Music for your Midweek: Son Lux - "Change is Everything"

This video
is incredible.

Prepare to by hypnotized:

"...see the bones glow as they break free"

"Welcome to the real world"

Guess whose 10 year high school reunion is coming up? Everyday I think about, I get more and more convinced that I shouldn't go. Not all of us ended up like John Mayer, alright? (Note: He actually did go to his reunion like he said he would)

As for me, I've got no career, no husband, no car, no kids. Nothing much that I need to report. I've still got 18 days to decide if I'm going, but as for now, I'm leaning towards NO. Someone else want to fill this google survey they sent out to us for me? Any and all suggestions appreciated. Exaggeration encouraged.

Name


Where are you currently living?


If you went to college after graduating, where did you go? If you finished, what was your degree in? If you did graduate school, where did you go, what did you study, when did you graduate (or will you graduate) and why did you do that to yourself?


What is your martial status?


•  Married/In a Partnership
•  Not Married
•  Currently on the Bachelor(ette).


Do you have any children? List their names and ages (and genders if you're into that sort of thing).
List on those that you know of... skip those from that shady weekend in Malibu.


If you are working, where are you currently working?
And feel free to share any cool jobs you've had since walking down the aisle at graduation.


Share something cool you've done that you want to brag about to people you've not seen in 10 years.
Go on, you know you want to.

This is all so exhausting.

Anyone wanna stay home and watch Romy and Michelle with me? I'll only force you to reenact this dance scene a couple times.

Saturday Verse: "In The Beginning" - Dylan Thomas

IN THE BEGINNING

In the beginning was the three-pointed star,
One smile of light across the empty face;
One bough of bone across the rooting air,
The substance forked that marrowed the first sun;
And, burning ciphers on the round of space,
Heaven and hell mixed as they spun.

In the beginning was the pale signature,
Three-syllabled and starry as the smile;
And after came the imprints on the water,
Stamp of the minted face upon the moon;
The blood that touched the crosstree and the grail
Touched the first cloud and left a sign.

In the beginning was the mounting fire
That set alight the weathers from a spark,
A three-eyed, red-eyed spark, blunt as a flower;
Life rose and spouted from the rolling seas,
Burst in the roots, pumped from the earth and rock
The secret oils that drive the grass.

In the beginning was the word, the word
That from the solid bases of the light
Abstracted all the letters of the void;
And from the cloudy bases of the breath
The word flowed up, translating to the heart
First characters of birth and death.

In the beginning was the secret brain.
The brain was celled and soldered in the thought
Before the pitch was forking to a sun;
Before the veins were shaking in their sieve,
Blood shot and scattered to the winds of light
The ribbed original of love.

- Dylan Thomas                                                                     

August Mix: Punching Bag

Beached somewhere in southern Utah

Last mix of a moody summer. Time for fightin' words:


1. She's Losing It - Belle & Sebastian 



2. Make Me Wanna Die - White Reaper



3. Gangsta - tUnE-yArDs



4. Montauk - Rufus Wainwright



5. For You (acoustic) - Fyfe* 
*You're going to have to click here to give this track a listen. Otherwise, check out the original version below.



6. Mr. Grieves (Pixies cover) - TV On The Radio



7. Future People - Alabama Shakes



8. Inside And Out - Feist



9. Mon Pays - Yelle



10. Women's Business - Canary



11. Future Past - David Bazan



12. Hallelujah - Thao & Mirah

Thao & Mirah - Hallelujah from jorankoster on Vimeo.

13. Elvis Presley Blues - Gillian Welch



14. On A Good Day - Joanna Newsom




Click here for the Spotify version of this playlist.
(David Bazan and Joanna Newsom tracks missing)


NOTES:

1. This song is almost 20 years old and I'm feeling a million years old

3. Merrill Garbus is always timely. This was one of my favorite tracks when they played Twilight several weeks ago

4.The collapse of civilization seems so pedestrian.

6. The original


7. Cannot get over the Alabama Shakes. Ever from the far-off hill outside of the Red Butte garden amphitheater, you knew they were killing it. Get it, Brittany.


8. From least favorite song to most favorite songs

9. Thanks to the French for my favorite freaky harmonies.

11. My valentine's day date makes and appearance

14. This one's a 4-month time machine. How can it seem so long ago?

Music for your Midweek: Alexander - "Truth"

Became recently re-obsessed with this song. I listened to on the regular when I lived in DC for the summer. Back then I wrote that I was in such a different place then I was 6 months. What would past me think of myself now 4 years later? Horrified, I'm sure.

