Jeff Harrington
LightNews LightNews
banner
parnasse.com
Jeff Harrington
@parnasse.com
750 followers 1.2K following 1.6K posts
Composer
Posts Replies Media Videos
Pinned
parnasse.com
Jeff Harrington @parnasse.com · Oct 19
🐸An experimental, wandering, out of synch video I made to accompany the Calefax Reed Quintet's great recording of my piece, Ranae. Taken while listening on my headphones in the brilliance of the afternoon light on a hillside full of wild flowers underneath Fort St. Jean in Villeneuve lez Avignon.🐸
Jeffrey Harrington: Ranae for Reed Quintet Performed by the Calefax Reed Quintet
YouTube video by Jeffrey Harrington
youtu.be
Reposted by Jeff Harrington
parnasse.com
Thomas Merton's letter to a young activist:

'Do not depend on the hope of results... concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself.'

jimandnancyforest.com/2014/10/mert...
And then this: do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. And there too a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real. In the end, as you yourself mention in passing, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.
February 8, 2026 at 1:26 PM
parnasse.com
New albums of string quartets and more featuring Anamorphosis (#3), Refugium (#9), and the Tango (#7):

Chamber Music 2 (2001-2023)
open.spotify.com/playlist/49h...

Chamber Music (1996-2011)
open.spotify.com/album/3ao33S...
April 17, 2026 at 1:07 AM
parnasse.com
gazing out our window at the sparkling sky-reflected still bay water and a pile of once-hotel rubble after yesterday's implosive fireworks.
April 13, 2026 at 1:15 PM
parnasse.com
/r/buddhism: 🙃
"CR Lama told me that the best practitioners of dharma are somewhat simple and stupid. Their minds are not busy all the time. They don't have a sense of mastery, or feel that they have to be in charge, and so they just do the practice.

from D.T. Suziki's 'Buddha of Infinite Light':
April 1, 2026 at 2:49 PM
parnasse.com
life may travel between planets on celestial debris. microorganisms can survive remarkably more extreme conditions than expected, and raises questions about origins of life.😎
Life forms can planet hop on asteroid debris—and survive
Hopkins study shows major impacts could transport life between planets
hub.jhu.edu
March 5, 2026 at 9:18 PM
parnasse.com
Some of the new Hubble observations show the Cat’s Eye Nebula, also known as NGC 6543, in the finest detail ever seen. The nebula lies some 4,400 light-years away from Earth.
Some of the new Hubble observations show the Cat’s Eye Nebula, also known as NGC 6543, in the finest detail ever seen. The nebula lies some 4,400 light-years away from Earth.
March 4, 2026 at 9:41 PM
parnasse.com
A recording of my 4th SQ ('98) that brings out the phase-shifting folky dissonances and fiddle patterns. 🤠
Spirale d'Arco for String Quartet
Jeffrey Harrington was born and raised in the Deep South, spending most of his formative high school years in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he became personally familiar with many great blues artists
soundcloud.com
March 2, 2026 at 2:38 PM
parnasse.com
“The forces we are up against have made peace with mass death. They are treasonous to this world and its human and non-human inhabitants.”
melissagiragrant.com Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com · Feb 28
“The forces we are up against have made peace with mass death. They are treasonous to this world and its human and non-human inhabitants.”
February 28, 2026 at 4:14 PM
parnasse.com
I asked James Drew once why he wrote music. He sat there for a few minutes sipping a beer, as he always did at our lessons, and then said, "Jeff, there is an enormous, invisible order to this world. Music serves to glorify that order and is the greatest gift any human can give back to the world." 🫠
February 24, 2026 at 1:42 AM
parnasse.com
New doc about the newly renovated Chelsea Hotel, where Elsie's abstract expressionist dad, Alfred Russell, lived from the 70's until he died in 2007.
February 20, 2026 at 10:28 PM
Reposted by Jeff Harrington
parnasse.com
No-greed surpasses charity

by P'ang Yun (Layman P'ang)

