#billy parham

[castlingvanias]

more miscellaneous art style experiment kids (kanto kids n human tawog reject club + billy

[cartoonbudartz]

Now onto the citizens of Elmore!

[gregorys-defender-for-life]

color wheel challenge

[cheekedupwhiteboy]

i hope cities on the plain has lots of john grady cole x billy parham yaoi

[dentesguardados]

McCarthy wrote figures, like Judge Holden, who were the genocidal tycoons of that brutal machine and greased its wheels. Others, like Billy Parham, became its more indirect, melancholic grist. The operatic violence McCarthy rendered on the page to give linear shape to this cosmic ruination distracts some readers, who think that gore is the end to his logic. But he always wondered what lay beyond the desolation. He wrote about love all the time, for one. It never really saved his characters, but it allowed their histories to braid into intertwined fates; still doomed, but larger than a lonely soul. In his final, stunning books, especially in The Passenger, he was exhausted with language while wielding it expertly, steering two cursed siblings toward mathematics, music, and the unconscious in search of ideas that might offer redemption in the atomic age. They come up empty-handed.

Elena Saavedra Buckley, On Cormac McCarthy

[nezoid]

The Last Improv Show 2023 recap!

I’m incredibly proud of the work I do with The Last Improv Show.

I filmed all of this (except I think 4 clips) and I went through hundreds of videos I shot through the year, to edit most, if not all, improvisers and monologists that were on the show in 2023 (excluding The Kennedy Center) into this reel.

I am very grateful to be a part of the team. ☺️

Some monologists featured in 2023 shows:

Bob Odenkirk, Ike Barinholtz, Kumail Nanjiani, Nolan Gould, Kelly Osbourne, Dolph Ziggler, Cameron Esposito, Jaleel White, Billy Eichner, Brett German, Terry Crews, Jeannie Mai, Kathy Griffin, Kristen Schaal, Joel Mchale, Patrick Renna, Paul Walter Hauser, Jason Reitman, Pauly Shore, Rainn Wilson, Bill Nye, and more!

Some improvisers featured in 2023 shows:

Dan Black, Carl Tart, D'Arcy Carden, Jason Mantzoukas, Paul B Welsh, Bobby Moynihan, Neil Casey, Brandon Scott Jones, Nicole Byer, Seth Rogen, Lennon Parham, Anthony King, Ego Nwodim, Betsy Sodaro, Mike Mitchell, Lauren Lapkus, Jessica McKenna, Jon Gabrus, Paul Scheer, Drew Tarvar, Skylar Astin, Edi Patterson, Brandon Gardner, Brett Gelman, Mary Holland, Katie Dippold, Phil Augusta Jackson, Joe Wengert, Beth Appel, and more!

Produced by Christina Calph.

[ratsapphic]

Billy Parham did NOT need to do all that. I get why he did but he simply could have stayed at home and died instead

[leggolibriovunque]

Trilogia della frontiera - Cormac McCarthy

Con Cavalli selvaggi siamo nel Texas del 1949. Lacerato ogni legame che lo stringeva alla terra e alla famiglia, John GradyCole sella il cavallo e insieme all'amico Rawlins si mette sull'antica pista che conduce alla frontiera e piú in là nel Messico, inseguendo un passato nobile, e forse, mai esistito.

In Oltre il confine, quando il destino gli offre l'occasione di passare la frontiera, il giovane Billy Parham compie la sua scelta e dirige il cavallo verso il Messico insieme al fratello Boyd. Billy ha appena catturato una lupa ferita che si stava accanendo sul bestiame della famiglia e ha deciso di non consegnarla al padre, che la ucciderebbe, ma di riportarla sulle montagne messicane per restituirla al suo mondo. 

Città della pianura inizia dove arrivavano i primi due romanzi. All'inizio degli anni Cinquanta John Grady Cole e Billy Parham lavorano in un ranch tra il Texas e il Messico. Insieme allevano cavalli, ascoltano sotto le stelle i racconti dei vecchi cowboys, si divertono al bar o al bordello. E al bordello John Grady incontra una sedicenne cosí bella da cambiargli la vita. Cosí contesa da costringerlo a scontrarsi con il suo protettore-filosofo Eduardo, in un duello allo stesso tempo epico e metafisico.

