Author | Lightnews

John Lingan

@johnlingan.bsky.social

This rules and you rule.

February 3, 2026 at 12:06 AM

John Lingan

@johnlingan.bsky.social

Nothing in the world cuter than a dimpled baby hand

February 2, 2026 at 4:10 PM

John Lingan

@johnlingan.bsky.social

Went back to Lot 49 to compare. It too is full of silly names and puns and an endless quest, but the language is often disorientingly poetic, rapturous. I still remember the feeling of this paragraph when I first read it in high school, and still barely know what he means. But this is music.

away taxco, whoe
"Hey," said Oedipa, "can't I get somebody to do it for me?"
"Me," said Roseman, "some of it, sure. But aren't you even
interested?"
"In what?"
"In what you might find out."
As things developed, she was to have all manner of revela-tions. Hardly about Pierce Inverarity, or herself; but about what remained yet had somehow, before this, stayed away. There had hung the sense of buffering, insulation, she had noticed the absence of an intensity, as if watching a movie, just perceptibly out of focus, that the projectionist refused to fix. And had also gently conned herself into the curious, Rapunzel-like role of a pensive girl somehow, magically, prisoner among the pines and salt fogs of Kinneret, looking for somebody to say hey, let down your hair. When it turned out to be Pierce she'd happily pulled out the pins and curlers and down it tumbled in its whispering,

dainty avalanche, only when Pierce had got maybe halfway up, her lovely hair turned, through some sinister sorcery, into a great unanchored wig, and down he fell, on his ass. But dauntless, perhaps using one of his many credit cards for a shim, he'd slipped the lock on her tower door and come up the conchlike stairs, which, had true guile come more naturally to him, he'd have done to begin with. But all that had then gone on between them had really never escaped the confinement of that tower. In Mexico City they somehow wandered into an exhibition of paintings by the beautiful Spanish exile Remedios Varo: in the central painting of a triptych, titled "Bordando el Manto Terrestre," were a number of frail girls with heart-shaped faces, huge eyes, spun-gold hair, prisoners in the top room of a circular tower, embroidering a kind of tapestry which spilled out the slit windows and into a void, seeking hopelessly to fill the void: for all the other buildings and creatures, all the waves, ships and forests of the earth were contained in this tapestry, and the tapestry was the world.
Oedipa, perverse, had stood in front of the painting and cried.

$Oedipa, perverse, had stood in front of the painting and cried. No one had noticed; she wore dark green bubble shades. For a moment she'd wondered if the seal around her sockets were tight enough to allow the tears simply to go on and fill up the entire lens space and never dry. She could carry the sadness of the moment with her that way forever, see the world refracted through those tears, those specific tears, as if indices as yet unfound varied in important ways from cry to cry. She had looked down at her feet and known, then, because of a painting, that what she stood on had only been woven together a couple thousand miles away in her own tower, was only by accident known as Mexico, and so Pierce had taken her away from noth-ing, there'd been no escape. What did she so desire escape from? Such a captive maiden, having plenty of time to think, soon realizes that her tower, its height and architecture, are like her ego$

only incidental: that what really keeps her where she is is magic, anonymous and malignant, visited on her from outside and for no reason at all. Having no apparatus except gut fear and female cunning to examine this formless magic, to understand how it works, how to measure its field strength, count its lines of force, she may fall back on superstition, or take up a useful hobby like embroidery, or go mad, or marry a disk jockey. If the tower is everywhere and the knight of deliverance no proof against its magic, what else?

February 2, 2026 at 1:34 AM

Reposted by John Lingan

Yo La Tengo

@actualylt.bsky.social

💔💔💔

January 31, 2026 at 12:45 AM

Reposted by John Lingan

Zachary Lipez

@zacharylipez.bsky.social

I’m honestly too sad about Catherine O’Hara to go through clips and find one to post so, since I’m a music writer anyway, here’s her sister’s perfect album from 1988 in case you don’t know about it. marymargaretohara.bandcamp.com/album/miss-a...

