'and we can whisper things, secrets from our american dreams...'

I have a confession: I try to act all tough, but I think pretty much everyone knows I'm basically just a big mush.

Yesterday I went to see Boyhood, the most recent (and possibly the most ingenious) film to come out of the strangely beautiful (and endearingly funny) mind of Richard Linklater. And I've had this song stuck in my head ever since.

I was just talking on the phone with my boy, and of course mentioned my new favorite song.

"It's kind of cheesy," I said, "but it's so damned sweet..."

"That sounds about right for you," he said, an affectionate chuckle hovering just beneath the surface.

And I couldn't help but grin, even through the tears this song somehow induces (no, I'm sure, this has nothing at all to do with those wonderful Boyhood father scenes, with protesting or not protesting, laughing or not laughing with my own father, with being or not being in the world with him) -- because that's what I do sometimes.



Let me go
I don't wanna be your hero
I don't wanna be a big man
Just wanna fight with everyone else

Your masquerade
I don't wanna be a part of your parade
Everyone deserves a chance to
Walk with everyone else

While holding down
A job to keep my girl around
And maybe buy me some new strings
And her a night out on the weekend

And we can whisper things
Secrets from our American dreams
Baby needs some protection
But I'm a kid like everyone else

So let me go
I don't wanna be your hero
I don't wanna be a big man
I Just wanna fight like everyone else...
(Family of the Year, Hero)

'i've been feeling old, i've been feeling cold...'

(Musicians: Flume & Chet Faker. Dancer: Storyboard P.)

"But the dancer, as elongated in limb as a Giacometti, rejects hip-hop’s reflex bravado. The intricate language he helped invent and is constantly, obsessively revising describes dreamers, poets and ghosts, not gangsters. This “mutant” idiom shows what it feels like to be young, black and pinned to the inner city, not whatever stance you take to deal with the situation."

'what could i say, i was far away...'

Do you have a song that catches you unawares and then makes you cry? This is the song these days, apparently, that does it to me. It's not new, and I haven't listened to it for a year or more, but it came up this afternoon on itunes. And I found myself in tears.

It's not particularly exciting or emotional or anything, it's just... loss. Simple, heartbreaking loss. And it gets me every time.

'this house is like russia...'

'This house is like Russia 
With eyes cold and gray 
You got me moving in a circle 
I dyed my hair red today...'
(Tori Amos, Take to the Sky)

'and i promise you, i promise that i'll run away with you...'

"so we put our hands up, like the ceiling can't hold us..."

Seriously crushing on Ben Haggerty, aka Macklemore, right now. He may just be the most adorable person ever to grace this earth. (Fair warning, Mom: there may be some bad words in this video. Watch it anyway!)

how to survive a hurricane, washington heights style

(a very biased view from a neighborhood on a hill)

High Water Everywhere (Charlie Patton)*

It began, for me, with a worried phone call from Lisa late Saturday afternoon. I was working all day at the library and she, our Sunday supervisor, had just read that the city was leaning towards calling for a transit shutdown starting early the following evening. We started making staffing contingency plans: what to do if the library closed, what to do if the University demanded we stay open.

 Wind & Rain (Garcia & Grisman)

That night was my Nick's bachelor party, and quite the party it was. Intimately small and filled with such warmth and affection, but involving copious amounts of alcohol and karaoke caterwauling until 3am and dragging ourselves to bed a mere hour before dawn Sunday morning.

Sunday morning, it was gray and damp but not yet raining, and we had guests coming over for brunch. After our ridiculously late night we were both feeling a little worse for wear and it wasn't until nearly noon that I started putting together our brunch and Evan ventured out to the store for a pack of veggie sausages.

 (Apple German Pancake: slice and saute a couple apples in a little butter, with a bit of cinnamon, chopped candied ginger and brown sugar; mix 1 cup flour, 1 cup milk, 6 eggs, 2 tablespoons melted butter, and 1/2 teaspoon salt; spread apples into a greased 9x13 pan, then pour batter over the apples and bake at 450 for 20 minutes. Serve with maple syrup.)

