One of those rare and wonderful work sessions when all the pieces gelled and I got excited about the project again.

KILL IT WITH FIRE and POWERWASH SIMULATOR satisfy both ends of my housekeeping spectrum and complement each other perfectly.

THE LIVING SHADOW / THE SHADOW LAUGHS

Yesterday and today being two very very good mail days:

Both are the first hardcover edition Ideal reprints of the first SHADOW story – THE LIVING SHADOW (originally published in THE SHADOW MAGAZINE No. 1, April 1931) – and the third – THE SHADOW LAUGHS (originally published in THE SHADOW MAGAZINE No. 3, October 1931), from 1935 and are in stunningly good condition. My shelves, they sing - and will sing even louder next week: just found the second Ideal reprint, THE EYES OF THE SHADOW, (THE SHADOW MAGAZINE No. 2, July 1931), which will complete the trifecta.

It’s taken a decade or so, but I’ve come to accept my place in the world as a more profane and cantankerous Mr Belvedere.

MÉLUSINE – Cecile McLorin Salvant

As with everything McLorin Salvant releases, MÉLUSINE is an interrogation of music’s capacity to tell all of our truths – the ones we know and the ones we don’t, a journey told through her singular voice across centuries and languages:

The new album’s songs tell the story of the European folkloric legend of Mélusine, a woman who turns into a half-snake each Saturday as a result of a childhood curse by her mother. Mélusine later agrees to marry Raymondin on the condition that he never see her on Saturdays. He agrees but is ultimately convinced by his brother to break his promise, piercing his wife’s door with his sword and finding her naked in the bath, half snake, half woman. When she catches him spying on her, she turns into a dragon and flies out the window, only to reappear every time one of her descendants is on their deathbed.

https://cecilemclorinsalvant.bandcamp.com/album/m-lusine

Vinyl duly ordered. So very, very good.

It's raining again and because of my inability to stop it from doing so, I'm once more an abject failure in the eyes of the dogchildren. And so it is and so it goes.