Mirror in the Sky: Savoring Art to Soothe Our Spirit

🎺 Coming in at #31 on the Top 100 is Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue, a record that didn’t just change jazz, it changed the way we think about music itself.

Released in 1959, this album introduced modal jazz to the world, tossing aside complex chords in favor of open space, freedom, and feeling. It’s smooth, cool, and endlessly listenable.

You’ve got Miles at the helm, with John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans, Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb, an all-star cast improvising in real time. The result isn’t just technically brilliant; it’s deeply human, full of mood and mystery.

Whether you’re totally new to jazz or already a fan, this record has a way of pulling you in. From the laid-back groove of “So What” to the smoky beauty of “Blue in Green,” the music feels as fresh and approachable today as it was over 60 years ago.

In this session, we’ll talk about:

• Why Kind of Blue still sits at the top of so many “best of all time” lists
• How modal jazz opened a door for new ways of listening and creating
• The magic of hearing masters improvise with so much restraint and beauty
• What makes this album a perfect gateway for people new to jazz

💡 Listening tip: If you can, try it once with headphones. You’ll hear the little details, like the brush of the drums, the piano voicings, the breath in the horn, that make this album feel so alive. But no pressure: it’s just as magical on speakers.

Spend some time with it, notice what grabs you, and bring your thoughts.

Hope to see you there!
Peace ❤️

Welcome to #29 on the Top 100! An insurance salesman. A mysterious housewife. A plan that seems foolproof… until it isn’t. Double Indemnity (1944) is the film that defined film noir: shadowy, sharp, and simmering with tension.

We already know director Billy Wilder from Sunset Boulevard (#16 on the Top 100, 1950) and Some Like It Hot (#22, 1959). With Double Indemnity, he showed Hollywood how far style, dialogue, and character chemistry could go in telling a story of desire and deception.

Why this film still hits:

• A milestone: 7 Oscar nominations, co-written by Raymond Chandler, and still the gold standard for noir.
• The archetypes: Barbara Stanwyck’s femme fatale, Fred MacMurray’s everyman lured astray, and Edward G. Robinson’s relentless investigator.
• The vibe: Venetian blinds, smoky rooms, and moral gray zones that shaped an entire genre.

What we’ll discuss:
⚖️ Temptation, choice, and consequence: what drives the characters into the dark?
🎬 How noir visuals and dialogue became a cinematic language of their own.
📚 Wilder + Chandler: when film and literature collided to make something unforgettable.

Whether you’re new to noir or you’ve seen this one before, give it a watch and bring your thoughts. Few films show so clearly how art mirrors both our darkest impulses and (by contrast) our search for light.

Peace! ❤️

With selection #23 on Modern Library's Top 100, we turn to John Dos Passos' groundbreaking, epic trilogy about American life called USA. The entire thing runs about 1,100 pages, and while I'm going to make an effort to read it all, this Meetup will focus on the first novel, The 42nd Parallel.

This novel follows the lives of five ordinary Americans—a machinist, a saleswoman, a reporter, a labor organizer, and an ambitious businessman—whose paths rise, fall, and intersect against the backdrop of a rapidly changing country.

Dos Passos uses a groundbreaking collage style, mixing fiction with newspaper headlines, stream-of-consciousness “Camera Eye” passages, and short biographies of real historical figures to capture the energy, contradictions, and upheavals of early 20th-century America.

The novel asks: What happens when a society moves faster than the people living in it? And how do personal ambitions collide with larger historical forces? In other words, timeless questions that might feel awfully relevant right now!

I love novels that help me understand how we got here. And The 42nd Parallel promises to do just that.

(After this book, I plan to keep moving up Modern Library's list. But if there's enough interest in continuing through the rest of the trilogy, let me know. I'll happily host those events too!)

RSVP Today! 📚