[biblioklept]

Riff on (re-)reading Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing

Yesterday afternoon, I finished rereading Cormac McCarthy’s 1994 novel The Crossing. I used the word rereading above, although this felt like a first read—fresh, raw, often far more painful than I would have thought. The Crossing is a coming-of-age novel, the story of New Mexican Billy Parham whose life is wracked with adventure and beauty and pain. I probably read The Crossing for the first time…

[olive-stripe]

Really likin that new alignment chart.

It was originally just the kids but I had extra space and pics

Also no idea why Penny is Like That it was fine when I edited it

The tag limit is 30 I’m not gonna bother tagging em all

[incorrecttawogquotes]

Billy: In your opinion, what's the height of stupidity?

Anais: Hey, Gumball! How tall are you?

[whileiamdying]

For our main podcast review this week, I am joined by Josh Parham, Dan Bayer & guest Kathia Woods. Together, the four of us are reviewing the final Oscar contender for the 2020-2021 film year, "The United States vs. Billie Holiday," directed by Lee Daniels ("Precious"). Starring Grammy-nominated singer, Andra Day, in her feature film acting debut, the film has received mixed responses but Day's performance as the iconic Black singer has been critically lauded. What did we think of her and the film around her?

[casualarsonist]

The Crossing (Cormac McCarthy novel) review

Had a nice time with All The Pretty Horses, did you? Enjoyed this wistful coming-of-age story between a boy and a girl on different sides of the tracks against the romantic backdrop of a Mexican estate? Well tough titties, friend, because you’re reading The Crossing now, and this ain’t no casual saunter through the desert. 

The Crossing is the second book in the Border Trilogy, and, set in the early 40s, tells the story of the boy Billy Parham and the three trips he makes across the border into Mexico. It’s hard not to go into detail about the novel itself without spoiling the nature and purpose of his three crossings, but it’ll be easy enough to give you an idea of the qualities of the book regardless, because, while ATPH wasn’t exactly soft and fluffy pulp, those expecting a similar level of accessibility and whimsy here will be disappointed. 

The biggest issue is that the novel is, for lack of a kinder word, turgid. The first of four parts holds the most engaging section of the story and chronicles Billy’s impulsive decision to return a captured wolf back home to Mexico from whence it came. Just when one feels like McCarthy is preparing to lay out an epic tale about man and nature coming together to conquer the odds, the narrative quickly falls out of Billy’s control, and things very rarely recover for him from then on. Nor do they recover for us, as the other three parts all start promisingly enough and yet are time and again waylaid and redirected into nothingness like water channelled from a great river only to dry up in the desert. The novel itself would have you believe that it’s all down to the 'impassive brutality of nature’ and the unpredictability of life, but really The Crossing meanders due to the lack of obvious intention and focus of the author. 

Dare I say it, I think I’ve found a McCarthy novel that I didn’t like. His bursts of beautiful prose feel injected rather than innate, forced into the story for no discernible reason other than to seemingly pad the content of the book. His descriptions of action are so sparse that the prose stands out inorganically against the rest of the text and feels like a bad fit, as if he checked his description-o-meter and realised that he hadn’t written a flowery paragraph in a few pages, and thus one was due. The three short instances of true narrative motivation all peter out into nothing, and Billy finds himself three times back in America with little but the rags on his back, and were this handled better, that might have been enough, because The Crossing does one thing well, and that is to make the reader feel like they’ve lived a life between the first and last pages of the novel. But McCarthy clearly wanted his book to be more than just a story, and so the beats in Billy’s journeys are interrupted by the occasional quirky and/or mysterious stranger who loves to ramble about themselves. One of the first stories we hear runs for nearly twelve pages, and makes no-impact on the overarching narrative whatsoever. Depending on how philosophical you feel when reading this, you may find something profound to be said in any or all of the half-dozen such stories present in the book, but they are encountered so abruptly and seemingly at odds with the characters and their travels that I was hard-pressed to find meaning in any of them beyond the fact that they they are unto themselves short stories of various quality. It comes across as self-indulgent and lacking in inspiration, a feeling exacerbated by the fact that when there are moments of genuine tension and excitement, McCarthy frequently shies away from the crescendo that he is approaching and these too almost always end up amounting to nothing.

