New Arcade Fire! Whaaa?
(!!!!)
listen here.

another favorite from Nelsonville Music Festival.
(I feel like the lead singer of Y La Bamba sounds like a latina Coco Rosie. Bliss).

Y La Bamba — Ponce Pilato from The Sights Of Sounds on Vimeo.

Y La Bamba - Juniper from Smoke Signals on Vimeo.

Y La Bamba - Tragos Amargos from The Sights Of Sounds on Vimeo.

Words by Sharon Van Etten
"Holding Out"
FROM: Because I was In love

I was floored
by your humble outlook on the world
around you,
who and all you are.
I was floored
by the way you take me
seriously,
even when I'm joking.

Damn, damn, damn, damn.

I'm not tired and I'm tired
of not calling out
on the street I was holding out
Holding out,
'cross the table I was holding out,
trying to find a lover like that.
Holding out,
like the wind I was holding out,
staying still,
hoping no one else would see me.
Hoping calm,
replacing silence, drying palms.
Do I need a reason to hold you now?
'Cause I'd hold you now,
yeah I would hold you now.
One night,
And all I need is one more day.
Holding out,
for something that feels okay,
and the right thing to do is wait.

Holding out,
holding out,
holding out for you.

I am strange,
Believed in fairy tales at a young age.
Circumstance,
now I kick myself in the pants.
And then you came to me
in a faraway way,
and I'm bringing you something
I want you to have,
it's the biggest part of my heart
that I still got.

Hoping arms--
no--
Holding out
I'll be holding out.

holding out.
I'll be holding out,
holding out.
Holding out,
holding out for you.

strangers to change/window-panes

something about doors and windows and openings and closings.
yeah something about that.
--
I got two and a half hours of sleep last night. (I'm tired) (but everyone's tired/but nobody's tired enough). And I had a strange dream, with dream-water again.
My thesis is 45 pages in, and for the first time in a long time, I can see forward and inward and in front of me.

also, Iron & Wine's Daytrotter sessions are really beautiful. I almost like them better than the album versions:

"I recall, the sun in our faces
Stuck and leaning on graces
And being strangers to change

The radio and the bones we found frozen
All the thorns and the roses
Beneath your window pane"

On being unkind to yourself//and dreaming in reverse.

(Cause I sure can be unkind to myself)

(We can all be unkind to ourselves).

photos by Tom Chambers--dreaming in reverse collection. View it here.

Someone like you- by Doug Paisley.

I've seen you stumble
I've seen you fall

I've seen you brought down, feathers and all

Picked yourself up for the ones that you call
Your best friends.

I know you've been fighting

What we can't see

Sometimes it takes many faces to be

It takes a time and a place to be free

But in the end

Who would be so cruel
To someone like you
No one but you
Who would make the rouse
For the things that you do
No one but you.

I woke up this morning
Looked at the sky
I thought of all of the time passing by
It didn't matter how hard we tried
'Cause in the end

Who would be so cruel
To someone like you
No one but you
Who would make the rouse
For the things that you do
No one but you.

---

*This was hauntingly-beautiful at Nelsonville Music Festival, where Cheyenne Marie Mize sang duet, and played violin. Cheyenne and Doug both have Daytrotter Sessions where you can legally download samples of their work, unplugged.

my mind/my mind/oh my//it dances.

Animal Collective - "Fireworks" (Bataclan, Paris - Back On Stages) from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.

I don't wanna be "all I ever see sometimes" anymore.

(I'm sorry I was an asshole).
(it's all cloaks, like Dale said).

Jenny Lewis is such a dreamboat.

for real.

Most of us are in love with illusion, anyway; at least she's honest.

bone thin bone.

"we sing as the sky falls down
we sing as the sky collapses
and make what we can of it
it's ok
we're all going to end up dead and gone."
--Tunng, "Hands"
.
temporary-ness.
everything.
hopelessly, not my own.
flashings else's.
fleetings dyings-off.
and I'm left
only one?
the only--
only?
bone thin bone.


I'm not afraid of disappearing.
Just afraid of everything else
Leaving before I'm gone.

friday

and trying.

Cat Stevens' "Trouble"

Is still the saddest, most heart-wrenching thing I've ever felt/heard.
And I can't take it off repeat.

Caitlin

dedicated me some love.

viva wildpack.

I'm a tornado.

You are the dust. You're all around, and you're inside.

You are the nature, I'm the roar that comes from you.

I'm a tornado, you are the fences that will fall

But still surround me.

I'm a tornado.
I'm a tornado.
I'm a tornado.

(words by Sharon Van Etten).

Riding for the Feeling.

[thank you, Adam, for giving me something to muse me through my constant separation anxiety with space and relationship. Love ya, Ricky].



