so this is what it feels like

"The ratés, the failed intellectuals (writers, artists, would-be Ph.D.’s). People like Sam Wolfenstein [mathematician], with his limp, his briefcase, his empty days, his addiction to the films, his penny-pinching and scavengering, his arid family nest from which he flees — terrifies me."
- Susan Sontag, Reborn: Journals and Notebooks 1947-1964







My book order finally came in! Sontag even said journals were meant to be read by other people (albeit people intimate with the author, but still). Other people's journals aid in narcissistically looking at our own world and drawing out grand parallels. Any young girl reading Sylvia Plath's college journals would, I'd imagine, identify with all her private insecurity, all her immeasurable melancholy (all her beauty). Five Christmas's ago, the boy who gave me Plath's journals wrote behind the front cover: "I hope it's not too dark or depressing or anything." But given the time, I probably would have wanted it that way.

we've reversed the modern

Youtube and I had some pretty good times there for awhile, but that fling is over. Doomtree is a hip-hop band I've been familiarizing myself with this past term, but never got around to writing about. They've been often characterized as "aggressive" sounding--which harks back to various member's punk-rock roots--but don't be afraid. They co-opt a lot of nostalgic big-band anthems/soulful trumpet wails while keeping song structures astonishingly premeditated. Also, I stand by what I say regarding (these bilingual!?) clever hip-hop lyrics. Just listen to it. It'll feel good. You can thank me later.


Doomtree--Accident

try me

What what what what? Ugh, this is just such a solid song.

emma bee bernstein

(may 16, 1985--dec. 20, 2008)

it's all pretty aching/heartbreaking.

her art & her blog & her father's.

it will save us, it's the heart

With my sprained foot, I hop along to this:

i wouldn't lie to you

He told me not much had changed since the rose-coloured days our parents were kids. He used to always play the magician while I plucked shy daisies for the famous flower act. I had this dress the exact shade of back-porch lemonade and kisses fleeting as the sound of popped bubblegum. There was a season when we would spend evenings lying on the front lawn humming to sounds of Percy Faith breezing through the windows--but we soon realized it wasn't enough ass we grew up, got jobs, got married, got drunk, got kisses from strangers in the haze of smoke-filled rooms. It still wasn't enough.

--Oh, and the music is pretty good too.

This past season, Mad Men featured Sukiyaki (the only Japanese language song to ever hit the top of US sale charts; 1963):

stay the night but keep it undercover

Look. There was nothing to do about it. Even if she knew she was going to have her heart broken, he had a gift for turning everything so romantic that out there, on the dance floor, she grazed the ground so softly as to almost float. He had that mythic smell--the luxury of forgetfulness, a mouthful of apple pie while the dairy moon hung over a cabin in the woods. Late at night, he sang you know I like my girls a little bit older, I just wanna use your love tonight. (She swoons, stupid in love.) I don't wanna lose your love tonight.


Bon Iver--Your Love (Outfield Cover)

as the bells (of freedom) ring

I think it was the winter before you turned 10 the winter of 53 when you contracted polio and learned the beauty of cigarettes after a storm. Rather than having the Christmas plague deliver paralysis throughout your tender limbs you were like a rootless tree growing upwards only. A birch traveling towards heaven as you sat in your hospital bed belting carols/belting them louder when nurses walked by. I first saw you perform at the Louis Riel coffeehouse in Saskatoon (after one rejection two) then at The Depression in Calgary. I followed you from art school to Toronto like Toronto was New York where you were going to make it as a folk-singer. Everywhere you touched I was always two moons behind. Train tracks you rode across began to rust before I ever reached them. The rivers were dry like you had taken all their might and drunk them into heartbeats of a song.

I know I've already posted this, but a song this swell ought to be posted twice. Plus, well, it is the season. He is my dearest → El Corazón is a perfect album → this is is my favourite track on it.

quiet covers

She finally strung lights on the tree, only to find they were broken. Now the baubles sit impoverished in their boxes. Tomorrow morning, she'll faithfully go through the string of bulbs. This will inevitably lead to picking up new ones. Remember! Darling isn't much for repairing, and probably/secretly delights in battling through the fray this late in the season. Still, tonight she'll light some candles and turn these songs on. Slush. Mush. Oh hush, there seems enough light now.

(shhhh. didn't you know? i'm in love with a feeling.)


