Arthur Russell - This is How We Walk On the Moon

I really like this song. The video's a bit literal.

Song by Adrienne Rich

You're wondering if I'm lonely:
OK then, yes, I'm lonely
as a plane rides lonely and level
on its radio beam, aiming
across the Rockies
for the blue-strung aisles
of an airfield on the ocean.

You want to ask, am I lonely?
Well, of course, lonely
as a woman driving across country
day after day, leaving behind
mile after mile
little towns she might have stopped
and lived and died in, lonely

If I'm lonely
it must be the loneliness
of waking first, of breathing
dawn's first cold breath on the city
of being the one awake
in a house wrapped in sleep

If I'm lonely
it's with the rowboat ice-fast on the shore
in the last red light of the year
that knows what it is,
that knows it's neither ice nor mud nor winter light
but wood, with a gift for burning.

Marita

Marita,
Please find me.
I am almost 30.
--Leonard Cohen

I read sheer desperation in those lines. As the first third of his life comes to a close, the romantic anticipations that brought optimism to his listless adolescence remain familiarly dreamlike. What was hoped for has not yet come; much is expended on the question of whether it will.

TW said that life is a fairly well-written play except for the third act. Well, perhaps the first act seems well-written once time wedges itself between activity and memory. But TW’s nostalgia likely betrays our inability to recall our own lives with their full, naked unremarkability. Certainly, the hero dies in act three. Act one is now closing. As act two begins, age and its unique ambitions have spread to his once-blithe peers. Weekends are now characterized by boredom and fatigue. As the routines of daily life crawl predictably onwards, he is anxious to start running.

Sukiyaki by Kyu Sakamoto

Mayakovsky by Frank O'Hara

1
My heart's aflutter!
I am standing in the bath tub
crying. Mother, mother
who am I? If he
will just come back once
and kiss me on the face
his coarse hair brush
my temple, it's throbbing!

then I can put on my clothes
I guess, and walk the streets.

2
I love you. I love you,
but I'm turning to my verses
and my heart is closing
like a fist.

Words! be
sick as I am sick, swoon,
roll back your eyes, a pool,

and I'll stare down
at my wounded beauty
which at best is only a talent
for poetry.

Cannot please, cannot charm or win
what a poet!
and the clear water is thick

with bloody blows on its head.
I embraced a cloud,
but when I soared
it rained.

3
That's funny! there's blood on my chest
oh yes, I've been carrying bricks
what a funny place to rupture!
and now it is raining on the ailanthus
as I step out onto the window ledge
the tracks below me are smoky and
glistening with a passion for running
I leap into the leaves, green like the sea

4
Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.

The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.

It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.

My Brightest Diamond - Golden Star

Holy Crap, I'm Published!

Click here for Bioethics journal homepage.

Covers

I first encountered the concept of one band covering another's song in seventh grade when, rifling through my Dad's dusty LP collection, I noticed that both Jimi's Monterrey Pop and Woodstock finales were written by Dylan. The concept bothered me, it seemed a form of theft. My dad explained that the singer-songwriter aesthetic only emerged in the late-50s, and that it was more the exception than the rule. To my horror, he then explained that most of my rock heroes -- typical 12 year old heroes like the Stones and the Beatles -- began as mere imitators.

In early high school I came to appreciate how a song could be totally reimagined, though I found most covers to be slight variations on superior originals (e.g. Red Hot Chili Peppers' Higher Ground). Others simply improved the vocals without offering anything novel (e.g. Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah). And so it was thrilling to come across genuine reinventions. I remember being amazed by how Dave Matthews' All Along the Watchtower (Listener Supported version) managed to depart from all previous incarnations (yes, Dave Matthews, I stand by that). The Dirty Dozen Brass Band's version of the blues standard, John the Revelator, as well as number of White Stripes tunes, were similarly impressive to me.

As my musical lexicon expanded and became more refined, I started to appreciate unexpected covers like Johnny Cash's Hurt or Patti Smith's Gloria. More recently, I've enjoyed Grizzly Bear's He Hit Me, Feist and Gibbard's Train Song, or Jose Gonzalez's Heartbeats and Cello Song. I find these particularly interesting because, to some extent, they reveal the coverer's musical personality. That a dying Johnny Cash was open-minded to the extent of using Trent Reznor lyrics as his epitaph still shocks me. My Brightest Diamond's sizzling cover of Feeling Good not only reveals their old-school influence, but also a sensitivity to how Nina could express world's of emotion with a slight quiver, and her knack for slowly and subtly nudging a song up to it's full brass-wailing climax.

In any case, for these and other reasons I've always made a particular effort to note covers (did you know Sinead O'Connor's Nothing Compares to You was penned by Prince?). When writing this I tried to think of a recent favorite. Radiohead's Reckoner came to mind. Note how, even live, Thom York's siren-like falsetto tinges the song with a kind of panicky uneasiness. Thomas Callaway's soaring gospel voice, on the other hand, sounds more like a harbinger of, well, something epic.

