still on a james baldwin binge. i love this passage from his sonny's blues:

And, while Creole listened, Sonny moved, deep within, exactly like someone in torment. I had never before thought of how awful the relationship must be between the musician and his instrument. He has to fill it, this instrument, with the breath of life, his own. He has to make it do what he wants it to do. And a piano is just a piano. It's made out of so much wood and wires and little hammers and big ones, and ivory. While there's only so much you can do with it, the only way to find this out is to try; to try and make it do everything.

And Sonny hadn't been near a piano for over a year. And he wasn't on much better terms with his life, not the life that stretched before him now. He and the piano stammered, started one way, got scared, stopped; started another way, panicked, marked time, started again; then seemed to have found a direction, panicked again, got stuck. And the face I saw on Sonny I'd never seen before. Everything had been burned out of it, and, at the same time, things usually hidden were being burned in, by the fire and fury of the battle which was occurring in him up there.

freshman year, i was such a wanna-be jazzhead. two songs that creepy-crawly'd out of my dorm room after a 2 am run to yokohama station (tenshindon chicken and soy milk... untouchable.)

atmosphere - god's bathroom floor
(rhyme sayers, 1998)

handsome boy modeling school (w/ roisin murphy and j live) - the truth
( so... how's your girl?, tommy boy, 1999)