April Poem #2

Empty highway, 1 a.m.,
ears still ringing
with the slight echo
of a voice lost somewhere
between addiction & resurrection:
There is so little separating
health & sickness,
but the difference means everything.
Thankfully, this quiet road leads home.

Soundtrack for a Recurrent Dream

Freelance Whales' self-released 2009 album Weathervanes is quite good. I've found myself coming back to it many times (during a summer with a lot of new music to listen to), but it wasn't until I listened to the following acoustic version of one of the best songs on the album, "Ghosting", that I realized that it might make a great theme for the film version of my recurring dream. (See previous post: The Triggering.)

A Two-fer

I.

The future is behind me...

The pulley season is mostly over, the moon is down too soon & the sun peeks up too early to push & pull one another into summer. It's a spring game they play to cut the cold and bring down the pounding rains.

Heading west from town, most often my family still snug in their beds (and if they aren't I stick around there way too long to watch the moon drop or sun leap), I get a view in my rearview mirror of the sun at its most orange, visible & still viewable with the naked eye as it rises up out of trees, or bluff, or in this case Highway 59.

It's funny to me that the sun rises at my back as I drive away. I am no hero riding off into the sunset but some silly pilgrim driving away from the sun & the ones I care about most. 

Today I stopped and took the picture. It isn't well composed (and neither is this description) but it chronicles one of the strange symbolic phenomena of being a commuter who notices things and is just silly enough to try and embed them with significance. It's kind of a curse.  

II.

Let's play three...

I've been sitting here grading final exams. My iPod has been playing background music. Mostly I haven't paid attention to it. However, three songs penetrated the single-minded concentration it takes to conquer the last days of grading. Here they are.

(I'm saving the best for last even though it played first.)

Enjoy:

Oh, it is worth saying that all three of these tunes were first played for me by the same fine person with an ear for great music: the one and only Jeff K.

Thanks, Jeff. Now I am going to drive home too fast listening to "Four Night Rider" over & over & over & over...

Here goes: [Settings: Repeat: One]

A bit of dust...

I don't usually post a poem (or whatever this is) right as I write it, but this time I decided I would. Our youngest son, F., was taking a nap, but E. and I were supposed to watch our nieces and nephews this afternoon, so E. and L. went on over and I stayed here to let F. sleep. I decided to listen to a few records and relax. I chose Hometowns by The Rural Alberta Advantage. The songs on this album are mostly love songs--non-typical love songs--and the album is a continuing narrative. It was a great way to spend an hour of a Saturday afternoon. It made me think about my wife and my family and how being alone, even for a short time, and missing the ones you love can be a helpful experience. The last song on side B of the album is called "In the Summertime". It is a wonderful song. I got up and replayed it several times.  As it ended for the last time, F. woke up and called for me to help him out of bed. The poem came to me at the first pop of dust during track one, but it didn't fully emerge until F.'s cry.
----
Call & Answer

A bit of dust just made the record pop,
a bit of back beat, just behind the bang
& crash.

               Edging the volume
one more notch to hear the clicks
& taps, the sweet impurity of hiss,

careful not to wake the sleeper,
hopeful that the spin stays true--
one more song & back for you.

----
and when we're middle aged,
you tell me i loved you like a renegade
----

The gift of an empty room 

& longed-for sounds:
windows for light, 

drums for heart, 

coupled voices

cut the quiet 

like breeze

through 

heat.

----

our love is strong...

while my heart's still pumping blood.

----

At that last song's last beat, 

the organ's wail or whine dies.

There's one final click & the sound 

of the automatic arm's robotic swing & drop...

The gift of loneliness goes,

no other song will do its service.

But the rising song of a waking son:

Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,...

That call is an answer,

and my answer is  of course.

 

Sunday Shuffle: Happy Mothers Day

“She’s About A Mover” Sir Douglas Quintet

She strolled on up to me,
Said, "hey, big boy, what's your name?" Hey, hey.
Well, she strolled on up to me,
She said, "hey, big boy, what's your name?"
If you want love and conversation,
Woah, yeah, what I'd say

[Well, it didn’t quite happen that way, but it might as well have!]

“Hold You In My Arms” Ray LaMontagne

When you kissed my lips with my mouth so full of questions
My worried mind that you quiet
Place your hands on my face
Close my eyes and say
That love is a poor man's food
Don't prophesize
I could hold you in my arms
I could hold you forever
And I could hold you in my arms
I could hold you forever

[May my riches never get in the way of my poverty… er, something like that, thanks H. D. T.]

“In the Midnight Hour” Wilson Pickett

I'm gonna wait 'til the stars come out

See them twinkle in your eyes

I'm gonna wait 'til the midnight hour

That's when my love begins to shine

You're the only girl I know

[Maybe not as much now as years ago (work, kids, sleep, etc.), but there will always be midnights (summers, nights out, retirement) until there aren’t anymore. There’s something to keep hope around for.]

