"Nothing is durable but what is caught up in rhythms. Bend content to form & sense to rhythms." —Robert Bresson, Notes on the Cinematograph

This book began as an act of keeping record—of how time moves, how we try to catch it in rhythm. continuo takes its name from the musical term for a continuous bassline, the foundation upon which harmony and improvisation unfold. Like its namesake, this book is not a fixed point but a cadence—something that adapts, questions, and connects. It resists the pull of certainty, offering instead an ode to multiplicity, where shifting perspectives unsettle the stillness of fixed answers.

The dialogues within—held with Idris Salaam, Lucien Smith, Juan Cardona, Ben Werther and Adrian Schachter —trace the contours of thought in motion. They exist in the space between movement and memory, between what we carry forward and what dissolves in the act of exchange. The photographs by Olivia Parker give the book its pulse, capturing moments that feel both fleeting and enduring, like echoes of something half-remembered yet deeply felt.

At its core, continuo is about rhythm—not just in words, but in thought, in learning, in how we listen and observe. It is about patient contemplation, about seeking the shape of understanding rather than its conclusion.

"I am learning pace
in gestures too small to name.
I dip my fingers in, not to own it, but to feel its weight,
to trace the shape.
I’m unmoored, yet held,
as the horizon holds the bird.
It’s all as serious as a tangle, as fixed as a cloud, as real as thinking,
as promised as time,
continuo."

Published with care by Oliver Shaw and Friends Editions, continuo spans 122 pages, perfect bound. Now it’s yours to hold—available online at Friends Editions and in-store at Knickerbocker.