Category: Arts and Letters

Dance as Form of Communication – Rolling Stones, Sonny Rollins anecdote

The song is noted for its dreamy qualities brought on by the soft guitars, smooth rhythm, and Jagger’s lilting refrain of “doo-doo-doo”. Veteran Stones collaborator Nicky Hopkins performs the track’s running piano.[1] The Stones hired jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins to perform the solo on this song, as well as two other songs on the album. On his contribution to the track, Jagger said in 1985:

“I had a lot of trepidation about working with Sonny Rollins. This guy’s a giant of the saxophone. Charlie said, ‘He’s never going to want to play on a Rolling Stones record!’ I said, ‘Yes he is going to want to.’ And he did and he was wonderful. I said, ‘Would you like me to stay out there in the studio?’ He said, ‘Yeah, you tell me where you want me to play and DANCE the part out.’ So I did that. And that’s very important: communication in hand, dance, whatever. You don’t have to do a whole ballet, but sometimes that movement of the shoulder tells the guy to kick in on the beat.”[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_on_a_Friend

Goethe on the Regularities of Life, Being in Tune With, Saul Bellow Reference

It is a narcotic dullness. There are times when I am not even aware that there is anything wrong with this existence. But, on the other hand, there are times when I rouse myself in bewilderment and vexation, and then I think of myself as a moral casualty of the war. I have changed. Two incidents in the past week have shown me how greatly. The first can hardly be called an incident. I was leafing through Goethe’s Poetry and Life and I came upon the following phrase: “This loathing of life has both physical and moral causes. . . .” I was sufficiently stirred by this to read on. “All comfort in life is based upon a regular occurrence of external phenomena. The changes of the day and night, of the seasons, of flowers and fruits, and all other recurring pleasures that come to us, that we may and should enjoy them—these are the mainsprings of our earthly life. The more open we are to these enjoyments, the happier we are; but if these changing phenomena unfold themselves and we take no interest in them, if we are insensible to such fair solicitations, then comes on the sorest evil, the heaviest disease—we regard life as a loathsome burden. It is said of an Englishman that he hanged himself that he might no longer have to dress and undress himself every day.” I read on and on with unacccustomed feeling.

Dangling Man
Saul Bellow

Note – copy I’m reading, above.
From Myopic Books, in Chicago.
One of Atlas Obscura’s:
162 Cool, Hidden, and Unusual Things to Do in Chicago, Illinois
 Thereʼs more than wind in the metropolis of the Midwest. Fascinating foods, marvelous museums, and an actual 1957 Cadillac De Ville encased in 15 cubic yards of concrete. This place has everything.

When the Secret Police Go Out of Town for a Few Days

What the Peace Corps volunteer found rather comical was bearing witness to the element of farce that police states often engender, of how easily the arrogance of officialdom can tilt into stupidity. As in all Iranian towns and cities, a favorite guessing game of Sonqorians was speculating on the identity of the SAVAK agents in their midst, a parlor game Metrinko was increasingly brought into as he gained residents’ trust. In the late summer of 1971, such speculations were abruptly resolved when the regime announced that travel to the city of Shiraz was temporarily off-limits to all private Iranian citizens, a security precaution for the upcoming international gala being held in nearby Persepolis. Except that soon after that announcement, many of those Sonqorians suspected of being secret police climbed aboard buses and left town, bound for Shiraz. “So that proved to everyone they were SAVAK.” Metrinko laughed. “They were all going down to stand guard over the shah’s party.”