"I've always had a major issue with death, from a pretty young age. From about 5 years old on I was very contemplative and started to become constantly filled with nostalgia for the present moment and the feeling that it's always fleeting. And until I handled that I really didn't have a healthy mind and it took a long, long time... I think the human potential is so much farther beyond what we expose ourselves, you know? And I feel like I was just coming up short constantly because of social anxiety... So I wrote... to myself, to convince myself to really act and try to be free" 

                                                                - Alexander Ebert in an interview with The Talks

You only live a day

          My family visited my grandmother at a care center on Sunday, where she was recovering from an emergency hospital visit. I never want to be in a care center. Even an hour long visit is too much. The sterility and fluorescent light, and cafeteria food makes my stomach turn. We talked about babies and moving and school and power of attorney. Every stage of life wrapped up in one conversation. It reminded me about how much thought is given to how we are brought into this world (water birth? epidural? c-section?) and so little thought about how we leave. A sobering thought in a sad conveyor belt of a building.

From my walking loop a couple weeks ago

          Maybe it's because people feel so helpless in the presence of death. There is so little you can control. You don't start considering it until it's right in front of you. For most of my life, my past experiences with death had been fleeting. They either left me half-sad and confused, or they didn't seem to affect me at all. I quickly brushed off any concerns or uncomfortable feelings I had. It was inconvenient for me to ponder on those things. Plus, I was young, so why should I think about them anyway?

From here

          It wasn't until I read Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go" that I started to think about death in any sort of real way. I realized death was the most cruel and fair thing. After my dad passed away, I was forced to look at death head on and what it meant to for me. I had to dive into those thoughts and swim around in them and I don't think I will ever get out. It's fine. Necessary even. I've mourned the loss of family and friends, as well as myself. I began to search death out, reading article after article after article. The dread you feel when you begin to contemplate everything ending, or everything never ending. It's the same feeling.

We don't talk about death, to our detriment. I recently found this excerpt from a talk given by Alan Watts that offers some insight on the subject.

         Gillian Welch our dealings with death and how it relates to the tradition of tragedy in Southern Folk music in an interview with Salon. Talking, writing, or singing about death helps make us more human, "They let us know that these things happen to people—and if they haven't happened to you, they could. And they tell you, you need to have compassion."

So, come on night

          In my death searchings, I found a syllabus for a course on "Death and the Christian Hope". My dream college course. I'm considering following through the reading list and creating my own little book club, though I think I would most likely end up the only participant. Despite all that, we need these conversations. I hope to have more of them. I believe that talking about death helps us to build a better life. After all, each one of us is a hopeless case. And isn't it beautiful?

Saturday Verse: "Scroppo" - May Swenson

SCROPPO

In the early morning, past the shut houses,
past the harbor shut in fog, I walk free and
single. It is summer — that's lucky. The whole
day is mine. At the end of our village I stop
to greet Scroppo's dog, whose chain is wrapped
around a large dusty boulder. His black coat
is gray, from crouching every day in the gravel
of Scroppo's yard — a yard by a scrap-filled pond,
where Scroppo deals in wrecked cars and car parts.
I guess he gets them from crashes on the expressway,
or from abandoned junks he loots by the roadside. 

I don't know the name of Scroppo's dog. I remember
him, years ago, as a big fierce-looking pup.
It may have been his first day chained there,
or shortly after, that he first greeted me:
his eyes big nuggets shooting orange sparks, his
red tongue rippling out between clean fangs —
fangs as white as lilies of the valley that bloom
in a leafy border by Scroppo's weathered porch.
It was late May, as now, when with sudden joyful
bark, black fur erect and gleaming, the dog
rushed toward me — but was stopped by his chain,
a chain then bright and new. I would have met
and stroked him, but didn't dare get near him,
in his strangled frenzy — in his unbelief —
that somehting at his throat cut short
his coming, going, leaping, circling, running —
something he couldn't bite through, tripped him:
he could go only so far: to the trash in the weeds
at the end of the driveway, to the edge
of the oily, broken cement in back, where Scroppo's
muddy flatbed truck stands at night. 

Now, as I walk toward him, the dog growls,
then cowers back. He is old and fat and dirty,
and his eyes spit equal hate and fear.
He knows exactly how far he can strain
from the rock and the wrapped chain. There's
a trench in a circle in the oily dirt his paws
have dug. Day and weeks and months and years
of summer heat and winter cold have been survived
within the radius of that chain.
Scroppo's dog knows me, and wants to come and
touch. At the same time, his duty to expel
the intruder makes him bare his teeth and
bristle. He pounds his matted tail, he snarls
while cringing, alternately stretched toward me
and springs back. His bark, husky and cracked,
crossing the boundary of the cove. 

I've never touched Scroppo's dog, and his
yearning tongue as never licked me. Yet, we
know each other well. Subject to the seasons'
extremems, confined to the limits of our yard,
early fettered by an obscure master in whose
power we bask, bones grow frail while steel
thickens; while rock fattens, passions and
senses pale. Scroppo's dog sniffs dust.
He sleeps a lot. My nose grown blunt, I need
to remember the salty damp of the air's taste
on summer mornings, first snowfall's freshness,
the smoke of burning leaves. Each midday,
when the firehouse whistle blows, a duet
of keen, weird howls is heard, as, at the steep
edge of hopelessness, with muzzle pointed,
earls flat, eyes shut, Scroppo's dog forlornly
yodels in time to the village siren sounding noon.

- May Swenson