Love:

I get up and dance like a lunatic ...

...because of these guys:

1. Empire of The Sun: Walking on a Dream.

2. Stars: The Night Starts Here.

3. The Smiths: There Is a Light that Never Goes Out.

4. Chairlift: Bruises.

5. Ben Lee: Catch My Disease.

6. The Virgins: Rich Girls.

7. Rilo Kiley: Silver Lining.  

8. The Knife: Silent Shout

9. Mylo: Zenophile

Songs that leap

You know how when you're listening to a song and then suddenly a moment leaps out and makes perfect sense? And you can't explain why, but you fall in love with the entire song just for that one moment? And that when that moment arrives you feel like you're at home-even understood? Moments like these always make me feel an instant connection with the songwriters and I feel that happy connectivity where I can believe that we are all made from one single star that spiraled somewhere For me these moments often come in the guise of the lyrics of a song. They don't come by very often but when they do they are much loved. I am usually resistant to talking about them but today I think I'd like to put them down. And I have already made it clear that I love talking about things I love.

(Disclaimer: The songs are not listed in order of preference)

1)Nick Drake: Really. Is anyone surprised that his song will be on this list? He's beautiful. I think it takes some amount of heartbreak and loneliness to understand him. Though when I read about him I feel like he was born that way. I think I used to look at him as some wounded, jaded butterfly-almost as a specimen that I found too beautiful to take in. But I held my arms out long ago, and his butterfly wings beat now, lightly in my head, heart -everywhere.

Song: At The Chime of a City Clock

        

        And at the beat of the city drum

        See how your friends come in twos;

        Or threes or more.

        For the sound of a busy place

        Is fine for a pretty face       

        Who knows what a face is for.

Can you tell me what a face is for?

2) Sufjan Stevens: Sufjan is an artist. I rarely feel that way about musicians. His work is art. And faced with it I always feel that chocked feeling in my throat where I'm so certain of the worth of something that it scares me. I feel like I am on the brink of of losing my mind and he's taking me with him. Good art does that. When you can't verbalize or intellectualize it. It just is. And as you can see my struggle is with doing this to his music his words. There is violence in this attempt but deserving I think. A short summary of the song is needed. John Wayne Gacy was a famous serial killer. But no it's not his recounting of the person that John Wayne Gacy, Jr was, that was startling, but his quiet reveal about himself:

Song: John Wayne Gacy, Jr.

         "And in my best behavior

         I am really just like him

         Look beneath the floorboards

         For the secrets I have hid"

And in the end, when he sighs quietly. I catch my breath.

3) The Shins: I have written about The Past and Pending way too many times. And for me the entire song is a moment. I love each and every moment in that song. It's a standalone in that sense. So I thought I'd pick one of the first songs I heard of The Shins. The song just packs a punch in the opening lines. For the longest time I would listen only to the beginning.

Song: Caring is Creepy

    

       "I think I'll go home and mull this over 

       Before I cram it down my throat
       At long last it's crashed, its colossal mass
       Has broken up into bits in my moat." 

I feel it, I feel it- in my gut.

4) Antje Duvekot: Antje Duvekot has this way of drawing images in very short sentences. It's the way I have always tried to write. I tend to prefer reading poems that are written similarly. In fact I am trying to develop a taste for poems that have a sentence that runs for more than two verses because I do feel like I am missing out sometimes. But I digress. Coming back to her music, there is something unapologetically dark about it. And I love that. Again, this is the first song hers that I had heard.

Song: Erin

        

         "Oh my hand I will stand

         as the world turns around me

         Lock the door to the yard

         Where the wind is bound

         Take all my fragile anchors away" 

Bound wind.

5) The Antlers: Admittedly I have heard only one album of theirs (Hospice) but do I need a bigger reason than this album to love them? I don't think so. This is such a painful album to listen to because it's so raw. People say that so often about things. I always think of an open wound smarting every time it is touched. I stay in a permanent wince when I hear this song. 

Song: Epilogue

         

          .. And like before you've got no interest

         in the life you live when you're awake

        Your dreams still follow storylines, like

        fictions you would make" 

I chose the epilogue but the rest of the story is just as compelling.

       

I hope I can make this a regular thing. 

Ely Shipley

Boy with Flowers
My aunt loved me, asked me:
will you be the flower
girl at my wedding? But I’m not
a girl, I argued, and she persuaded me:
you’ll get to throw rose petals
onto the aisle, walk before me, both of us
crushing them beneath our feet, my gown
dragging over them. I agreed. I wanted
nothing but chivalry.
At the church, my mother and I
waited in the small room. She brushed
my aunt’s hair until the dress arrived.
Isn’t it beautiful? And I agreed until they tried
to put me in it. I’d seen my father
and uncle earlier, standing in a circle
of other men, smoke hovering over their heads, a halo
and their voices kind, quiet, and deep. I told my aunt—
I want to wear a suit like them! She promised
if I wore the dress I could wear anything
I wanted after: army pants, a sheriff
badge, cowboy hat, and pistols. My mother shot her
a look in the mirror where we posed, both of them
angelic in white, and me not yet
dressed. Today I wake from another dream
in which I have a beard, no breasts,
and am about to go skinny-dipping
on a foreign beach with four other men.
I’m afraid to undress, won’t take off my shorts,
so they gab me, one at each ankle, the other two
by each wrist. I am a starfish hardening.
The sun hovers above, a hot
mirror where I search for my reflection.
I close my eyes. It’s too intense. The light
where my lover is tracing fingertips
around two long incisions in my chest. Each sewn tight
with stitches, each naked stem, flaring with thorns.

Georgia O'Keefe

Playlist IV

I'm not going to say much. I'll let the music and the videos speak for themselves. I would like to add that the Angus and Julia Stone video is my favourite. And that Skinny Love has no official video but I am obsessed with this song so I had to put it up.

Okay that's all!

Kabir

"There is dew
on these poems in the morning,
and at night a cool breeze may rise from them.

In the winter they are blankets, in the summer a place to swim.

I like talking to you like this. Have you moved
a step closer?

Soon we may be
kissing."