My latest Paris Review Daily piece on Camino Real.

My latest Paris Review Daily piece is a letter from Guam reporting on the second half of my Japan/Pacific trip.

There’s a pit in my stomach from the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear fallout in Japan.  I spent 18 wonderful days in that country and flew out of Tokyo to Saipan two days before the earthquake.  I went through my recent pictures from there and found this one of Kyoko Mizoguchi in Minamata.  I wrote about her in my Paris Review piece of last week.  Both times we saw her she bid tearful farewells to me, Momoko, and Ishikawa and she waved at us with both hands as we parted.

Kyoko Mizoguchi waving goodbye to us in Minamata, Japan. March 4, 2011.

I have a feeling my experience in Japan and this fallout will mean that I do more work there in the future.

Minamata, Japan. March 2, 2011. Photo by Takeshi Ishikawa.

My new entry on Paris Review Daily comes from Okinawa, on the heels of two weeks in Tokyo and Minamata.

HERE’s my new blog entry from Tokyo on the JLP site.

Update 2/24/11:  Here’s my new JLP blog entry “Tokyo Day 4.”

Update 2/27/11:  Here’s my JLP blog entry “Tokyo Day 8.”

I’m departing tomorrow.  Here’s a post I put up on the JLP site today.  More posts will follow on that site and on Paris Review Daily, with links here.

This Thursday night at 7pm I’ll be at Hayti Heritage Center in Durham, N.C.  More information HERE.  UPDATE 2/11/11:  HERE is a report on the event with photos.

HERE is my second Sonny Clark piece on Paris Review Daily – January 26, 2011 – and my Recommended Sonny Clark Playlist this week on the JLP blog HERE.

HERE is my new JLP blog post about the passing of David Logan of the Reva and David Logan Foundation in Chicago.  Their generosity made much of my work possible over the past decade.

I participated in writer Karen Balcom’s new series of questionnaires about high school music experiences.  You can check it out HERE.