Words & Music

by Mike Power

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  • Review: The Last Puritan by George Santanaya

    George Santayana The line is so familiar it could have come from Shakespeare or scripture:  Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. The man who came up with the line was Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, known to the English-speaking world as George Santayana. I was so Read more

  • Fictional Humans of New York (FHONY) – Rudy

    http://11×20.deviantart.com/ I dreamed of her again last night. You tell me, is it fair for the elements of my subconscious to conspire against me? Forgetting should be the easiest thing in the world. I do it all the time. I forget important shit, but her? Never. She had a habit or rubbing her index finger Read more

  • The Lost Art of Letter Writing – The Letter Home

        According to the postmark, this letter was sent on December 2, 1945. Three months earlier, and five days before my dad’s 20th birthday, the Japanese formally surrendered. The war was over but soldiers, sailors, and airmen were  spending another Christmas away from home. Still, it must have been a joy to experience the Read more

  • The Only Thing That Makes Sense

    I can’t read right now. The words keep tripping me up, obscuring the meaning of the thoughts they are meant to convey with their clumsy syllables and pronunciations. The trees do a better job of making meaning plain. They create oxygen to boot. I can’t hear the music. It’s too loud. Obnoxious fingers attack strings and Read more

  • Jersey Shore Sketchbook – Dunes & Tunes

    Here’s another photo-and-sketch collage, put together from a trip to Lavallete, NJ last weekend. Nothing goes with dunes like tunes and no tunes go with the beach like the Beach Boys.  This is the first song Brian Wilson ever wrote. In his own words: “Back in 1961, I’d never written a song in my life. Read more

  • Catskills Sketchbook #3

    There’s a lot of magic left in this world. There’s magic in love of course, and in religion if that’s your kind of thing. There is magic in the first words and steps of an infant, and in an old man’s dying breath. There are magic people (I’m looking at you), magic words, and magic Read more