By the end of the book I found myself skipping pages of text - specifically during the last traveller’s tale, in which I knew by reading excerpts here and there that not much was being said of any worth. And obviously it’s shameful to admit that I skipped parts of a novel I’m claiming to have an educated opinion on, but I can confidently argue that The Crossing is a novel that does its utmost to exclude the reader from great portions of its text on its own terms, for it’s by far the worst offender of any of McCarthy’s novels when it comes to presenting tracts of important, plot-related dialogue delivered in untranslated Spanish. Entire set pieces in which Billy meets a stranger on the road and sits down for a meal are rendered pointless when the conversation at the table is in Spanish. When one of the main characters is shot, the conversation between Billy and the doctor operating is almost entirely untranslated, replacing tension with frustration and leaving the reader feeling as if they’re an outsider to a story that paradoxically exists only for them to read. ‘What’s the point’ is a question I asked myself many times in reading The Crossing, and this is just another example of the decisions within that make it feel like McCarthy was fulfilling a contractual obligation, or conducting an experiment in which he writes a book that he intends to keep for himself, and then is encouraged to publish it anyway. 

It’s a slog, is what I’m saying. A slog that is not unrewarding, but places so many obstacles and so much faff in between the moments of reward that I can’t help but imagine that McCarthy’s literary agent didn’t even bother to read it before signing his paycheck. I’ve started to read the third novel in the trilogy, Cities Of The Plain, and it’ll be worth seeing as to whether there’s any point in advancing beyond All The Pretty Horses at all, but judging The Crossing as its own novel separated from its place in a trilogy, I can surely say that I recommend the reader keep a wide berth from this here creature.  5/10

Not Worth It

[tuseriesdetv]

Noticias de series de la semana

Renovaciones

ITV ha renovado McDonald & Dodds por una tercera temporada

FOX ha renovado Duncanville por una tercera temporada

Cancelaciones

CBS ha cancelado MacGyver tras su quinta temporada

Noticias cortas

Tatiana Maslany (Sister Alice) no estará en la segunda temporada de Perry Mason.

Jodie Turner-Smith abandona The Witcher: Blood Origin debido a un retraso en las fechas de producción.

Netflix adquiere The 39 Steps, la adaptación de la novela de John Buchan (1915) protagonizada por Benedict Cumberbatch.

Fichajes

Jennifer Jason Leigh (The Hateful Eight, Single White Female) se une a la segunda temporada de Hunters. Será Chava, cazadora de nazis.

Nick Offerman (Parks and Recreation, Devs) será Uncle Miltie, quien ayuda a Rand (Seth Rogen) a distribuir la sex tape, en Pam and Tommy.

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Game of Thrones) protagonizará y producirá el drama The Second Home, la miniserie adaptación de la novela de Christina Clancy (2020) que sigue a dos familias separadas a raíz de un fatídico verano en Cabo Cod, Massachusetts.

Samantha Morton (Harlots, The Walking Dead) será Catherine de Medici en The Serpent Queen.

T'Nia Miller (Years and Years, The Haunting of Bly Manor), Charlotte Riley (Trust, Peaky Blinders), Alex Hernandez (UnREAL, The Son), JJ Feild (Turn, Lost in Space), Eli Goree (Riverdale, Pearson), Gary Carr (The Deuce, Death in Paradise) y Adelind Horan (The Pioneers) se unen a The Peripheral.

Renée Elise Goldsberry (Hamilton, Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist) se une a She-Hulk. Interpretará a un personaje llamado Amelia.

Hayley Squires (Adult Material, The Miniaturist), Frak Dillane (Fear The Walking Dead, The Girlfriend Experience), Clémence Poésy (Genius, The Tunnel) y Jamael Westman (Anne Boleyn) se unen a The Essex Serpent.

