Playing Nirvana Blind…

Julliard jazz professor Ulysses Owens Jr. plays drums to Nirvana’s “In Bloom,” a song he’d never heard before, and comes amazingly close to Dave Grohl’s original track. Click here.

An Amazing Conversation

Listen to this conversation between David Pakman of CNN and Dennis Prager of Prager U. Pakman is a Liberal. Prager is a Conservative. They are discussing some of the hottest issues that are separating Liberals and Conservatives today. And yet, by talking about what is reasonable instead of what is ideologically correct, they find common ground.

I can’t remember hearing any political discussion this hopeful since… well, in a long time.

Click here.

Matt Gaetz Grills Air Force Superintendent Over Gender Diversity Scholarship

This has all the markings of Russian anti-US propaganda. But it turns out to be true. Do you think the Russian military – or the North Korean military, for that matter – have programs like this?

Click here.

Jimmy Buffett’s Final Album

Jimmy Buffett’s posthumous album will be released November 3. Click here to listen to three of the new songs on it.

Douglas Murray on Tennyson’s “Ulysses”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson 

“Lord Tennyson’s poem lauds the strength of human will ‘to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield,” says Murray. Click here to listen to him talk about its importance… and then read an excerpt.

David Foster Wallace’s Legendary Commencement Speech 

LC sent this in. “Forgive me if this 23-minute recording is repetitive,” he wrote. “Perhaps you’ve posted about it before. I find it poignant.”

David Foster Wallace was a uniquely smart and inventive writer. Some of his novels are considered to be must reading for anyone seriously interested in contemporary fiction. He eventually killed himself. And that is a topic we could talk about for hours. But he was also practical and poetic, as you can see from this relatively short commencement address.

Click here.

Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for death” 

Emily Dickinson might be America’s greatest poet. Even better than Walt Whitman or E.A. Poe. At the very least, she is America’s best Metaphysical poet. If you’ve never heard one of her poems recited, this will be a treat. Click here.

Pop-Up Classical Music Performances 

DF, my elder sister, sent an issue of The Marginalia, where Maria Popova included this link to a pop-up performance of Beethoven’s final symphony. Click here.

I’ve covered a few of these before. I especially like it when they are orchestrated in a way that really surprises the audience.

Click here for a link to more of them, with a bit of history on how they came about.

“I rise at eleven, I dine about two,

I get drunk before seven, and the next thing I do…” 

John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester 

Number Two Son sent the following link to me and my brother, a professor of ancient literature at Princeton. He said, “I thought you two would appreciate it… but you should listen to it in private…”

I was intrigued.

It was a poem by John Wilmot, the 2nd Earl of Rochester, who lived during the reign of Charles II in the late 17th century. The poem itself, as you will see, is bawdy. But it is also technically impressive.

I love the idea that proficiency at writing verse might have been something that the king and his gentlemen friends considered important. In that sense, Wilmot is typical of a group of courtiers of his time that are now known as the Cavalier poets. (Although back then they were sometimes referred to as “roistering gallants.”) For these aristocrats, wit and poetry were considered de rigueur for their class, just as playing the pianoforte was expected of gentle ladies a century later.

(I took a few extra minutes to write that last paragraph because I wanted to see if I could sound like a Princeton professor. My brother said, “Not quite!”)

You can hear the poem beautifully read by Douglas Murray here.

Long Ago… I Fell for Her

When The Carpenters were on the charts, I never thought much of them. I saw them as syrupy sweet and sentimental, which was not my teenage thing. But I do remember liking Karen Carpenter’s voice. A few days ago, I came across this clip of a vocal coach reacting to her singing. It may explain why, despite my antipathy for the sort of songs she sang, I was a secret fan.

Click here.