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 for May 2017

From the new 5CT corporate headquarters on Whidbey Island, we bring you the No country for old men who love cortado’s edition. 1. Our editorial team uses Bear all day long. 2. Let’s say you’ve heard about ‘storytelling’ and how ‘storytelling’ might help your business. What to do? 3.Where do fairy tales come from? 4.Please do enjoy this sparkly shop window duet.  5. Poems from an unlikely — or perhaps not — place. “If you want to be happy, be,” said Leo Tolstoy and what, we should argue?

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Bear


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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 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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5CT July / August 2015

C harles Simic is the second poet laureate from New Hampshire, loves New York and writes like a dream. The writer Richard Kreitner has mapped out some cool interesting American road trips for your summer. The scene was Cambridge University – the year – 1965 – the characters – two leading intellectuals – the debate – who pays for the American Dream? Plus, a live performance to make your day. And Baltimore (West Baltimore to be exact) — as literary as any city in America — has given us another great one. “Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.” – James Baldwin

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Essays & Poems by Charles Simic

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author photo by Beowulf Sheehan

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