Iron & Wine/Calexico--Always On My Mind (Willie Nelson)
Kyte--Solsbury Hill (Peter Gabriel)
Neko Case--Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis (Tom Waits)

he's a heartbreaker

So. Bon Iver became kind of a big deal this year. Next to Fleet Foxes, he's the most hyped-about person on Hype! Not surprisingly, he's also on everybody's "Best of 2008" list, even though, tech-ni-cal-ly, For Emma, Forever Ago came out as a limited-run independent release last year. Aw well! No hard feelings here.




Shockingly, I'm not posting to proclaim my "I love him more than you all love him because I get him" status (um). But that he's coming out with a new EP! Gleeeeeeee. To all you melancholy downers: pre-order that shit.


Bon Iver--Blood Bank

bury your nihilism

The blogosphere is in mad-love with this band, which makes sense, because they hail from the same stylistic roots of Cut Copy, Girl Talk, MGMT etc. etc. etc. What is with that? I'll admit, it's music that really compels you to groove, yet these bands somehow always lose their appeal for me after a few loud listens. Boo, you know I hate these short-lived relationships. But really, even if you are going to drive me crazy--it's Christmas, and your sweater on me looks utterly charming(?)


Oh, this biography is pretty charming(ly perfect) too:

"So like, get it out of your mind that this is yet another avant-retro scumbag project, some kind of 21st-century revival of that 80's electropop revival from the late 90's. No, no, that's not it at all. It's more like...well, remember when Peter Gabriel and Scritti Politti crashed your Christmas party sophomore year and did a set of Prince covers on your little cousin's toy piano? Do you remember how pure, how beautiful everything looked outside that night, the snowflakes caught in floodlight against the black of the sky? And that girl--what was her name--how gorgeous she looked in that weird white sweatshirt with all that fake sparkly stuff in her hair? It was NOW, right now, and there wasn't anything else but now. Yeah, that's it.

...

But maybe, just maybe this is something like perfection--five jewelled tunes that catch the waves of joy shimmering up there on the future horizon. Euphoric but plaintive, sublime but wiggly, Chunk of Change gets to the truth of the matter about what we all want--love, release, goddamn snappy beats and swooningly gorgeous hooks. Gorgeous like the girl in the sweatshirt. Passion Pit is now, dude, and that's all there is."

Passion Pit--Better Things

seahorse fidelity is a gift

I'm into this business. I'm into this fall asleep when you can no longer keep your eyes open, but fall asleep to this lullaby business. I'm into this waking late/rising later with the noontime sun, guiltless deal. I'm into avocados, pumpkin pie, and these bowls of Christmas chocolates by my bedside. I'm into certain kitschy holiday-scented candles too. I'm into introducing my mum to Mad Men (long ago purchased & quickly set aside for these days) because she's a period piece kind of gal. I'm into Absalom, Absalom! and Dylan's Chronicles I (girlie, it's been two years coming). I'm into beautiful things in store windows (you in my eyes), in my ears. I'm into spending hours being reminded of how much I've missed this past term--I'm into writing about them, now that I have time, but there's always too much to say. Let's understand that I always overshoot (past the time I'm given/the time I think I have).


I sang this song in a joyful choir during high school (choreography included). I'm fairly certain I love Christmas most for how it evokes nostalgic memories (perhaps never mine), so it seemed fitting--if I were going to try--to start here.

Asleep At The Wheel--Chattanooga Choo Choo

match-box hard-fought prayers

I miss singing with the church choir, because it's almost time for epiphanies. If you come up, I will sing the descant for you. Oh, I'll always stay to fight safely inside the harmonies.



Baby Dee (ft. Bonnie Prince Billy) -- Safe Inside the Day

logistic nightmares

My ipod fell into the snow today. (I know, I know.) I tried going to bed at 7, and this happened. It's exam period so I let it slide. It's exam period so I'm ready to burn down the library room I haunt. Take note: he may not be a sensitive man, but your aim is true. I know, I know, I know.


These are the lines that made me love him:

"You worry that I will leave you. I will not leave you. Only strangers travel. Owning everything, I have nowhere to go."

Come thursday, you'll be saying goodbye.

Antony & The Johnsons -- "Another World"

(snow)flakes(oh)

December is the month of everyone's favourite albums of the year, a string of lights, a heightened prevalence of cinnamon, spice, and everything nice. Get(ting) excited?

reconsider: i stopped listening to music when i wasn't in love

Dear Steve,

The other day I yelled at a girl about the merits of country lyrics: she concluded us both tawdry, as I got lost along the road between folk and country. I detest obviousness and with terrible pride we went silently the entire way home.

When we first met, you were too young to play in bars so instead I’d sit at back tables of vague coffeehouses as you sang out against Vietnam.



