Bo Diddley with the Bo-ettes, and the Duchess (right) on rhythm guitar, Los Angeles, 1965
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‘There’s Bo Diddley. Big hips, pointy shoes, glasses. A gap between his teeth, and a bow tie, in 1965.’
Bo Diddley with the Bo-ettes, and the Duchess (right) on rhythm guitar, Los Angeles, 1965
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‘We meet at various points in the great swathes of the past that neither of us were alive to witness.’
Allen Bratton on a daytrip to a castle with his older boyfriend.
‘Listening to three white poets, whom I suspect are academics, talk about the state of poetry.’
Oluwaseun Olayiwola eavesdrops on an older generation.
‘I’d been dubious about his company at first.’
Sarah Moss on watching Shakespeare with her twelve-year-old son.
‘She didn’t trust us because, to her, tenants were like children.’
Kate Zambreno on negotiating with her older landlady.
‘A moment now swallowed in embarrassment, I asked a question only a young person might ask an older one.’
Lynne Tillman on trying to understand what makes a generation.
Ben Ratliff has been a pop and jazz critic at the New York Times since 1996. His most recent book is The Jazz Ear: Conversations over Music (Times Books).
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‘Is there in fact a jostling for dominance between the art forms, some barely suppressed competitiveness?’
Adam Mars-Jones on music and ceremony.
‘gormandizing, gluttonous, lickerish, guttling’
Excerpts from Lydia Davis’s diary.
‘What happens to a dancer when they stop dancing?’
Diana Evans on dancing and writing.
‘The people I’ve photographed made Beirut liveable.’
Sama Beydoun photographs the nightlife of Beirut.
‘Ordinary sounds change their meaning in the context of war when the reverberations of sound can mean death.’
Ada Wordsworth on silence, noise and the war in Ukraine.
‘When did you last see your father? Was it when they burned the coffin? Put the lid on it? When he exhaled his last breath? When he last sat up and said something? When he last recognized me? When he last smiled? When he last did something for himself unaided?‘
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