King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation
Scott Anderson

Inside Out – Eve 6

The band’s final name is a reference to The X-Files. Fagenson, a fan of the show, suggested the name after seeing an episode titled “Eve,” which included a character who went by the name of “Eve 6.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eve_6
see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Billboard_Modern_Rock_Tracks_number_ones_of_the_1990s#1998

I would swallow my pride, I would choke on the rinds
But the lack thereof would leave me empty inside
Swallow my doubt, turn it inside out
Find nothin’ but faith in nothin’
Wanna put my tender heart in a blender
Watch it spin ’round to a beautiful oblivion
Rendezvous, then I’m through with you

I burn, burn like a wicker cabinet
Chalk white and oh-so-frail
I see our time has gotten stale
The tick-tock of the clock is painful
All sane and logical
I wanna tear it off the wall
I hear words in clips and phrases
I think sick like ginger ale
My stomach turns and I exhale

I would swallow my pride, I would choke on the rinds
But the lack thereof would leave me empty inside
I would swallow my doubt, turn it inside out
Find nothin’ but faith in nothin’
Wanna put my tender heart in a blender
Watch it spin ’round to a beautiful oblivion
Rendezvous, then I’m through with you

So-Cal is where my mind states
But it’s not my state of mind
I’m not as ugly, sad as you
Or am I origami
Folded up and just pretend
Demented as the motives in your head

I would swallow my pride, I would choke on the rinds
But the lack thereof would leave me empty inside
I would swallow my doubt, turn it inside out
Find nothin’ but faith in nothin’
Wanna put my tender heart in a blender
Watch it spin ’round to a beautiful oblivion
Rendezvous, then I’m through with you
(Rendezvous)

I alone am the one you don’t know you need
Take heed, feed your ego
Make me blind when your eyes close
Sink when you get close, tie me to the bedpost
I alone am the one you don’t know you need
You don’t know you need me
Make me blind when your eyes close
Tie me to the bedpost

I would swallow my pride, I would choke on the rinds
The lack thereof would leave me empty inside
Swallow my doubt, turn it inside out
Find nothing but faith in nothing
Wanna put my tender heart in a blender
Watch it spin ’round to a beautiful oblivion
Rendezvous, then I’m through, now I’m through with you

Through with you
Rendezvous, then I’m through with you

The Scent of Decaying Fish and Playing King Henry VIII – Jude Law Anecdote

MOSLEY: It’s, yeah, your 2023 film where you played King Henry VIII. I read that you hired a perfumer.

LAW: I work with her quite often, actually.

MOSLEY: Really? Yes.

LAW: Yeah. First of all, she’s an absolute genius, Azzi. And she runs an amazing perfumery called The Perfumer’s Story. She makes incredible scents. And, you know, scents is a really quick way to accumulate sort of feelings and emotions. You know, if you walk into your grandma’s house, it smells a certain way, and you feel a certain way. If you go out and someone’s been cutting the grass – (sniffing) right? – it evokes all sorts of memories. Or the smell of gasoline, you know?

MOSLEY: Yeah.

LAW: I mean, things like that that are very pungent are very quick to make you feel and think, you know? And my job is an odd job. You know, whether you want to or not, you turn up. You put on someone else’s clothes, and you have to embody someone pretty damn quick. And sometimes it’s like, hey, it’s 7. The sun’s coming up. We’ve got to go do this.

MOSLEY: We got to get this done.

LAW: Get in it, right?

MOSLEY: But let’s talk about what she did for you, OK? She…

LAW: So she built this. She made a perfume for me. And I’d read this piece about Henry. He basically had these ulcers on his leg that were rotting, and it was a miracle he lived the 10 years he did with them. But you could smell him, apparently, three rooms away. He’d stank, like, fetid.

MOSLEY: Yes.

LAW: And what I realized, I’m playing him at the very end of his life when eventually he died of these things from a fever. And I just thought it would be very helpful to everyone else and to me if I stank. So she made me this incredible, noxious odor that I kind of sprayed on myself.

MOSLEY: It was made, a concoction of pig sweat.

LAW: Yeah.

MOSLEY: Fecal matter.

LAW: (Laughter) You’re going, does this say this?

MOSLEY: To mimic the smell of decaying fish.

LAW: Yeah.

MOSLEY: So it was really bad.

LAW: It was really, really, really, really rancid. Yeah. But it really helped. To me, it was very interesting playing someone who is incredibly powerful, all-dominant, expects everyone to bow to their every need and thought and want, and yet is sitting in a body that is immobile because of the weight he’s put on and because of the wounds he has, kind of in his own rotting flesh, and having to kind of face himself. And he can’t escape what he’s done to himself and who he’s become. You know, he’s a mass murderer.