Evan texted me saying the stores were out of bread and the lines wrapped around the aisles. All that afternoon we chuckled (scoffed, really, it must be confessed) at all these people hauling around cases of bottled water and armfuls of hummus and baked goods. Oh these hysterical urbanites, we thought, and patted ourselves on the back.

 Like a Hurricane (Neil Young)

The University finally announced that all classes and events for Monday had been canceled. Moments later the call came through that the libraries would be closed too. (I don't know that my staff have ever been so happy to get a call from me before as they were this week.)

We ventured back to the store early that evening, pleased with our purchases of half a pound of whitefish salad and a couple pumpernickel bagels for breakfast the next morning. We cooked up some black beans and rice for dinner, with enough leftovers for lunch the next afternoon.  Lisa stopped by with a pomegranate.

And then there was this peculiar moment Monday morning, as the clouds thickened and the air started to feel oppressive, when we looked at each other and said, almost simultaneously and with a certain embarrassed anxiety, "What if all those people know something we don't know?"

Call It Stormy Monday (Albert King & Stevie Ray Vaughan)

I pulled out our largest stockpot and filled it to the brim with tap water, set it aside just in case the water went out. We started going through our refrigerator and cupboards, pulling out bags of greens, a couple squashes, a bag of beans that my brother had given us for Christmas last year and that had been lurking in the back of the cupboard ever since. We decided we better cook up whatever we had.

(Back-of-the-Cupboard Bean Soup: In a 5-quart pot, rinse the beans, cover with water and bring to a boil for a couple minutes. Turn off the heat and let soak for an hour. Dump out the soaking water, rinse, cover again with fresh water, bring to a simmer. Peel and smash a head's worth of garlic cloves, toss in the soup pot.  Also toss in a handful of sun-dried tomatoes, a couple tablespoons of olive oil, a couple bay leaves, a dash of cayenne pepper. Let simmer for a couple hours, stirring occasionally, adding water or broth as needed to keep the beans covered. We added a couple of Evan's vegetable stock ice cubes (you can use any broth you want or just water) and some juice from a can of tomatoes. Add salt and black pepper to taste, serve over rice. This made enough soup for days and days.)

We munched on pumpernickel bagel and Franks Market whitefish salad while Evan cooked up all the bunches of greens and I set the soup to simmering. Early in the afternoon we went for a walk up to Fort Tryon park and back. It was just beginning to rain and the wind was picking up. The bridge, my beloved bridge, looked gorgeous and haunted in the diminishing noonday light.

Storm Music (Gil Scott Heron)

Later that afternoon we stocked up on a couple bottles of wine and a bag of popping corn, and Evan dashed down the hill to Buddha Beer Bar for a growler of PumKing. (Clearly we had our priorities straight.) Early Monday evening we cooked up some white rice and Evan's pumpkin stir fry. I spent most of the evening watching old Law & Order on Netflix, knitting, drinking wine, and eating the pomegranate Lisa had brought over the night before.

(Pumpkin Stir-Fry: peel and cube pumpkin and steam till tender; while pumpkin steams, lightly beat a couple eggs; fry pumpkin cubes in oil over high heat, adding a dash of soy sauce, a little fish sauce, and a handful of coarsely chopped scallions. Serve over rice.)

We waited and waited, perched up on top of this hill not far from the northernmost tip of the isle of Manhattan and one block away from the highest geographical point in the borough, for things to get bad. And strangely, eerily, they never really did.

The rain picked up a bit but then tapered off. The wind rattled the windows for a few minutes and then tapered off. The cat freaked out, of course, and kept nosing into the vents in the air conditioner in the bedroom as if she could sense something strange, something malevolent, seeping in.

Mighty Storm (the Dukhs)

We waited and waited, chatted with our west coast relatives, reassured them all was well. The news started to darken though, both literally and figuratively. Friends on Facebook started posting about losing electricity everywhere: downtown, Brooklyn, Queens, Westchester, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts. Eventually, getting on towards midnight, our lights began to flicker occasionally. I decided it was time to go to bed.

