I guess we'll never know

67 Street & 121 Avenue: Was it the first time our paths crossed?

December, middle of finals

"River" - Joni Mitchell

I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly

Sigh.

Music-palooza

Bought a bunch of these old-fashioned thingies called CDs. Woo! Can't wait to dig in.

• Brandi Carlile, Give Up the Ghost: Previewed this on her site after hearing her interview with Jian and it pulled strongly. It's on now and I'm digging it. More songs in the vein of The Story but with new inflections and sounds. I enjoy her register — she's an alto who's not afraid to use the upper range — and the humanness of her singing. Heart-on-sleeve really works for me.

• Metric, Fantasies: Actually a gift from Allia, who calls it one of the best of 2009; other reviews are similarly enthusiastic. I have an on-again, off-again relationship with Metric, so I'm looking forward to hearing this one.

• Imogen Heap, Ellipse: Previewed this on iTunes after watching a video demonstrating Heap's recording process. I love her sound! I enjoyed her previous disc, although it did tend to fade into the background after a few listens. This new one was really yummy in preview — super electronica! Looking forward to this one, too.

• Modest Mouse, Good News for People Who Love Bad News: Hooked by the single "Float On", which always makes me smile. MM has a fanatical following. Perhaps I'm about to become part of it.

• Green Day, 21st Century Breakdown: The first single, "21 Guns", caught my ear and has been on my iPod regularly for the last few months. So few mainstream artists are making anything resembling political music these days. I have hope for this disc — and have deliberately not read any reviews. I want to hear this one fresh.

• MGMT, Oracular Spectacular: Not new — this one came out last year, and I dislike the lead single "Time to Pretend". (That's a great endorsement, right?) But I adore the follow-up singles "Kids" and "Electric Feel", so this one should be OK on balance. Again, Allia strongly recommended this disc, and I have developed faith in her recommendations.

Noe Venable, "The World Is Bound by Secret Knots", "The Summer Storm Journals" and "Down Easy" (as the Noe Venable Trio): On Ecto, the mailing list I am still subbed to after more than a decade, Noe Venable is regularly hailed as an emerging goddess. Her sound is girlish — a high voice, sometimes quite thin and soft, with sensitive lyrics and emotional delivery. Not poppy in any way. These discs have been in the changer for the last three weeks and are growing on me, although I can't say Ms Venable grabbed me instantly. Pleasant, but a little background-y.

Lately I've been into a little more drama in music, a la Marina and the Diamonds. Marina's iTunes singles have been on my iPod almost daily for the last three weeks. I wish I could get the disc in Canada!

I've also been listening to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' new disc It's Blitz! frequently, although I've had it for a few months. Still have to dive into Grizzly Bear and White Lies, both of which I've also had for a while. But time, you know? Well. These can go into the changer next.

There are few things in this world I cannot resist. Two of them are books and music. And since I'll be pounding the books pretty hard for the next two weeks, I'm glad to have some music to go with them.

L

Just supposin' I'm proposin'

And the thought for today is this:

"... it's hardly surprising that most citizens should increasingly withdraw from public life: why should the practice of citizenship seem worthwhile when politicians and corporations alike seek to infantilize the people, reducing them to consumers confronted with the most trivial of choices?" — Alex Callinicos (The Resources of Critique, p. 253)

Wow!

The vault of lost lyrics, chapter 9

Such a wry and melancholy song.

**

"The Dangling Conversation" (as recorded by Simon & Garfunkel)

It's a still-life water color
Of a now-late afternoon
As the sun shines through the curtained lace
And shadows wash the room
And we sit and drink our coffee
Couched in our indifference
Like shells upon the shore
You can hear the ocean roar
In the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs
The borders of our lives

And you read your Emily Dickinson
And I my Robert Frost
And we note our place with book markers
That measure what we've lost
Like a poem poorly written
We are verses out of rhythm
Couplets out of rhyme
In syncopated time
Lost in the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs
Are the borders of our lives

Yes, we speak of things that matter
With words that must be said
"Can analysis be worthwhile?"
"Is the theater really dead?"
And how the room is softly faded
And I only kiss your shadow
I cannot feel your hand
You're a stranger now unto me
Lost in the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs
In the borders of our lives

The vault of lost lyrics, chapter 51

A wistful voice-and-piano recording. Despite the negative aspect, this song portrays resilience and optimism — important qualities these days.

