Tag: music

With this post, I am officially calling dibs on Oren Lavie.

Soon she’s down the stairs
Her morning elegance she wears
The sound of water makes her dream
Awoken by a cloud of steam
She pours a daydream in a cup
A spoon of sugar sweetens up		 Sun been down for days
A winter melody she plays
The thunder makes her contemplate
She hears a noise behind the gate
Perhaps a letter with a dove
Perhaps a stranger she could love

Today, using addresses given to me by friends on the internet, I prepared and mailed tiny packages to London, Seattle, Atlanta, Brooklyn, Carolina Beach, Herts, Cambria, Dumfries, Burlington, Urbana, Roanoke, Phoenix, and Manhattan. A fine spread, beautiful evidence of the far reaching influence of modern communication.

I sat in a puddle of white envelopes at the park, addressing them, tipping ingredients into one, and then into another, slipping cards into each, slipping in cards, rose petals, and my smile, wishing I had through to bring more tiny plastic dinosaurs. The sky was almost like summer today, except too pale, as if seen through a film of soap.

Curious pedestrians would stop and ask what I was doing, wanted to know if this was a business I had, sending interesting letters to strangers. I told them this was far too bare bones, that I was too poor to be anything but kind in a nostalgic way. “People have trusted me, wouldn’t you want to reward such behavior?” This seemed to satisfy as, once I said that, they would gently walk away, glad to have asked, but not interested enough to stay.

just now in the hall: sudden alarm -> woman’s voice, startled, “fuck you” -> angry high heels

Mockingbirds mastered police sirens
and now the city is on edge.
Grinding their teeth at night, the people
send out their swollen moans to the powerlines.
Their dreams are troubled, a caravan of trolls
bedding down, picking their yellow teeth
with a white chip of bone.

The people are no less uneasy in the morning rain,
when no birds sing. When lumpy blue clouds
gather outside like flies’ eyes.
When a house is pounded by rain and for the first time they hear
how small it really is.

-Matthew Rohrer

The fire alarm testing men are in my building today, setting off pitch tones that sound precisely like clarinet. A perfect G. Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. It continually throws me from whatever I am doing, as I unconsciously flex my knowledge, remembering precisely how to match that note on the french horn. My coworker and I take up the keen, pretending to be conductors, tapping our screens, singing “me me me me” in wavering, high pitched fake voices. Oh orchestra, you never truly leave me.

Sitting nervously in a long black skirt, in the only white shirt I owned, back row, trading filthy jokes with the percussion, trying to keep the note while leaning forward to turn the next page, placidly counting bars, keeping the time with only one toe, 1-2-3-4 2-2-3-4 3-2-3-4 4-2-3-4, too short to quite see past the trombone.

(Still faultlessly memorized: all the fingering to The British Grenadiers).

It was an incomplete time for me. Feeling my instrument, this apparently difficult thing, was easy, a skill smooth and uncreased, but disliking who I played with and the musical choices made. Perhaps if I was with a different group, I would have taken to music more, but there are a lot of possibilities every day, and these few, taken as a group, to do with my instrument, are no more or no less than a vague irritation brought on by the hum, the pitch tone hum, of the sad, steady keen of the fire alarm.

m to the a to the sh it up

Dj Earworm hit it out of the park again with his newly annual end-of-year mash-up, United State of Pop.

This year’s track is distinctly melodic, but just as scathing, tongue-in-cheek impeccable and ultimately addictive as anything. From his site, (where you can directly download any of his music): “Here are bits of the Top 25 hits of the year, according to Billboard Magazine, arranged into a four and a half minute song. This is a follow-up to last year’s mashup of the Top 25 hits of 2007. This year in the charts, we’ve gone all soft. The songs are sexy and defiant, less macho than in previous years. Accordingly, I’ve selected Coldplay as the instrumental track, giving the whole year a sort of symphonic feel. This edit is called “Viva La Pop”, and I hope to post more edits soon.”


Download: United State of Pop 2007

Download: United States of Pop 2008 (Viva La Pop)

r.i.p. Eartha Kitt, who Orson Welles described as “the most exciting woman in the world”.

Mer says, “Just a quick goodbye air kiss to glamourpuss Eartha Kitt, who passed away today [Dec 25th] at the age of 81. It’s nice to picture her sitting on some sparkling, inter-dimensional yacht this evening, having scintillating conversation over moon martinis with [the also, sadly, recently deceased] Harold Pinter.”

Also recently lost to us is Gene Rodenberry’s widow, Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, “the First Lady of Star Trek”, who died in her home of leukemia December 18.

a satisfying week

Bill Murray has been crashing parties and hanging out with strangers.
(It could happen to you.)

Across the buildings, a slight gap in the clouds. Keith looks out and says, “oh look, a nice day.” A shift in the sky and the blue goes away. Weather whispering gray. Today it snowed briefly in a winter half effort. White flakes, fat with promise, that melted as soon as they touched ground. Now, as before, it is raining.

