Lovesong

Moving boxes shelving books is my idea of good honest work, and we all go out there and bum around the shipping floor getting shit done, and everyone brings cds so that they're piled up top of the changer, and whoever's putting on music in the morning just grabs six or so and throws them on. Hodge podge eclectic, of course, and I've learn to let the music run like water off my ducky strong back, and sure, maybe there's accordian, or sure, maybe there's the Go-Gos, nothing much to me. So I'm in my little den of order, rolling carts of reciepts and books around me, scanning scanning blip blip blip, and somebody's put the Cure on, and I just about die, because it's really not fair. You can't just put the Cure on. That's not how it works. At least not an entire cd of Robert Smith & Co. It's too much for mortal souls to handle. Throw one song on a mix, or something, but hearing him and them so much in one day, like you'll never know when they're gonna come on the overhead, but then they do and he's saying "just like heaven" and you're back there touching heel to ankle and dancing back and forth on some rubber mat put down so nobody strains their back, because you can't not dance to the Cure, even if you barely dance, and then he's singing " however far away" and who could help it, really, all I can think of is every stupid shared moment of skin on skin, some bright morning with squares of lit sun, some dark night lamp or nothing glowing"whatever words I say" and sure, sure, I believe you again "you make me feel like I am young again". You know everyone else is doing it, too, see here how we're all sort of silent when the Cure comes on, like everyone's about to cry but maybe, just maybe, we can get through this song so scan scan scan and check an ISBN, but then so thwarted because the cd changer skips and stammers to another song, but, oh, "pictures of you" and kill me now, right now "looking so long for the words to be true".

She's Chosen To Believe/ In The Hymns Her Mother Sings

In case you were going to, you close ones, you dear things to me, or even just vague whispering things that come somewhere in contact with this, please don't forget about Iron & Wine. Listen to "Fever Dream", or "Teeth In The Grass", or any song really, let it just play in the background while you bathe, or when you're drinking something warm, or just sitting staring out some fogged over window. You don't even have to listen, I suppose, if you don't want to, if your ears are broken for just today. Just go to Passing Afternoon and read the lyrics, see the way they are on the page, and that should be enough, even if the font is simple serif and the spaces are simpler still. I think his words make me remember that I do have a soul, as much as I forget that space is occupied, and how much work such things take, and how precious pearly they are. I could swear, if it made you hear me more.

Papa died smiling
Wide as the ring of a bell
Gone all star white
Small as a wish in a well

Seven Songs For Seven Singers (Memetastic)

"list seven songs you are into right now. no matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they're any good, they must be songs you are presently enjoying. post these instructions in your journal, along with your seven songs. then four other people to see what they're listening to."

1. Damien Jurado- Just his voice. And the sound of his older stuff. I forgot about the year when I got into him so much, wheedling burnt copies of his cds out of people, passing off my fake i.d. at the Blackbird to see him smoke a cigarette, sing a few songs. I love that man.

2. Killers-Smile Like You Mean It: Finally, finally, after hints dropped so wide they could have paved the whole damn street, my roommates and neighbor bought me the Killers cd, thus (hopefully) putting an end to my propensity to gaze dramatically off into space and bob my head whenever their songs come on overhead at the bar. Imagined quote from the band: "Hey, guys, what do you think we should use in between out chorus hook and lyric hook?""I dunno. Howabout a bridge hook?"

3.Pixies-UMass: Because Frank Black loves to hear himself say stuff, and so do I, so even if I can't figure out what it all means I still get to stutter out the lines and feel like a badass ("like cap-i-talistssss, like comm-u-nissstss, like lot-sa thingsss, you heard about.").

4.Mountain Goats-There Will Be No Divorce: Is very haunting, sort of, Portland, sort of, and it talks about rain and radios and the hair stands up on the back of his neck and he delivers all the words in a soft way.

5. Gwen Stefani-Luxurious: The song I thought I'd never like has now wormed its way into my nonsensibilites through the gentle pull she gives to the lyrics at the line "E-gyptian cotton." A week ago, this would have been the Harajuku Girls song, chosen simply for its chance to allow me to annoy Kenneth by saying "Super Kawaii (that means 'super cool' in Japanese)" in a mock Japanese schoolgirl intonation.

6.Mr.Bungle-Sweet Charity: So damn catchy, Mr.Patton. So very damn catchy, and then there's little harmonies, and, like, seagulls and shit at the beginning. And just thinking of the title gets all the instrumentals stuck in my head, the bonging bass line and the the string section.

7.Vashti Bunyan-Lookaftering: Is an album, not a song, but I think about it all the time, and I don't even own it. I want it, though, pretty badly, and I want to sit and have some Kenyan tea and listen quietly with a blanket.