**

"You Can't Win" (as recorded by Murray McLauchlan)

When the good times come at last
Is only when the bad times rest
Someday they're going to lay you down
Even though you did your best
All the heroes of the wars
Forgotten in the rain
Old soldiers and memories
Make them young again

You can't win
You can't win
You're just someone who plays the fool
You can't win
You can't win
I don't believe that life's so cruel

I'm going to wear my finest suit
Go walk around the town
Strangle out this emptiness
And smash it on the ground
I'm going to watch the faces on the children
While they play
Try and find the child in me
And never have to say

You can't win...

Monday Commonplace

"And what if memory itself is a foreign object which the body longs to be rid of?" — Douglas Glover

Pay attention, people!

This word is pronounced "ca-SHAY". It's spelled cachet. As a noun it refers to prestige.

This word is pronounced "cash". It's spelled cache. As a noun it refers to a hiding place or storage place.

These two words are not the same. Somewhere in the US this morning, a copy editor should be hanging her head for missing this distinction twice on a single page.

Oops.

Having seen this happen, long, long ago...

An excerpt from Jen Lancaster's new book Pretty in Plaid. This passage occurs in the chapter in which she describes wearing her early `80s Jordache jeans:

...When I take them off, my thighs are deeply indented where the seams hit and sometimes I need to punch my legs to regain feeling in them. I'm often forced to lie on the floor and use a rat-tail comb to properly zip them. (They're so tight around the crotch region that I technically may not be a virgin anymore.) ...


Ahem. Some of us used a coathanger. Good times...

The more deceived

Thought for today, courtesy of Adam and the Ants (!)...

"I'm the dandy highwayman so sick of easy fashion
The clumsy boots, peek-a-boo roots that people think so dashing
So what's the point of robbery when nothing is worth taking?
It's kind of tough to tell a scruff the big mistake he's making..."

Rampant with Memory

Just watched an excellent adaptation of Laurence's _The Stone Angel_. If you haven't seen it, it's definitely worth your time — if you can find it. (In the Edmonton area, it's available on DVD from the public library.) One of the reviewers said Ellen Burstyn deserved an Academy award for her performance, and it was indeed admirable. But maybe I'm more apt to respond to a film about mothers and sons. Amazing, though, that one instance of a naked male bottom got it an R rating!

It's been a weekend for movies, actually. Saw the new Harry Potter yesterday — very dense story-telling and painting-like cinematography, I think; I'll have to see it again soon. Maybe it will still be in theatres by the time we're back from France, although that seems unlikely. Apparently the final book will require two films to adapt. Good: more to look forward to!

Also watched _Away from Her_ on Friday afternoon. Hard to believe that was a directorial debut: impressive! I really must look for the short story on which it was based. I know I have lots of Munro packed away somewhere... should unpack it...

Terrible weather right now, after a mild early morning; looks like it could storm at any minute. Last night's storm was electric, wild. But "This is what the world is for / Making electricity."

Adieu.

High praise

"No one ever understood better the art of having grace without affectation, raillery without malice, gaiety without folly, propriety without constraint, and virtue without severity." — a description of a fictional character, Princesse Clarinte, who represents the historical salon hostess Madame de Sévigné, now memorialized by a street in le Marais, Paris

Hope: Leslie Romantic

From a song rather jauntily covered by U2, "Everlasting Love":

Where life's river flows
No-one really knows
'Til someone's there to
Show the way to
Everlasting love
Like the sun it shines
Endlessly it shines
You always will be mine
Eternal love
Whenever love went wrong
Ours will be strong
We have our own
Everlasting love...