Bonus: “There is a Light That Never Goes Out” The Smiths

And if a double-decker bus
Crashes into us
To die by your side
Is such a heavenly way to die
And if a ten ton truck
Kills the both of us
To die by your side
Well the pleasure, the privilege is mine

[So, it didn’t come up fourth, but it was within ten! And I just finished a book that used it as muse, so it’s fair play.]

No Shuffling, No Rune Reading, Just Music

New Brit Pop from The Lodger

Have A Little Faith In People ...

Great bass line and saxophone, and lyrically smart.
_______________________

A good friend and colleague of mine gave me The Lodger's 2007 album Grown-Ups, but he didn't give me this track he recorded in 1989, but I found it here anyway! Here's a J. H. composition with his late 80s/early 90s band The Wilmas: Do Me A Favor from Songs About Girls 7" vinyl ep (1989).

That's a great, self-effacing pop song--just the way I like 'em.

_______________________

Ten year's before Mr. H. & Co. were rocking The Bottleneck, these Irish lads were the top of the pops.

(I don't think the similarities are accidental, and that is NOT a bad thing as far as I'm concerned.)

Music: Tiny Desk Concert & Two Bonus Tracks

Just missed these guys (Wye Oak) in Lawrence. They were in town with Shearwater and Hospital Ships. Shame, but here's a taste before next time.

Horse Feathers, Thistled Spring out this week.

• 
  

Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) sings John Prine.

Sunday Shuffle #1: 18 April 2010

I realized that I haven’t written about music yet. I do not intend for this to be a music blog, but, music being a central part of my life—one I get to share with family, friends, and students, I should come up with a way of getting to write about it here.

Enter the Sunday shuffle.

A friend recently accused me of getting esoteric, so I decided to go whole hog. One way of reading runes is to “throw”  three runes and do a past, present, and future reading. There are as many ways of reading runes as there are crazy people pretending to be rune-reading, thought-healing, super-prophets.

Enter the iPod shuffle feature.

On any given Sunday, starting today, I may call upon the iPod oracle to cast a reading. It’s important to remember that the three throws/tracks are a package deal; they only make meaning considered together; a theme must be seen before reading each track individually. The first track explains the past: where you are coming from; the second track interprets the present: what’s going on now; the third track predicts the future.

Here goes the first throw:

Track #1: “That Teenage Feeling” by Neko Case [from Fox Confessor Brings the Flood]

And nothing comforts me the same 
As my brave friend who says, 
"I don't care if forever never comes
 'Cause I'm holding out for that teenage feeling
 I'm holding out for that teenage feeling"

That Teenage Feeling - Neko Ca...

Track #2: “Living of Love” by The Avett Brothers [from Emotionalism]

Say yes we live uncertainty 
And disappointments have to be
And everyday we might be facing more 
And yes we live in desperate times 
But fading words and shaking rhymes 
There’s only one thing here worth hoping for 
With Lucifer beneath you and God above
 If either one of them asks you what your living of 
Say love, say for me love

Living Of Love - The Avett Bro...

Track #3: “Better Things” by The Kinks [from Come Dancing With The Kinks]

It’s really good to see you rocking out 
And having fun, Living like you just begun. 
Accept your life and what it brings.
 I hope tomorrow you’ll find better things.
 I know tomorrow you’ll find better things.

http://lala.com/zEtII

___________________________

Well, I can’t help/hope but think this is a good omen—a good first throw. It seems the theme is set by track two, by those brothers who write/sing of little else: love. Going backwards from there to Ms. Neko Case, spins her often bitter but not hopeless ballad toward hopefulness. When I met my wife I was no teenager, but I started to feel like one as we got closer and closer to one another and decided to drop the just friends. That was a dozen years ago.

As far as the brothers Avett are concerned, they have been the house band around our place for a year or so. We have grown to love their sappiness, but we prefer it with a healthy dose of banjo. Mr. iPod picked a good one to stand for today.

That leads us to track the last: an old standby, The Kinks. “Better Things” is not one of my favorite Kinks’  tunes, but the message of hope and happiness works great as a predictor of futures as far as I’m concerned. Ray Davies is now 65 and still “rocking out”. I hope that I and mine will be too, and music like this (truly “pop” music, that is) never goes out of style.

___________________________

I decided to add a fourth track. One that wasn’t selected but that is on the iPod right now and is on my mind this weekend. That song is: “However Many takes it Takes” by Vandaveer [from Grace and Speed].

Well, step outside into the sun 
Let it dry your eyes and run 
Around, feel the warm underneath your skin 
The clouds will soon move in again 
You can't expect to always win 
You've got to take it as it comes 
The marching bands and beating drums 
Play familiar songs for the alum 
We've all got scars, but we don't like to show them 
Sometimes it's better to be strong 
We all got to be moving on 
You've got to walk a million miles 
Ah honey, go walk 'em with a smile

However Many Takes It Takes - ...

Past, present, or future, that’s a damn good song. 

[If my Lala embeds are wrong, sorry, and if you don't have a free Lala account, get one.