I wish I could give all I’m longing to give / I wish I could live like I’m longing to live.
When the chorus comes in on John Legend & The Roots’ cover, promise me you’ll throw your head back a little as you dance.
Sometimes your head has to be angled just right to catch the flash.
Someone should try and correspond these posts, their quality, their length, their moods with my last.fm listening history, but the internet would probably chase me out of town with torches and pitchforks should they ever learn the true extent of my theft and vacuity. This is all to say: I have a last.fm account.
And what was there / The perfect glare / We all fall through.
—“while you wait for the others”, grizzly bear
my roommate and i disagree on where grizzly bear sits on the fundamental, terribly-reductionistic, completely-sophomoric-musical-criticism uplifting/depressing scale. my roommate firmly believes grizzly bear speaks to something melancholic, tragic. and tragic these lyrics are, not to mention angry and fierce and bitter. they are wrung out of something deep within this droste-rossen-taylor-bear power quadrumvirate. but what they are doing with the music here is shouting it. it’s played on a pinnacle looking over a grand canyon. it’s cathartic, it’s sunny, it’s loud, it’s fast. it throws around words like “forgiveness” and “pretentions” with complete sincerity. grizzly bear is nothing if not sincere, vulnerable, fragile, beautiful. as it stands in its album veckatimest it is the climax. the remaining two songs—“i live with you” and “foreground”—are the panting sighs of their instruments, exhausted, smoking a cigarette, burping, holding us, and we are not alone, we are not alone, we are not alone.
Just you and I and this TV.
—“my dreamgirl don’t exist”, neutral milk hotel
i like neutral milk hotel and how deeply it strikes the note of loss. it’s hard to listen to; it’s hard to like. but in times of loss you are drawn to its simple rhythms; you find yourself creating a smart playlist in itunes for the band. you click around on a few songs you like. slowly you realize you like all the songs and—and why did you delete that one song from that one album?, that album only makes sense as a cohesive whole, of course that song belongs in that order. when you have lost something—whether it’s a girl whose hair always smelled different, or a piece of yourself you never knew you had, or the feeling of one person’s hand in yours—you turn to neutral milk hotel because it’s there, because jeff mangum finds the ties that bind you to some poor girl in the second world war whose life was much worse than yours, because he finds them and he plucks them out of his guitar, and if that’s not beautiful, mysterious, chilling, daring, and intoxicatingly melancholy without being angry, bitter, or cynical—without crossing those lines at all—then what is?
anyway, this isn’t their best or most accessible song, but i like it quite a bit, i hope you do too.
Ben Folds: “You Don’t Know Me” (feat. Regina Spektor (!)).
if i’m the person that you think i am / clueless chump you seem to think i am / so easily led astray / an errant dog
inspired by a particularly cruel email i have received
#thingsgettingbetterwithtime
Gerard, who now has a story about death.
Gerard remembers receiving an aluminum foil in the mail, some ashes of his wife. It was all he could afford.
GERARD REMEMBERS A RINGING SOUND VIBRATING THROUGH HIS EARS AND SOUL.
Gerard visits a cemetery every third of the every month to place flowers on his wife’s grave. When the angels remember, these flowers pulled up into the mesosphere by golden, apotheosistic threads. When the angels forget, the flowers are beaten into the ground by wind and water.
SHE DIED OF CANCER.
Though weak from symptoms and treatment, her body looked like the love of his life until the end. This was because her soul belonged to Gerard, which Gerard never wanted but it was given willingly, anyway.
Anyway.
They had perfect maps of each others’ souls. She will soon pass on, and Gerard will have to find a filing cabinet large enough to store all the maps Gerard has that he will never have to use again.
IF GERARD IS LUCKY, GERARD WILL BE UNABLE TO FIND ANY SUCH FILING CABINET. IF GERARD IS UNLUCKY, THE SAME.
Gerard still wakes up every day and reenacts the same six-year old routine. Gerard climbs out of bed, makes silently down the stairs, and pours a glass of water for his wife. Gerard makes back up to give this glass of water to an empty side of the bed, which is perfectly made.
Gerard puts his hands into his arms, less frequently now than before, but some nonetheless.
WHEN SHE DIED, SHE LOOKED AS IF SHE HAD THOUGHT ABOUT HIM EVERY DAY FOR A VERY LONG TIME.
She kissed Gerard softly, lips to lips, before she died. She turned her face toward him and smiled and closed her eyes. Color and sound seemed to drain from the room. The life monitor’s whine seemed miles and miles away. A silvery substance poured out of her. From her eyes, her mouth, her pores, her womb. It flowed past Gerard and splashed onto the floor. It pooled around her bed.
Breathe.
The torrent subsided. It had flowed around the tears Gerard marked on his wife’s arm. They formed the shape of a starling, a light white mark on her flawless arm.
Breathe.
GERARD LEAVES THE HOSPITAL AND CONTINUES HIS LIFE.
It seems like a different life entirely. But he embraces it with closed eyes, arms to his side. It is not the most glamorous superpower, to beat back your fears and doubts and live not for one but for two. To carry your head high because she would want you to. But it is a superpower nonetheless.
SOMETIMES THAT IS GOOD ENOUGH.
Beirut: “A Sunday Smile”.
Horns!
We burnt to the ground / Left a view to admire / With buildings inside church of white / We burnt to the ground / Left a grave to admire / And as we reach for the sky, reach the [HORNS] church of white
Also, Gulag Orkestar? AMAZING.
Mumford & Sons: “Roll Away Your Stone”.
You told me that I would find a home / Within the fragile substance of my soul / And I have filled this void with things unreal / And all the while my character it steals / The darkness is a harsh term don’t you think?
Ukrainian band Los Colorados cover Kate Perry’s “Hot and Cold”.
Stop the world; I want to get off here. (via reddit; Wikipedia)
St. Barbara-Glass.
Monks on Segways, with fire on the top of their heads, playing “Lightning” by Philip Glass. Good night, everybody. We’ll start storyboarding the next chapter of the internet tomorrow because this one just ended.
Your drummers may die, but your dreams never will.
Do you enjoy good things? Then you will enjoy Lost Albums, a new weblog, and you will subscribe to its insanity.
This just in: Cordozar Calvin Broadus’ feelings hurt.
WikipediaIt should be noted that only famous rappers get national media coverage when it comes to dissing others.