It's never easy to say goodbye
To the faces
So rarely do we see another one
So close and so long

I asked the room if I'd said enough
No one really answered
They just said, "Don't go, don't go"
Well all this leaving is neverending

I kept hoping for one more question
Or for someone to say,
"Who do you think you are?"
So I could tell them

With intensity, the drop evaporates by law
In conclusion, leaving is easy
When you've got some place you need to be
I'm giving up this gig for another seaon

With the TV on mute
I'm listening back to the tapes
On the hotel bed
My my my apocalypse

I realized I had said very little about ways or wheels
Or riding for the feeling
Riding for the feeling
Is the fastest way to reach the shore

On water or land
Riding for the feeling

What if I had stood there at the end
And said again and again and again and again and again
An answer to every question
Riding for the feeling

Would that have been a suitable goodbye?

To take on the world at all angles (requires a strength)

There's this old Southeast Engine song from their One Caught Fire EP (before they even had a studio album, let alone five) that they never play anymore. Actually, I don't have any memory of them playing it ever, but I wasn't around in the beginning beginning. And anyways, it's called Nothing's Wrong, and there's this haunting way Rem says:
"but I swear there's nothing wrong at all. there's nothing wrong at all. there's nothing wrong."

that always gets to me.

The first time I heard it I was a sophomore in high school and Frances (an eighth grader) said, "I can't tell if he means it"

And now maybe everything and nothing is wrong simultaneously. Maybe things are so wrong, that wrong is right. Maybe I'll say Nothing's Wrong, and let you decide if you believe me. It won't make any difference either way.

minutia in a happy life:

1. Serendipitous run-ins and thinkings of each other.
2. The way a space comes alive after a stagnant, too-long, winter.
   
3. The best damned French toast I ever did have with Geoff Odiorne (c/o: Crumbs bread + farm fresh eggs + pure organic vanilla extract + freshly ground cardamon pods + totally rad/totally real maple syrup).
   
4. The Oxford English Dictionary.
5. Walking
6. Bicycles
7. Books
8. oh, oh, music--
   
9. Drives away from here.
10. and drives back home

30-loves list. (for Dale). (and also for myself).

1. Love of family.
2. Love of friendship, that becomes a kind-of family.
3. Love of the way we can be many different things to each other.
4. Love of farm stillness.
5. And farm movement.
6. And love of knowing that I might plant the garlic, but I do not make the garlic grow.
7. Love of service.
8. Love of the humility that allows oneself to be served by another.
   
9. Love of the capacity for reinventions.
   
10. Love of second chances, with things right in front of you.
11. Love of saying sorry.
    
12. Love of music, and the way it shares things between people (the way it shares things between the multiple people in one person).
    
13. Love of moments when I recognize I'm human.
14. Love of my cat Comet.
15. And my old cat Chewy (rest in peace).
16. Love of the people who have passed--physically, or emotionally--from my life, for they are and always will be a present part of who I am.
17. That is, Love of the way Love lingers, even when bodies and hearts do not.
    
18. Love of functioning in a Communion of Saints.
    
19. And of the Joy and value in little pleasures and safeties.
20. Love of my body (on a good day).
21. And my spirit (on a good day).
    
22. Love in strength and flexibility (but not malleability).
23. Love of the way I am big and small in a world that is big and small.
24. Love of warm things.
25. Love of the intimacy allowing one to speak a coded language, that only one more understands.
26. Love of spending a lifetime, almost knowing one another.
    
27. And the way that people return to each other after miscommunications to try to communicate again; their persistence shows a caring language cannot capture.
    
28. Love of deep peace.
29. Love of not taking oneself too seriously.
    
30. Serious Love.

floating? falling?

1. Fear of trapped.
2. Fear of future.
3. Fear of loneliness.
4. Fear of failure.
5. Fear of unconsummated talent.
6. Fear of too much.
7. Fear of not enough.
8. Fear of boxes.
9. Fear of being ripped from boxes.
10. Fear of language.
11. Fear of finality.
12. Fear of change.
13. Fear of rejection.
14. Fear of never-ending tiredness.
15. Fear of peaking.
16. And slipping.
17. And disappointing.
18. And disappearing.
19. Fear of forgetfulness.
20. Fear of losing perspective.
    
21. (Fear of unaware irony).
22. Fear of money.
23. Fear of apocalypse.
24. Fear of mindlessness.
25. Fear of rabbit holes.
    
26. Fear of being too afraid to jump them.
27. Fear of losing agency.
28. Fear of history repeating.
29. Fear of arbitrariness.
30. Fear of being too small.

cosmia/nausia

-"Whirlwind of Lovers," by William Blake.

"when you ate I saw your eyelashes

saw them shake like wind on rushes

in the corn field when she called me

moths surround me - thought they'd drown me

and I miss your precious heart..."

-"Cosmia," by Joanna Newsom.

---

I cannot tell if the universe is getting bigger or smaller as I grow.

Sometimes I am blanketed in quiet excitement. Sometimes my hands disappear. Sometimes I see nothing but the chaotic matrix. Sometimes I am alone.

Alabama, Arkansas

I finally came home.

frustrated with the spanish music scene.

after an entire day listening to really horrible (I mean, really horrible) Spanish music, in feeble attempts to trigger the Spanish flip in my brain, I finally stumbled on the Spanish indie scene...

...and the only artist I really liked was a woman under the moniker "Russian Red."

...who sings in English :/