Wayne Brady (How I Met Your Mother, Colony) será Del Cooper, un comediante convertido en productor y el nuevo interés amoroso de un personaje aún no desvelado, en la quinta temporada de The Good Fight.

Shelley Conn (Liar, The Lottery) y Calam Lynch (Mrs. Wilson) serán Mary Sharma, la madre de las hermanas Kate (Simone Ashley) y Edwina (Charithra Chandran); y Theo Sharpe, ayudante de un impresor; en la segunda temporada de Bridgerton.

Sebastian Roché (The Young Pope, The Originals) y Michelle Ventimilla (Seven Seconds, Gotham) serán recurrentes en Big Sky como Wagy, el sheriff de Lochsa County; y Rosie Amaya, hija de Gil Amaya, el gerente del rancho de los Kleinsasser.

Adepero Oduye (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, 12 Years a Slave) y Cornelius Smith Jr. (Scandal, God Friended Me) serán Karen Wynn, enfermera jefe en la unidad de cuidados intensivos y líder del comité ético; y Bryant King, especialista en medicina interna y uno de los pocos doctores negros del hospital; en Five Days at Memorial.

Karen Robinson (Schitt's Creek, Tiny Pretty Things) será recurrente en la tercera temporada de A Million Little Things como Florence, una dulce viuda con sentido del humor.

Kareem Green (It's Showtime at the Apollo) será recurrente en Flatbush Misdemeanors como Kareem, padrastro de Dan (Dan Perlman).

Patricia Hodge (Miranda, A Very English Scandal) sustituye a la fallecida Diana Rigg en el papel de Mrs. Pumphrey en la segunda temporada de All Creatures Great and Small.

Ebonee Noel (FBI, Wrecked), Karen LeBlanc (Ransom, Departure), Yaani King Mondschein (Saving Grace, Blood & Oil) y Rance Nix protagonizarán The Kings of Napa.

Peta Sergeant (Snowfall, The Originals) se une como regular a la sexta y última temporada de Supergirl. Será Nyxly, una prisionera de la Phantom Zone.

Max Osinski (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., The Last Ship) será recurrente en la segunda y última temporada de The Walking Dead: World Beyond como Dennis, un soldado dedicado y disciplinado que trata de recuperar su vida.

Tom Kenny retomará su papel de narrador en Powerpuff. Robyn Lively (Twin Peaks, Light as a Feather) será Sara Bellum.

Sinéad Keenan (Being Human, My Left Nut), Lola Petticrew (Bloodlands, My Left Nut), Amy James-Kelly (Gentleman Jack, Safe), Genenieve O'Reilly (Tin Star, The Honourable Woman), Colin Morgan (Humans, Merlin), Owen McDonnell (Killing Eve, The Bay), Prasanna Puwanarajah (Doctor Foster, Patrick Melrose) y Kerri Quinn (Come Home, Coronation Street) protagonizarán Three Families, antes conocida como When It Happens To You.

Nicholas Burton (Dave & Theo) y Aaron Jeffery (Wentworth, McLeod's Daughters) se unen como recurrentes a Pieces of Her. Serán Andrew Queller, el hijo pequeño de Martin Queller (Terry O'Quinn); y un misterioso y potencialmente peligroso personaje que aparece en la vida de Laura (Toni Collette) y Andy (Bella Heathcote).

Barbara Alyn Woods (One Tree Hill; Honey, I Shrunk the Kids: The TV Show) será recurrente en Chucky como la alcaldesa Michelle Cross.

John de Lancie (Star Trek: The Next Generation) volverá a interpretar a Q en la segunda temporada de Star Trek: Picard.

Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine (The Chi, Treme) será recurrente en The Lincoln Lawyer como Raymond Griggs, un intenso y tenaz detective de Los Ángeles que investiga un asesinato.

Osy Ikhile (The Feed) y Caoilinn Springall (The Midnight Sky) se unen como regulares a Citadel. Stanley Tucci (Feud, The Lovely Bones), Nikki Amuka-Bir (Avenue 5, Luther), Susan Lynch (Happy Valley, Apple Tree Yard), Sara Martins (Death in Paradise), Leo Woodall (Cherry), Gráinne Good (The Other Lamb) y Leo Ashizawa (A Discovery of Witches) serán recurrentes.

