Miles from Where You Are, I Lay Down on the Cold Ground and Pray That Something Picks Me Up

Long-winded, as usual.

I know I write similar things about music over and over...phrasing and rephrasing the same kinds of thoughts. But that's just the problem. Music hits a nerve with me in a way that I can never manage to express. And it frustrates me, because I always want to find the right words for everything. I want to clearly state each fear, each point of pride, each tangible thought that runs through my mind.

Yet when music hits me (as bland as it sounds, that's exactly what it does) I find myself without words. Somehow, somewhere, there's always a musician who manages to blend note and chord and melody and harmony and word and voice and tone and breath and it hurts. It just hurts me in a way where I hold my breath and wait for a pause, a bridge, a moment when the musician is just pausing in his or her own mind, catching their own breath, readying to carry me away with another chorus.

There are songs that make me mourn my not-even-over youth and others that make me feel so naive, childish, inexperienced. I want to know the pain they sing about and yet, I feel like when they sing about joy or love, I'll never feel it as fully as they do.

Music, to me, is the ultimate hyperbole. It is this hypersensitive 2-4 minute expression of an event or emotion. Musicians create this BANG that sucks you into their world and just when you feel that you could never leave, they cut you off and leave you hanging. They change tone and voice with another song and you're left at the edge.

Think of the last time you heard a stunning song for the first time. Think about how you felt as you felt the song ending. To me, it feels like a miniature version of getting your heart broken. Like a first love, a well-written song will burn itself into your memory and each time something reminds you of it, you'll be instantly carried away to a world of nostalgia and aching, just aching, to be back where you were the first time it hit you and knowing that you'll never be the same again. You'll never be who you were at that moment and things are always changed and don't go back.

I'm listening to a song right now that, for some reason, makes me think of words and names I love:

Friday
Violet
Crimson
Antioch
Burnished
Gelding
Ethereal
Whisper
January
Why
Mouth
Languish
Autumn
Velvet
Stellar
Eyelashes

Some words have magic in them.

I have this same dream.

My Dream
by Ogden Nash

Here is a dream.
It is my dream—
My own dream—
I dreamt it.
I dreamt that my hair was kempt,
Then I dreamt that my true love
unkempt it.

Oh, The Horror...

Have you ever read the shortest horror story in the world?

Here it is:

"The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door..."

by Fredric Brown, December 1948

Further or Farther?

Secret: I didn't know the difference between "farther" and "further" until today.

FARTHER denotes physical advancement in distance.

FURTHER denotes advancement to greater degree, as in time.



The correct answers to the above examples follow:

It is farther down the road. (For distance physically traveled.)

You read further in the book. (To a greater degree than where you are now.)

You further your education. (To a greater degree than what you have now.)

Thanks, LessonTutor.com!

Uh oh...there's more

Beirut: "Nantes"

Also...on the topic of inspiration, this group of people, LaBlogotheque, from France, records all of these musicians performing live in all sorts of random places. Sufjan Stevens in a building roof in Cincinnati or at a farm, Jose Gonzalez in an abandoned house in Marfa, Texas. Their guerilla-style filming, catching all the outtakes, the broken voices, the off-keys, just adds to the magic of the song. It takes it to a new level, altogether.





love. love. love. love. love.

Beirut: "Elephant Gun"

David Downton

His fashion illustrations are incredibly inspiring.

Also, I kept staring at his surname and reading it as "Downtown." Oops.






The bottom one, especially. It's from last season's Dior Couture show. I want to hang it at the end of a long hallway with nothing else.

Writers, Unite!

30 Rock: Ten episodes will be produced. Five episodes have aired, so there are five left.


Heroes: Twelve episodes will be produced. Seven episodes have aired, so there are five left.


Lost: Eight episodes will be produced. None have aired yet, so there are eight episodes left.


The Office: Twelve half-hour episodes will be produced. Eleven half-hour episodes have aired, so there is one half-hour episode left.


Pushing Daisies: Nine episodes will be produced. Five episodes have aired, so there are four left.


Scrubs: Twelve episodes will be produced. Three episodes have aired, so there are nine left.


Info from TVGuide.com

Here lies my only entertainment hope:

Rob Ryan

He cuts these things out of paper and has compiled them into a book, which I must have.

Iran

Oh, Lisa.

Lisa Loeb reinvigorated With...New Found Glory?

Oh My Gosling

I



LOVE

Jet Lag by Eve Robillard

He flies over the ocean to see his girl, his Sorbonne
girl, his ginger-skinned girl waiting for him in the City

of Light. Everywhere river and almost-spring gardens,
everywhere bridges and rainy statues. Streets going

nowhere, streets going on all night. I love you my mona
my lisa, my cabbage, my gargoyle, Degas' little dancer

in dawn's ragged gown. But on the third day she
picks up her books, tells him she needs to study:

she adores this town, she's not coming home in May, she's
going to stay all summer. Lowers her morning-calm eyes.

He's all right in the cab, all right on the plane droning
him home in only three hours American-key in his lock now

his tick-tock apartment, shiver his shadow, his need
to sleep. Then with a tiredness washing over and

over him and through his raveling bones
he begins to know.