Afterwards, you’d walk me home as the throaty-voiced girl began her set. The waitress lit candles. Each time before turning the corner, we’d look back to the flickering of yellow and green lights throwing themselves against window panes now starting to fog. Afterwards, whenever we met you were with a new woman. I decided they all looked the same and since it had become so difficult to speak on matters of the heart we resorted to asking questions we already knew answers to. When was your birthday, again? How is your steak? Do you love her? I remember asking one particularly cold winter how much you pawned to find answers to every question ever haunting me from birth. You showed me your wounded hands, speckled with dry blood from the biting wind. I pawned my home in Virginia and seven marriages with six women it seemed to say.

Honey don’t…I haven’t slept in years. I only speak in haikus now I would reply. Silently, you reached for the salt and I twirled the meadow lilies in the vase to face me.



Steve Earle and Reckless Kelly - Reconsider Me

Steve, Steve, Steve: I'll love you until the end of time. (And I'll never make you sad again.)

on and on

This* (s)

Function:

noun

1: Things I can put on repeat.

* Life is Better - Q-Tip feat. Norah Jones

with a recollection you've half erased

I'm positive positive positive it's simpler. If I had the means I would track back and remember to call my best friend, I would let the cat out and forget about her, I would spend some more time in the basement of a building long torn down now learning the harmonies to 2:45 A.M.. Still, it means less now because last year I had music distinctively its own and this year I don't. So I rummage through and find these songs. They leave me both full and empty because I can't feed myself like I was fifteen in love, or like I was tearing down unknowable streets away from the voice across the phone (oh I cradled in the palm of my hand).


2:45 A.M. - Elliott Smith
Eyes - Rogue Wave

the only place for starting over

I've been in a major music slump these past months. I hate music slumps. But I'm back now.


Dearest Jeremy Messersmith,

The funny thing about you is you'll take me places, yeah. I'll meet you in Virginia. The only state for broken-hearted lovers. I'll meet you in Virginia. The only place made for starting over. Lay me down, tucking you in.

All my love,
Jane




Jeremy Messersmith - Virginia
Jeremy Messersmith - Miracles

so you are to me

Country? Folk? Not a problem! So officially my favourite genre. Listening to Steve Earle's El Corazón is about the equivalent of being read a bedtime story. See, there's something about the poetry of folk music which remains unparalleled (except maybe in rap). Are you jonesing for a straight run of Illmatic now? Yes I am. Yes. I. am.





Ft. Worth Blues - Steve Earle

in the summertime

Two points. The Wrights's album In The Summertime = harmonies glorified. And Two Hours Traffic = perfect summertime music (= rockin' sounds & "not that great" lyrics). You said it (they did).


It's because school begins just about now (but until then it's barbecues, systematically scanning the local movie store's selection, and watching tedious semi-final swim heats).


Stuck For The Summer - Two Hours Traffic

so a cat person

everytime you grab at love, you will lose a snowflake of your memory

Your daughter Lorca lead me upstairs for coffee where I saw you naked except for underwear bent over the stove boiling soba noodles. You chewed small pieces of sausages and fed them to a sick bird now nesting in your sink. For all this perhaps I was more nervous.
Detesting nostalgia you perfected the art of receiving only what may be discarded. Throwing away longings and ghosts to glimpse your masterpiece to leave you with a loneliness all your own.
Like a classic songwriter your poetry was great but your voice tattered from the first wearing. Like a classic poet your words still managed to crawl into hotel beds of unhappy women and afterwards you would sing their tragedies. I could never distinguish temples from laughter. Either way by the end you will have brought me down to my knees.

I HAZ GOES TO FIND THE MAN!


Chelsea Hotel #2 - Leonard Cohen

because original ideas are far and few between

Now recommending McSweeney's Recommends, Prolific, & many, many things recommended on FFFOUND! This is how I (this is how I) waste my time.

THIS IS WHY I LISTEN TO PSEUDO-FOLK

Do I have a secret favourite genre? Between the clever lyrics of country & the minimalist harmonies of a hymn (lofty platitudes wrapped in a prayer)?



How Can I Tell You (Cat Stevens) - Liz Durrett
Kiss - Scout Nitblett

stop, drop & roll

If there was such a thing as perfect metro music - this would be it. Chairlift's sound conjures memories of ambling through crowds of commuters on cold Monday mornings. Thick, dreamy & secret.

Baby, anything that elicits a visceral response.


