Edward O'Connor – Writer, editor, part-time birder
I’ve been listening to Lucienne Boyer’s recording of “Parlez-moi d’amour” (1930) on and off for about twenty-five years and have never grown tired of hearing it. I came to the song through a two-disk CD I bought of chansons françaises, the type of music performed in the cabarets and music halls of Paris over the … Read more
Here is the second instalment of the list I drew up in May for the so-called Ten Album Challenge. In revising the text for these last five albums, I discovered a rather pressing urge to say something more about Billie Holiday and Captain Beefheart in particular. The first because her far-reaching shadow seemed to touch, … Read more
Nothingness made visible The cook at the halfway house where I worked was a Ukrainian woman named Connie. A widow in her sixties, she was loquacious, vain, and opinionated, a born storyteller. I could sit in the kitchen for hours and listen to Connie’s tales of the lumber camps where she worked in her youth … Read more