Music Monday - The Other Guys - St Andrean Skies

Favorites The Other Guys perform the original commission by Oscar Foxley for St Andrews 600th Anniversary, "St Andrean Skies." 

I was never a fresher, or an undergrad at St Andrews at all, but I remember those first few lit-on-fire days there. The wind whipped up every possibility I'd ever considered for myself. I remember my friends, knocking on my door, calling me out from within myself, to new places. I remember frolicking on steep hillside slopes with my hair blowing everywhere, my wellies sinking in the sand, beneath a huge Northern moon and ripped open, flood lit, St Andrean skies. Even at midnight. Even in Autumn. You could see everything. And nothing.

I often wonder if I'll ever have a year as happy as that. But the seeds of that time continue to crop up every day. Even here in Los Angeles. 

What I'd give to relive the days spent 'neath those St Andrean skies...

Burberry Shows Us London Via iPhone 5s

If London really looked like the above, there's nothing that could have made me leave. 

But it's just Burberry, giving a small sneak into London Fashion Week via a new iphone 5s. 

Speaking of London, though:

-The London Skyline over time

- If Breaking Bad were set in the UK

- Sienna & Tom for Burberry

- And more. 

For your London daydream, I'm out.

Happy Hump Day. Hope it's dreamy.

Saturday Intermission

London 1927

I think about place and belonging a lot. I often feel out of place. Or caught, maybe is a better word, between two (or more!) places. Not part of this, not wholly a part of that. And I suppose time and timing is another big component of the idea of "place" especially as it pertains to belonging. 

Perhaps my London near-miss of a life was all to do with timing. I wonder what it would be like if I went back now, or a year from now. And while I think living in London in 1927 might be a bit out of the realm of possibility, it's nice to daydream about-- especially if this footage of the Big Smoke from British film pioneer Claude Friese-Greene is any indication. 

The captions are almost as lovely as the footage. And in case you love the song as much as I do, it's "Parasol" by British indie-rock collective, Jonquil. 

Music Monday - MS MR - Secondhand Rapture

New York-based duo, MS MR have been releasing critically praised singles since about this time last year. They've drawn comparisons to Kavinsky and even Florence + The Machine and have been remixed by pretty much everyone. They've also spent much of the last year touring with Jessie Ware. 

Next week, we finally get a full album: Secondhand Rapture. But you don't even have to wait that long to stream the whole album before its May 14th drop date. Listen NOW here.

Welcome to the innner workings of my mind...

Some of my fave remixes by CHVRCHES & NICITA:

And the original:

This Week Felt Like This - Stars - Your Ex-Lover Is Dead

After a week spent in a fictional revolution, in chaos, in shock, in the air, in rehearsals, in awe, in despair, in gratitude, I am returning to this song, which is one of my favorite numbers from the upcoming Shaping Sound tour. Watching dancers apply energy to this. I wish you could see what I've seen all week. Soon you will. This is how I feel about this week. Get it all out. 

Stars - Your Ex-Lover Is Dead from Arts & Crafts on Vimeo.

Want to See - I Give It A Year

Self-deprecating British rom-coms! Though I'm not sure how I feel about Rose Byrne as a Brit.... I mean, I know she's Australian, but still... it doesn't sit well... other than that, I can't wait to see this with my hetero life mate, McC. It came out in February in the UK and I don't see much in the way of info about when we sad Americans (who just can't have nice things) will also get to have it. Don't make we who miss Britain wait, please. 

I Will Steal You Back - New Jimmy Eat World

Hey there, burgeoning youth of the early aughts. This is the sound of your teenage years calling. And we have Jimmy Eat World on the line for you. Remember being 19? If you were having a hard time recalling, you won't for long.

New album Damage is out 6/11. Bring me back, Jimmy. Steal me back to then. I'm ready.

Sunday Scribbles - Untitled

my love is nimble

quick on its feet

for hide and go seek;

a child of science

shrinks down smiling

hides in cabinets

springs forth with soft laughter

to take up all the space in the room

solid

or melts to liquid, seeping into cracks

rises up gaseous

settles in a dew all around

takes on life again but

curls up in your lap to sleep and 

asks for nothing save the sound of us talking

requires no consistent shape

known only for the phosphorescent tail that trails behind it

unless otherwise noted, all poetry copyright Ryann Ferguson

Peace Out, Mercury in Retrograde Friday Links

Who's excited for Mercury to get the eff out of retrograde this weekend?? I know I am! My poor command center alpha is no longer able to communicate with some of its programs the way it needs to, so I've invested in the future of littlewow and a new Command Center Alpha arrives on Monday just in time to start kicking ass with a clean cosmic slate. Hallelujah. 27 inches of awesome. 

Not being able to solve problems continues to be a huge source of weird anxiety for me. Any problem I can't solve on my own in a matter of 2-3 hours makes me kind of depressed. I'm really working on this, but I think I'm always going to prefer at the end of the day to be my own one woman army. 

