spirits in the high church

Been listening to Albert Ayler's "Love Cry" tonight. What amazing work. Recorded in 1968, Ayler comes second to nobody. Of course there is Coltrane, Pharoah, and Coleman to contend with. But Ayler is in a class unto himself because it is the sound of a student playing with the weight, violence, and joy of a youthful spirit giving back that which was given to him.

From an interview with Ayler the day of Coltrane's funeral, Ayler explains, "I would say when I was in the army, in 1960 and '61, when I spent two years training, when I first started playing, I had a thing that was free at that time, you know? But when (Coltrane) started playing, I had to listen...just to his tone you understand? To listen...to him play was just like he was talking to me, saying, 'brother, get yourself together spiritually.' Just one sound--that's how profound this man was."

There are quite a few Ayler recordings, and I find them all great. Play them loud. Fury sounds better when it is loud. Check out this bio

weddings and barbed wire

In my hunt for the perfect wedding poem, i stumbled across this work about a guy who has been fixing barbed wire fences his whole life. It's out of the collection "Gutter Flowers" by Don Welch. This poem has nothing to do with weddings, but i thought it sounded real nice anyway.


"At the Edge of Town"

Hard to know which is more gnarled,
the posts he hammers staples into
or the blue hummocks that run across his hands like molehills.

Work has reduced his wrists
to bones, cut out of him
the easy flesh and brought him
down to this, the crowbar's teeth

Caught just behind a barb.
Again this morning
the crowbar's neck will make
its blue slip into wood,

there will be that moment
when too much strength
will cause the wire to break.
But even at 70, he says,

he has to have it right,
and more than right.
This morning, in the pewter light,
he has the scars to prove it.