As many of you have been asking for word sheets to accompany our daily chanting practice, I thought I’d post them here. What follows below is the opening invocations, followed by a collection of most all of the simpler chants we sing together each morning, and finally the closing prayers. You should be able to... Continue Reading →
Q&A: Is Kirtan Religious?
Since the coronavirus quarantine went into effect here in New York City on March 14th, we’ve been offering morning chanting from the altar in our living room here in Brooklyn. While I’m still admittedly working through a bit of awkwardness around singing with a group through the eyes and ears of an iphone, I’ve found... Continue Reading →
Our Lady of Aparecida
When I was 20 years old, I wrote a song entitled “Miss Fine Mix,” inspired by a Belle Waring poem called “When A Beautiful Woman Gets On The Jutiapa Bus.” At the time, I had aspirations of becoming a great and famous singer songwriter, and had recently quit college, moved to Boston with my cousin,... Continue Reading →
Christmas on the Down and Out
Christmas on the Down and Out 1 It was Christmas Eve. I was living in a dilapidated $400 a month studio in Williamsburg, my first apartment in Brooklyn, and I had passed the better part of the day sprawled across a coffee-stained futon mattress, smoking generic brand cigarettes, alternating between cups of instant Nescafé and... Continue Reading →
Thank you, Stan Lee
"Virtually every kid is exposed to giants and ogres and talking wolves, and so forth. And magic. And I think you never outgrow your love for those imaginative, fanciful, farfetched, fantastic characters and situations." – Stan Lee My childhood bedroom was at the end of a long hallway, adjacent to my sister's room on one side... Continue Reading →
The Grand Street Sessions
There is a Stan Lee post coming. Given the sorry state of my computer, currently transitioning through its death throes and its replacement on its way, the post will likely be up in a couple days. For now, I thought I'd take a moment to share some kirtan dates with you, as well as this... Continue Reading →
More Bitcoin: Some Sunday Afternoon Thoughts After A Walk in the Park
We spent this morning in Prospect Park with our five month old puppy, Leia. The park allows owners to unleash their dogs before 9 am, a policy that welcomes an odd assortment of neighborhood characters and personalities; borderline eccentrics, semi-conscious financial planners, pajama-wearing elementary school teachers, introverted dog walkers, hungover yoga teachers; all punctuating the... Continue Reading →
Bitcoin and Chidhananda: Some Thoughts on Cryptocurrency in the Age of Unchecked Desire
"The solution of every problem is another problem." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe The subject of Bitcoin came up a few weeks ago in the strangest of places. I'd traveled from Brooklyn with friends to lead kirtan on Martha's Vineyard, and after a day's drive and three hours of singing, a dozen of us, the... Continue Reading →
Life, Death and Baseball: Some Notes on the 2018 World Series
We spent most of our Sunday in Westchester County, where we attended the funeral of a friend's father who had passed away, very unexpectedly, at the age of 72. I'd never met the man and knew very little of him before the service, but over the course of the day; the memorial, the burial and... Continue Reading →
On Kirtan
We left Brooklyn early Saturday morning for Martha's Vineyard, where the seasonal tourists have disappeared, the foliage has turned to brilliant shades of orange, red and gold, and the mid-October temperatures have dropped suddenly and precipitously. This is all familiar to me, having grown up near Portland, Maine. Autumn in New England always stirs a... Continue Reading →
