Study in picture boxes.

A mix, of sorts. With love.

1.  Diamond Day - Vashti Bunyan
2.  Ngakula Ngakula - F. Kenya
3.  Your Heartache and Mine - Hari and Aino
4.  Sun Lips - Black Moth Super Rainbow
5.  Death in the Park - Archers of Loaf
6.  Song for Morrie - Forest City Lovers
7.  Fai Di Me Quello Che Vuoi - Massimo Ranieri
8.  Action/Reaction - The Choir of Young Believers
9.  Lover, You Should've Come Over - Jeff Buckley
10.  Paying for that Back Street Affair - Kitty Wells
11.  Videotape - Radiohead
12.  Sequoia - Boards of Canada
13.  Nostalgia Del Primer Amor - Nelson Ned
14.  Unspoken - A.M. Architect
15.  Eve - Astrid Williamson
16.  Make the Road by Walking - Menahan Street Band

Sunday morning coffee with a side of overcast. The scratching of unmet goals, forced-aside desire. (How I wish I had more courage.)

"Angry Charlie" - Generationals, Con Law, LP, 2009.

I think at a certain point, the mind makes it impossible to keep up appearances.  The band has stretched too far. It breaks, and the self-discovery forces its way forward.

"Let's Make This Precious" - Dexy's Midnight Runners, Too-Rye-Ay (2002 rerelease)

Lu Xun, Wild Grass

When I am silent, I feel replete; as I open my mouth to speak, I am conscious of emptiness.

The past life has died. I exult over its death, because from this I know that it once existed. The dead life has decayed. I exult over its decay, because from this I know that it has not been empty.

From the clay of life abandoned on the ground grow no lofty trees, only wild grass.

"Friends with Lofts" - Netherfriends

September as List

A. Instrumentation. Chord progression, harmony, bridge.
B. "Side effects include eyelid skin darkening."
C. White men on television.
D. Celebration of aging.
E. Eee.
F. The constant attention to the body.  
G. An absent girlfriend.
H. When I am awake, I am tired.

"Let's Go" - The Shondes, 2007

This is an unusual August. Even during the election, August represented a quieter, slower month on the canvassing/phone-banking/direct mail calendar. But not this year. This year, August is a hungry, hot tornado of health care babble in Washington, DC.

"Twin of Myself" - Black Moth Super Rainbow

Batshit crazy teaparty people, stammering politicians, stifling D.C. heat and my withering-on-the-vine vacation plans. I'm leaving the city this week for a wedding, and had planned to spend another week in Maine and Connecticut, bumming around and generally forgetting about the maelstrom in DC.

"Yesterdays" - Ella Fitzgerald w/ Nelson Riddle & His Orchestra

The longer this fight goes on, the more I just want it to be over. A public health insurance option? Employer mandate? Reimbursing hospitals 5% above Medicare reimbursements? Only months ago these legisltative components seemed like forgone conclusions in a final health care bill. Now, they're suddenly controversial.

"Untitled 8" - The Real People

"I Live A Lot of Places" - Woodpigeon

It seems like a Democrat is peeled away every day against the public option. Just wait until voters figure out that, while they're required to now have health insurance, the government isn't going to offer a competitive option for them to choose from. The entire country will be auctioned away to private insurance. Yeah, fellow Democrats, the American people will LOVE that.

"Supermellofied" - Peter & the Wolf

Summertime. I'm now convinced that our body/mind/spirit is tethered to the changing of seasons and the small, 30-day-or-so monthly cycles that govern our thoroughly modern lives. Here's the pattern I see emerging:

January - March: The most beige time of year (not to be confused with stagnation, which happpens later in the year). Work, sleep, play - but nothing too exciting, too challenging, or controversial.

April - May: Predictably work-focused. Like a timed falling hammer. Work work work.

June - July: HOLY SHIT DO I WANT THIS LIFE, or, HOLY SHIT THIS COULD BE MY LIFE. I spend the entire summer contemplating quitting my job, living abroad, and making other ridiculously unscripted life changes.

August: Stagnation, coupled with a vague sense of dissatisfaction

September - October: Gorgeous explosion of movement, precision and determination

November: Dread

December: Mild depression, combined with intense moments of nostalgia

Knowing this, I'm able to plan vacations better. Best to flee during periods of stasis, and recharge my batteries in the warm sun or in the Italian countryside. When it's busy, I don't really want to leave anyway.

1. Wild Rice - Summer Cats
2. Gotta Cheer Up - Cotton Jones
3. Lagunita - Trio Los Avilenos
4. Sisters of Mercy (Cover) - Beth Orton
5. Just in Time (Live) - Nina Simone
6. It's Gonna Rain - Violent Femmes

August is just days away, and I've finally taken the plunge and asked for a significant block of time off work. My plans? To bum around the east coast (mostly Maine, but also Vermont and Massachusetts) visiting friends and sleeping in late. Oh, and updating this long-neglected music blog.

Is it 1931?

From the Telegraph: Roosevelt took over a country where the economic machinery had completely broken down. The New York Stock Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade had closed. Thirty-two states had shut their banks. Texas had restricted withdrawals to $10 a day.

Few states could borrow on the bond markets. Illinois and much of the South had stopped paying teachers. Schools closed for months. An army of 25,000 famished war veterans squatting in view of Congress had been charged by troopers of the 3rd US cavalry with naked sabres – led by a Major George Patton.

Okay, so maybe not quite.

As each day passes, I grow increasingly convinced that we're living in what will be the early years of a lost decade. Lost to digging ourselves out of this recession. Paying off debt. Stablizing the economy. Everyone is going to slow down. Job turnover - the voluntary kind - will grind to a hault. People will stop moving from city to city. We'll do the work of 3 or 4 people at the office. We'll stop sleeping. We'll work and work and work, and then find ourselves belly-up at the bar each night. And then we'll wake up one day at age 45 and realize that we lost the best years of our lives to the world's second great depression.

Poof. There go our (my?) twenties. Up in smoke.

at least we have music and romance.

1. "Crimson and Clover" - Tommy James and the Shondells
2. "My Love" - The Bird and the Bee
3. "Blood Bank" - Bon Iver
4. "Head Dress" - Amazing Baby

Hello Sunshine. I hate this fucking week already.

"Hello Sunshine" - Aretha Franklin, Aretha Now, 1968

Sometimes, it seems like the ambient noise around us reduces reality (reality, as in, cars driving down the street, cashiers scanning groceries, dogs barking) to pixels, beats and sensations. The crowded conditions of modern life abstracts anything imbued with meaning. Meaning (i.e. that which transmits value of some kind to the object) is diffused into style. At that point, what are we left with? Coolness. Hotness. Sexuality, I suppose. Sex can survive, as can hunger. The body reigns.

Today, I discovered Loney, Dear's "I Got Lost" and listened to it 10 times, still wanting more. It recalls the soundtrack of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (as well as the opening sequence of Battlestar Galactica), with the sensibility and vocal track of Radiohead (perhaps even a dash of Sigur Ros?). Anyway, it's the perfect tune to accompany this feeling of d-e-t-a-c-h-m-e-n-t.

1. "I Got Lost" - Loney, Dear, Dear John, 2008

2. "Take Warning" - Operation Ivy, s/t, 1990

3. "What She Came For" - Franz Ferdinand, Tonight: Franz Ferdinand, 2009