Mitch's Note on this episode:

"As we find ourselves in the middle of Season Two of our podcast, Journey Of An Aesthete I thought I should like to record a second solo episode which I guess means me sitting in front of the microphone and speaking all alone with the listeners/audience. I always get really nervous with these episodes as, speaking historically I have done very little in the way of public speaking like this, by which I mean it has happened so infrequently that I don't feel as practiced as I should like - though this podcast itself is making up for lost time. It isn't that I have a phobia or fear of public speaking - in truth whenever I do it

 I feel at least moderately comfortable - it is just that it is a conviction of mine, whether founded or not, that one always does something best the more they have done it. I really don't know much about being a "natural" or whatever the term is. Alongside that vein I thought I would play just a little bit of piano, in this case the first (and in part the only) music I have committed to composing in the times since late March or early April. It promises to be a much longer piece, and aside from the somber tone of the opening that you will hear here, will have as many passages that are upbeat, even joyful in the fullness of the completed work. 

I gathered some selections to read on this, our second solo show. I always have a deep feeling of indebtedness to others, thinker and artists that have come before me and I always to try to utilize my show as a platform to honor them. When I am forced to talk about my own piano playing I always try and mention my debt to my teacher Stanley Cowell, to name but one example. But some influences are people whom I have never met; I only know the works authored by the creator, not the creator herself. I have always felt that "the work" this might be the "best" part of themselves, which, though might be controversial to say (even though daily news reports sort of confirm my theory. And I mean no disrespect to any family members or loved ones of artists who really feel that the artist in their life is really great as a human being, never mind what they have made or that they are also known in public).  I read Elizabeth Bishop's One Art which for me is a truly perfect poem which is saying a lot. I then read one of the first life changing books I ever encountered, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, by Shunryu Suzukim book I was most fortunate to encounter at the age of 13 or 14 and which has accompanied me on just about every "stage" of my life until the present at age fifty-one.

 I do read it as a beautiful work of art, even poetry. I don't know if this is the correct or, in Suzuki's common formulation, the "right understanding" to read it in such a way but for what it's worth I also happen to think it accurate in many respects as a document of our daily lives, speaking in a broad register, thus making it in at least one instance a confirmation of Keat's proposition of Truth and Beauty being synonymous. 

The book Foregone Conclusions has a review from The New Republic that I uncovered from wayback in 1995: https://newrepublic.com/article/63010/the-illusion-fate The Frank Loesser letter is a hoot and very funny. Its prankish and insouciant tone I feel has some seriousness in calling into question our received categories of artistic evaluation more generally even as I am not now prepared to take on fully the "populism" (egalitarianism?) of Loesser's narrator in the letter. 

As far as the arts go, I have no caution. I love all of them without reservations, enthusiasm that I hope is expressed in episodes like this one.”

 Links to Mitch’s Body of work:Journey of an Aesthete Podcast  http://themoderatecontrarian.blogspot.com https://mitchhampton.bandcamp.com https://www.patreon.com/journeyofanaesthete