
—
Early on a spring morning in Manhattan, Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly and Nadia Sirota gathered at Reservoir Studios in Manhattan to play a song first performed five years ago and an ocean away.
“Mercury” is the closing track off Planetarium, a song cycle about the planets by Stevens, Dessner, Muhly and James McAlister. The work was originally composed on commission for the Dutch concert hall Muziekgebouw Eindhoven, and first performed there in 2012. Five turns around the sun later, Planetarium will arrive in recorded form on June 9 via 4AD.
“Mercury” is one of the most intimate songs on the record, a quality that’s emphasized by its spot just after the 15-minute, ambient, electronic epic, “Earth.” Where the record’s other songs foreground synthesizers and spastic electric drum samples reminiscent of 2010’s The Age of Adz, “Mercury” largely rests on Muhly’s gentle piano work and Stevens’ beautiful vocal. Where once, in the original live performances, the song swelled to a cinematic rush on the order of Illinois, it’s now spare and elegant. Its warm intimacy is all the more apparent in the group’s live performance, which features Dessner of The National lightly doubling on guitar Stevens’ wordless refrain at the song’s close.
Like many of the pieces on the record, its lyrics are a constellation of the cosmic, the personal and the mythological. The song, named for the messenger god, is a perfect musical setting for the feeling of having something dear carried away from you. “All that I’ve known to be of life / and I am gentle,” Stevens sings. “You ran off with it all.”
“Life is so abundant here, and yet we’re so obsessed with the exterior of here,” Stevens told All Songs Considered‘s Bob Boilen in a companion interview. “That’s what’s so interesting, there’s a sort of beautiful, perfect order to life on earth that’s so mysterious and so profound. And yet, as people, we really fuck it up. We’re so dysfunctional. And we seek guidance from the exterior world — from the heavens — to help us understand our purpose here, and to sort of create a sense of order.”
Stevens, Muhly and Dessner have created their own sense of order here. The musicians will present Planetarium at four shows this summer (all of them terrestrial):
July 10 — Paris, FR — Philharmonie de Paris
July 18 — Brooklyn, NY — Celebrate Brooklyn! – Prospect Park
July 20 — Los Angeles, CA — Hollywood Forever Cemetery
July 21 — Oakland, CA — Fox Theater
You can watch a video of the interview — and listen to the full-length interview — on All Songs Considered.
Producers: Bob Boilen, Ben Naddaff-Hafrey; Director: Mito Habe-Evans; Editor: Nickolai Hammar; Violist: Nadia Sirota; Audio Engineering: Daniel Availa, Fritz Meyers, Josh Rogosin, James Yost; Videographers: Annabel Edwards, Mito Habe-Evans, Nickolai Hammar; Special Thanks: St. Rose Music; Series Producer: Mito Habe-Evans; Executive Producers: Anya Grundmann, Keith Jenkins; Special Thanks: Mark and Rachel Dibner of the Argus Fund
—
“after silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
-aldous huxley
being a great lover of people, and the human story, and most all that is life, and even though i have always been a bit on the shy side, i have never thought of myself as an introvert. that is, until i heard susan cain speaking about her book on npr. in her book, ‘quiet’, she describes the differences between introverts and extroverts, and the challenges that come with being an introvert and living in a world that celebrates the latter.
what really hit home for me were some of the many examples she gave: feeling most comfortable with just a few close people rather than in large groups, making things happen behind the scenes rather than in front, in a quiet way, and most of all – the need to recharge oneself by spending some time in solitary pursuits after being a part of the goings-on of the world around us. in all of her research and all of her descriptions of both types of people, i found myself to clearly be an introvert.
as children, parents are told to help their child to overcome these traits, and children are told them need to speak up and be ‘like the others’ in this area. why not accept that some people are quiet and some are more vocal, and that both are okay and are needed in the world? to exhibit introverted traits, goes against most teachings about how to be ‘successful’ in the world, in pursuits such as business or politics, among many others, and it takes a bit of time for some to accept that things can be done in other ways.
introverts tend to be very adept at reading people and situations, as they most-often stand back and take it all in, listening to their intuition, and become very attuned to the small details of humanity. they spend time reflecting, pondering and considering things. they learn that huge things can be accomplished in small, quiet ways. i am always learning, about the world, about the people within it, and about myself, and will spend quiet time today reflecting upon all of this.
I didn't have my glasses on.... 
