"Dream tonight of peacock tails,
Diamond fields and spouter whales.
Ills are many, blessings few,
But dreams tonight will shelter you.
Let the vampire's creaking wing
Hide the stars while banshees sing;
Let the ghouls gorge all night long;
Dreams will keep you safe and strong.
Skeletons with poison teeth,
Risen from the world beneath,
Ogre, troll, and loup-garou,
Bloody wraith who looks like you,
Shadow on the window shade,
Harpies in a midnight raid,
Goblins seeking tender prey,
Dreams will chase them all away.
Dreams are like a magic cloak
Woven by the fairy folk,
Covering from top to toe,
Keeping you from winds and woe.
And should the Angel come this night
To fetch your soul away from light,
Cross yourself, and face the wall:
Dreams will help you not at all."
— Thomas Pynchon
30 October 2009
29 October 2009
is it always going to feel this way?
the wind is running its fingers fiercely through the trees
outside my window and i wonder,
why is it always easier to be honest to a blank page?
Listen to Olsen Olsen by Sigur Ros
27 October 2009
Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang
"The strangeness of Time. Not in its passing, which can seem infinite, like a tunnel whose end you can't see, whose beginning you've forgotten, but in the sudden realization that something finite, has passed, and is irretrievable."
Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates
22 October 2009
Thank you for saying it for me...
A review by Carrie Brownstein that says all the things I know and fear:
On Friday, I saw Viv Albertine of The Slits, Softpower (featuring Mary Timony) and The Raincoats play at the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn. How do I feel? Lucky.
As I wrote last week on this blog, The Raincoats influenced nearly every musician that sprang forth from Olympia and countless other similar towns and scenes across the U.S. Needless to say -- or perhaps I do need to say it -- so did The Slits.
So, at the Knitting Factory on Friday, watching not The Raincoats (who were fantastic, by the way) but Viv Albertine, I realized I hadn't really witnessed fearlessness in a long time, at least not at a rock show. As one of my friends put it, more succinctly: "This was one of the punkest things I have ever seen."
If there is a voice in music that's seldom heard, it's that of a middle-aged woman singing about the trappings of motherhood, traditions and marriage. A woman who isn't trying to please or nurture anyone, but who instead illuminates a lifestyle that's so ubiquitous as to be rendered nearly invisible. She places in front of you -- serves you up -- an image of the repressive side of domesticity, the stifling nature of the mundane, and turns every comfort and assumption you hold on its head. It raises questions that no one wants to ask a wife or a mother, particularly one's own. Are you happy? Was I enough? What are you sacrificing, and are those sacrifices worth it? And when someone is brave enough -- honest enough -- to confront the difficulty of it all, the strange, often irreconcilable dichotomy of being a mother and an artist, a woman and an artist (and why should it be a dichotomy?), frankly, it's scary as hell. It makes people uncomfortable. And this sentiment of unease, especially coming from a woman in her 50s, sounds somewhat silly, even juvenile. Why? Because after a certain point, we're supposed to feel settled, or at the very least resigned.
As an audience, we can handle teenage girls and young women singing (sexily, coyly, prettily) about heartache and boys and loss, about unfairness, about redemption and about payback. But when an older woman sings of those same subjects, well, it wrecks everything. And, by that, I mean that we have certain expectations of older artists: They can turn into caricatures of their former selves, be campy or kitschy, sing stories of survival and resilience, and deliver pearls of wisdom. But that's about it. So it's shocking when an older woman gets on stage and basically says: This way of living and of being did not work, and the comfort that we all strive for was barely a comfort for me at all.
Viv Albertine did that. She did it with humor and with guts. And you can bet there were people who didn't get it.
I haven't even mentioned that Albertine's guitar playing is beautiful and unsettling in its strangeness. It's not simple, but rather a distortion of the facile. Sort of like the subjects of her songs.
I'll say it again: I felt lucky to be there.
Seen anything punk in a while?
On Friday, I saw Viv Albertine of The Slits, Softpower (featuring Mary Timony) and The Raincoats play at the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn. How do I feel? Lucky.
As I wrote last week on this blog, The Raincoats influenced nearly every musician that sprang forth from Olympia and countless other similar towns and scenes across the U.S. Needless to say -- or perhaps I do need to say it -- so did The Slits.
So, at the Knitting Factory on Friday, watching not The Raincoats (who were fantastic, by the way) but Viv Albertine, I realized I hadn't really witnessed fearlessness in a long time, at least not at a rock show. As one of my friends put it, more succinctly: "This was one of the punkest things I have ever seen."
If there is a voice in music that's seldom heard, it's that of a middle-aged woman singing about the trappings of motherhood, traditions and marriage. A woman who isn't trying to please or nurture anyone, but who instead illuminates a lifestyle that's so ubiquitous as to be rendered nearly invisible. She places in front of you -- serves you up -- an image of the repressive side of domesticity, the stifling nature of the mundane, and turns every comfort and assumption you hold on its head. It raises questions that no one wants to ask a wife or a mother, particularly one's own. Are you happy? Was I enough? What are you sacrificing, and are those sacrifices worth it? And when someone is brave enough -- honest enough -- to confront the difficulty of it all, the strange, often irreconcilable dichotomy of being a mother and an artist, a woman and an artist (and why should it be a dichotomy?), frankly, it's scary as hell. It makes people uncomfortable. And this sentiment of unease, especially coming from a woman in her 50s, sounds somewhat silly, even juvenile. Why? Because after a certain point, we're supposed to feel settled, or at the very least resigned.
As an audience, we can handle teenage girls and young women singing (sexily, coyly, prettily) about heartache and boys and loss, about unfairness, about redemption and about payback. But when an older woman sings of those same subjects, well, it wrecks everything. And, by that, I mean that we have certain expectations of older artists: They can turn into caricatures of their former selves, be campy or kitschy, sing stories of survival and resilience, and deliver pearls of wisdom. But that's about it. So it's shocking when an older woman gets on stage and basically says: This way of living and of being did not work, and the comfort that we all strive for was barely a comfort for me at all.
Viv Albertine did that. She did it with humor and with guts. And you can bet there were people who didn't get it.
I haven't even mentioned that Albertine's guitar playing is beautiful and unsettling in its strangeness. It's not simple, but rather a distortion of the facile. Sort of like the subjects of her songs.
I'll say it again: I felt lucky to be there.
Seen anything punk in a while?
Songs to make you laugh and cry
Modern Girl by Sleater-Kinney
About Face by Grizzly Bear
Island, IS by Volcano Choir
Darkly Smiling by The Great Society
About Face by Grizzly Bear
Island, IS by Volcano Choir
Darkly Smiling by The Great Society
21 October 2009
the great struggle
Help!
I should be working, writing, washing my clothes. Why
am I constantly having this heated argument with my best
self - consciously creating a situation where I slip slowly
into a state of unmotivated malaise?
I should be working, writing, washing my clothes. Why
am I constantly having this heated argument with my best
self - consciously creating a situation where I slip slowly
into a state of unmotivated malaise?
The real problem is
resting
on the fact
that all I want is to be sitting on the beach
with a pint of ben and jerrys and a glass of bordeaux.
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