Kevin Sun

Good old Winthrop I'm graduating tomorrow, which means an early morning wake-up call by Dixieland band as per Winthrop House tradition (I happened to be woken up by the band last year around this time, and managed to hear a few strains of "Indiana"). I haven't too much to say here since graduation's been a long time coming now. In fact, I wrote a brief sum-up piece for The Crimson a few weeks ago as part of the magazine's traditional end-of-the-year "Just the Tip," which features advice from graduating seniors. Eschew any and all exit strategies. Don’t overuse exclamation points. Master the art of trolling. Be situated so self-transformation is imminent. And always respond to emails immediately. -Kevin Sun ’14 I recently finished reading Signifying Rappers  (1990), an interesting collaboration between then-roommates David Foster Wallace and Mark Costello. It's essentially a collection of back-and-forth riffs on various topics in and a...

Photo by Mattia Luigi Nappi Wayne Shorter's solo over "Eighty-One" f rom  E.S.P.  (1965) surprised me the first time I heard it: raw, direct, and completely unaffected expression, which probably applies to most instances of Wayne's playing over the 50 or so years. As I've written previously, it took me a long time to accept Wayne's style of playing for what it is, which to my ears rejects certain conventional contemporary notions of great saxophone playing in favor of stylistic choices that might initially come across as a lack of technical control, but actually reveal a deep sense of wisdom and attention to detail.  A writing analogy comes to mind, i.e. , perhaps counterintuitively, it's harder to write a sentence that breaks grammatical and stylistic norms but functions effectively in its purpose than a sentence that fulfills the basic, received rules of grammar and style and succeeds. When I think of my favorite prose writers (Joan Didion, DFW),...

Nasheet Waits, Vijay Iyer, Mark Helias, and Logan Richardson: EQUALITY I went to Winter Jazzfest for the first time last year and was pleasantly introduced to musicians I had never heard before, including Chris Morrissey , whose set at the Bitter End I thought was especially compelling—so much so that I ended up picking up his record afterwards, The Morning World . Although rainy, cold, and later misty last night, plenty of people came out to see music for this year's WJF. A few brief thoughts about what I saw: Lee Konitz/Dan Tepfer + Harlem String Quartet  at Zinc:  They could have billed this as Harlem String Quartet (via D.T.) + Lee Konitz! As I understand it, Tepfer was feeding the quartet notes (or note choices?) to the musicians via MIDI keyboard, who then received the input on tablets on each of their stands. They hadn't tried the experiment until yesterday afternoon, Tepfer mentioned, but after a slightly rocky start, the music started to go places, I thought. ...

David Foster Wallace at the  Hammer Museum  in L.A. with fans  Claudia Sherman and Amanda Barnes (Jan. 2006) Great picture, huh? The image to the left was uploaded by Claudia Sherman , featured in said photograph, with the file name 'The_best_people_you_will_ever_ know.jpg' which, I found pretty amusing when I scooped it up from Wikimedia Commons. Check out the body language, too—I've seen a cropped headshot version of this picture elsewhere on the tubes, but the left hand crossing torso and holding right arm really completes the image of the author as shy but personable dude.  I just finished reading D.T. Max's biography of DFW, Every Love Story is a Ghost Story (2012), the title of which is taken from DFW's short story "Tri-Stan, I sold Sissee Nar to Ecko," from Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999) and shows up elsewhere in DFW's writing and, less expectedly, in the writing of Christina Stead, a pre-Wallace writer. As a fan of Wallace,...