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| "Dear Goddess, We made this breakbeat just for you-as an offering Can you hear us now?" I don't think I can adequately express the line above without the benefit of Saul Williams' style, especially not in print. It's a repeated repeated line in a particular piece of his, which starts off with a recording of one of his father's sermons regarding fatherhood, and Saul's own addition begins "Our Father-who art in-St.Francis' hospital-for hypertension". And then he echoes in this bit about offering up a holy breakbeat, over and over and if only Mr.Williams didn't go on to talk so convincingly in his belief of his own diefication I would swallow this line whole. Unfortunately, he's let himself have such a loose grasp on the possibility of Truth that even though his music stirs this intensity in my blood that reminds me to live again, I still have to take several steps back and raise my hands up at the album sometimes, saying "Naw, naw, I'm not buying that, man. Bullshit." But still, that line, such a mantra of dedicating creativity, and the idea of returning it to a mother figure rather than a father figure changes the context so much for me, that just hearing that idea raises the hair on the back of my neck. I swear, I'd shrug off most people who pulled this sort of thing on me in a matter of moments, but there's something about this guy that I have to take his message and just subtly alter it against what I know he believes because it'd be such a shame to let some of these lines go to waste. He talks about having his soul tattooed on his tongue, about making his soul rhyme with his mind, all these fertile similes and metaphors that just sit there begging for me to cobble them into my own belief system, so I drive from Hillsboro to Portland just listening to the intonation of his metered prayer. |
Thursday, April 21, 2005
What Have You Bought Into How Much Will It Cost To Buy You Out?
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
No I Didn't Do Anything
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| 'S too late 's too late and I know that very well but still if there's ever going to be a chance of me getting up in the morning it's hinging strictly on the fact of me staying up late enough to recharge my cell phone tonight. Tonight was a bit escapist and we all knewit but fuckit Eric Bachmann was there and if Crooked Fingers wasn't enough to snap me out of my slump of a day then frankly it seemed hopeless 'cause once you get that phone call that says sorry we went with someone else (or sorry I went with someone else for that matter) the rest of the day seems well you know doomed to personal failure so roll with it. Forget the uneven (odd) conversations you tried to have hammer out your broken heel find the missing garter and matching socks and then leave. Leave the house leave the eastside and venture in to the city's alleys in hopes of spending time with those other miserable souls. Hand stamped at the door yes thank you I'm twenty with a two yes I know I don't look it can I have a well whiskey and coke please? And I discovered this tonight even though I already knew it but alcohol? My achilles heel. You could be the biggest puppykicker in the world but hey if when I meet you I find a drink in my hand presented by the generosity of your wallet suddenly I'll realize people really must have misjudged you. In fact (a hint for the hopeless) if you wait until I've already downed one and found it sweet stuff the second will strike my tongue an old and dear friend and who wouldn't want to leave that taste in my mouth? Geez the Crooked Fingers' show was all I ever wanted short of an actual live replaying of the Reservoir Songs album. The band stumbled down to our level as the evening progressed and suddenly it was an unplugged mariachi singalong to Valerie and Sleep All Summer in front of the stage and the boy with the very model of a girlfriend turned and said very nice to me when we were finished, presumably in some sort of reference to my knowledge of a goodly portion of the lyrics and I sincerely hope he wasn't kidding and I was too two sheets to the wind to notice. Many blessings heaped upon the wonder of wonderous peoples populating my aquaintenceship and showing up in nooks and crannies of these shows I wander into alone. There's a redemptive quiet thrill that stirs itself deep in my cockled heart every time I see a familiar face. |
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
Beauty, Music, Shicky Gnarowitz
Shicky Gnarowitz was the tune emanating out of the underbrush while you made a deal with the crisply spatted Devil, still sure that you'd felt the ephemeral breath of the loophole that could postpone your undoing in this antebellum town.
Shicky Gnarowitz is the lightly dusted book of photographs that your grandmother couldn't show you, a faded corporal shadow hovering at the edge of sepia-toned squares of a life you'd never understand. She kept them in the false bottom of a steamer trunk.
Shicky Gnarowitz was in the hive of bees on St.Begas piece of sod as she drifted through salted seas, her only sustenance the honey they produced. When the wind turned sour, they spun madly about her but never stung.