Bruises - Chairlift
Evident Utensil - Chairlift

ai guo

My father woke up at 5 am this morning for opening ceremonies. No matter what anyone says or critiques, I know he's glowing inside.

baby, look at me

Nigel Lythgoe once said, “What I dislike are dance snobs, and those are people who think you need a formal training with years and years of experience before you can be called a dancer...You don’t just need a formal training. It’s because you have a great feel for dance.” So I suppose this season's So You Think You Can Dance winner Joshua Allen fits the bill pretty well.

Although I believe SYTYCD to be the best competitive/reality television show out there - & by far my favourite summer indulgence - I have to admit its campyness ultimately distracts from America choosing the "best" dancer. My favourite dancer of season three was Danny Tidwell, but I can see how his elitist air could have jarred with the pop culture of the show (he placed runner-up).

Despite all the cheese & politics, the finale did relive my favourite dance of the season: Chelsea & Mark's hip-hop routine to Bleeding Love. & everything about it is catered to my unsophisticated senses, my hoi polloi heart.

turn from the east

I really like when senses blur. Here someone has synched Gyorgy Ligeti's Artikulation with Rainer Wehinger visual listening score. I remember visiting Hermann's Jazz Club some cloudless winter afternoon and following the band with a master orchestratral score & briskly keeping up by following distinct melody lines. Instead, here are written notes transmogrified into something slightly more subjective. Wehinger combines splashes/splots of sounds with swerving shapes and colours, bringing us (somehow) closer to Ligeti's idiosyncratic instrumentals.

"no one on earth has any other way left but - upward"

from
russia
with
love
.

the ballad of john & jerry

The animation is beautiful.
John Lennon is beautiful.
It's all
beautiful
(& so are you).

"In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon's every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries the terrifyingly genius pen work of James Braithwaite with masterful digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon's boundless wit, and timeless message."

lovin’s for fools

"The human voice is about eighty percent of Bon Iver’s game."

I can't get over him (I really can't). I was ready to get on that plane to Montreal just to see him.
What was I supposed to do? Stand in line to profess my love? Where is that line?
I can't see it over here for the sunset. From the sunset(?) I will see him.

keep guessing

He told me that I would look back, thinking this was the beginning of the end.


Things that are hard.

i went lookin' for the d.j.'s daughter

I find it slightly nauseating that we've come upon August (but this softens the blow).

Nick Thorburn & Jim Guthrie are Human Highway & their debut album is Moody Motorcycle. That sentence itself gives you a little thrill, doesn't it?

Thorburn describes the duo as possessing an Everly Brothers/Simon & Garfunkel "lullaby-type stuff" sound. As one who advocates free love to all musical genres, I have always maintained a tremendous soft spot for folk harmonies. It sounds like a marriage between early jazz & later rock rooted from when "a moment of hurt combines with a moment of boredom."

I have fierce anticipation for an album which (even now) feels like a triumph of tenderness, lost & found.


The Beach - Human Highway
The Sound - Human Highway

the guild

Felicia Day hits a perfect note.

poetry & airplanes (i'm tired of waiting for love)

I first heard about Teitur from a short article on Paste. For some reason, my (young/eager) heart was prompted to downloaded their song Poetry & Airplanes onto my cellphone - something I would never fathom to do now. I later played it to a friend while driving by a shaded road (warm still through the scratch of makeshift speakers).

Since then I haven't seriously ventured into anymore Teitur; he sounded like Rufus Wainwright meets Damien Rice's poetic aspirations & that was a bit too much melodrama even for me to take. As yet, that one song always reminded me of how white bedsheets reflect against skin (morning, saturday) & driving down dirt roads that feel like shattered champagne bottles on stained carpets.

I recently came upon an NPR feature on Teitur's Catherine the Waitress (which strikes similarities to a Bobbie Allen meets Joe Christmas relationship - anyone, anyone?). I didn't recognize him from how he coyly smiled to me behind the diner bar. Maybe I would miss him now.



Catherine The Waitress - Teitur (2008)

endorsement enforcement

I'm being a bit of a "class-conscious philistine" here, but the Slate podcasts are truly a marvelous thing (I particularly recommend the Cultural Gabfests).

If you look hard enough, I'm flashing you the thumbs-up sign with one hand while pumping/bumping (ha-ha?) the air with the other. I'm very predictable.

a right fur peace

Pretty in love/Pretty, in love.


'Perhaps they were right in putting love into books,' he thought quietly. 'Perhaps it could not live anywhere else.'