The Avalanches

Casiotone for the Painfully Alone

CTFPA's previous albums were generally characterized by somber, albeit clever, lyrics winced and moaned to grainy, under-produced keyboarding. The extreme to which he pushed his anguish shtick was certainly tongue-and-cheek. And, to be sure, the shtick produced a few gems (see: this, this and this). But even the most tortured of souls eventually needs a breath of optimism. And apparently CTFPA is no exception, given his recent concept album about the prospect of having children. Fittingly, he has put together a band and hired a proper producer to deliver the gospel.

I can think of a few songs which fantasize about starting a little family with a dog and white-picket fence. But this is easily my favorite incarnation because of it's hilarious hermeneutic (in the Dilthean sense): written from the perspective of one of two fleeting bank-robbers, whose clearly enamored with his confederate, and hopeful of a clean getaway. Enjoy.

Dusty Springfield

She's awesome. The White Stripes' version is also good.

I posted the song because I love it. But, in retrospect, it's also funny to watch her balance the sheer power and passion of her voice with the 1960s expectations of female performers. She had to play the role of the traditional, elegant, wholly non-threatening female, while also belting her heart out. For some reason she was not allowed to express with her face and body what she was made famous for expressing with her voice. So you get this incredibly athletic and emotional vocal performance, pushed through forced smiles, awkward head tilts, silly choreography, etc, etc.

My Foray into Punditry

I try to avoid political punditry because almost everything is but a slight variation on a very tired theme. At least to my mind, most current affairs debates are dominated by two polarized camps, ever reformulating and rephrasing the same messages, only with novel rhetorical flair and topical references. The end result is something like a stadium sport, favouring the loud voices of those who can turn a quotable phrase over the voices of those with thoughtful expertise. Granted, I am insufficiently attuned to the daily ins-and-outs of politics to understand the full significance of, say, the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor. But I get the gist of it.

She supports affirmative action.
Red Camp: reverse-racism, land of opportunity, bootstraps, etc.
Blue Camp: systemic racism, etc.

She believes government can favour the pro-life position.
Red Camp: sanctity of human life, Jesus, etc.
Blue Camp: right to privacy, right to autonomy, etc.

This is all to say that -- bracketing those personally engaged in some kind of activism and positively working for change -- I do not honestly understand how people sustain the energy to keep up on these kinds of daily affairs. Genuinely unique developments are so rare that "news" seems an ill-fitting term.

Anyways, I am harping on this topic because, strangely, I woke up this morning with a taste for dabbling in some punditry myself. I've never done this before:

"We have to work the dark side, if you will. We're going to spend time in the shadows."
--Dick Cheney

"The story of the attacks on the United States has a moral, but sadly nobody seems to be heeding it. The moral . . . is that power alone is no guarantee of security. . . . All the terrorists needed were sharp blades. . . . The only guarantee of security is justice. Had the United States been more just as the world’s leader, nobody would have plotted to destroy it. . . . America’s power may indeed liquidate terrorist organizations and crush this or that dissident, but until the injustice ceases, violence and evil will not. . . . The U.S. needs to remove not only the evil perpetrators of such crimes but the causes of injustice in the world."
--Naguib Mahfouz

"America was targeted for attack because we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world."
--George W. Bush

"It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
--MacBeth

Heimlich

by Jeramy Dodds

Comes up behind you at a party, masks your eyes
with his mammogram hands, asks ‘Guess who?’
A bear-hugger from way back. Trains by wrapping
around bridge pilings, vending machines, a Douglas fir.
Avoided at most parties: too clingy, too close a talker.
Hovers near buffet trays glaring at your chest, hands
rasping between songs. You poke fun at his tight
lederhosen, his tin flute, but you’ve bitten off
more than you can chew. Through the crowd
he rushes to you, binds two fists into one under
your sternum. By his second squeeze, the ghosts
of mine canaries flood your mouth and stream
to that part of horizon he’s left ajar.

Jenny Holzer

The Cinnamon Peeler

By Michael Ondaatje

If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bark dust
on your pillow.

Your breasts and shoulders would reek
you could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under rain gutters, monsoon.

Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbor to your hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. This ankle.
You will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler's wife.

I could hardly glance at you
before marriage
never touch you
-- your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
I buried my hands
in saffron, disguised them
over smoking tar,
helped the honey gatherers...

When we swam once
I touched you in water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.
You climbed the bank and said

this is how you touch other women
the grasscutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.
And you searched your arms
for the missing perfume

and knew

what good is it
to be the lime burner's daughter
left with no trace
as if not spoken to in an act of love
as if wounded without the pleasure of scar.

You touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
peeler's wife. Smell me.