Shicky Gnarowitz is the widow in black chiffon, walking by the open windows of a summer evening's wedding feast and wilting the magnolias on the maid of honor's dress.
Shicky Gnarowitz is the lightly dusted book of photographs that your grandmother couldn't show you, a faded corporal shadow hovering at the edge of sepia-toned squares of a life you'd never understand. She kept them in the false bottom of a steamer trunk.
Shicky Gnarowitz was in the hive of bees on St.Begas piece of sod as she drifted through salted seas, her only sustenance the honey they produced. When the wind turned sour, they spun madly about her but never stung.
Shicky Gnarowitz is the widow in black chiffon, walking by the open windows of a summer evening's wedding feast and wilting the magnolias on the maid of honor's dress.
Monday, April 04, 2005
By Any Memes Possible
Total volume of music files on my computer?
11.8 gb. The advent of 56k brought the low number. If, in a parallel world, I still lived with my parents and their glorious broadband, ridiculous amount of information would once again be stored on my computer. (Wait. Is that just a new way of saying how many cds you own? 'Cause I've got about 500 of those.)
The last CD I bought was... Shicky Gnarowitz and the Transparent Wings Of Joy. I am so glad you asked me. It's as if the musical interludes from every Decemberists album had been upped about ten notches on the gloriously beautiful scale, and I highly recommend it, and not just so you'll also have the joy of informing someone how much you love it. Sexy klezmer music that will make you weep, or dance madly about in a joyish enthusiasm, taken over by the gods of violin, string bass, and guitar.
Song playing right now:
Mountain Goats-Horseradish Road..."the enigma variations/ on the radio, things that I could guess at/ the things that I already know/the twelve thousand dollars /that turned up in your purse/You've done something awful/I've done something worse." Mmmm....good.
Five songs I listen to a lot or that mean a lot to me (In no particular order):
1. Pedro The Lion-The Only Reason I Feel Secure (Is That I am Validated By My Peers). I have that memory of when this album utterly changed how I viewed the world, or at least focused these feelings that never had definition before. I wish I could pick a song and say that it was the one that really did it, the one that meant more than the others, but the record as a whole is indivisible when tackling these postmodern Christian themes with a surprising amount of honesty and, most importantly, grace. I remember driving around Portland and surrounding for hours just replaying and replaying the short span of the eight songs. Eight songs? Is that really all there was to this conversion experience?
2. Crooked Fingers-Reservoir Songs-I listened to this cd once or twice every morning for God-knows-how-long last year. It's that rare beast, a subtle break-up record. Eric Bachmann (formerly of Archers Of Loaf) put out a 6 track cover album comprised of the cathartic evolution of:
Kris Kristofferson's Sunday Morning Coming Down
Neil Diamond's Solitary Man
Prince-When You Were Mine
Bruce Springsteen-The River
Bowie/Queen-Under Pressure
They rebaptize these themes of love and loss and redemption under Mr.Bachmann's Neil Diamond in a Southern Gothic church voice, and there's an air to the progression that heals.
3. That damned "Such Great Heights". There was this time when I would put on the Postal Service version and swear this song was the sweetest creation of bips and childlike romance to ever meet my cd player. When I discovered the Iron & Wine cover, I nearly dissolved into fits of rabid appreciation, listening to it in hushed rooms with reverent silence. Ever since, it's dominated emotional moments in my life with a callous agenda to do nothing but give me overly-sentimental memories. It'd mix with the smells of bacon frying in he mornings, and we'd sway. Sway, dammit! I'm not a home swayer, but for this song, anything.
"Since then, it has caused me nothing but bittersweet grief in various forms by coercing itself to be played at a variety of functions and events where I have been in attendence, with or without an ex-significant other that shall go unamed, sometimes pre-ex-status, sometimes post-ex status, and sometimes in that little in-between area between post and pre."-a previous statement by myself regarding the same topic.
4. Everclear-Nervous and Weird- There's the grit of high school angst rubbing itself off on this song, and I couldn't have felt more at peace in my restless skin than listening to lyrics that talked about splintering out of sheer awkwardness and a desire to metamorphisis into someone who could feel bright in the day.