& so understanding my incentive for everything (typical)
[breathes deeply & gulps the last of her lemonade]
probably the best thing that has happened to me all summer.

run rabbit run

Andrew Weiss gets the great rock genre (circa 1970s?). Be it Ween, Akron/Family, or Café Tacvba - every one of his creations has a trudging, half-dreaming Syd Barrent quality about it.

From laptops in living rooms to Weiss's mixing board, Aderbat has been no exception. On July 24, the five-membered band released their sophomore album We Belong To The Sea (also the title of an Aqua song - but similarities end there). Aderbat is a mash-up/throw-down of wonderful surrealism featuring Pink Floyd vs. Radiohead vs. Stan Getz (Matt Taylor's voice verges impressionistic shades of jazz).

It's about, yes, relationships. The band is, yes, hopelessly inspired by hip cultural references such as Roshomon (Aderbat is the name of some archaic experimental flying machine). Isn't it romantic?


Busted Cars - Aderbat
Come Love - Aderbat

post script

Sometimes I hate myself for getting a kick out of things like this, but hey! He is officially my number one.

hey ya'll good morning

This is West Side Story* meets Working meets Rent. This is In The Heights. This is wonderful.

The musicals I've performed alone in my bedroom (straight through, with costumes) are generally dated pre-1980s, so it's always refreshing & encouraging to hear that, yes, people are still composing for Broadway. I can sing & gush through any Sondheim musical front-to-back, but even I don't believe ol' Stevie is making a comeback anytime soon (winning "Best Revival of a Musical" every other year does not count). Remarks of Broadway plummeting into extinction have lead to comparisons with opera's road of esotericism. I'll admit that all musicals share a distinctive quality; sui generis. Perhaps this is why critics can't see the art progressing any further than box office of Andrew Lloyd Webber rock operas.

So I'm reminded that musical theater's credo is revival (full of hope) & its modern-day composers are ceaselessly remaking Broadway's sound (while staying true to Gay, Gilbert & Sullivan). The best composers today are those who use what they know & what they've lived. Jason Robert Brown's heartbreaking The Last Five Years (2001) goes both ways in time & the audience witnesses the same marriage simultaneously beginning & falling apart. tick, tick...BOOM! (1990) is basically a musical portrayal of Jonathan Larson's aspiring-composer/SoHo-cafe-waitering days, while his notorious Rent sings about every bohemian topic possible (including Sondheim).

The blurring of contemporary pop sounds with the roots of blues music & the technique of classical voices is what makes listening to a cast album the greatest joy (I swear). Success is a song capable of being taken out of stage-context & placed solitary among another genre. In The Heights sounds to me sometimes like an R&B ballad, sometimes rap, salsa, merengue etc etc., but when I hear the rolling suspended cymbal closing the finale, I know I'm pretty much home.

In The Heights is this years Tony award winning musical written/composed by twenty-eight year old Lin-Manuel Miranda. He also stars in the show, but don't worry - he's tremendous. It was nominated thirteen times & took home four wins (including Best Musical).


*But actually, the opening number begins exactly as West Side Story's "America." Goody.

how do i look?

I was recently reading Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's, & despite Capote's casting requests, I just don't see Holly Golightly as a Marilyn Monroe. She's so clearly an Audrey Hepburn.

To no surprise, there have been thousands of films based on novels, short stories, & comics. This season's line-up of movies contain a number of adaptations from books I've already read - ultimately diminishing my desire to see them. When I do watch a book-based-film I must try to forget my preconceptions of, well, everything - for they rarely coincide with the director's. Although fantasy films may serve as visual indulgence, they're no game for (highly resourceful) imaginations. & despite never actually having re-read a Harry Potter book - Danielle Radcliffe was in. my. head. after the premier of Sorcerer's Stone.

During my A Beautiful Mind phase I not only repeatedly watched the film, but also spent hours listening to the (instrumental) soundtrack. Boombox in the washroom during baths? I was all over that shit. I actually brought the movie to a friend's birthday party along with an excuse like, "Your name is Alicia & so is the heroine in this supersupersuper movie!". So it was obvious to me to read the book which had inspired the movie. I remember a school secretary asking me one afternoon how the book was: "Great! But...different than the movie."

As a child, Jane Austen, Roald Dahl & the Narnia series served as wonderful material to get drunk on, & became so perfectly & elementally set in my mind, making early books the hardest to grapple with on screen. Colin Firth is a fox, & although being the quintessential Mr. Darcy to many girls, he just isn't mine. & despite thinking Tim Burton delightful - the only thing we share are the proportions between James & his giant peach. I love books & I love films. Sometimes I love films based on books - but I'd prefer to keep both entities separate.



