Berezina, or The Unibrow

Star! [excerpt: My Ship] (1968) (Robert Wise) [buy]

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 00:43:53 -0500

Star! [excerpt: My Ship] (1968) (Robert Wise) [buy]

(via duplo)

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 00:19:31 -0500

(via duplo)

Central Park in the Dark (1906) (Charles Ives) [buy]

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 02:57:58 -0500

Central Park in the Dark (1906) (Charles Ives) [buy]

the way i see it, you can play from your heart. and hell, you can play from your soul. but the real...

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 00:05:43 -0500

the way i see it, you can play from your heart. and hell, you can play from your soul. but the real trick is to play the song that everyone else’s soul has been aching or dying to hear. the song that everyone has always known. yeah, they ain’t heard it yet maybe, but they’ll know the whole thing once you play it for ‘em. we all owe that to the world once in our lives, to do that for everyone else.

~Jared Roessler

Ring of Smoke (2009) (Mills Baker)

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 04:15:49 -0500

Ring of Smoke (2009) (Mills Baker)

Élégie (for viola solo) (1944) (Igor Stravinsky) [buy]

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 01:28:09 -0500

Élégie (for viola solo) (1944) (Igor Stravinsky) [buy]

“The Old Men Admiring Themselves in the Water” I heard the old, old men...

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 02:16:00 -0500

“The Old Men Admiring Themselves in the Water”

I heard the old, old men say,
‘Everything alters,
And one by one we drop away.’
They had hands like claws, and their knees
Were twisted like the old thorn-trees
By the waters.
‘All that’s beautiful drifts away
Like the waters.’

~W.B. Yeats [free]

Der Ritt der Walküren (1997) (Uri Caine Ensemble) [buy]

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:06:39 -0500

Der Ritt der Walküren (1997) (Uri Caine Ensemble) [buy]

Bee! I’m expecting you! Was saying Yesterday To Somebody you know That you were due — The...

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:08:28 -0500

Bee! I’m expecting you!
Was saying Yesterday
To Somebody you know
That you were due —

The Frogs got Home last Week —
Are settled, and at work —
Birds, mostly back —
The Clover warm and thick —

You’ll get my Letter by
The seventeenth; Reply
Or better, be with me —
Yours, Fly.

~Emily Dickinson [free]

Walk and Talk (1998) (Ashley Page) [buy]

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 00:07:45 -0500

Walk and Talk (1998) (Ashley Page) [buy]

“A Shropshire Lad, XXVII” ‘Is my team ploughing, That I was used to drive And hear...

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 00:06:00 -0500

“A Shropshire Lad, XXVII”

‘Is my team ploughing,
That I was used to drive
And hear the harness jingle
When I was man alive?´

Ay, the horses trample,
The harness jingles now;
No change though you lie under
The land you used to plough.

‘Is football playing
Along the river shore,
With lads to chase the leather,
Now I stand up no more?´

Ay, the ball is flying,
The lads play heart and soul;
The goal stands up, the keeper
Stands up to keep the goal.

‘Is my girl happy,
That I thought hard to leave,
And has she tired of weeping
As she lies down at eve?´

Ay, she lies down lightly,
She lies not down to weep:
Your girl is well contented.
Be still, my lad, and sleep.

‘Is my friend hearty,
Now I am thin and pine,
And has he found to sleep in
A better bed than mine?´

Yes, lad, I lie easy,
I lie as lads would choose;
I cheer a dead man´s sweetheart,
Never ask me whose.

~A.E. Housman [free]

travors: Websites re-imagined as paperback books (via...

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 00:04:35 -0500

travors:

Websites re-imagined as paperback books (via Rétrofuturs)

I Didn’t Understand (1998) (Elliott Smith) [jackpot]

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 00:07:39 -0500

I Didn’t Understand (1998) (Elliott Smith) [jackpot]

“Chamber Thicket” As we sat at the feet of the string quartet, in their living room, on...

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 00:06:25 -0500

“Chamber Thicket”

As we sat at the feet of the string quartet,
in their living room, on a winter night,
through the hardwood floor spurts and gulps
and tips and shudders came up, and the candle-scent
air was thick-alive with pearwood,
ebony, spruce, poplar, and horse
howled, and cat skreeled, and then,
when the Grösse Fugue was around us, under us,
over us, in us, I felt I was hearing
the genes of my birth-family, pulled, keening
and grieving and scathing, along each other,
scraping and craving, I felt myself held in that
woods of hating longing, and I knew
and knew myself, and my parents, and their parents,
there—and then, at a distance, I sensed,
as if it were thirty years ago,
a being, far off yet, oblique-approaching,
straying toward, and then not toward,
and then toward this place, like a wandering dreaming
herdsman, my husband. And I almost wanted
to warn him away, to call out to him
to go back whence he came, into some calmer life,
but his beauty was too moving to me,
and I wanted too much to not be alone, in the
covert, any more, and so I prayed him
come to me, I bid him hasten, and good welcome.

~Sharon Olds [buy]

(via suicideblonde)

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:04:50 -0500

(via suicideblonde)

A Snowstorm Blows (1992) (Dmitri Hvorostovsky) [translation]...

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:05:25 -0500

A Snowstorm Blows (1992) (Dmitri Hvorostovsky) [translation] [buy]

“Cascando” 1. why not merely the despaired of occasion of wordshed is it not better...

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 00:07:15 -0500

“Cascando”

why not merely the despaired of
occasion of
wordshed

is it not better abort than be barren

the hours after you are gone are so leaden
they will always start dragging too soon
the grapples clawing blindly the bed of want
bringing up the bones the old loves
sockets filled once with eyes like yours
all always is it better too soon than never
the black want splashing their faces
saying again nine days never floated the loved
nor nine months
nor nine lives

saying again
if you do not teach me I shall not learn
saying again there is a last
even of last times
last times of begging
last times of loving
of knowing not knowing pretending
a last even of last times of saying
if you do not love me I shall not be loved
if I do not love you I shall not love

the churn of stale words in the heart again
love love love thud of the old plunger
pestling the unalterable
whey of words

terrified again
of not loving
of loving and not you
of being loved and not by you
of knowing not knowing pretending
pretending

I and all the others that will love you
if they love you

unless they love you

~Samuel Beckett [buy]

Solitude (1934) (Duke Ellington) [buy]

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 00:14:10 -0500

Solitude (1934) (Duke Ellington) [buy]

Obscene & Pornographic Art / Nick Cave Dolls (1991)...

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 00:11:00 -0500

Obscene & Pornographic Art / Nick Cave Dolls (1991) (Bongwater) [buy]

“Finding a Bible in an Abandoned Cabin” Under dust plush as a moth’s wing, the book’s...

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 00:13:14 -0500

“Finding a Bible in an Abandoned Cabin”

Under dust plush as a moth’s wing,
the book’s leather cover still darkly shown,
and everywhere else but this spot was sodden
beneath the roof’s unraveling shingles.
There was that back-of-the-neck lick of chill
and then, from my index finger, the book

opened like a blasted bird. In its box
of familiar and miraculous inks,
a construction of filaments and dust,
thoroughfares of worms, and a silage
of silverfish husks: in the autumn light,
eight hundred pages of perfect wordless lace.

~Robert Wrigley