5. Blackalicious-Feel That Way-It's righteous prozac for the soul, you see? A direct counterpoint to the heaps of drama spinning in my stereo, a song that can do no harm. I remember the first time I heard a Blackalicious song, back in '99, I think, when I was still working at the mall and there was that kid who'd bring in his dancey-trancey music sprinkled with hip-hop and the Cut Chemist Workout fomr A2G was playing and it blew.my.mind. I loved it, and I followed the trail until I found Blazin' Arrow several years later and this song, this song was what I'd been looking for all that time (Another memory from that era was listening closely as one of my employees defined "emo" for me, as I had never heard the term.).
11.8 gb. The advent of 56k brought the low number. If, in a parallel world, I still lived with my parents and their glorious broadband, ridiculous amount of information would once again be stored on my computer. (Wait. Is that just a new way of saying how many cds you own? 'Cause I've got about 500 of those.)
The last CD I bought was... Shicky Gnarowitz and the Transparent Wings Of Joy. I am so glad you asked me. It's as if the musical interludes from every Decemberists album had been upped about ten notches on the gloriously beautiful scale, and I highly recommend it, and not just so you'll also have the joy of informing someone how much you love it. Sexy klezmer music that will make you weep, or dance madly about in a joyish enthusiasm, taken over by the gods of violin, string bass, and guitar.
Song playing right now:
Mountain Goats-Horseradish Road..."the enigma variations/ on the radio, things that I could guess at/ the things that I already know/the twelve thousand dollars /that turned up in your purse/You've done something awful/I've done something worse." Mmmm....good.
Five songs I listen to a lot or that mean a lot to me (In no particular order):
1. Pedro The Lion-The Only Reason I Feel Secure (Is That I am Validated By My Peers). I have that memory of when this album utterly changed how I viewed the world, or at least focused these feelings that never had definition before. I wish I could pick a song and say that it was the one that really did it, the one that meant more than the others, but the record as a whole is indivisible when tackling these postmodern Christian themes with a surprising amount of honesty and, most importantly, grace. I remember driving around Portland and surrounding for hours just replaying and replaying the short span of the eight songs. Eight songs? Is that really all there was to this conversion experience?
2. Crooked Fingers-Reservoir Songs-I listened to this cd once or twice every morning for God-knows-how-long last year. It's that rare beast, a subtle break-up record. Eric Bachmann (formerly of Archers Of Loaf) put out a 6 track cover album comprised of the cathartic evolution of:
Kris Kristofferson's Sunday Morning Coming Down
Neil Diamond's Solitary Man
Prince-When You Were Mine
Bruce Springsteen-The River
Bowie/Queen-Under Pressure
They rebaptize these themes of love and loss and redemption under Mr.Bachmann's Neil Diamond in a Southern Gothic church voice, and there's an air to the progression that heals.
3. That damned "Such Great Heights". There was this time when I would put on the Postal Service version and swear this song was the sweetest creation of bips and childlike romance to ever meet my cd player. When I discovered the Iron & Wine cover, I nearly dissolved into fits of rabid appreciation, listening to it in hushed rooms with reverent silence. Ever since, it's dominated emotional moments in my life with a callous agenda to do nothing but give me overly-sentimental memories. It'd mix with the smells of bacon frying in he mornings, and we'd sway. Sway, dammit! I'm not a home swayer, but for this song, anything.
"Since then, it has caused me nothing but bittersweet grief in various forms by coercing itself to be played at a variety of functions and events where I have been in attendence, with or without an ex-significant other that shall go unamed, sometimes pre-ex-status, sometimes post-ex status, and sometimes in that little in-between area between post and pre."-a previous statement by myself regarding the same topic.
4. Everclear-Nervous and Weird- There's the grit of high school angst rubbing itself off on this song, and I couldn't have felt more at peace in my restless skin than listening to lyrics that talked about splintering out of sheer awkwardness and a desire to metamorphisis into someone who could feel bright in the day.
5. Blackalicious-Feel That Way-It's righteous prozac for the soul, you see? A direct counterpoint to the heaps of drama spinning in my stereo, a song that can do no harm. I remember the first time I heard a Blackalicious song, back in '99, I think, when I was still working at the mall and there was that kid who'd bring in his dancey-trancey music sprinkled with hip-hop and the Cut Chemist Workout fomr A2G was playing and it blew.my.mind. I loved it, and I followed the trail until I found Blazin' Arrow several years later and this song, this song was what I'd been looking for all that time (Another memory from that era was listening closely as one of my employees defined "emo" for me, as I had never heard the term.).
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