No-greed surpasses charity.
No-delusion surpasses concentration.
No-ill will surpasses morality.
No-self-centered thinking surpasses cultivating connections.
----
----
We all ride together in the boat of wisdom.
October 21, 2025 at 12:59 PM
parnasse.com
this is not political... politics requires voting and accurate counting as a common sense science! 🫣
atrupar.com Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · Feb 16
Ossoff: "Among today's false prophets are the election deniers who indulge this president's obsession with overturning the 2020 election. Hear me when I say this -- they tell a lie so absurd, and therefore so debasing, that the act of telling it proves the teller's total and humiliating submission."
February 16, 2026 at 9:28 PM
parnasse.com
if you are anywhere near remotely involved in ending this deportation crisis, you need to read this gracious and poetic thank you note:
Peaceful Observers To Our Beloved Guardian Angels, In these times of profound trial, when darkness sought to engulf our community, you emerged as trembled of unwavering light. When fear gripped our hearts and the very fabric of our existence beacons under the shadow of masked agents-when we were hunted, chased, and made to feel as strangers in the place we call home- you stood tall You stood with us. With courage that defied the chill of winter winds and compassion that warmed the coldest nights, you became our shield. You left the comfort of your daily lives, your workplaces, your routines, to stand guard at our doors. You brought us the gift of warning-the loud sirens that pierced the silence of impending danger, grving us precious moments to seek shelter, to protect our children, to preserve our dignity. You did not merely observe; you acted. You confronted hatred face-to-face. You stood between us and the agents of fear, becoming the voice for the voiceless, the strength for the weary, and the hope for the hopeless. In your presence, we found sanctuary. In your resolve, we found resilience. Your bravery is a testament to the boundless capacity of the human spirit. You stood against the tides of xenophobia, Islamophobia, and every form of prejudice that seeks to divide humanity. You embodied the highest ideals of human dignity, honor, and solidarity. You reminded us-and the world-that America's true strength lies in its embrace of those who seek refuge, its promise of freedom, and its unwavering stand for justice. Your sacrifice will echo through generations. We will tell our children, and they will tell theirs, of the guardian angels who stood tall when hate knocked at our doors. Your legacy is etched in the heart of our community-a living history of compassion without limits, courage without borders.
February 16, 2026 at 1:24 PM
parnasse.com
Gorgeous new image of the Egg Nebula, with the earlier Hubble image, a very young preplanetary nebula, a structure of gas and dust created as a Sun-like star approaches the end of its life.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_Neb...
This newly processed image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is the clearest view yet of the Egg Nebula. It is a preplanetary nebula, a structure of gas and dust created as a Sun-like star approaches the end of its life. The Egg that we see now will eventually hatch, revealing a white dwarf at its centre and leaving its shell to become a spectacular planetary nebula.Many preplanetary nebulae are relatively dim and hard to spot. They are made of layers of gas ejected by the star, but that star is not yet hot enough to ionise the gas and cause it to glow. The Egg Nebula is relatively unique, easily visible as a sparkling jewelled egg in space. Powerful beams of starlight blast out of the inner cloud, two a-side, giving a breathtaking illumination to this cosmic structure. Fast-moving outflows of hot molecular hydrogen also emerge from within the dust cloud, visible just at the base of the searchlight beams. These outflows glow with infrared light, which is shown in this image by orange highlights.The central cloud of dust is surrounded by concentric rings, themselves made up from thin, faint arcs of gas. These were created by successive outbursts from the central star, which ejected a little more material from its outer surface every few hundred years. The beams of starlight are reflected by these layers of gas, creating an appearance like ripples on the surface of water. The way that gas molecules reflect and scatter light gives a bluish colour to the arcs. The reflected starlight reveals important details about the central star, which is impossible to view directly in its dusty shell.[Image description: In the centre an opaque cloud of grey gas hides a star. Two strong beams of light from the star emerge from large holes in both sides of the cloud. The central cloud is surrounded by concentric, wispy shells of gas, illuminated by the star’s light. The shells reflect extra light where they’re hit by the twin beams. A crowd of smaller stars with cross-shaped sp… Image produced from exposures in visible and infrared light from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3
February 15, 2026 at 6:35 PM
parnasse.com
new piano music, written in 2022 available: piano preludes, #24, 25:

Piano Prelude No.24
imslp.org/wiki/Piano_P...
Piano Prelude No.25
imslp.org/wiki/Piano_P...
New recording: Piano Prelude No.25
soundcloud.com/jeff_harring...
February 12, 2026 at 6:35 PM
parnasse.com
Thomas Merton's letter to a young activist:

'Do not depend on the hope of results... concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself.'

jimandnancyforest.com/2014/10/mert...
And then this: do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. And there too a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real. In the end, as you yourself mention in passing, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.
February 8, 2026 at 1:26 PM
parnasse.com
Leave it to a Jesuit to praise dish-washing as revelation, Father James Martin on how his real world working life inspired him:
"Eventually You Have To Be Your True Self" - Father James Martin On The Jobs That Helped Him Grow Up
YouTube video by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
www.youtube.com
February 4, 2026 at 2:10 PM
parnasse.com
A line of baby stars follow a shock wave, inter-galactic consequences of the first confirmed rogue supermassive black hole, probably ejected during a galactic merger.

youtu.be/2imlUyTyJD4
February 4, 2026 at 2:02 PM
parnasse.com
as these frightening times progress, staying positive at ALL tmes and remembering always that there is absolutely no benefit from harming yourself, or others, is the ONLY way. 🙏🙏
January 18, 2026 at 9:03 PM
parnasse.com
revising my ittle song for sop. and sq, El aire se serena, that i wrote for a 1986 tulane req. but was never ultimately premiered. a setting of a 16th c. spanish religious poem celebrating a musician.

A Francisco Salinas by Fray Luis de León

Original text: www.poesi.as/fll03.htm
ODE TO FRANCISCO SALINAS To Francisco Salinas Catedrático de Música de la Universidad de Salamanca The air becomes serene and is clothed in beauty and strange radiance, Salinas, when there sounds the incomparable music governed by your skilled hand. At that heavenly sound my soul, that is sunk in forgetfulness, recovers its judgement and the lost memory of its first, exalted origin. And as it knows itself, it improves its fate and thought; it disdains the gold that the blind multitude worships, and perishable, deceitful beauty. It traverses the ether until it reaches the highest sphere, and there it hears another mode of imperishable music, the first, the source of all. It sees how the Great Master, playing this immense cither, with skilled movement produces the sacred sound by wich this eternal temple is sustained. And as it is composed of concordant numbers, it emits a consonant response, and from their vying is mingled the sweetest harmony. Here the soul steers through a sea of sweetness, and at last sinks so deep within, that it hears or feels no strange or rare event. O blessed trance! O death that gives life! O sweet oblivion! Could I but remain in your repose without being restored ever to these low and abject senses! To this bliss I call you glory of Apollo's sacred choir, friends whom I love beyond all treasure, since all visible things are sorrowful tears. Oh, may your music, Salinas, sound everlastingly in my ears; hearing it, my senses awaken to God's goodness, and to all else remain oblivious.
January 18, 2026 at 2:38 PM
parnasse.com
for those that understand, it's enough...
parnasse.com Jeff Harrington @parnasse.com · Apr 8
The Followers of the Way are protected...

-Zen Teaching
radicalgraffiti.bsky.social Radical Graffiti @radicalgraffiti.bsky.social · Apr 7
"My girls protect me, not the cops."
Seen in Paris, France
January 17, 2026 at 2:32 PM
parnasse.com
“The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community. The aftermath of nonviolence is redemption."

-- Martin Luther King
January 16, 2026 at 1:42 PM
parnasse.com
toad sits in water surrounded by hopeful vocalizations... 😎
toad sits in water surrounded by hopeful vocalizations...
January 14, 2026 at 3:29 PM
parnasse.com
RIP Bela Tarr, w/an extraordinary clarification:

“My opinion is that we were doing comedies. You can laugh a lot. I only ask this, how did you feel when you came out of the movie theatre after watching my film? Did you feel stronger or weaker? That’s the main question. I want you to be stronger."
“My opinion is that we were doing comedies. You can laugh a lot.” He added that they were not pessimistic. “I only ask this – how did you feel when you came out of the movie theatre after watching my film? Did you feel stronger or weaker? That’s the main question. I want you to be stronger.”
January 6, 2026 at 3:46 PM
parnasse.com
Been a busy few days of birthdays, holidays, and anniversaries: We celebrated 44 years of marriage yesterday!

Rome restaurant menu gazing w/Elsie in 2005?
Rome restaurant menu gazing w/Elsie in 2005?
January 5, 2026 at 4:06 PM