Miss America, by Mary Margaret O'Hara

11 track album

marymargaretohara.bandcamp.com

January 30, 2026 at 11:18 PM

John Lingan

@johnlingan.bsky.social

Take this month and shove it.

The Rules-Based International Isaac Butler @isaacbutler.bsky.social · 3d

Rest in peace to Catherine O’Hara, a true comic genius.

January 30, 2026 at 6:30 PM

John Lingan

@johnlingan.bsky.social

Silliest musician I've ever spent time around (derogatory)

January 30, 2026 at 6:03 PM

John Lingan

@johnlingan.bsky.social

Didn't know that was Drayton on the Idler Wheel, he's a beast. Will have to relisten today.

January 30, 2026 at 3:41 PM

John Lingan

@johnlingan.bsky.social

Grateful to Nick for reading, and for this excellent prompt. Five off-the-cuff choices:

Rod Stewart, "Every Picture..." (Micky Waller)
Bill Withers, "Still Bill" (James Gadson)
Rainbow, "Rising" (Cozy Powell)
New Order, "Brotherhood" (Stephen Morris)
Deerhoof, "The Runners Four" (Greg Saunier)

Nick J Mascis @bridgemusicbunker.bsky.social · 4d

As I’m reading the chapter in here about Charlie Watts, what are some albums that aren’t immediately thought of as “drum albums” but you listen to and hear it that way? An album that in an under the radar way is carried by the drummer? My go-to answer is Twin Cinema.

Backbeats: A History of Rock and Roll in Fifteen Drummers by John Lingan

January 30, 2026 at 2:57 PM

Reposted by John Lingan

Nick J Mascis

@bridgemusicbunker.bsky.social

As I’m reading the chapter in here about Charlie Watts, what are some albums that aren’t immediately thought of as “drum albums” but you listen to and hear it that way? An album that in an under the radar way is carried by the drummer? My go-to answer is Twin Cinema.

January 30, 2026 at 1:51 AM

John Lingan

@johnlingan.bsky.social

My nominee: Rod Stewart’s “Every Picture Tells a Story” with huuuuge galloping drums throughout by Micky Waller.

January 30, 2026 at 1:57 AM

John Lingan

@johnlingan.bsky.social

January 30, 2026 at 1:25 AM

John Lingan

@johnlingan.bsky.social

Lord knows he’s earned it, and I hope I’m this imaginative when I’m 88, but this is even more pointless than his two previous hepcat-jive P.I. riffs. As in, I genuinely don’t know what the point is, and it lacks both the sf/surrealist and romantic strains in his best stuff. Hope he lives forever.

The cover of Thomas Pynchon’s “Shadow Ticket”

January 28, 2026 at 6:11 PM

John Lingan

@johnlingan.bsky.social

I thought “Balmorhea” is what happened the day after having a cream of crab soup and three Bohs at Dizzy Issie’s.

New town every hour @townsusa.bsky.social · 7d

Balmorhea, Texas
Pop: 595

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balmorhea,_Texas

Images: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=116075656
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=150403746

January 27, 2026 at 5:53 PM

John Lingan

@johnlingan.bsky.social

Philip Kennicott using the tools of visual arts criticism to dissect ICE’s immorality. Incredible piece.

Column | The abhorrent power of the photograph of a 5-year-old held by ICE

An image like this could once change history. Can one still?

www.washingtonpost.com

January 23, 2026 at 10:52 PM

John Lingan

@johnlingan.bsky.social

That’s also the only way I can comprehend it with the others. Has to be the most arch Album of the Year slate ever.

January 23, 2026 at 7:30 PM

John Lingan

@johnlingan.bsky.social

Awards are baloney but if you're snowbound this weekend I recommend DA 5 BLOODS.

DiscussingFilm @discussingfilm.net · 12d

Delroy Lindo has finally received his first ever Oscar nomination for his performance in ‘SINNERS’

See the full nominees list: bit.ly/OscarNoms26

January 22, 2026 at 4:10 PM

John Lingan

@johnlingan.bsky.social

Condolences to my fellow ECM perverts, this man was a visionary. Between Towner and DeJohnette, two of the label's defining artists have died in the last few months.