Take Five: At the threshold of wonder
Nick Cave prays, Shara Nova provokes, Jean-Michel Basquiat bebops, Natural Information Society drones, and Davy Graham strums in an eclectic week even by my standards
“Take Five” is posted each Friday, and offers five things I spent some time with over the course of the previous week. No criticism, no in-depth analysis, just a few things I think you might be interested in checking out. When the spirit moves me, I’ll post other things at other times.
1. Nick Cave — Seven Psalms
My fascination with Nick Cave after seeing his extraordinary concert with the Bad Seeds last week continued into the next as I started to explore deeper parts of his catalog. This week — which like most recent weeks had its share of difficulties — found me taking solace in Seven Psalms. “While in lockdown I wrote a number of psalms, or small, sacred songs—one a day for a week,” Cave wrote of the pieces. “The seven psalms are presented as one long meditation—on faith, rage, love, grief, mercy, sex and praise. A strange, contemplative offering borne of an uncertain time. I hope you like it.” I do. Though I don’t share Cave’s faith, I do admire his way with words. The imagery in these brief recited prayers is visceral, even when divorced from their context — “His antlers rake lightning across the sphere,” or “A gas canister spins, hissing through the street” or “I am the mist-maker moving through the throng.” The quiet, solemn backing by Warren Ellis is the perfect complement to Cave’s serious recitation. The near-constant assurance by politicians of a certain persuasion that they have “prayed on” something leaves me cold, but Cave makes a case for the value of prayer regardless of spiritual intent. Writing in the Red Hand Files in response to a question about prayer, he says, “You need not pray to anyone. It is just as valuable to pray into your disbelief, as it is to pray into your belief, for prayer is not an encounter with an external agent, rather it is an encounter with oneself.” With Seven Psalms, Cave’s prayers offer a moment of quiet contemplation that can be a reset regardless of how, why or if you adhere to any particular faith.
2. Shara Nova — Provocations on Creativity
When Shara Nova performed as part of the City of Literature’s MusicIC festival production of “Penelope,” she brought some merch to sell. Among the various CDs was a small booklet titled Provocations on Creativity. In some ways, it is her own version of Brian Eno’s “Oblique Strategies” cards. Though while Eno’s goal was to help to find a way through barriers, Nova’s seems to be simply to spark creativity in the reader’s life. “Each choice we make to be creative, even in the smallest of ways, is the invention of our beautiful existence,” she writes. Over the course of a month’s worth of “provocations,” Nova offers pithy advice like “Memorize a poem. Practice it so you will be ready to recite it at any opportune moment,” but also more involved suggestions such as to notice your jealousy of others’ success and determine what this can tell you about your own practice. Nova has shared provocations on her own Substack, as well as a wealth of other material. I marveled at Nova’s creativity during the short time I spent with her, and see this booklet as a small way to revisit that feeling and perhaps spark my own creative impulse.
3. Jean-Michel Basquiat — ‘Charles the First’
It was time to swap out the artwork on my office wall, so down came Egon Schiele’s “Four Trees” and up went Jean-Michel Basquiat’s “Charles the First.” From a small, subdued, landscape to a bright, busy canvas by a renown street artist, the switch has definitely added some intrigue to the wall. Both came from the Iowa City Public Library's Art to Go! collection. Unlike the Schiele piece, there wasn’t a musical impetus to pick this one; it just grabbed my eye as I perused the selections. However, this too has a musical link, as the “Charles” of the title is Charlie Parker, a strong influence on Basquiat’s work. It’s difficult not to see parallels between the frenetic bebop of Parker and the vibrant work of Basquiat. Both disrupted their field, and each gave the patron — listener or viewer — a lot to digest. I’ve read up a bit on Baasquiat and the painting this week, and look forward to spending some time gazing when I need to take a break from the screen, exploring the text-heavy composition and the painter’s use of shape and color.
4. Natural Information Society - ‘Is’
Joshua Abrams jazz/creative music combo Natural Information Society has a new album out in collaboration with the Bitchin’ Bajas, but I’m not ready to listen as I’m still absorbing the group’s 2023 double album Since Time is Gravity. I saw the band perform in Spring 2023 as part of the Mission Creek festival, and picked up a copy of the album at the time. It is a dense, drone-fueled collection that is easy to let pass by unremarked given the subtle variations in the songs, but it takes a real close listen to fully appreciate. Using nontraditional instrumentation, the group creates a groove and then plays it with minor variation, letting each small change set in and create new textures before incorporating the next. Abrams plays the guimbri, a hide-covered lute that has a deep, resonant tone, and is joined by harmonium, bass clarinet, congas and horns. On three tracks they are joined by Chicago saxophonist Ari Brown, who adds more melodicism to the mix. “Is” is the longest of the three, but it also gives Brown the most room to move, exploring the surprisingly vast map laid out by the underlying drone.
5. Davy Graham — ‘Angi’
The AllMusic Guide says of Davy Graham that most in North America don’t know him, but "[L]isteners usually get all misty over one of the persons he influenced." Such is the case for me when considering Graham. In fact, it was an insightful interview with Richard Thompson, one of those influenced by Graham, about his guitar technique that led me to the guitarist. Thompson talked about Graham’s playing, particularly his innovation in guitar tunings that led to the now ubiquitous DADGAD configuration. I thought it was time to do more than occasionally listen and really spend some time with him. I started at the beginning with his recording debut, the 3/4 A.D. EP, which includes his original instrumental, "Angi." Though made famous by others (including Simon & Garfunkel on the Sounds of Silence album), it's hard to top the original and easy to hear it as the cornerstone for a generation of acoustic finger picked guitar music. Though he performed and recorded across several decades, Graham only has a dozen or so albums to his name, and so far, it feels worthwhile to listen to them all.