A Modest Man

INTERVIEWER: Are you concerned about what you’d leave behind?

JERRY GARCIA: No, I’m hoping to leave a clean field – nothing, not a thing. I’m hoping they burn it all with me. I don’t feel like there’s this body of work that must exist. There’s enough stuff – who needs the clutter, you know? I’d rather have my immortality here while I’m alive. I don’t care if it lasts beyond me at all. I’d just as soon it didn’t.

Interview, Rolling Stone, 2 September 1993

Music: Rosemary
Written by Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter
Performed by the Grateful Dead
Aoxomoxoa (1969)

Photo by Jan Saudek: Children Playing in a Cemetery (1973)

This Is Why You’ll Always Return

Life is precious, every minute
And more precious with you in it.

Music: Little Person
Written by Charlie Kaufman and Jon Brion
Performed by Deanna Story
Synecdoche, New York (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (2008)

For you.

happy birthday

Life is holy, and the journey is Now. Say it with a Bop beat.

Warren Tallman
Kerouac’s Sound
Collected in A Casebook on the Beat (1961)

Henri Matisse: The Circus, from Jazz (1941-43)

Music by Duke Ellington: C Jam Blues
Performed by Charles Mingus and band
Mingus at Carnegie Hall (1974)

For @Ratrage

Music for War

PLAY LOUD

Two Tribes (Annihilation Mix)
Music by Peter Gill, Holly Johnson and Mark O’Toole
Performed by Frankie Goes to Hollywood
12″ single (1984)
Screen capture from the Two Tribes video

Related

For Carter Burwell’s Birthday

You may know Carter Burwell’s music without knowing his name. He scored nearly all of the Coen Brothers’ movies (e.g. Fargo, True Grit), much of the Twilight series (‘Bella’s Lullaby’), and many other films.

Mr. Burwell first hit my radar in 2002, when I purchased the DVDs for Being John Malkovich and The Man Who Wasn’t There on the same day. The menu-loop music for both DVDs was jaw-droppingly beautiful. I checked the credits and found that both pieces were by the same composer. I sought out the soundtrack albums and loved them. Burwell’s soundtracks are now permanent fixtures on my iPhone music player.

He is also a smart essayist and runs an excellent website (with free music downloads and samples) called The Body.

You shall know a man by his works. What we know about Carter Burwell is he has a lot of soul.

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Music by Carter Burwell (four favorites out of many):

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Malkovich Shrine and Embarcation, from Being John Malkovich (1999):

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I Met Doris Blind, from The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001):

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SeDuctIon, from Fur (2006):

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Opening, from Moving Gracefully Toward the Exit (2006):

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Photo of Carter Burwell (2001) by Chianan Yen