In any case, tech-stewing aside, there's a lot to be really happy and motivated about lately. Enough waxing, you say. Take me to the links!

- Here's what they thought LA of 2013 would look like back in 1988.
- I'm still super bummed about the demise of google reader. And not impressed by alternatives.
- If people talked about Seinfeld they way they do Girls.
- This has been making the rounds, but it's damn good.
- This.
- Ma' Girl, Claire Vaye Watkins winning all kinds of awards and being everywhere!
- Children from around the world pose with their favorite possessions.
- The ten best famous graves. (Keats! Represent!)
- The life you might have lived. Missing Out by Adam Phillips.

The Most Astounding Fact - Neil deGrasse Tyson Appreciation Day

My heart is warmed thinking of this guy speaking at the 100th commencement of my alma mater. Rice 2013 grads sure are lucky. (His wife is an alum, so I guess that was our in.) 

Neil is more than a scientist. He's a modern philosopher of real life and I can't wait to see what he tells those kids. I feel like he's going to blow our minds. Where Alberto Gonzales (a Rice alum) merely praised the virtues of George W. Bush in my own commencement speech-- in a desperate play to become Attorney General-- I doubt we'll hear much of that from Neil. 

Personally, I hope he break dances to Michael Jackson. But in lieu of that, I'll take something more like this. The simple revelry in the science, but also the magic of our existence. This is poetry as good as any I've heard. 

The Most Astounding Fact from Max Schlickenmeyer on Vimeo.

Rachel Potter - Live The Dream

What a few years Rachel Potter has had! I've said before-- one of the only things that's really genuinely encouraging after so many years in the biz is having being able to see the arc of someone's success in hindsight. I remember sunny summer afternoons in Astoria park with Rachel talking about the struggle. 

At the time, she singing in a wedding band and feeling sort of dissatisfied with auditioning. She'd always been high on my list for Muffin in VOTE! at some point. Often, I wish I had more going on only so I could hire more of my friends. We talked about all the discouraging things that had ever been said to us and how we tried to shake them off. 

Shortly after I left for Scotland, all the good stuff started happening for Rachel. She got Wednesday in The Addams Family and then The Mistress in Evita. She's always done her own original music, and now that is taking off like whoa. Case in point, her new video airing on CMT, "Live The Dream." 

There's a lot of reasons to love this video. Most of mine include the obscene amounts of friends yukking it up in the background. Yours might also include Ricky Martin. (!) Check it out. Live the Dream, people. 

Berndnaut Smilde's Indoor Clouds

Today's meditation is on displaced natural elements. Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde brings the outdoors indoors with these cloud art/experiments. Using an artist's imagination and a scientist's methods, Smilde created Nimbus clouds in abandoned gallery spaces and churches across Amsterdam. The result has a lot of people talking, and me having a daydream riff on the thought of....

For more, click here and here. 

I Don't Remember-- Were We Wild and Young?

Here's how adding a song to a movie (This is 40) completely changed what I thought about that song. 

When Ryan Adams's album Ashes & Fire came out last year, it took its place immediately on the shelf with all the other Ryan Adams-- near the end. And it never got all that much deliberate rotation. He's prolific and though he puts out a lot, most of it is wonderful background texture, but not much more. 

Then I heard "Lucky Now" isolated acoustically on the radio and began to notice the lyrics. 

Then the song was performed live in a key final scene of This Is 40. I can't say that seeing the song in the film changed my opinion of it-- (though the presence of Paul Rudd does cast a magical glow on everything near him) -- no, it was the addition of a simple steel guitar (and played by a lady steel guitarist, no less.) The song is a country song. It lives and breathes there and it is miraculous. 

It does not exist on the internet in video form. So instead, I provide for you there merely meh studio version and a link to the This Is 40 soundtrack-- which I recommend in its entirety, actually-- and where you can get said live version, which I have been listening to on repeat for a week. It's just so damn applicable. 

St Andrews Day Links

Happy St Andrews Day! About now, the processional is making its way to the East Sands for piping and fireworks. The weather here has decided to ease my Scotland sickness. It's been raining in LA, so it really does feel like a day in Auld Reekie. Not only is this the day that honors Scotland's patron saint, it's also Sophie's birthday! 

Sophie, in addition to being one of my lifetime best friends, a brilliant and heart-breaking musician, is  also someone who simply embodies Scotland for me. I think listening to her music, no matter where you might find yourself, gives you the feeling that you're listening to her by a hearth and crackling fire in Perthshire. 

Every year, Scotland tourism does a lot to promote the event and this year is no different. Here is a fun little whathaveyou from Scotland.org where you can Saltire your face. Who doesn't want to look like an extra from Braveheart, right?

And more links!

- In case you want to know more about St Andrew, here is my post from a few years back. 
- Because it's Scotland, we might as well get political about it. 
- Downton in New York? This is the best idea ever! (Though why do they call Downton a rom/com?)
- Interesting Theresa Rebeck interview on her exit from SMASH.
- My boo, Taylor, has started blogging again. The poet hedonist hard at work. 
- These two people together on one stage make me proud to be American.
- This jacket.
- I was ambivalent before, but, man, this Second Season of GIRLS looks prrrrretty good!

