LA Times:
The lost art of deep listening: Choose an album. Lose the phone. Close your eyes. (link below)
In my first year of grad school (1970!), my wonderful classmate Joe had me lay down on his sofa and tenderly applied stereo headphones to my ears.
He said, “Close your eyes, let everything else go – and just listen to this music.”
Joe was deep, brilliant, sensitive, gorgeous and black. This was one of the most nurturing, tender moments I have experienced with another man.
I wonder sometimes: “If I had known back then that I was bisexual” (I only faced up to this in the last year) “and Joe had known that he was gay (if he did, he never let on during the ensuing three years – but we sure never heard about a girlfriend), what might have been possible?”
With the Covid – and my realization in the last 18 months that I never actually did have a mental illness – I am having a real hunger to look up people from my past, people I wanted to avoid when I considered myself “damaged goods”.
I do know where Joe went to work after he got out of our grad program. When it’s OK to travel again, I shall perhaps have to go look him up.
Oh, the music? An artist that, at age 22, I had never heard of: Van Morrison.
I do believe that being introduced to his music in this unforgettable way is part of the reason he has always been one of my rock & roll heroes.
Do you know this track by Van the Man? He rocks harder here than on any other song I have ever heard by him – and I’ve heard a lot of them.
Lay back on the sofa. Put on your headset. Nahh! Not to this track! Get your ass up off the sofa and shake your booty!
Van Morrison – “Bulbs”
Majo dances to “Bulbs”
