Wow, July already. I seem to think about this blog only every once in a while.
I finished my June fast a couple of days ago and now I’m trying another dietary thing – carnivore eating. The idea is to eat only things that come from animals. I’m going to be doing this for the month of July. In my case I’m eating meat, eggs, and cheese. The only spice will be salt. The only drink will be water. It will be interesting to see how this goes…
Today is the first day of one of my 5-day water fasts. I do these almost every month now. I started fasting.. oh.. about four or five years ago. I don’t actually remember why.
The first year of my fasting I did a 3-day fast every quarter. So for that year I did four 3-day fasts. The second year I upped it to 4 day fasts. The year after that I went from quarterly fasts to monthly fasts. After that I went to 5-day monthly water fasts. I’m probably going to stay at that level.
In the first year fasting was quite hard for me. I didn’t feel good physically in the beginning but for some reason I kept at it. Over time I and my body seemed to have adapted to it. By now I don’t feel bad at all. In fact, the deeper I get into my fast the better I feel. I’m at the point now where I really look forward to my monthly fasts. However, I’m a little wary about doing a fast longer than 5 days or more frequently than once a month.
I’m not super-religious about it. Sometimes I’ll skip a month. Sometimes I’ll cut the fast short by one day. But most of my fasts nowadays are every month and 5 days long.
It generally takes about three days for me to feel the changes that come with fasting. That’s one reason why I target 5 days as the best duration for me.
I’m not fasting for weight loss (although I could stand to lose a bunch of weight). Rather, I do it for the health benefits both physical and mental. It’s also a kind of monthly reset where I stop doing things that I really don’t want to be doing but have somehow crept into my daily activities. Mindfulness seems to come along with fasting but erodes for me once I get back to normal daily life. Fasting monthly helps me avoid going too far off the rails.
Last night I stayed up way too late listening to a podcast interview with two people with obvious mental problems. It made for compelling listening but it wasn’t helpful to me. I think most humans are drawn to such things, maybe as entertainment.
Before I went to sleep last night I thought I would try to spend a day away from things like that. I came up with five things I wanted to avoid: podcasts, news, YouTube, Twitter, games.
I found that a day like that had many benefits. It motivated me to spend more time on activities that further my longer-term aims. Way more than I’ve done lately. And I didn’t have the common experience of wondering how I could have spent the last few hours sitting in front of the screen accomplishing nothing; learning nothing.
I’m going to try to do this more often.
…And the only place to begin is where we are.
Simply begin.
But begin.
-Seth Godin
What’s going to happen this year? Let’s see what happens…
I haven’t been posting about the albums I’ve been listening to lately. So today I thought I’d do some catch-up and post about my recently-listened-to albums.
Western Wall | The Tucson Sessions
(Linda Ronstadt & Emmylou Harris)
Two of my favorite female singers and they sing so well together. The album has such a meticulous sound – Glyn Johns is the producer. As is usual for these two artists the choice of songs is astute.
Deep
(Stick Men)
I’m a big King Crimson fan and two of its members are in this three-piece band – Tony Levin and Pat Mastelotto. Unlike in Crimson, where he plays primarily basses, Levin sticks (no pun intended) to the Chapman Stick in this band. The third member of the band for this album is Markus Reuter who plays touch guitar.
I really love this kind of music and especially this album. An added bonus with this album is a DVD disc with 5.1 mixes of the tunes and a video featuring live performances of the band interspersed with some “home video” footage of the members working in their home studios and traveling on the road.
Conference Of The Birds
(David Holland Quartet)
This is Holland’s first album as a leader and it’s quite interesting. The other players are reed men Sam Rivers and Anthony Braxton and percussionist Barry Altschul. This is a free jazz kind of album and there is great empathy among the players.
When I’m considering albums to listen to I don’t immediately think of Dave Holland but whenever I do get around to listen to his albums I’m amazed at the music and how much I like it.
Mingus Ah Um
(Charles Mingus)
I recently read Mingus’ book “Beneath The Underdog” (I don’t recommend it if you’re looking for a book about his music) and I realized that although I’ve heard many versions of his music covered by other artists I never listened to to any of his albums. So I finally got around to the source.
I think I picked the best first album of his to listen to. The music is varied and interesting. The musicians do a great job with it. One of the tunes on the album that I’ve heard many other folks cover is the iconic “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” which I’ve always loved. But the version on this album surpasses all the other versions I’ve heard. The elegiac treatment here is so appropriate to the tune. Just great.
Another aspect of the album that really struck me was the variety of music on the album, all of it great.
Epistrophy
(Bill Frisell / Thomas Morgan)
A guitar / double bass duo album recorded live in 2016 at the Village Vanguard. Frisell has such a unique style of playing and his empathy with Morgan is of the “finishing each others’ sentences” variety. The choice of tunes is quite diverse and yet the players make all of them their own.
I’m a big fan of Frisell and have seen and heard him in many different contexts. The duo context is one I haven’t until I listened to this album. It may be my favorite.
Well, that brings my blog up to date on my recent listening.
Today I finished listening to the rest of the 3-CD set. The last disc is alternate takes and other stuff not previously released on the album.
Throughout all three discs the stuff I liked the most was Dolphy playing with only the bass player. On the last disc there are a couple of versions of “Love Me” with that instrumentation
In addition to the discs there’s an impressive 96-page booklet with remembrances of Dolphy and how “Musical Prophet” came about that I really enjoyed reading.
Another Eric Dolphy album from the “Musical Prophet” 3-CD set. This one from the same sessions that “Conversations” came from. I like this album a lot as well. I seem to be becoming quite the Eric Dolphy fan.
This album was released posthumously in 1968. It was deemed “too futuristic” to be released circa 1963 when “Conversations” came out. Really interesting music including a bass clarinet / double bass duet on the Ellington tune “Come Sunday.” Even more radical is the bonus track “A Personal Statement.”
One more disc from “Musical Prophet” and I’ll probably make that tomorrow’s album-of-the-day.
I listened to the version of this album from the 3-CD set “Musical Prophet.” I picked up this collection (which also includes the “Iron Man” album and some previously unstudio cuts) after listening back to “Out To Lunch!” recently.
“Conversations” is a really great album. Four diverse cuts and two bonus tracks of Dolphy and the bassist Richard Davis together. So great. I’m looking forward to the other CDs of this collection.
Another trio album today but this one is quite different. Chris Potter and Dave Holland are well known jazz players but Zakir Hussain is an Indian percussionist which really gives the album a big part of its flavor. All the tunes are originals written by the trio members.
I really liked this album (I tend to say that a lot but I’m picking albums to listen to that I think I will really like). Being a bass aficionado I especially like Dave Holland’s playing but the other two trio members are incredible musicians as well. And this music is what it is because of the contributions of all three.