In This Horror Show

Jonesing to dance with a beautifully tall elegantly coiffed person to some wickedly dark and maudlin tune under blurry twinkly lights.  Natasha has it figured out.  Who says anti-depressants have to be teeny tiny little rounds pills?




Put your glad rags on and let's sing along
To that lonely song

You're the train that crashed my heart
You're the glitter in the dark

Well, Your Hair's Still Red

No one ever tells you.  Maybe they don't even know.  The hard part is this... as you age, as you experience this place of never-ending happiness, as the wheel turns its relentless revolutions... it never gets easier.  The wheel may age and be replaced with new thoughts, but it never ceases to turn agonizingly routine cycles.  Round and round.. round and round.   

I am Henry the 8th, I am.  Henry the 8th I am, I am.  87th verse, same as the first.

What we once thought was exciting and opening becomes something we've seen and been hurt by or worse seen and been unimpressed by because it's something we saw ages ago and were either hurt or unimpressed by then.  It's the tragic irony of age. Another break-up, another apartment, another job, another album, another shitty album.  Blah... plans are for the young.

Sooooo... let's just go crazy.



When I feel disconnected, when I want to remember who I am... this song reminds me.  Grounds me into a place of rain wet streets, sideways glances, a heart of fearless steel, dancing feet of gold.

And it never gets old. 

Not To Be Trusted

The Untrustworthy Speaker

Louise Gluck

Don't listen to me; my heart's been broken.

I don't see anything objectively.

I know myself; I've learned to hear like a psychiatrist.

When I speak passionately,

that's when I'm least to be trusted.

It's very sad, really: all my life, I've been praised

for my intelligence, my powers of language, of insight.

In the end, they're wasted - 

I never see myself,

standing on the front steps, holding my sister's hand.

That's why I can't account

for the bruises on her arm, where the sleeve ends.

In my own mind, I'm invisible: that's why I'm dangerous.

People like me, who seem selfless,

we're the cripples, the liars;

we're the ones who should be factored out

in the interest of truth.

When I'm quiet, that's when the truth emerges.

A clear sky, the clouds like white fibers.

Underneath, a little gray house, the azaleas

red and bright pink.

If you want the truth, you have to close yourself

to the older daughter, block her out:

when a living thing is hurt like that,

in its deepest workings,

all function is altered.

That's why I'm not to be trusted.

Because a wound to the heart

is also a wound to the mind. 

photo: Manesse, 1930s

I Wanna Spend My Life With You

The breath releases and catches in me.  A rush and thrill deep in my solar plexus with the push of keys against my fingertips.  The words come haltingly, frustratingly slow.  It's been too long, I'll need to coax them out.  And you too.  I've been gone a long time, intermittently popping in with some cavalier comment here and there.  But, it's here, finally.  My new laptop...after more than a year... I'm ensconced in laptop/internet/music lagoon bubble bliss. 

Music... my one true love.  This prodigal daughter has returned.



My latest repeat obsession for the last several months, Sebastien Tellier... can we just swoon over those string overtures and sweeping hook of La Ritournelle?  Then in typical drippy froggy fashion at the 4:37 mark, he launches into his poetic coup de grâce and as I listen I morph into a chalk outlined corpse on the floor hankering for more. 

Oh nothing's gonna change my love for you
I wanna spend my life with you
So we make love in the grass under the moon
No one can tell, damned if I do
Forever journeys on golden avenues
I drift in your eyes since I love you
I got that beat in my veins for only rule
Love is to share, mine is for you

 

The Black

Some days are for giving up.  Taking the mantle and resting it yet again on Atlas' already burdened shoulders. Don't drop the world dude.

Art by Daehyun Kim.  See more here. 

Sweet Southern Harmony

The push and pull of this rhythm... it brings me to a state of congealed peace just in time for the plunge in the middle.  Drink it up... tis the season.

Shibaried

Funny... some of us like being shibaried.  There is more than one way to bond a cat.

Stellastarr have something very Cure-esque in this track especially and does anyone else here Slowdive/Lush vocal similarities?  It's catchy yet I can't quite decide if I'm embarrassed to like it.




And I'm going through hell
Through the darkest sides of myself
I only want what I can't have

Stalker Nostalgia

Let's all just admit once and for all that if given the opportunity to internet stalk, we will.  It's just how it is and I refuse to accept any flak on the subject.  You do it, I do it.  End of story.

So today, I was internet stalking the profile of my very first boyfriend.  The man I moved overseas for; the one that introduced me to drugs and rock'n roll. (Sex by that point was a foregone conclusion.) Yes, if you have ever wondered; these cliches are true.

