Notes to Cecil

A compendium of thoughts and images inspired by one particular solo performance from free-jazz pianist Cecil Taylor.

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Notes to Cecil

• 2013-05-24

  

  in the light, smoke        in the dark, channel:

                     a fissure of interconnection and points of discourse

• 2013-05-21

  

  the moment load
  of everything he tells us
  hanging there,
  heavy, in the air:
  unmanageable

• 2013-05-18

  

  Some days are just like this: 
                                 and we ask
                           ourselves

                                                                   about the holes. 

• 2013-05-15

  

                                                           ——— as if.

                                      of.
                                                  of what

               what if.

• 2013-05-12

  

                                   the pure galaxy of rising

• 2013-05-09

  

                            Aren’t we managing everything we’ve gathered,
  and finding something new in the crowding?

• 2013-05-06

  

  If this curve is wisdom
  if this shadow toward if this motion away

       how hard we work to see the light
       to name our small perspective

• 2013-05-03

  

          the flounce of sunlight ———— the threshold of sound

• 2013-04-30

  

  Another pile of curved days.
  Another pile of private sounds.

  How to distinguish the answer?        More listening.

• 2013-04-27

  

  Picasso said first I find something, then I go looking for what it is. 

                                                     Is this how it is for you?

• 2013-04-24

  

                         Cecil, everything you do is order out of order, unraveled.          

             Everything you do names spaces 
                                            I didn’t know needed to be filled.

• 2013-04-21

  

  A day of capacity, of firm placement, of imbalance.
  Everything holds to itself, but shows up — cracked and ready.

  It continues even where we are not looking or listening.

• 2013-04-18

  

  Whatever has tipped 
                     is, by extension, what holds us in place.

• 2013-04-15

  

  I am listening, but sounds keep getting erased and replaced.

• 2013-04-12

  

  slip through
           and sometimes        destroy us with
                                                                  your sounds