Jace Clayton:

Borders are about violence and fixedness and centralised authority. Music is about pleasure and fluidity and endless waves of influence.

Decius, from the archive:

Al Qaeda is not an organization. It is a scene.

From Tim Winton's Breath:

The angelic relief of gliding out onto the shoulder of the wave in a mist of spray and adrenaline. Surviving is the strongest memory I have; the sense of having walked on water.

From the recent archive:

Though some federal appellate courts do not appear to require any degree of suspicion to justify a search, one federal district court stated categorically that all laptop searches conducted at the border require at least reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing.

From way back:

Neyshabur, one of the oldest cities on the Silk Road, was a major cultural crossroads that boasted one of the ancient world's first universities. It produced many of Iran's greatest poets and was also known for its turquoise.

In Blue as the Turquoise Night of Neyshabur, Kayhan Kalhor combines Western strings and Indian tabla with his core ensemble of kemancheh, santur, and ney.

The piece is an arabesque-like elaboration of an Iranian melodic formula called chahargah. According to Kalhor, chahargah means literally "fourth time," and its mood reflects the quiet and introspective atmosphere of the fourth part of the old Iranian daily cycle, from late night until just before dawn.

Rory Stewart:

Without music, time has a very different quality.