Raff Law (Twist) será el sargento Ken Lemmons en Masters of the Air.

Tammy Townsend (K.C. Undercover) se une como regular a la sexta temporada de Queen Sugar. Paula Jai Parker (A House Divided, Family Time), Marquis Rodríguez (When They See Us, Iron Fist) y McKinley Freeman (Hit the Floor, Samantha Who?) se unen como recurrentes.

Thomas Barbusca (The Mick, Chad) y Adrienne Wells se unen como recurrentes a la tercera temporada de Black Monday. Serán Werner, un joven republicano del equipo de Blair (Andrew Rannells); y Nomi, una joven talentosa que pronto se convierte en la joya de la corona en el nuevo negocio de Mo (Don Cheadle).

Vic Mensa será recurrente en la cuarta temporada de The Chi como Jamal, alguien que quiere ayudar a su novia y a su hermana pequeña.

Eugenio Mastrandrea (All Cops Are Bastards), Keith David (Greenleaf, Future Man), Danielle Deadwyler (P-Valley, Watchmen), Kellita Smith (Z Nation, The Bernie Mac Show), Judith Scott (Snowfall, Dexter), Lucia Sardo, Paride Benassai y Roberta Rigano se unen a From Scratch.

Pósters

          Nuevas series

Peacock ha encargado un reboot de Queer as Folk centrado en un grupo diverso de amigos de Nueva Orleans cuyas vidas cambian tras una tragedia. Creada, escrita y producida por Stephen Dunn (Little America, Closet Monster), que además dirigirá el piloto. Produce Russell T. Davies (Queer as Folk, It's a Sin).

Tom Holland (Spider-Man: Homecoming, Lo imposible) protagonizará y producirá la primera temporada de The Crowded Room (diez episodios), antología de Apple TV+ que contará historias reales de personas que aprendieron a vivir con enfermedades mentales. Esta primera tanda, basada en 'The Minds of Billy Milligan' (1981), la biografía escrita por Daniel Keyes, trata sobre la primera persona absuelta por su desorden de personalidad múltiple, conocido ahora como trastorno de identidad disociativo, en los años 70. Escrita por Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind, Fringe).

Justin Timberlake (Inside Llewyn Davis, The Social Network) interpretará al productor y presentador de concursos de televisión Chuck Barris. Según sus memorias, publicadas en 1984, esta profesión era una tapadera para ocultar su verdadero trabajo como asesino de la CIA en los años 60 y 70. Creada y producida por Jon Worley (Justified, SEAL Team). Escrita y producida por David Hollander (Ray Donovan, The Cleaner). Hubo adaptación cinematográfica en 2002.

HBO Max encarga King Shark, spin-off de The Suicide Squad. Escrita y dirigida por James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy, Scooby-Doo).

HBO Max encarga diez episodios de Minx, comedia ambientada en Los Ángeles en los años 70 y protagonizada por una feminista joven y formal (Ophelia Lovibond; Elementary, W1A) que se alía con un editor de poca monta (Jake Johnson; New Girl, Stumptown) para crear la primera revista erótica para mujeres. Con Idara Victor (Turn, Rizzoli & Isles), Jessica Lowe (Wrecked, Miracle Workers), Lennon Parham (Lady Dynamite, Bless This Mess), Michael Angarano (The Knick, This Is Us) y Oscar Montoya (Bless the Harts). Escrita y producida por Ellen Rapoport (Desperados). Produce Paul Feig (The Office, Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist).

HBO Max desarrolla Deeds, comedia negra sobre una agente inmobiliaria desesperada (Kristin Davis; Sex and the City, Melrose Place) que se embarca en un camino cada vez más oscuro cuando se ve obligada a aliarse con una pareja de sociópatas jóvenes y drogadictos que pronto descubren que en el mundo de los bienes raíces de Los Ángeles, en lo que se refiere a inmoralidad y comportamientos despiadados, les llevan ventaja. Escrita por Michael Davidoff (Working) y producida por Kristin Davis (And Just Like That...) y Ellen Pompeo (Grey's Anatomy).