(In case you're interested, there are many, many versions of these lyrics on the Net. If you don't agree with my interpretation, look around and you'll probably find a version that suits your hearing.)

Belated happy solstice!

L

And they call it democracy

What does it say about us as citizens — what does it say about the quality of our democracy in Canada — when both our prime minister and the leader of the opposition use an election as a bogeyman? When did our right to vote become something with which to threaten the populace?

This morning CBC quotes Stephen Harper saying, “I don’t want an election. I don’t think anybody wants an election.” Obviously the leader of a minority government, the prime minister only by default, doesn't want to lose his power. But Stephen Harper doesn't speak for me.

Popular wisdom says we get the government we deserve. What have we done to deserve Stephen Harper?

Courtesy of Alberto Manguel

From his delightful and meandering book A Reading Diary: A Year of Favourite Books:

"Instead of saying, 'I seek the meaning of the world,' i.e., the superlative of all superlatives (and the very minute I pronounce the word, I have it, I achieve my purpose merely by having pronounced it), human philosophy has acted like the fool who would run through the streets in tears, looking for his own head on every street corner." — Ladislav Klima

"The person who is really in revolt is the optimist, who generally lives and dies in a desperate and suicidal effort to persuade all the other people how good they are. ... Every one of the great revolutionists, from Isaiah to Shelley, have been optimists. They have been indignant, not about the badness of existence, but about the slowness of men in realizing its goodness." — Chesterton

Red rover or the black dog?

Hmm. Here's something for ya:


Tried flipping through my file of coloured days but couldn't find it. Life swallowing beauty without even chewing. Naming it does not make it go away. Linens, lindens. Roses grow sore from their beauty, and tales are the least one can steal. Breathe deep a wreath of joy, of roses of sweetpeas of gardenias of lilies of holly of rosemary of rue. Meadows of joy where one runs in white linen. The span of his arms the height of me. Prone, supine, lupine. Pining. Liminal and subliminal, the threshold to walk over, the doorway to a new life. Crossed and crossing. Her feet too delicate to touch earth. World of undoing and the undone. Milk vetch. Again and again and again. Inky blue of inconsolable longing, of missing, of loss. Red to die, blue to bring back. Wearing white silk shirts and chambray skirts. Taffeta and crinolines. A hope inside a hoop. A man to walk alongside, the pepper for your salt, the sun for your moon. Fresh-mown grass. Again. Falling and befallen. How does it happen? There was a white haze over the city. Merry, my lord. Do not adjust your set. Do not set your judgement against me. Don't stand so close, so close. Eat the peach, hand extended, fingers quivering. Cherries apples plums roses white never red. The glaring yellow of an angry eye. Lost and lost. I can sense the end. Almost never at a loss for words in my head but cannot make my lips form them. Lies slip so blithely.

A-Plus for Nerdiness

Just got 90 percent on an ABBA trivia quiz. Sigh. To celebrate, iTunes spontaneously found "The Name of the Game" just as I finished the quiz. Apparently computers have a sense of humour after all.

Back to the books!
L

Thursday

She said, A good day ain't got no rain.
She said, A bad day's when I lie in bed
and think of things that might have been.

— Paul Simon, "Slip Slidin' Away"

Whoops!

Forgot the Sarah Slean concert last night at Myer Horowitz. Oops!

Am looking forward to hearing the new Tori Amos. So far, others' reviews are really mixed. Also just received the new Joan Baez (and an old JB as well); looking forward to hearing it, too.

And a kind friend has just sent me a copy of his latest book. Wow! Inscribed and everything! How sweet! Looking forward to reading it ... as soon as I get through the pages and pages and pages of directed reading I still need to finish.

Do you think I can finish my diss in six months? This is the challenge I have set for myself. Well, that and passing my candidacy. The clock is ticking... go!

L

Not en vacances

Feeling comme un poulpe!

Walking in the Super Cities Walk on Sunday. Wish me luck -- and thanks to all who pledged.

L

PS: Happy birthday, Dave!