"Audience members were treated to author Haruki Murakami serving as a disc jockey while playing the works of jazz great Stan Getz and talking about his music."

"Murakami played records from his own extensive collection during a session held Nov. 13 at the Waseda International House of Literature in Tokyo.... In the shadows of his spectacular and extensive musical career, Getz continued to suffer from alcoholism and drug addiction his entire life. 'Music is there like an independent form of life unto itself,' Murakami said. 'It keeps evolving even if it lives in a host who is so messed up.'"

From "Murakami spins best of Stan Getz while he talks about jazz great" (The Asahi Shimbun).

A reader sent me that link, and I greatly enjoyed reading it here at my computer with access to Spotify to listen to, notably, “Corcovado” from “Getz/Gilberto."

 

I made a bookmark for The Asahi Shimbum, where I was pleased to see that the biggest front-page item was "Pigeons figure the odds to perch where safety is assured"...

The unusual sight of 30 or so pigeons perched on the rooftop of a parked car on a road in central Tokyo, rather than an adjacent small park, seemed like an unlikely place to congregate. But in fact it made perfect sense.... It turns out that pigeons take two factors into account when they pick where to perch, according to Shigeru Watanabe, professor emeritus of animal behavior at Keio University who won... the Ig Nobel award, which honors “achievements that first make people laugh and then make them think,” for showing that pigeons can distinguish between paintings by Picasso and Monet by showing 10 pictures of each to them.

I who was lost and lonely/Believing life was only/A bitter tragic joke, have found with you, the meaning of existence, oh my love....