HBO Max desarrolla una comedia ambientada en un campamento de verano en la que cuatro amigas de toda la vida que se preparan para ser monitoras jurarán mantener su amistad tras la llegada de una chica nueva desde otro campamento. Escrita por Lauren Herstik (American Vandal, Pearson).

Showtime desarrolla Mabel, serie precuela de Madea en la que Mabel Simmons se muda a Atlanta en 1972. Escrita por JaNeika James y JaSheika James y producida por Tyler Perry.

The Downstairs Girl, la novela de Stacey Lee (2019), tendrá adaptación televisiva. Ambientada en Atlanta en 1890, sigue a una joven que vive con su guardián en un sótano y trabaja como criada para una de las familias más adineradas por el día y escribe anónimamente en un periódico por la noche. Escrita por Aminta Goyel (Ghostwriter).

Fechas

La décima temporada de Call the Midwife se estrena en BBC One el 18 de abril

El estreno de la 2ª y última temporada de Selena: The Series se adelanta del 14 al 4 de mayo

Girls5eva se estrena en Peacock el 6 de mayo

Run The World se estrena en Starz el 16 de mayo

La quinta y última temporada de The Bold Type se estrena en Freeform el 26 de mayo

Panic se estrena en Prime Video el 28 de mayo

La tercera temporada de Sistas se estrena en BET el 9 de junio

La undécima y última temporada de The Walking Dead se estrena en AMC el 22 de agosto

Tráilers y promos

Loki

Selena: The Series - Temporada 2 y última

Run The World

High School Musical: The Musical: The Series - Temporada 2

The Mosquito Coast

Pose - Temporada 3 y última

Girls5eva

The Chi - Temporada 4

Jupiter's Legacy

[martyniiii]

MAG 175 - Epoch

New Magnus episode! MAG 175 - Epoch

Case ########-15

An inventory of what comes after. 

Audio recorded by the Archivisit, in situ.

Content warnings:

Body horror (inc animals)

Description of human remains

Self-mutilation 

Futility / Inconsequence

Environmental disaster / Eco-horror

Pollution

Water insecurity

Existential & Theological dread

Unpleasant SFX - insects, squelching, sirens 

Thanks to this week's Patrons: Alaina Royse, Shane Kelly, Grackles, anonymous sky, Lainy J, JZimD, OatmealAddiction, Deidre Pitts, Andreas Evans, Disaster, Lovro, Saadia, Megan Linger, Billie, Rowen De Lacy, Gil, Zetallis, Woodspurge, Redd, Erin Sellars, James Curry, TJ Hoffer, KP Wilson, Zoe Schroeder, charliewarl, Shannon McHugh, Taylor Ashmore, lu, Mitch Pavao, sageybug, Josephine Hoare, Azaria Serpens, Bonnie Phillips, DwarvenBeardSpores, Bex quollish, Jax Wells, Twisted Sight, Elizabeth LeGant, Agnieszka Szołucha, Benn Ends, Libby Broome, Elyse Walker, Faith Gillispie, Kathleen Parham, PansyThoughts, e.herself, Tartha Jedril 

If you'd like to join them visit www.patreon.com/rustyquill

Edited this week by Annie Fitch, Elizabeth Moffatt, Brock Winstead & Alexander J Newall

Written by Jonathan Sims and directed by Alexander J Newall

Produced by Lowri Ann Davies

Performances:

- "Martin Blackwood" - Alexander J. Newall 

- "The Archivist" - Jonathan Sims 

Sound effects this week by josephsardin, 16G_Panska_Sand_Nikolas, StephenSaldanha, lolamadeus, audiojacked, nooly, PhreaKsAccount, vckhaze, PhreaKsAccount, usernamemoe, Tomlija, tim.kahn, jchiledred, dheming, jorickhoofd, Fission9, Rvgerxini, TreasureBoxFilms, kantouth, jorickhoofd, launemax, Alexir, msantoro11, Inspector J, secondbody, Kinoton, supersound23, Peacewaves, Spoxe, Relenzo2, 7h3_lark, kMoon, Dariachic, tatianafeudal, potok_potoczny, jorickhoofd & previously credited artists via freesound.org.

