a blind flaneur

We listened to an NPR story about Cole Porter’s ‘You’re theTop that made me think for the first time about Porter’s place in the Whitman tradition. N PR featured song snippets from a vintage 1930s Victor recording of Cole singing and playing the piano. In the course of the radio piece you probably hear all […]

Here is one version of the lyrics, but it may not be exactly what Cole sings on the Louise Brooks montage. Like a grandiose poem in the Whitman tradition, the text can be invented on the spot.
“You’re the Top” by Cole Porter
At words poetic, I’m so pathetic
That I always have found it best,
Instead […]

Quais de Seine is the second shhort vignette in the 2006 film Paris, je t’aime. The short was made by the husband-and-wife team of American screenwriter Paul Mayeda Berges and Indian-British director Gurinder Chadha. In it a young man (Cyril Descours) hangs out on the banks of the Seine with two friends who taunt all […]

Set 1: Oscar Peterson performs You Look Good To Me at the Montreux Jazz Festival. in 1977. He is accompanied by two bassists,Ray Brown and Niels Pedersen.
We were in downtown Oakville on Christmas Eve as last-minute shoppers deserted the streets and dusk settled and we learned from the CBC that Oscar Peterson had died at […]

When I do writing workshops I structure my responses to other writers this way. First, respond from life. Next, say what works. Then, and only then, comment on what doesn’t work. “Respond from life” means expressing a memory evoked by the writing. There’s no need to fake or embellish this memory. It’s the authenticity that […]

I am enchanted by this line of poetry. It wormed its way into my memory at the beginning of the year, and now and then it floats to the top of inner speech when I should be using my words to transact one or another dreary task. It’s the final line of a poem by […]

Standouts in a crowd: Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett (Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter) are a little off true, even by the standards of Victorian London. [Photo source: NPR/DreamWorks]
NPR : Rickman Gives Voice to ‘Sweeney Todd’ Nemesis 122007

How to begin a musical about a barber who slashes his customers’ throats and a baker who […]

Notre Dame de Paris shimmers on a December night. [Photo by  M. Bob]

Every family with an oral tradition has a story that is told and re-told at Christmas until it acquires the power of myth. This is mine. It tells how my grandmother, Ona Willis, joined the Salvation Army.
It was a rainy night in Columbus, Ohio on Christmas Eve in 1944. All three of Ona’s sons were […]

Once upon a time, I ran as fast as I could to get away from Holiday Muzak at the shopping mall. One of my earliest newspaper columns railed against the psychotropic effects of hearing “Jingle Bell Rock” twenty times a day. I risk convulsions and catatonia even now after brief exposure to that one. About […]