Glenn Kubish

Here are three things that left behind tracks of gratitude and happiness in the maelstrom. Three Things, episode 111:                               1. Socks   I was reading Dylan’s Nobel Prize in Literature acceptance speech from, wow, what is already, could it really be, six years ago now? Near the end, he takes us to the underworld, calling up the specter of the wandering Odysseus, who has made a never-ending tour stop in Hades to meet the Greek hero Achilles.  Dylan reminds us that Achilles said if he could, he would choose to go back   “...and be a lowly slave to a tenant farmer on Earth rather than be what he is,   king in the land of the dead, hat whatever his struggles of life were, they were preferable to being here in this dead place.” I heard the echo of Maya Angelou’s grandmother. She warns her granddaughter about complaining like the customers, Sister Murphy and Brother Thomps...

  Happy end of the week! Here are three things from my little life that made me happy or grateful (or gratefully bewildered) this week. The podcast . The transcript: 1. Trumpeter Sean My brother-in-law Sean is a jazz musician of some note. He fronted the Edmonton Jazz Ensemble back in the day. He teaches at a college in New Jersey. We got to chatting in email about a new song by Bleachers, which turned into a kind of treatise on how musicians perform together. They can do so at a high level only if they’re as good at listening as they are at making their own noise. Here’s Sean from that email last week. To play in an ensemble, I have to listen to myself through focusing on your playing. Fortunately it is not difficult to hear myself since I am the closest to my instrument, but since I’m closest to the instrument and the sound that it’s creating, I hear it and it’s yet harder for me to hear the other players, which is why I must focus on them. I have spent my life honing listening s...