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[yasbxxgie]

Jazz as Communication

by Langston Hughes

You can start anywhere—Jazz as Communication—since it’s a circle, and you yourself are the dot in the middle. You, me. For example, I’ll start with the Blues. I’m not a Southerner. I never worked on a levee. I hardly ever saw a cotton field except from the highway. But women behave the same on Park Avenue as they do on a levee: when you’ve got hold of one part of them the other part escapes you. That’s the Blues!

Life is as hard on Broadway as it is in Blues-originating-land. The Brill Building Blues is just as hungry as the Mississippi Levee Blues. One communicates to the other, brother! Somebody is going to rise up and tell me that nothing that comes out of Tin Pan Alley is jazz. I disagree. Commercial, yes. But so was Storeyville, so was Basin Street. What do you think Tony Jackson and Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver and Louis Armstrong were playing for?(1) Peanuts? No, money, even in Dixieland. They were communicating for money. For fun, too—because they had fun. But the money helped the fun along.

Now; To skip a half century, somebody is going to rise up and tell me Rock and Roll isn’t jazz. First, two or three years ago, there were all these songs about too young to know—but. . . . The songs are right. You’re never too young to know how bad it is to love and not have love come back to you. That’s as basic as the Blues. And that’s what Rock and Roll is—teenage Heartbreak Hotel—the old songs reduced to the lowest common denominator. The music goes way back to Blind Lemon and Leadbelly—Georgia Tom merging into the Gospel Songs—­Ma Rainey, and the most primitive of the Blues.(2) It borrows their gut-bucket heartache. It goes back to the jubilees and stepped-up Spiri­tuals—Sister Tharpe—and borrows their I’m-gonna-be-happy-anyhow-in-spite-of-this-world kind of hope. It goes back further and borrows the steady beat of the drums of Congo Square—that going-on beat­—and the Marching Bands’ loud and blatant yes!! Rock and Roll puts them all together and makes a music so basic it’s like the meat cleaver the butcher uses—before the cook uses the knife—before you use the sterling silver at the table on the meat that by then has been rolled up into a commercial filet mignon.

A few more years and Rock and Roll will no doubt be washed back half forgotten into the sea of jazz. Jazz is a great big sea. It washes up all kinds of fish and shells and spume and waves with a steady old beat, or off-beat. And Louis must be getting old if he thinks J. J. and Kai—and even Elvis—didn’t come out of the same sea he came out of, too. Some water has chlorine in it and some doesn’t. There’re all kinds of water. There’s salt water and Saratoga water and Vichy water, Quinine water and Pluto water—and Newport rain. And it’s all water. Throw it all in the sea, and the sea’ll keep on rolling along toward shore and crashing and booming back into itself again. The sun pulls the moon. The moon pulls the sea. They also pull jazz and me. Beyond Kai to Count to Lonnie to Texas Red, beyond June to Sarah to Billy to Bessie to Ma Rainey. And the Most is the It—the all of it.(3)

Jazz seeps into words—spelled out words. Nelson Algren is influenced by jazz. Ralph Ellison is, too. Sartre, too. Jacques Prévert. Most of the best writers today are. Look at the end of the Ballad of the Sad Cafe. Me as the public, my dot in the middle—it was fifty years ago, the first time I heard the Blues on Independence Avenue in Kansas City. Then State Street in Chicago. Then Harlem in the twenties with J. P. and J. C. Johnson and Fats and Willie the Lion and Nappy playing piano—with the Blues running all up and down the keyboard through the ragtime and the jazz.(4) House rent party cards. I wrote The Weary Blues:

Downing a drowsy syncopated tune . . . . . . etc. . . . .

Shuffle Along was running then—the Sissle and Blake tunes. A little later Runnin’ Wild and the Charleston and Fletcher and Duke and Cab. Jimmie Lunceford, Chick Webb, and Ella. Tiny Parham in Chicago. And at the end of the Depression times, what I heard at Minton’s. A young music—coming out of young people. Billy—the male and female of them—both the Eckstein and the Holiday—and Dizzy and Tad and the Monk.(5) Some of it came out in poems of mine in Montage of a Dream Deferred later. Jazz again putting itself into words.