Storm Cloud (The Upsetters)

I kept jerking awake that night, sitting up in bed and straining to hear anything at all -- pounding rain, gusting winds, sirens wailing in the dark  -- but mostly there was just silence. The university had decided to batten down the hatches one more day but I woke up pretty early Tuesday morning anyway. The eerie quiet continued, exacerbated by the profound silence of a city without traffic. No garbage trucks, no shrieking kids, barking dogs, blaring car horns. I crawled out of bed, walked out to the kitchen, listened to the humming of the refrigerator with an uncomfortable mixture of gratitude and guilt.

We had a quiet stay-at-home morning. Cups of tea and hours of the guilty pleasures that are Nashville and the Walking Dead and Breaking Bad. Beans over rice for lunch (oh the ridiculous amounts of beans and rice we had!). Eventually we decided to venture out for a walk down towards the river. It was misting out, and the air felt heavy and damp and clean.

Wash Out in the Rain (Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes)

Water dripped from everything and we sloshed our way through downed leaves and branches and puddles of mud. Perched by the river, the little red lighthouse seemed to glow in the surrounding gloom. And the river itself, well, it had retreated mostly back to its rightful path but was broiling and  muddy and inconsolable.

We wandered down by Columbia-Presbyterian and looped around and headed north. Eventually, 5pm, we met up with a couple neighborhood friends for happy hour drinks and shared horror and dismay at the pictures coming out of neighborhoods to the south. Friend Zak, fearing the morning commute sans reliable public transportation from his neighborhood, made his way up to join us at the bar, and then came home for dinner and a night's sleep on our couch.

Harlem River Blues (Justin Townes Earle)

The next morning, Wednesday, the M4 was running, if packed to the gills, and it took no longer than usual to get to the library. What seems shocking, frightening, to me is how normal things were, and have continued to be, in the face of so much devastation mere miles away.

To get a sense of it abstractly, one need only take a look at this map from the MTA, wiping out access to huge swaths of New York City. But even this doesn't describe the feeling of otherworldliness as we stand on subway platforms listening to announcements that there are no trains south of 34th Street, as bus operators announce that all transit fares are being waived, as stories come out that gas is running low throughout the tri-state area. (Yesterday, as I passed a gas station on my walk to the train after work, there were cars lined up around the block and police vans closing in with megaphones blaring instructions to disperse, the gas had run out.)

Hurricane Season (Trombone Shorty)

This Sunday Nick is getting married in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. It sounds like quite a few of their guests will not be able to make it after all this craziness, and I can only imagine how heartbroken he and his Sarah must secretly feel about this. But I asked him today how he was doing and he, in his ever succinct way, said there's a certain romance in getting married in the wake of disaster, of "love among the ruins and all that."

I have been stressing out all week about getting to the garden from way up in Washington Heights, enduring the lines for shuttle buses and stumbling along Atlantic Avenue in my fancy strappy shoes. But if Nick can be so pragmatic about carrying on, (and yes, if thousands of patient New Yorkers can so calmly carry on), the least I can do is get myself to my best friend's wedding on time.

Here Comes the Sun (The Beatles)

 *Music (mostly) thanks to Evan and his hurricane playlist

'hey my love do you believe that we might last a thousand years or more if not for this...'

I have a friend who adores Dave Matthews Band. I, as I am sure you are not overly surprised to learn, do not adore Dave Matthews Band, but they do have one song that I have loved ever since first hearing it in 1996.

But the thing is, I don't think I've heard it much since then, and apparently my connection to it doesn't have much to do with reality.  I was explaining to her, over a couple of beers the other night, that Dave Matthews always seemed kind of facile to me, and frat-boyish, and easy. Except this one song that I loved, and that always felt dark and drugged and tinged with tragedy and danger. She asked me what song it was, and I told her, and she just looked at me funny and laughed and started reciting lyrics.

Celebrate we will
'Cause life is short but sweet for certain
We're climbing two by two
To be sure these days continue

No doubt she has a point, but I still stand by mine too. I don't know that I know many songs as sad, as beautifully desperate, as this, and even after nearly fifteen years, despite all its lovely pretty lyrics, it still brings me to tears.

