The poem of ecstasy

Mural above Mulate's. The poem of ecstasy that was this weekend is best told in pictures.

Norman Mailer, An American Dream
Josh Alan Friedman, Black Cracker
Gloria Coates, String Quartet No. 9
Roberto Carlos Lange, Music for Memory
Beatrice Long, Scriabin: Mazurkas (Complete)
Scriabin, The Poem of Ecstasy
Konstantin Ivanov, Scriabin: Prometheus - The Poem of Fire
Paul Crossley, Scriabin: Late Piano Pieces




Friday night I took Maya and a friend to the observatory to look at Jupiter during its closest pass in 60 years. The astronomer let them press the buttons that open the hatch. When I win the lotto, I want to live in the observatory and will still open it up on the weekends for viewings and science, but we will have DJ's laying down retro-future space grooves under the lectures from the astronomy club.


Saturday morning brought me to my buddy John and the first tailgate breakfast of the season: Nicaraguan cross-cut ribs. Like across the slab with a bone saw. It is like bacon except it is ribs. You don't even know how existentially satisfying it is to gnaw away on one of those little circles of bone.


I left before this came to fruition: a pork butt marinated in lemon, soy sauce and Cristal, wrapped in banana leaves. We suggested that next time they further tenderize it by having a virgin use it as a loofah, a bodybuilder as a "surrogate" and Mike the Tiger a chew toy. Maya and I didn't attend the game because we usually don't and were full of meat.


Things started changing around here on Sunday.


Sunday afternoon's book research led me to High Performance at the Atchafalaya Club. High Performance recaptures the essence dance bands of the 60's where accordion meets pedal steel out in the lotus patches of the swamp hopped up on cheap beer and fishin' boat fumes. Video forthcoming.


It is kinda gorgeous out there. Even the wake of a small boat is  transcendent.




And they have a gator pond.


And a lighthouse.


I had another show lined up in Lafayette but had the time wrong, so I circled back down the old road to Breaux Bridge, looking for this fabled place called Desiree's Shangri-La and instead wound up at good ol' Mulate's


Note the cypress columns


the seafood gumbo


and the ubiquitous swamp mural. Mulate's is spoke of as the original Cajun restaurant and has been a landmark of Breaux Bridge for decades. It's been at least one of those decades since I've been there; it was closed for a long stretch after a fire but has been restored to its homey glory.


Everybody stops there.


I hollered at Dickie Landry to see if he wanted to tag along but his pan-Louisiana supergroup (in every sense of the word) Lil' Band O' Gold heads out for a New Zealand tour this morning.

On the way home, I got stuck in traffic heading toward the bridge and the bridge untethers some sort of nervousness in me. Normally I don't wallow in the what-if's of others' competencies that plague the average control freak, but I like to just get across this bridge without dying each time, TYVM, and snailing across it in the dark of night  is rattling. Somehow Scriabin's crazy ass countered all this, so I am tacking in his wind for the day.