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DIMA'S BLOG is an interactive collection of music, art, photographs, video clips, audio podcasts, quotations, humor, poetry, interviews, anecdotes and memoir, curated by Dmitri Matheny and with commentary by readers. You can keep up-to-date with Dima's Blog through RSS feeds and email updates. Click on the orange RSS button [below, right] to subscribe. Please pause the streaming music at the bottom of your screen before playing video or audio clips. |
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NOSTALGIA "Teddy told me that in Greek, nostalgia literally means the pain from an old wound. It’s a twinge in your heart, far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine. Goes backwards, forwards, and takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called “The Wheel,” it’s called “The Carousel.” It lets us travel the way a child travels, round and around and back home again, to a place where we know we are loved." ~Don Draper, Mad Men STAY GOLD, PONY BOY Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay. ~Robert Frost HYPOCRISY "It is a public scandal that gives offence and it is no sin to sin in secret." ~Jean-Baptiste Poquelin "No man can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which one may be true." ~Nathaniel Hawthorne "For he who lives more lives than one, more deaths than one must die." ~Oscar Wilde THE WONDER OF INTERLOCHEN But how can one express the wonder of Interlochen? No one can truly translate it for others. I can only say that in a world which deals so much, for expedience's sake, in tinsel and material values, there is something fine and wholesome and splendid and altogether overwhelming in the euphony of sixteen hundred young boys and girls delighting in the wonders of great music. And a nation fortunate enough to have an arts center like Interlochen can look to the future with hope.
~Van Kliburn, 1962 CAT FANCY I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat. ~Edgar Allan Poe What do I care about the purring of one who cannot love, like the cat? ~Friedrich Nietzsche A cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue sparks, eyes blazing and sputtering. ~William S. Burroughs A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way. ~Mark Twain If you really want to learn about life, get a cat. Because the world is his. ~James Cromwell Everything comes to those who wait... except a cat. ~Mario Andretti I believe cats to be spirits come to earth. A cat, I am sure, could walk on a cloud without coming through. ~Jules Verne You call to a dog and a dog will break its neck to get to you. Dogs just want to please. Call to a cat and its attitude is, 'What's in it for me?' ~Lewis Grizzard DON'T SHOOT THE MESSENGER "Dancers are the messengers of the gods." ~Martha Graham
QUINTET "If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." ~Isaac Newton HUNTER S. THOMPSON on Fuel, Tension & Self-Respect
ODE TO MARISKA "Did I make the right decision in coming home to this suburban desert after 20 years in San Francisco? My days are so strange. There's something absurd about the sound of a lone horn, accompanied by a hundred humming air conditioners on an otherwise silent street. When I can't take it anymore, I get on the treadmill and watch another episode of Law & Order..." ~D.M. WISDOM OF THE WORLD-WEARY "If you want a guarantee, buy a toaster." ~Clint Eastwood "You know why divorces are so expensive? They're worth it." ~Willie Nelson "The large print giveth and the small print taketh away." ~Tom Waits RTFO RYAN According to USA Today: "Reynolds, after some playful banter with fans, was asked by a young boy what it was like to recite the Green Lantern Oath. (For the uninitiated, it's: "In brightest day, in blackest night, No evil shall escape my sight. Let those who worship evil's might, Beware my power — Green Lantern's Light!") Reynolds initially did not plan to recite the oath on stage, but was overcome by the boy's innocent question. Reynolds gave the oath as if he were summoning power, never taking his eyes off the child...and fans erupted." ALI, BOMAYE ! "It isn't the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it's the pebble in your shoe." "I hated every minute of training, but I said, 'Don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion'." "It's the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen." HOWLS FROM THE HOLE Solitude is dangerous to reason, without being favourable to virtue. Remember that the solitary mortal is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly mad. ~Samuel Johnson We must reserve a back shop all our own, entirely free, in which to establish our real liberty and our principal retreat and solitude. ~Michel de Montaigne Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that very well-lit back alley where one keeps assignations with oneself: no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions. ~Joan Didion BE CAREFUL “All meaningful and lasting change starts first in your imagination and then works its way out. Imagination is more important than knowledge.” ~Albert Einstein "It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane." ~Philip K. Dick "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be." ~Kurt Vonnegut WHAT Q LEARNED FROM HIS FATHER Once a task is just begun, never leave until it's done. Be the labor great or small, do it well or not at all. FINDING YOUR VOICE "Everyone has to find their own voice as an instrumentalist, in jazz more than other kinds of music. You want to sound as much like yourself as you can, and still retain your musical values. My decision to concentrate on the flugelhorn was not as strange to me as it was to other people..it's just a certain sound that I'm looking for." ~Art Farmer EVOLUTION "It is not the strongest of the species, nor the most intelligent, that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change." ~Charles Darwin AND THE LIVING IS EASY
"A big heartfelt thanks to our friends JoAnne & Ed Soued, Ed Dunsavage and all the good folks at the Siskiyou Institute in Ashland, Oregon, who hosted last weekend's concert and launch party for our new duo album, GRANT & MATHENY! Darrell Grant and I have been performing at the Old Siskiyou Barn annually since 2000, and it remains one of our favorite venues anywhere.