'on my island home i spent some time with you...'

(The Microphones, The Moon)

'beacon, don't fly too high...'

(James Blake, Lindisfarne)

'sad eyes like sharpened daggers, you'll never walk only stagger...'

I am a sucker for pathos, it is true. Especially, probably not surprisingly, when it comes to adolescents and drugs and death.

I've been watching Skins, a rather shockingly graphic British television series about a bunch of fucked up to varying degrees teenagers. 90210 gone bad, if you will.

The acting is good, the music is decent, and the stories are dirty and mean and sweet.

Sid, one of our angsty young heroes, wakes up one morning to find his father dead in his easy chair, presumably from a stroke or some other abruptly instantaneous demise. (The father, a gentle and worn down soul, still has one hand curled around a glass of whiskey; the other dangles a cigarette burned down to the nub.)

Sid, in shock, goes to school and spends the day staring into the void, not telling anyone about the nightmare that is waiting for him back home. Later that night his best friend Tony drags him out to a club to see Crystal Castles, and this is what happens there. Pathos enough to make you cry. (And buy a Crystal Castles song, at least if you are like me, and a sucker for such things.)

'but i still stand in awe of superficial things...'

(Wye Oak, Civilian)

'and i did cartwheels in your honor, dancing on tiptoes...'

I'm not quite sure what it is I love about her so much. Her voice can be bombastic, her lyrics are so often trite, there is little nuance and no subtlety. And yet this song sends shivers up my spine every time I hear it. (And oh, her endearing awkwardness and flaming red hair and ridiculous clothes that remind me a little too much of my junior prom dress...)

bookends

I was dreaming Sunday morning, in that cold gray light just before dawn, about the end of the world again. Remnants of the previous night's movie* had sent tendrils, slithery nightmare tentacles, twining through restless sleep. (It doesn't necessarily take a lot to set me down this path. Sometimes it feels like a much too regular thing.)

Later that day we went to see a friend sing with the Renaissance Street Singers in a vast and gorgeous Chelsea loft, resonant with hardwood floors and enormous wood pillars and ceilings so high there was room enough for voices to mingle and intertwine and soar.

I'd forgotten, until that afternoon, until sitting there in that overheated and crowded loft, how much I'd once loved this kind of music. I'd forgotten how my parents and brother and I, early one autumn Sunday morning in Paris, had traipsed over to visit the Musee de Cluny, only to find that we had forgotten that Daylight Savings Time had ended the previous night and the museum was closed for another hour.  We wandered across the river to Notre Dame to kill a little time, and as soon as we went inside we could hear the singing, and it was the most beautiful thing my thirteen-year-old self had ever heard.

Almost every Sunday morning after that I would wake up early and head out before eight, either alone or with my father or with one of the many visitors we had throughout that strange and beautiful year. I would walk up our street to Rue Dante and then follow Lagrange to the Pont au Double and over the Seine.  And I would stand there for a moment facing the entrance to the Cathedrale, gathering myself, before walking in as quietly as possible to find a seat in the back and just sit there and listen until the music ended.

This is what I have been wrapping around myself these last few days, in the wake of yet another irresistible bout of apocalypse.  It was the closest I've ever come, I think, to believing in God.

*On the Beach

npr music tiny desk series

I'd never even heard of this until today and now I can't stop watching these wonderful little performances. Not a bad way to spend a quiet Saturday at home nursing a cold.

Beirut
Craig Finn
K'Naan
Josh Ritter
Dave Douglas Brass Ecstasy
Hilary Hahn
Adele
Horse Feathers
Goat Rodeo Sessions
The Decembrists
The Civil Wars
Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes
Lisa Hannigan
Basia Bulat (again)
Trombone Shorty
Steve Earle
Red Baraat
Tallest Man on Earth
Gogol Bordello

spotify, or, yet another stick in the craw of romance

Evan asked me over dinner last night what I was smiling about, and I had to confess that I'd been writing a blog post in my head. I had been thinking about what a lovely evening we were having, and what a treat it was to come home to the smell of bread baking in the oven, a glass of home-fermented hard cider, and Gillian Welch playing on the radio.

