5CT for June

In between Beethoven and Kafka, there is a Merton-like silence. And two versions of solitude. Plus Dylan! It’s the 5CT Sublime Summer Music Festival Edition, bringing you Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4, a refreshing slice of Thomas Merton, Bob live in Newport, Red Garland with John Coltrane, Duke and Louis Armstrong and two brothers in jazz. Oh, and a mini book review in the sidebar. “You are free, and that is why you are lost,” Franz Kafka is reported to have said, to which we can find no rejoinder whatsoever, except maybe Happy Summer!

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Sir Colin & Mitsuko


They are a bit like chalk and cheese, but Sir Colin Davis (September 25, 1927 – April 14, 2013) then conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, and Mitsuko Uchida’s love for Beethoven’s music is a note to behold. Watch how each of them (he, restrained, she, highly expressive) speak about the majesty of this music and about performing with the other. Fascinating obituary of Sir Colin here —>

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5CT February 2017

And so we careen into February hoping for the best, prepared for the worst. As always, there is art and music and writing to help. Meet an artist from Venice, CA and do observe his magic with magazine clippings. Who to follow on Twitter in these days of sound and fury? Who should we read? A wicked smart Seattle artist tells the creative class what it needs to know. The courageous team at the Munich Post kept at it until the end. And because we all need music more than ever, a 5CT Winter Playlist. I love you, 5CT readers. 

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Jay Kelly |Venice Beach, CA


{ As One | Jay Kelly }

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5CT August 2016

To the lazy days of summer’s end, I welcome you. First, over to England for some great black and white photographs. A hot tip on a great little notebook. LARB—dish from Laos or book review website? Baa Baa Black Sheep by Wynton Marsalis is the perfect accompaniment to tour the work of a Portuguese goddess of abstract painting. “At night I would go to sleep dreaming of sea adventures.” – John Claridge

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{The canal, 1966, John Claridge}

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5CT for June 2016

We hear a lot about the power of words and of stories. Those instances when the yeast works its magic are rare and beautiful to behold. Kate Tempest is a performance poet from London, and her stunning 2015 Europe is Lost seems a mite prescient. I found myself floored at the writing in The Crack-Up, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s series of ‘confessional’ essays for Esquire. Martin Pistorius made me weep and Max Porter filled me with joy and wonder and a touch of envy. The rich, driving sounds of Kendrick Lamar’s Complexion (A Zulu love) come via DM. Seems a good time for this: “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” George Orwell

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Kate Tempest, we are lost, we are lost


What else but this for right now?

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Poets and maps, power and language

His name is Mr. Wendell Berry and we need his voice now more than ever. One startup, 57 trillion squares. This subversive intellect from Atlantic City has thought deeply about you, your country, your children, and your calling. A near perfect film about journalism and power. A beautiful writer leaves home for another language. “Without imagination, love stales into sentiment, duty, boredom. Relationships fail not because we have stopped loving but because we first stopped imagining.” – James Hillman

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Wendell Berry, the essential voice

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