I’m glad my week has been wonderful enough to make up for the weather. I cried upon waking my first day back from California, mutely, pained, unhappy. “What’s wrong, what is it?” A thousand things, a hundred disappointments, ten I could say aloud, but only one to share, “There’s no sky.”

Tuesday: Finally seeing Cory McAbee‘s The American Astronaut on the big screen was absolutely fabulous. Officially Duncan was hosting it, but my involvement (with That Mike) brought me to the front of the room, answering questions as I sat beside him, swinging my legs under the table that only came up to his knees.

Wednesday: Amanda Palmer‘s show with Zoë Keating and the Australian theater company The Danger Ensemble was outrageously Off The Hook. It’s an expression I sometimes hate, but I can’t think of anything more apt. Zoë Keating was exactly as mind-bendingly glorious as expected, but Amanda Palmer raucously surprised me. Her humour and spark and pure scintillating shine blew juicy, delicious bubbles of overwhelming near-religious delight into every nook and cranny of my brain. Just like everyone else at that show, I think I now love her. It was also a great time to play catch up, as people I love were in attendance I haven’t seen in absolutely forever, like Dragos and Tall-Travis. (Also, Kyle, I said Hello for you. She was thrilled.)

Thursday: As a fluke, while waiting to get in to see Zoë & Amanda Palmer, Andrew Brechin gave David and I a free voucher to Waltz With Bashir, a strong, very personal animated documentary into the horrors of the 1982 Lebanon war. Telling the story of the 1982 Sabra-Shatila massacre of Palestinian refugees through the director’s own reclaimed memories, it was educational without preaching, and painful without guilt. At first I was skeptical of the animation style, which reminded me too strongly of old cut scenes and on-line java cartoons, but the story pulled us in, and the animation smoothed as the film continued, leaving us rapt as it drew to a close.

Tonight: There’s a Tom Waits Tribute Night at Cafe Deux Soleils from 8:30 – midnight. “a line up of the who’s who in east vancouver gather together to sing the songs of one of the most influential artists around. his world of strange wit and hard luck characters has made a home in each of our hearts. come out dressed in black, red and your fancy feel ready to sing along and stomp the floor silly.” Featuring: Blackberry Wood, Tarran the Tailor, my sweet and charming friend Jess Hill, our very own RC Weslowski, CJ Leon, Christie Rose, Chelsea Johnson of the Foxy House which hosted my birthday, Corbin Murdoch, Jeff Andrew, Buffaloswans, Maria in the Shower, Fraser Mclean, Christa Couture, Nick Lakowski, Sarah Macdougal, Pawnshop Diamond, Katie Go Go, and Mike the Swan.

Tomorrow: Our all day, all night non-denominational, costumes optional, holiday social and house party to celebrate David moving in, with crepes in the morning, tea in the afternoon, and candle-lit silent black and white horror films until dawn. (In regards to BYO: Bring your own syrup, eggs, fruit, or toppings, bring tea, cookies, or pie, bring flowers, feathers, or figs, whatever you feel appropriate, but most importantly, bring yourself.) Extra guests welcome within moderation

Bonus: Amanda playing Radiohead’s Creep on the ukulele for Kyle and Neil at the Cloud Club.

amanda freaking palmer blew my brains out last night

Flying Virgin Air felt like reaching into tomorrow. Intellectually I knew what sort of experience it was going to be, I’d read articles about the in flight interactive computers and seen shiny, smiling pictures of people enjoying the interior of the plane, but I didn’t understand how, as an experience, it would be so comfortable and intuitive, yet subtly new.

I loved it. I loved the psychiatry precise Buddha Box ambient music, the violet lights softening the iPlane cigarette-white edges of the comfortably wide seats, the oddly flawless hand-set/computer-keyboard controller, the look&feel of the touch-screen design, and even the this-close-to-annoying mock trendy animation that explained what to do in event of a crash. Everything about the flight was a visceral reminder that we’re already in the future and you would have crashed that flying car anyway. I felt like a target market perfectly catered to, coddled, even in business class, with a desire to do it again instilled in me immediately, a thousand times more powerful than any advertisement could.

Clicking the handset out of the armrest, I clicked through the computer system, poking at everything that was available. (No one else signed onto the seat-to-seat chat, unfortunately, but it was enough that the option was there.) Finding a Music section, I braced myself for a tedious, arduous list of tenaciously popular artists, only to be pleasantly surprised. I found jazz, indie, rock, pop, techno, classical, and opera – everything I listen to at home, alphabetically listed all the way to Frank Zappa. Satisfied, I leaned back and shrugged out of my shoes. My schizophrenic play-list was a lovely thing, (inspiring me to want a long, intimate dinner with whoever programmed Virgin Air’s music selection), matched in beauty only by the ridiculously cotton pink dawn beginning to break so perfectly outside my airplane window.