Twilight comes out this December & I'm already sick of hearing about it. I'm looking forward to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, not because it's my favourite Fitzgerald short story (it is), but because David Fincher is attempting such an ambitious plot. I'm terrified of how Blindness is going to turn out (a novel can only handle so much butchering, & there's enough of that between the covers). Choke remains, like most Chuck Palahniuk related things, up in the air. & of course, I've already made plans to watch The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2.

it's only hip-hop diamond trash lust

I'm happy to say my first subscription to The New Yorker arrived in the mail today, & interestingly enough the cover displays this controversial cartoon by Barry Blitt titled The Politics of Fear:
















Reactions to Blitt's satirical cover-art have been disparate to say the least, ranging from urges for editor David Remnick's resignation to comparisons to the (well-received) ironic comedy of Stephen Colbert. & of course, there are those who wish to know what the drama is really about (really).

Being one who embarrassingly lacks in the political department, I don't claim to possess an enlightened perspective on "The Politics of Fear" & if I did, I'm sure someone else has already written about it by now. I do believe that every generation contains it's own cultural borders which may not appear so distinct during the time. Art (speaking liberally) is meant to generate discourse & satire is meant to generate...an ironic chuckle? I've read that Blitt's fault lies in his "gutless" caricature of the Obama's; that had Blitt only made more of an overstatement to show this. really. was. satire. - America would have been left less confused & offended.



If anyone cares, the (serious) articles within this weeks issue related to Obama are pretty good.
Read them here & here.

drawing the line

The old debate over whether graffiti is art or vandalism (or perhaps both) is wonderfully illustrated (oh but literally) in this trailer. Here the artist is put on trail - both in court & in conscience - when forced to meditate upon motives behind his spray-painted creations.

The artist - Peter Gibson - is a local Montrealer & this past year, I've apparently blindly ambled across streets bearing his very work.

Watch the trailer here.


Spoiler: All charges against Gibson were dropped & his payment to the city was a small fine & 40 hours of community work. Personally, I'll be in the Plateau come Fall with my eyes to the ground.

so the world may call a fool

They start off perfectly bad. Wake up & hesitate to brush your teeth/sit in bed feeling rueful about some incident (dated, vague)/convincing yourself shame is a sign of self-honesty.

Work was awful, puddles, Chinese take-out. She thought: that almost rhymes.



Gabriel - Ivan Colón

modern messaging

As a shout out to non-electronic mail, I had to do this.

& then there were

Similar to this & this, it was about time Canada created an award for best album based on pure "artistic merit."

This past week, the Polaris Music Prize has announced its short list (10 albums narrowed down from 40). The judging system is pretty hep, involving a 178-person jury of qualified music journalists (none of whom have financial ties to nominated artists) each submitting a top 5 list, which ultimately becomes the short list. During the Polaris Awards gala held late September, a further 11-member Grand Jury tapers this list to one final winner.

A glance at the 40 album long list gives a fairly accurate portrait of an indie music blogger's "Best of 2008" playlist. But then again, I'm not complaining.

The "difficulty" of a vague selection criteria such as musical merit is fairly obvious - I can't begin to confidently predict a winner. I'd like to see Holy Fuck up there, although the ever-nostalgic Stars would come as a personal victory (haters to the left).

The 2008 short list:

Black Mountain – In The Future
Plants And Animals – Parc Avenue
Basia Bulat – Oh, My Darling
Stars – In Our Bedroom After The War
Caribou – Andorra Shad – The Old Prince
Kathleen Edwards – Asking For Flowers
Two Hours Traffic – Little Jabs
Holy Fuck – LP
The Weakerthans – Reunion Tour

Past winners include Patrick Watson (Close to Paradise) & Final Fantasy (He Poos Clouds).

Lovely Allen - Holy Fuck
Jezebel - Two Hours Traffic
Personal - Stars

thanks for being my girl

Unabashedly crooning songs of a gay subject matter, Jay Brannan is like a sweet commercialized version of Antony. While Antony warbles with immense heartache to lyrics such as those in "Be My Husband" -

Be my husband and I'll be your wife
Oh daddy now now love me good
Be my husband and I'll be your wife
If you want me to I'll cook and sew

Brannan's melodious tenor almost shade the darker themes underlying his lyrics, which half-laugh/half-bring-you-to-your-knees. For example, "Housewife" -

I wanna be a housewife
What's so wrong with that...

I like to wash the dishes
I like to scrub the floors
Don’t mind doing his laundry
What are boyfriends for?

