ObscuraJournal 2/28/26

The most annoying thing I've had to deal with this week is plumbing issues, mainly the lack of hot water. That's been fixed, so now the only annoying thing is dealing with an album thats skipping. Rush's 2112, brand-new, skips on the third track on side one. After several cleanings, I managed to dislodge whatever was making the needle bounce back and now it plays fine.

I need to look back through some posts from a few weeks ago, because I know I suggested a topic for this month's newsletter, but I just can't remember what it was. Right now, I'm leaning on the obvious connection between mysticism and jazz. I mean, perhaps the greatest jazz album of all time, John Coltrane's A Love Surpreme is about as spiritual as you can get with instrumental jazz. That's just for starters. I'm currently reading Miles Davis' autobiography and I think it mentions he believed in magic and voodoo ... or maybe I read that somewhere's else.

"Miles Runs the Voodoo Down" anyone?

And with Kamasi Washington's work, especially the album titled Heaven & Earth, as well as much of his work anyway, I think there's a lot to connect the dots with mysticism/magic/occult + jazz. And even there's a tenuous connection, that's never stopped me before. I know I'm not alone in thinking there is a connection, and I'm sure among my writing peers I can find a few who would be inclined to agree.

Either way, the newsletter will be hitting by this weekend, maybe sooner.

peace&love