MOSLEY: Yes.

LAW: And deluded to the extreme of believing that he’s second only to God. Well, he’s about to face God. And it’s like, OK, what’s going on? What’s going on in that man?

MOSLEY: You’re pretty unrecognizable in that role. And I’m just wondering, there had to be some pretty interesting conversations around the rank smell on that set. It helped you. It also helped your colleagues, your costars.

LAW: Well, I mean, it wasn’t like I, you know, wanted to shock them or warn them, you know, but we discussed it. And Alicia Vikander, who plays my wife, the queen, Queen Katherine Parr, was very game for it because she sort of loved this idea that she had to have this intimacy and this devotion amidst this sort of wall of stink, (laughter) you know? And the guys who play my Privy Council were old friends of mine from the theater. And again, it was this sort of – this conflict between observing their devotion and putting up with this appalling physical decay.

https://www.npr.org/2025/09/18/nx-s1-5545540/jude-law-takes-a-dark-turn-in-the-psychological-drama-black-rabbit

Smoking Area Knowledge and Remote Work

If career growth matters, 100% remote is a trap
byu/roseba inunpopularopinion

Apprehensive_Ruin692
I think this is true. It depends on the company but in person interactions matter to a lot of people.

HighTurning
I remember my colleagues talking about how back then “Smoking area knowledge” was a thing, where basically only the smokers would get to know specifics about the company or job because people would go there and overshare lol

I feel it’s probably the same, if your team has a bunch of people getting together at the office and you are not there you are probably missing out.

snarky_answer
Same thing happens for lower enlisted in the military. The “smoke pit” is where lower enlisted and upper enlisted/officers mingle on somewhat more equal footing and knowledge gets spread by oversharing or given on the down low. That info the propagates out via the “lance corporal” underground before any official word is usually given.

sethra007
IIRC, this was one of the reasons behind changes in laws that allowed women access to certain types of men’s-only clubs. So many men conducted business on golf courses and during lunches or drinks at those clubs that it was shutting women out of opportunities.

Chicago – September 9, 2025

Lincoln Park
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Park,_Chicago

Chess Records
https://bluesheaven.com/

From Keith Richard’s memoir Life:

2120 South Michigan Avenue was hallowed ground—the headquarters of Chess Records in Chicago. We got there on a last-minute arrangement made by Andrew Oldham, at a moment when the first half of our first US tour seemed like a semidisaster. There in the perfect sound studio, in the room where everything we’d listened to was made, perhaps out of relief or just the fact that people like Buddy Guy, Chuck Berry and Willie Dixon were wandering in and out, we recorded fourteen tracks in two days. One of them was Bobby Womack’s “It’s All Over Now,” our first number one hit. Some people, Marshall Chess included, swear that I made this up, but Bill Wyman can back me up. We walked into Chess studios, and there’s this guy in black overalls painting the ceiling. And it’s Muddy Waters, and he’s got whitewash streaming down his face and he’s on top of a ladder. Marshall Chess says, “Oh, we never had him painting.” But Marshall was a boy then; he was working in the basement. And also Bill Wyman told me he actually remembers Muddy Waters taking our amplifiers from the car into the studio. Whether he was being a nice guy or he wasn’t selling records then, I know what the Chess brothers were bloody well like—if you want to stay on the payroll, get to work. Actually meeting your heroes, your idols, the weirdest thing is that most of them are so humble, and very encouraging. “Play that lick again,” and you realize you’re sitting with Muddy Waters. And of course later I got to know him. Over many years I frequently stayed at his house. In those early trips I think it was Howlin’ Wolf’s house I stayed at one night, but Muddy was there. Sitting in the South Side of Chicago with these two greats. And the family life, loads of kids and relatives walking in and out. Willie Dixon’s there….

Lakefront trail
www.choosechicago.com

Miscellaneous