The DMITRI MATHENY GROUP will stage a series of events in Southern California next week as part of the 87th annual Redlands Bowl Summer Music Festival. Charles McNeal, Nick Manson, Ruth Davies, John Lewis and I will perform Tuesday evening 7/6 at the Redlands Bowl, and will offer several free workshops for children and families in San Bernadino County.  And next month, August 7-8, the DMG is delighted to return to Colorado's spectacular Telluride Jazz Celebration. Telluride provides a stunning natural setting in which to beat the summer heat and experience the best in live jazz. So hush, little baby, don't you cry." ~DM LUCK, LOVE & MAKING A LIVING "The lucky person passes for a genius." ~Euripides "Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius." ~Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart "A genius is one who can do anything except make a living." ~Joey Lauren Adams I FEEL IT COMING TOGETHER "If you have enough people telling you you're wonderful, then you start believing you're fabulous, then someone tells you you stink and you believe that, too! That's why, despite the public perception, I'm a very private person who has a hard time with the fame thing." ~Angelina Jolie “If America had been discovered as many times as I have, no one would remember Columbus.” ~Sean Connery “In this business, fame lasts for a second. You can be blown up and blown down. People keep losing interest in faces because new ones come along every single second. I'm one at the moment. Tomorrow I won't be. That's cool. I'm not saying that when it does end, I'll be like, 'Yay! It's ending.' But I'll move on and do something else because that's what has to be done. It's about survival. If you're sad about it, then you're in the wrong job.” ~Keira Knightley KUDOS, OKEEP! "Congratulations to my friend (and producer of my album Penumbra) ORRIN KEEPNEWS, on the occasion of his receiving the 2011 NEA Jazz Masters Award for Jazz Advocacy. The NEA Jazz Masters Award is our nation's highest honor for jazz musicians and industry professionals. I can think of no one more deserving than Orrin, who, by following his own street sense and good taste, became the leading curator of American jazz, producing nearly every historically significant jazz album of the modern era. Like many musicians and fans, I trace the beginning of my jazz education to nights at the turntable, courtesy of Orrin. Thank you, Mr. Keepnews -- and kudos!" ~D.M. AMOR FATI "We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancients methods is to tell a story, begging the listener to say — and to feel — yes, that's the way it is, or at least that's the way I feel it. You're not as alone as you thought." ~John Steinbeck "What if a demon were to creep after you one night, in your loneliest loneliness, and say, 'This life which you live must be lived by you once again and innumerable times more; and every pain and joy and thought and sigh must come again to you, all in the same sequence. The eternal hourglass will again and again be turned and you with it, dust of the dust!' Would you throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse that demon? Or would you answer, 'Never have I heard anything more divine'?" ~Friedrich Nietzsche "Hear that lonesome whippoorwill? He sounds too blue to fly. The midnight train is whining low, I'm so lonesome I could cry." ~Hank Williams Posts 1 - 25 of 673
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