Despite being a sucker for silvery voices, I'm not sure how I entirely feel about Mr. Brannan. By using lyrics involving the words iPod, Craigslist & your text messages were like no-calorie food for my soul I'm not certain if he's being flippant or genuinely serious.


Half- Boyfriend - Jay Brannan
Bird Girl - Antony & The Johnsons

look, i find some of what you teach suspect

For those who don't know, I've had two important obsessions throughout my life: Gilmore Girls & musical theater.

So it was interesting to discover that Wayne Wilcox (Marty in Gilmore Girls) also has portrayed Fabrizio (The Light in the Piazza) & Gordon in the film version of Rent. His role in the film was small, but not insignificant - because I remember coming out of the theater thinking "That solo was my favourite musical moment."

When I find a line sung with such shocking honesty, I usually rewind to the build-up of said moment & repeat it to exhaustion. It's some pathetic form of musical indulgence, & when the (generally weak) film soundtrack came out, I did exactly that with this clip.

wonderbloom

Mary fell in love at least twice before spring came. Looking for the driest land, she'd kneel down over the sallow, fractured ground & try to pray. Sometimes when she'd turn to ask if it meant anything, the streams would come. Always come the yearning rain, the kiss stains by her feet, the last ring I gave her she lost.

I don't know quite how to put to words what Anathallo feels like.

oh what can it mean to a
daydream believer

(why don't you marry it, then?)

When I really get down to it all - when I stop caring where they're from (Mt. Pleasant, Michigan), what Pitchfork rated "Floating World" (2.7), & what instruments are at work (flute, flugelhorn, harp). It all sounds very questionable, but still, it would be a mistake to not listen to them.

Hanasakajiijii (Four: A Great Wind, More Ash) - Anathallo (2006)
Dokkoise House (With Face Covered) - Anathallo (2006)
Nonias Field - Anathallo (2008)

strong opinions

Puttering around the used book stores of Edmonton, it's as if there's been some retail conspiracy to keep the supply of Naipaul up, Neruda down, & Nabokov nonexistent. Checking under "N Authors" of the Chapters that dot this flat land, I've consistently found myself frowning at a pair of rouged lips (that lilting "Lolita"), at best accompanied by a copy of "Pale Fire."

After my consumerist bust I grumbled, I heeled myself in the shins, I headed to the library. A most singular place within our unassuming city! Shelves devoted to Nabokov & not one coquettish "Lolita" (the darling was out on loan). I've been very happy ever since & last night was reading "Strong Opinions" - a collection of interviews taken across the decade of 1962 - 1972 compiled & republished by the great man himself. In the forward he famously writes "I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child."

Nabokov's interviews are biographically & philosophically enlightening (although he calls himself a writer without social intent), often hilarious, & always poetical. Since yesterday I've been walking around repeating "Loll-LEE-ta" & "Vla-DEE-mir Na-BOH-kov" - if I will actually exhibit my newfound comprehension of such "proper" pronunciations is indefinite. If you can stand to not be thrown off by his rather charming arrogance, I highly recommend the aptly titled "Strong Opinions."

Just a thought - being also a gifted lepidopterist he makes me wonder how many great poets we've lost to the fastidious world of science.



"Do you know how poetry started? I always think that it started when a cave boy came running back to the cave, through the tall grass, shouting as he ran, "Wolf, wolf," and there was no wolf. His baboon-like parents, great sticklers for the truth, gave him a hiding, no doubt, but poetry had been born - the tall story had been born in the tall grass."


"There is John Shade in Pale Fire, the poet. He does borrow some of my own opinions. There is one passage in his poem, which is part of the book, where he says something I think I can endorse. He says - let me quote it, if I can remember; yes, I think I can do it: "I loathe such things as jazz, the white-hosed moron torturing a black bull, rayed with red, abstractist bric-a-brac, primitivist folk masks, progressive schools, music in supermarkets, swimming pools, brutes, bores, class-conscious philistines, Freud, Marx, fake thinkers, puffed-up poets, frauds and sharks." That's how it goes."



"IN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION: WHAT SCENES ONE WOULD LIKE TO HAVE FILMED

Shakespeare in the part of the King's Ghost.
The beheading of Louis the Sixteenth, the drums drowning his speech on the scaffold.
Herman Melville at breakfast, feeding a sardine to his cat.
Poe's wedding. Lewis carroll's picnics.
The Russians leaving Alaska, delighted with the deal.
Shot of a seal applauding."


Lolita - Throw Me The Statue

stand over there

I was thinking today how incredible it would be if I could just somehow receive all new music completely filtered of reviews & ratings; what they're called & what they wear.