Sweet Tooth

Somehow-- perhaps with all the moving-- I had missed that Ian McEwan had a new novel. Luckily, Cronin mentioned it when I saw him at Vroman's and I did not delay in picking up the 70's spy 'thriller,' Sweet Tooth. 

Now, I'm about half way through and I love it. Spies obsessed with writers, writers obsessed with spies, a dirty London and the seventies... this book has everything! The NYTimes called it "clever, but annoying,"(I've heard that before) so I'm wondering if maybe the annoying part kicks in somewhere after the first half. For me, it feels like a strange but satisfying window back into a version of living in the UK. 

When Serena rides on a bus through Central London, from North to South,  I recall reading Barbara Trapido's Brother of the More Famous Jack (a feel-better gift from Iona) perhaps because the two books oddly remind me of each other. Or at least their heroines. 

And curling up to read Sweet Tooth in my poetry bedding-- the fluffy luxury I bought for Scotland, I recall being curled up in my castle room at Dean's Court watching The Cambridge Spies and reading le Carre novels. I can't bring myself to do too much else this holiday week besides replicate that level of comfort. (I mean, I have things to do. I'm dog sitting. I'm going to my aunt & grandmother's for Thanksgiving.)

I don't know that I'll feel by the end the way I feel about this book now, (I hear the feminist in me really won't!) but for now, I recommend it. And for now, its textured world is just what I need.

When I Look Back On Those Neon Nights - Miss Atomic Bomb

Almost every song ever written by The Killers carries a kind of inescapable Vegas about it. They aren't just from here-- they radiate the ambience of here. A perpetual nostalgia. They also seem to understand the significance of their origin. They lean into it. Sam's Town. And this latest effort, our state motto: Battle Born. I wonder if that Vegas palate they paint with is detectable to anyone not from here. Once, in the radio station here, I told Kade that "When You  Were Young" was what growing up in Vegas sounded like. He thought about for a minute, and then agreed. 

"Miss Atomic Bomb" sees that feeling and then raises it with so much local specificity and ambience, it puts a squeeze on my heart a bit. My hometown band still has the same sound they've always had (there's a guitar homage to "Mr. Brightside" on "Miss Atomic Bomb," as if Mister & Miss were a couple) but I do think they've grown. Brandon Flowers has never sounded better. And this is one of the most beautifully shot performance videos I've ever seen. 

All Of My Days - Alexi Murdoch

How delighted I was to be watching television and hear lovely Scottish musician, Alexi Murdoch, featured in a Sprint cell phone advertisement. In addition to being a lifetime nomad and partaker of various locale, (Athens! Scotland! North Carolina! Los Angeles!) I've been a big fan of his mellow music for years now. 

Today's been a pretty trying day. Today, I wish I were in a Sprint commercial (unlimited life!) instead of the AT&T nightmare that ate my whole day and I still don't have a working phone. It's like the world does't want me to rejoin it. Fine. I'll just relax with McC and Alexi Murdoch and imagine ourselves somewhere more dreamy. Greece, perhaps. Alexi, See you there?

Haw River Ballroom & My Future Artist Colony

After our awesome lunch at the Saxapahaw General Store, we walked the one one road in the town down towards the river. I fell a bit in love with this little condensed compound: a very British style pub called The Eddy, a coffee shop/arts/events ballroom, and the most amazing Sawmill-turned-exposed brick condos EVER. 

I'm dreaming of a next next summer spent living in a two bedroom exposed brick splendor for like $400 a piece and me and Steven finishing Tercio de Muerte or whatever else strikes our fancy. We'll sit outside in the mornings with coffee and strategize the day's writing. We'll write all day. One our days off, we'll go to the art gallery. At night, we'll hit up the ballroom for whatever band is has come to to this small spot on the map. 

The balance between being right in the middle of it all and being right in the middle of nowhere has become a key component of the overall balance of my life, I gotta tell ya. I wouldn't mind spending the whole summer with Lucie right up the street too. 

Everything about this area of North Carolina makes me want to sit outside and make things. Everything about it whispers in your ear how easy it is to be happy. Everything smells like cedar. Everything sounds like cicadas. The whole day, I just kept thinking, "Yep, this is what life is supposed to feel like...."

Let's Go Anywhere

Planes, trains, and automobiles are what my life is about, even as I attempt to be still. I'll be logging a lot of car hours this weekend as I trek around South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia. I feel pretty worried at the moment, but I can tell you what I'm going to do no matter what. I'm going to roll the windows down of whatever rented car I might happen to be in and let it all in: the heat, the petrichor, the buzz, the hum. 

Driving around in the South when I was a kid, I felt like I could do anything. That everything was on the road ahead of me. It used to make me want to get out and run. That's how strong I felt. I thought I could get there faster than the car on my own two feet.