My neighborhood in Brooklyn may be the land of organic free-range grass-fed shade-grown milk and honey, but there are no pomegranates.  (Til next season.)

So instead, raspberries.  (Here’s one I photographed before it disappeared in my mouth.)  As close as I could come to the kind of precious, translucent quality of a pomegranate seed.

I’ve been thinking about pomegranate seeds since Thursday night’s Helmut Lachenmann concert at Miller Theatre.  Some exquisite, sensual, beautiful sonorities in his music.  I felt like I was wandering through a greenhouse, overwhelmed by the delicate scents and textures of cucumbers, papaya, jasmine, mint, and exotic fruits that would never meet outside a planned environment.  It made me think about how some [other] music is like a constructed meal, with careful consideration of baking processes and the effects and sensual/emotional/cultural associations yielded by particular combinations (e.g. lamb and horseradish, or sweet potatoes and rosemary).  Lachenmann’s music sometimes seems like the sanctuary of a botanist whose pleasure comes from discovery and exhibition, more than consumption and digestion

And now for something completely different — !  Tonight at 7pm, at the Bell House in Brooklyn — Sarah Snider‘s “Penelope”, delivered by Signal (same folks who played the Lachenmann show, oddly enough) and the beautiful voice of Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond). Haunting text by Ellen McLaughlin.  We rehearsed yesterday, and I haven’t been able to get some lines out of my head > “Never never never never will I sleep like that again.”  It’s a beautiful musical setting of McLaughlin’s luminous and modern reading of the old story of Penelope.  The song “Lotus-Eaters” ripped my heart out.

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