Don't look at me like that - you've judged a band by its album cover too.


Christian pop + Country = Soul - Pitchfork

but hey! not a problem

Approaching the front door you eye the note taped on the mailbox that reads: "If you need the keys - they're in the mailbox."


All that & he didn't even bother to lock the door.

throwbacks/already?

Two summers ago, Paperweight came down & could potentially have slapped seventeen-year-old me across the face - instead it drew up the bedsheets & sang me to sleep on repeat, repeatedly.

Joshua Radin "Paperweight" at the Last Kiss premiere

it take more than a magazine to kill my vibe

You may have already heard about a recent underwhelming Kanye West performance (& it's subsequent underwhelming reception) at Bonnaroo. Ladies & gentlemen, it was just plain rude. Well, judging from his rebuttal Sir West certainly had an entirely different perspective on how all that shit went down. And as you know, you can't tell him nothin'.


"I am sick of negative people who just sit around trying 2 plot my downfall... Why???? I understand if people don't like me because I like me or if people think tight clothes look gay or people say I run my mouth to much, But this Bonnaroo thing is the worst insult I've ever had in my life. This is the most offended I've ever been... this is the maddest I ever will be. I'm typing so fucking hard I might break my fucking Mac book Air!!!!!!!!..."


But really, I wasn't too shocked by this semi-illiterate response from an angry Kanye. The real reason for writing this was to feature a post of someone I really admire/idolize/potentially have a nerd celebrity crush on. And no, it's not Mr. Throw Your Diamonds In The Sky.

Sasha Frere-Jones's letter teaches us (& Kanye West) to take a deep breath & rap all them bad vibes here.

"the internet: we all live there now"

Today's entry title comes from a panel held earlier this month by n + 1 at The Kitchen, which quaintly describes my relationship with the "Net." This is not to be confused with the 1995 Irwin Winkler thriller "The Net" starring Sandra Bullock, although the degree of its executional & metaphorical horrors are perhaps comparable.

As a child of the '90s born on the cusp of World Wide Web project beginnings, I have an understandably voracious appetite for the internet. I would even go as far as saying that my attachment to web-based activities exceeds that of most technologically savvy youths I know. Throughout the past four years, the internet has ruthlessly transformed from a source of swift communication & quick references to the leading mainstay in my daily rituals & customs. Admittedly, this change has immensely affected the ways (& wheres) I live my life.

I have shamelessly sat with good friends in parents's basements (not smoking weed or debating the hefty merits of the lastest Seth-Rogen-inspired movie) but sitting stagnant with separate lap-tops, accompanied only by the sounds of secretarial-speed click-clacks & the occasional "Guffaw."

Leading me to arrive at the latest apogee of online achievements: Facebook. Created like most other networks by University students, it has caused a recent furtive escalation of "face-time" with the internet. Pun indeed intended. With great discomfort, I admit that Facebook gives me yet another reason to cruise the "information superhighway." Comparable to an appetizer & dessert arabesque surrounding my long-winded online buffets - Facebook is my way of saying to the browser both "Heyyyyy, good looking," & "Is it really 4 AM? I really should go & at least try to get tired." And like a buffet, everything consumed from the broad range of choices leaves no distinct or satisfying taste in my mouth.

There have been various attempts to wean myself off this useless incessant need to know if anything has "happened" since last I checked Facebook. I've tried numerous account deactivations, contact-purging, even making a friend change my password (only to have Facebook e-mail me the new one). It's all no use. The toxic habit seems to have seeped into my genetic mapping, placing itself just above the compelling urge to feel the sun on my skin.

My devotion to the internet is not to say that I don't spend time reading (hard-copy) novels, exercising, or interacting with my own species. My fear is that I'm not just losing hours that could be devoted to reading another Nabokov novel, but that the internet has become such a central constituent of my lifestyle leaving potentially productive mind-space being frittered away by too much time in front of a screen; that an internet junkie is no better than a couch potato. I'm not certain how many words or facts I acquire each day - but it's likely they reached me through a podcast, blog or unpredictable hyperlink.


But really, I don't mean to give the "Net" an entirely bad rep. When it's not being abused or acting as the abuser itself, the internet can be a truly wonderful thing. Research that would have taken days in a paper-based library (remember catalogues?) can be reduced to mere minutes using the right URL & keyword. Take for instance Wikipedia, a loosely reliable but very convenient all-encompassing database which has enough respect for our beloved "Net" to make "Internet" a locked entry - something they have yet to do for, say, Milton, Du Bois or Faulkner.