But I wasn’t the only one putting jazz into words. Better poets of the heart of jazz beat me to it. W. C. Handy a long time before. Benton Overstreet. Mule Bradford. Then Buddy DeSilva on the pop level. Ira Gershwin. By and by Dorothy Baker in the novel—to name only the most obvious—the ones with labels. I mean the ones you can spell out easy with a-b-c’s—the word mongers—outside the music. But always the ones of the music were the best—Charlie Christian, for example, Bix, Louis, Joe Sullivan, Count.(6)

Now, to wind it all up, with you in the middle—jazz is only what you yourself get out of it. Louis’s famous quote—or misquote probably­—“Lady, if you have to ask what it is, you’ll never know.” Well, I wouldn’t be so positive. The lady just might know—without being able to let loose the cry—to follow through—to light up before the fuse blows out. To me jazz is a montage of a dream deferred. A great big dream—yet to come—and always yet—to become ultimately and finally true. Maybe in the next seminar—for Saturday—Nat Hentoff and Billy Strayhorn and Tony Scott and the others on that panel will tell us about it—when they take up “The Future of Jazz.” The Bird was looking for that future like mad. The Newborns, Chico, Dave, Gulda, Milt, Charlie Mingus.(7) That future is what you call pregnant. Potential papas and mamas of tomor­row’s jazz are all known. But THE papa and THE mama—maybe both—are anonymous. But the child will communicate. Jazz is a heartbeat—­its heartbeat is yours. You will tell me about its perspectives when you get ready.

NOTES

(1) Tony Jackson (1876-1921), American ragtime pianist and blues singer; Ferdinand Joseph “Jelly Roll” Morton (1885-1941) began playing piano in New Orleans’ Storyville at the age of seventeen and was regarded by many as the first great jazz composer; Joseph “King” Oliver (1885-1938), popular ragtime performer with roots in New Orleans.

(2) Blind Lemon Jefferson (1897-1929), early American pioneer of the blues; Thomas “Georgia Tom” Dorsey (1899-1993), African American blues singer, gospel songwriter, and pianist.

(3) James Louis “J. J.” Johnson (1924- ), an American trombonist and composer, and Kai Winding (1922-1983), a Danish American trombonist, formed the popular group Jay and Kai in 1954; Lonnie Johnson (1889-1970), American guitarist and jazz singer.

(4) Jacques Prévert (1900-1977), French poet; James Price “J. P.” Johnson (1894-1955), American ragtime and blues pianist and composer; J. C. Johnson (1896-1981), jazz pianist and songwriter; Willie Hilton Napoleon “Nappy” Lamare (1907-1988), American guitarist, banjoist, composer, and singer.

(5) Chick Webb (1909-1939), American drummer and bandleader; Hartzell Strathdene “Tiny” Parham (1900-1943), Canadian American pianist, organist, and bandleader; John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie (1917-1993), American trumpeter and bandleader; Thelonius Monk (1917-1982), American jazz pianist and composer.

(6) W. Benton Overstreet, American songwriter; Perry “Mule” Bradford (1893-1970), American pianist, songwriter, singer, and producer; Buddy DeSilva, American songwriter; Dorothy Baker (1907-1968), jazz writer best known for Young Man with a Horn, a novel about the life of Leon “Bix” Deiderbecke; Charlie Christian (1916-1942), American guitarist; Joe Sullivan (1906-1971), American pianist and composer.

(7) Nathan Irving “Nat” Hentoff (1925-), American writer and jazz historian; Billy Strayhorn (1915-1967), American composer, arranger, and pianist; Tony Scott (1921-), American clarinetist and saxophonist; Charlie “Bird” Parker (1920-1955), American alto saxophonist and one of the most influential soloists in jazz; Friedrich Gulda (1930-), Austrian pianist, flutist, baritone saxophonist, singer, and composer; Charles Mingus (1922-1979), American double bass player, pianist, composer, and bandleader.

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