What I Am Listening to Tonight...Thank You, Pierre!

                

Here's what I just burned to my Media Player after listening to it in amazement and really riding the sonic waves.

It's "Routes, not Roots," a cd of Joris giving readings of some showcase pieces and accompanied variously by Munir Beken's oud, Mitch Elrod's guitar, and on my particular favorite...aleatoric radio....this on Track 8, "Aegean Shortwave," in which news of the world is transmitted by the human radio (Joris) in counterpoint to reports of increasing global destabilization...Joris himself flickers between several languages while imparting the "news that stays news".....and Nicole Peyrafitte does amazing voicework on this track...moving between melody and rap and really turning the piece almost martial...

I am just starting to enjoy this and look forward to really soaking it up.

I love Joris's voice, which is sort of Rutger Hauer's if he were French...okay now I gotta fight a Blade Runner tangent...always with the Blade Runner tangents...

This can be found and ordered (? I believe) on WWW.PIERREJORIS.COM.

I look forward to reviewing two amazing works of poetry authored by this poet, who seems to triangulate his soul somewhere above and equidistant from France, North Africa and New York. One is ALJIBAR (which is--to boot--one of the most beautifully designed books to cross my threshold in the last year or so) which is a bilingual edition (I love those) and MEDITATIONS ON THE STATIONS OF MANSOUR AL-HALLAJ.

This looks infinitely preferable to a medieval Christian parsing of the same...i know because I already read lines like this in there....

what is the manner
I mean the matter

with you standing
there in the desert?

Take your hands
out of your pockets

the desert has no manners
but many pockets

which is no excuse for your
lack of know-how

when it comes to sharing
this last pinch of

hot sand & mica
hides as lint

in the pockets
of your heart


He has transposed to such interesting Stations: manners, awe, fatigue, wonder, perishing, avidity, probity, existence, labor, restitution, to name just a few...


I can see these books are going to be roommates in every sense of the word for some time now going forward....


Pierre, Thank You....