Guess what?  He's got a new band and a song posted.  A rough demo, yes but I'm so glad to see he's still dedicated to his passion.  I remember countless hours listening to him strum his guitar and sing portions of unfinished songs and in fact, there are three never recorded tracks I find myself singing years later. I would drown to Suede's My Dark Star as he perniciously practiced Bernard Butler's beautifully haunted solo.  Pernicious because I thought I would murder him if I had to listen to the same five bars just one more time (aka the Joys of Living with a Musician).  Of course, now I love those same five bars with a reverence so holy, so deeply ingrained are they in my musical repertoire....this manic clutching devotion to Suede.

Nostalgia stains deeply, just like the tattoo I carry from that time, and I won't apologize for it. Didn't we just think we were grand Wild Ones as we poetically, tragically, romantically said goodbye in airports and train stations by singing to each other yet another Suede song, And on you my tattoo will be bleeding and the name will stain.

Coming of age is a state of being so personal and universal; its potency reverberates in us all.

Eating Cake

These girls are tantalizing my listening rounds of late.  Falling down rabbit holes of the 1960s varieties... impresario managers, rock star consortiums, just a hint of sexual deviance (affairs with Jimi Hendrix and married men notwithstanding).  Lushly lovelies.  An excerpt from a Dangerous Minds blurb, "The Cake are the missing link between The Ronnettes and The Runaways, The Shangri-Las and The Go-Gos".



This clip features a very excited Jeannette Jacobs and those dance moves... swoonville.

The Experiments Gone Awry

It's shameful how long it's been since I listened to music.  Not sought music, actually listened to music. Lazy listening habits; too many days spent acquiescing to others' tastes.

Not today, friends.  This blasts the aural cobwebs out of their tender crevasses.

Blood Heart

The raging shame of it all.  Perspective and feeling warring with reality.  Who are we indeed?

Those lovely dark musings furtively marauding through our psyches; perfected by this wonderful track.  Vielan Dank Blood Candy.... Vielan Dank.

Well, Naturally

Collage art is all the rage these days but more than all the rest I wish I could live in the worlds Eugenia Loli creates in her collage work. They make more sense to me than anything I've seen in this world thus far.  That and the snail porn in Microcosmos.

The Creak of Heaven House

Stiff fingers hovering...this language so new and now foreign.  I am home. I am never home.

Float

Beautiful, hypnotic soundtrack for floating provided by the lovely Ensemble Economique.

Strung

Strung... like tendons or firing synapses... fairy lights inside the body connecting one mass to another.  How many golden ratios exist?  Is it infinite?  Impossible to discount divine interference when it comes so willingly.

Dan Estabrook.  Gentle, poignant, synchronistic.  See more here. 

The Right Place

I find myself, yet again, in yet another person's home living out of suitcases 1600 miles away from familiarity.  The in between, this liminal space is both beguiling and terrifying with its ephemeral flirtation.   So, I fall back on old strategies and patterns...sequestered wine time and comfort sounds.  The staid reminders of stability and home.  How prosaic.

This is a reposted song.  The original is here.

Yoga Girl

Shit.  You guys, I'm in a quandary.   What can you do but laugh?

PS,  This video is some funny shit.  

Vingt Devils

Have you seen this???  Just you wait till the Frisbee scene amazingness.  In 20 days, I'll be moving out to the west coast and I kinda wonder if my inner Demon will want to maim all the sun bunnies or if I'll be the next victim of The Invasion.  You know which one I mean.

Sunday Perfect

The boxes are packed and stored.  The spy papers burned with all incriminating evidence of so so so many transatlantic exploits fluttering into the breeze like irradiated snow flakes. 

Now to groove... do it right, feel it deep.  Burn and melt to the dream of possibility.



*This might just be my new favorite album du jour.  Damn... this slows your gut to the consistency of hot caramels.

Terresting

Oh you know... just hanging on a futon mattress in a house that isn't mine with my clothes in bags all around me listening to cute love songs about monsterly extra-terrestrial love.  Who knew a sober solo Friday night could feel so good?

Once A Ballad Touched Me

I love everything about this.  The cover photo, Karen O's iconic vocals, the intimate guitar strumming, the origin and am reminded of a time when one of three girls assigned this song as my ring tone, nicknaming me Moral Relativity as we all sat around getting wasted on many beers, taking photographs, smoking cigarettes on a sloped roof and talking a lot of glorious shit into the wee hours of the morning.

No. 5 - With A Bang

In a year, one must crawl before walking.  I'm crawling towards you... just to mouth the word hello.

Torso by Marta Hoepffner, 1940