Afternoon at the Ivanhoe

I have finally started organizing my growing database of Paterson fragments (I broke down and bought myself new hard drive) and found some recorded conversations from Paterson that I’d been looking for since I moved again last summer. You can get a sense of an afternoon hanging out at the Ivanhoe, near the falls—the philosophizing and the fighting (I never recorded the fist fight that almost exploded while discussing Jung’s concept of the anima). There’s not as much of the music, which was also a big part of the scene and we’ve heard it in previous entries (at least at the very end of this discussion clip).

Click here for today's Paterson mix.

Next week I’ll be on the road, showing some Paterson video and performing live audio (among other things) at the Artefact Festival in Brussels. The topic is “capture,” which seems an apt way to talk about the limits of approaching Paterson/Paterson by way of the blog.
In the meantime, Impossible Object’s “sister” blog The Paterson Project has posted their first new song in a long time, so check it out. Paterson never ceases to surprise me: so much in its corners! The Haitian president passage? I forgot that completely.

Ivanhoe on Last Wednesdays

Every last Wednesday of the month, the Ivanhoe Arts Mosaic in Paterson hosts an open mic with music, poetry, dance, etc. within spitting distance of the Great Falls. Pictured above is the current president of the Ivanhoe, Don, and its music director, Mike, both of whom we've heard from in previous entries. I especially like Mike's piano playing. Mike on the Ivanhoe piano: "Playing that piano is like pushing a Buick up hill all the way. You press a note, and it plays 3 seconds later. That piano defies physics." I'm always a sucker for crappy pianos. Check it out tomorrow night if you're around.

It Is Silent By Defect of Virtue in that It Contains Nothing of You

The cost, the cost; Beautiful Thing; fire, wind and mind; tightrope acrobats across the abyss of the real; wax fetishes and tin ears; the library's discontents: it's all here in Book III. "Come tatterdemalion futility." Click here for our most recent discussion of Paterson in Paterson.
Last chance to stop by in the flesh, for a whirl through Books IV, V and the unfinished sixth, is July 9 at 7pm.

Walking--

This week, I hosted the third meeting of the Paterson book club--reading Paterson, in Paterson, with Patersonians--and we focused on Book II. Listen here for a recording of much of the discussion (large mp3 file). Since Book II arrays multiple views of Garret Mountain, I've included the 25 cent view from the binocular machine mounted at the cliff's edge. Free for Impossible Object readers (click on image)! Last discussion group meetings are on July 2 and 9 at the Ivanhoe Arts Center.