A Sweet Unrest

Japandroids

I love this song.
That is all x 

 

 

Edit: The track is available for free here- link courtesy of Jeremy from the great (and completely legit) Fingertips blog!

A pocketful of disposable razors wrapped in a parking ticket

April 26th is Poem In Your Pocket Day here in the US.  I've always liked the idea of it, of people carrying around a few cherished, crumpled lines maybe to share but truthfully just because they're needed.  To borrow a phrase from someone we'll be hearing more from in a minute, I really am this foolish.

I've been saving this one especially for today, from this.

The Great Poet Has Gone by Adam Zagajewski

Thinking of C.M.

 

Of course nothing changes
in the ordinary light of day,
when the great poet has gone.
Gray sparrows and dapper starlings
still squabble heatedly
in the tops of ancient elms.

When the great poet has gone,
the city doesn't miss a beat, the metro
and the trams still seek a modern Grail.
In the library a lovely girl
looks in vain for a poem that could explain it all.

At noon the same noise surges,
while quiet concentration reigns at night,
among the stars- eternal agitation.
Soon the discotheques will open,
indifference will open-
although the great poet has died.

When we part for a long while
or forever from someone we love,
we suddenly sense there are no words,
we must speak for ourselves now,
there's no one to do it for us
- since the great poet is gone.

                            (translated by Clare Cavanagh) 

I've got a great song for you too- it's written by Mark Spence, author of the first poem in the collage above, and performed by him and his band Royal Chant.

Royal Chant - Hesitation Kills

Yay!

A little pressed for time this week but very pleased to report that marvelous Tim made a podcast for us.  I was so happy when I saw it start to download.  

Enjoy x.

College boys are writing sonnets

Happy Easter xx

Julie London - Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most

And all the trouble of a BA in English Literature

I've found a lot to like on this one.  I don't know much about them but wonder if they their parents had a Sundays record or two kicking around- is it just me?  It's hard to pick a track to share, if you like this you might check out Argonaut, Betty Wang, and Friends of Friends too.  I got the whole album from amazon for $5.  

Hospitality - Liberal Arts

I've got a very fickle Internet connection these days but will be by to visit as many of my favorite places as possible while it's happy x.

Dance the night away

A lifetime ago (circa 1999) when I was working girl with a wardrobe consisting solely of black-on-black and high heels, I stumbled across an Internet quiz that promised to reveal the secrets of my inner being in just 10 simple questions- to be answered all in song lyrics.  Oh yes.  Clearly this promised to be  much more useful than any quiz I'd ever seen in the pages of Cosmo and I got typing.

I can't remember the entire outcome, only the most important thing: when I got to the end, the quiz told me that the title of the song whose lyrics I'd used for Question 4 summed up my Philosophy Of Life.  That song was Van Halen's Dance The Night Away.  I liked that immensely.  And while it occurs to me now that I might have had a 'workplace image problem,' I liked that when a few of my colleagues wandered into my office to see my results, they laughed because they thought it suited so perfectly.  It may have been one of my finest moments- it was certainly a relief to see myself as something other than a bookish, brooding indie chick.  

I think a lot of their music, and most especially this, sounds wonderful today.  Like crazy carefree summer.  I don't dare put the song up but this way you get to check out DLR's moves-  see about 2:14!  

What the living do

I'm not sure where I first heard about this poetry collection but I somehow knew that Marie Howe wrote it in the wake of her brother's death and I read it deliberately, wondering if I would see anything of myself.  Parts of it were very dark and disturbing, which may seem like an obvious thing to say in re a book about loss and death and grief, but unexpectedly it was the first part, about her childhood, which I found the most difficult.

There are three poems I really loved, the title poem being one of them and this being another.  I'm always pleased to come across a poem that has something to do with music, always and ever curious about what it means to someone else given what it means to me (and yet I am so poor at describing it!).

Without Music by Marie Howe

Only the car radio
driving from the drugstore to the restaurant to his apartment:

rock and roll, oldies but goodies,
and sometimes, softly, piano music

rising from the piano teacher's apartment on the first floor.

Most of it happened without music,
the clink of a spoon from the kitchen,

someone talking.  Silence.

Somebody sleeping.  Someone watching somebody sleep.

                                                        *            *            *           

I heard this again accidentally over the weekend and like the book it deals with the darkest things.  I was a brand new mother when the record came out and this song made me so sad and not in a natural way.  Even now I never really seek it out and when it does find me it stays in my head haunting me for days.  This is a beautiful performance of it, her voice every bit as pure, strong and lovely as on the record and I love how with the back up singer she manages to get that same incredible gooseflesh raising soaring ache on the chorus.  Brilliant.  But someone play something dancey quick!

Let me take a step back

My neglected but nonetheless beloved little space on the Internet had a birthday last week.  My most heartfelt thanks to all y'all for sharing four years of words and songs and stories with me.

I'm reading Rilke right now- a selection of his letters, which are delightful, and also the Duino Elegies, which I have this vague fear may be beyond my ability to understand completely (or even mostly) but I'm trying.  More on that later if I think of anything intelligent to say but for now, here is a song that I love.  Seattle isn't the first place that springs to mind when I think of hip hop but maybe that's just me being out of touch because this is brilliant, to me it sounds classic and yet completely fresh all at the same time.  I turned my sorrow into a song and made it an anthem.  Preach on.

 

Honey I smell smoke

 

The baby has, tragically, stopped napping, forcing me to wave a very unwilling farewell to the few quiet moments I was able to find in my day.  Posting will be more irregular than ever but one day, one day, this is going to be a real blog.

For now I'll do my best and my first post of 2012 is a look way back.  I didn't know we'd lost Heavy D until I read it in the year-end farewells in a magazine.  He always made me smile.  He styled himself somewhere between a cuddly teddy bear and hip hop's unofficial court jester but he had a fantastic delivery and seemed well-respected by all.  He did the theme song for In Living Color.  His memorial in EW was written by none other than Q-Tip.

My favorite Heavy D performance is this guest rap on Guy's single Do Me Right.  This goes way back to the exuberant early hook-ups between hip hop and classic soul.  The resulting genre, New Jack Swing, was offensive to many- the straight up hip hop kids who thought it too poppy and the soul purists who thought it too rappy but songs like this never failed to make me want to dance.  I am convinced one day some of these songs will be properly appreciated the way disco is now.

That's Heavy D in the intro these songs inevitably all had but what I absolutely love is his sketch starting at about three minutes in, his cool comedic self-possession the perfect contrast to Aaron Hall's velvety, down-on-my-knees pleading.

And anyhow, it's Friday.  Let's dance while we can.

Guy feat. Heavy D - Do Me Right

Happy New Year

My traditional New Year's wish - a fancy dress, a lovely song.  

Happy Happy 2012 

Rufus Wainwright - What Are You Doing New Year's Eve