Except of course she wasn't playing on the radio, and somehow the thought of writing about the loveliness of her dulcet tones playing on Spotify just didn't have the same ring to it.

And this is what was making me smile as I munched on the most delicious grilled cheese sandwich ever.

"and the radio is counting down the top 20 country songs..."

"like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays..."

november music (fragments)

Jill and Evan and I went to Brooklyn Bowl last week to see Mike Doughty. They were surprised, I think, at how middle-aged he is, or how similar all of his songs are, or something. They are not wrong in this assessment (as Jill so concisely put it, after hearing some of his old stuff, "I guess weird dissipates with age?"). Weirdness also dissipates, sometimes, with being sober, and with being content, and maybe with being happy, and I still can't help but love him, even if half his songs sound like they might be the intro to Circles. (Here is some old Mike, and here is a some new(er) Mike, and here is an actual music video off his latest record!)

I recently discovered this little gem (and am apparently one of the last people on the planet to do so, given its YouTube views), and pretty much want to listen to it all the time:



Nathan recently sent me a mix (by which I mean, in this amazing modern age, that he sent me a URL and I went to said URL and downloaded a zipfile, then unzipped said zipfile and imported it into my itunes -- with Evan's tutelage because I am technologically phobic and sadly ill-informed). One particular song, this weird and gorgeous thing, is currently my commuting music of choice. I put my headphones on, turn up the volume, and stare aggressively out the train windows (preferably the front-most window, out of which one can stare at the oncoming tracks, and which is closest to the door most convenient for my subway stop).

I am slowly putting together a birthday mix for a recently reconnected old friend.  I find myself wanting to somehow capture in it the twelve years of our silence, but I've been working at narrowing things down.  Just because these new-fangled technologies don't have the built-in limitations of TDK cassette tapes doesn't necessarily mean anyone wants three hours of your favorite tunes, after all.  Some of the things that aren't making the cut: Singuila's Mektoubi, from my French/African hiphop phase; Tricky's take on the Cure (mostly because the studio version isn't nearly as creepy or as gorgeous as this); a nearly 20-minute long live recording of Built to Spill's Broken Chairs, because though it captures a certain early-20s angst, who wants to hear twenty minutes of someone else's rage, elegantly and heartbreakingly jagged as it might be?

'and if you hate me, then hate me so good that you can let me out...'

(Damien Rice, Rootless Tree)
It feels like fall today, and I've had this running through my head this evening.

'i know some day you'll have a beautiful life...'

I had a quiet evening at home last night contemplating a new project, munching on CSA tomatoes and sweet corn accompanied by a glass of lovely New Zealand sauvignon blanc, and listening to random Itunes songs.  A song from the Into the Wild soundtrack came on and I found myself not moving, almost not breathing, for its duration. I'd forgotten how much I love Eddie Vedder, and how his voice has been moving me to tears ever since a nondescript 10th-grade night except that I heard Black for the first time, back when Pearl Jam was just making the scene and everyone was obsessed with (the kind of over-rated, in my opinion) Jeremy.

There's something about his voice that can still get to me: the same deep resonance that brought such comfort to my sixteen-year-old self.  And I love that he made such beautiful music with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (whose Longing  I listened to incessantly in 1996, and whose contributions to Peter Gabriel's Last Temptation of Christ helped make it such a lush, glorious album). And I love that Anacortes' very own Jacob Navarro (of Spoonshine fame) plays the mandolin on Vedder's Better Days. And I still love Smile -- there's just something about his plaintive, "I miss you already, I miss you always..." And Off He Goes, from that same album.  And I still love State of Love & Trust, even if not with quite the same passion as in 1993.

I don't know. I find it strangely comforting that Eddie Vedder grew up, grew out of that early '90s flannel shirt angsty thing, outlived Kurt Cobain and Andrew Wood and Layne Staley and is still around, recording eccentric ukelele albums with an Anacortes boy and writing gorgeous music that's been making some already pretty amazing movies that much more beautiful.

'thought i had an answer once, but your random ways swept me along...'