Mr Magpie

Because all the pieces matter.

Category: Mixes

  • Music for Writers (and a note on Morton Feldman)

    In the process of developing my writing practice I’ve come to realize that, at least for me, there are only two types of writing days: really good or really bad.  On the really good days, I find music to be an impediment: it pulls me out of the focused, flowing state into which I have…

  • Lonely City Songs

    All the lonely people, where do we all come from? For all its objective brilliance as a piece of songcraft, something about “Eleanor Rigby” has always rubbed me just slightly the wrong way. I know now what that something is: it’s the “they”. As an account of the sad lives (and one sad death) of…

  • An Advent Calendar

    An Advent Calendar

    Music, along with film, is often spoken of as the art of sculpting in time (Andrei Tarkovsky’s book of the same title is beautiful and essential reading for anyone interested) and exists only in the given moment and in memory. You cannot approach a piece of music the way you would a painting, sculpture, or…