Jay Wrote

The topics of censorship, oppression and youth mental health occupy my mind quite a lot these days: Jeez, just grow up!      Toughen them up - they don’t have a clue about stress. Or oppression. If you are shielded from dis-ease in your encounters, you’ll miss a lot of good in the world. Someone else’s myths should not censor me or anyone else. Both my children have had treatment for anxiety. Why would you say something to deliberately hurt someone? Isn’t it as bad to be cruel to a group as it is to a single person?  Or worse? How can you, in your position of privilege, have anything legitimate to say  about this issue to the victims of historic violence? Isn’t some art beyond acceptable? To you?  To everyone? Censorship, Essay 1, Breasts (elsewhere on blog) Censorship, Essay 2 Taravat Talepasand’s “Woman, Life, Freedom” - Art and Action At Macalester College The Art Macalester College, like its neighbor, Hamline University, has recently dealt with question...

Finger Poppin’ with The Horace Silver Quintet, An Appreciation Jay Wilkinson, August 23, 2023 When eyes are closed, it is hard not to imagine that I am at a table in a club.  Facing the stage. Thirteen feet away.  The table in front of us is, miraculously, still unoccupied. There oughta be the clink of glasses twenty feet behind me and murmurs of drunks and lovers around us. Sax and drummer, Junior Cook and Louis Hayes, are to the left, bassist Eugene Taylor center and trumpeter Blue Mitchell stands to the left, behind pianist Horace Silver, who plays the 1954 Steinway that stretches across the front of the stage.  When the snare or trumpet launches a variation or a solo, their sounds arise up. How is the cymbal sounding like it’s five feet higher than the piano?  A sax solo on the left will not be echoed on the other side of the stage but is heard there organically.  Silver vamps behind the horns - a trainer’s hands stimulating a horse’s shoulders just before t...