Trapped in lament/To the poet's core

Mayer, despite his propensity to spontaneously combust on the pressure of his own thought pattern whenever prompted to speak in any other form than lyrics, has a knack for choosing covers.


I really do think he's a genius. Particularly when he lets the guitar do the talking.


Now, I have a soft-spot for the guy because 1. I actually kinda get his logic most of the time (not the napalm thing, but the other stuff). It almost always comes out wrong, but I see what he's getting at. And 2. probably most importantly, I feel attached to him because, amongst everyone I know, I take credit for "discovering him" in 1999. That sounds kind of ridiculous (nobody discovers anybody) but I did befriend him at a coffee shop in Little Five Points in Atlanta one hot July day in 1999. I went up to him largely because I thought he was cute and tall and had a downright buttery voice. But even more than that, I went up to him to make someone else jealous.


It worked. John & I pseudo (pseudo pseudo) stayed in touch for a number of years (I promoted Room For Squares in Japan) and later on that day in L5P, the boy I was trying to make jealous actually kinda fought with 2 other boys for the privilege of buying me a dress (Which I still have.)


But anyhow, John always puts out an album of what I need, when I need it. This winter, the stellar cover of "I'm On Fire" was one of the best things about his new album and I've noticed for several months that he's been pairing the song in concert with the...no joke, straightup heavenly...Emmylou Harris song, "Where Will I Be."


I like the weight he adds to the song. John's version feels very repentant, very of the human element. Of the body. Wounded in a different way. Emmylou's is  so light-winged, which is part of what's great about her....like the song might fly away.


I remember Emmylou Harris very vividly from childhood. Especially this song. I remember wishing I could have a mother like Emmylou Harris, soft and soothing like she was: one part, like, medicine woman or hippie tree-nymph and one part bless-her-heart gospel mother. Like you think she's going to smell like patchouli, and instead she smells like jasmine.


I love questions not phrased as questions. I love that "Where Will I Be," somehow doesn't sound like a question ever in this song... just a looking out, into the distance.


We listened to a lot of Emmylou while we were waiting for TL  to arrive.
And I'm thinking of her now on this perfect Friday evening, along with John and his great taste in covers.


Happy Weekend. Enjoy the original after the jump.

The streets are cracked
And there's glass everywhere
And a baby stares out
With motherless eyes
Under long gone beauty
On fields of war
Trapped in lament
To the poet's core

Oh where oh where will I be
Oh where oh when that trumpet sounds 

the together people & the alone people

Maybe it’s part of what it means to be a writer—to be an observer more than a participant. (Not that I don't participate...just... indulge me in an unemotional sociological tangent for a moment [that's why I'm wearing my scientist glasses in the photo <--------]) But it seems to me, and always has, that there are the people who spend their whole lives in some form of together, and then there are the alone people. 

The together people are almost always together and the alone people are almost always alone—except for brief, exotic moments where the together people allow one of the alone people into their world temporarily. And for a glimpsing minute, the alone people have the anthropological experience of living the life of (or at least in the midst of) the together people.

Together people (this will come as no shock) stick together…with other together people. They’re the kind of people who are always in relationships, really put their family first and often adopt other people into their family of togetherness. But the only ones who stick, really stick are other together people. An alone person can be loved and even accepted as the fun, eccentric fill-in-the-blank relationship, but will never be included to the extent that the other together people will be included.


This is possibly because the alone people, of their own accord or compulsion, will need to remove themselves, if only for a bit, to go inward, to think about the events, maybe even to write about them. But in that moment, the one where they stop living the moment and pause to ponder it, record it, analyze it, describe it, the together people have already moved on with the living of it. And you're one step behind. 

I’ll let you guess which one of these 2 kinds of people I am. And which kinds of people I mostly admire. Maybe I am subject to my own hold-outs—the way I hold a part of myself back from being known too well. My life seems more like a press junket-- moving from one still moment of connection to the next. Meaningful, but fleeting, and very spaced out. A collection of moments in between work phone calls. Blips on the together ones' radars, but that add up to my life. I don’t doubt that I am loved. But even my own hopeful self has a hard time not believing that I am best loved in small doses. I can see that.


Loving someone in small doses will never make for them becoming a together person. I don’t know what actual qualities go towards making someone a together person (perhaps it’s really a gene or something) but I do know this much: If you’re best appreciated at alternating intervals and no one can handle you everyday, the alone life is where you’re headed.

Which might even be okay for me. You've read some of my thoughts on the mind-blowing hurt that people inflict on one another. Sometimes I really do think I'd rather be on my own-- I know how I'll treat myself. 

Oh, but I can spot a together person from a mile away. The serial monogamists, the family folks, the "Groups"...I've known them all and at certain times in my life, I've studied them thinking, "What is it that they do to always be so surrounded?" As though I could somehow turn into one. Is it like citizenship? Do the alone people need the legitimacy of a together person? Like a passport. If you can somehow attach yourself to one, you can can gain a kind of legal citizenship? Or can an alone person only seek to find some tentative arrangement with another alien? Maybe we'll never know. 

There is only the question: When will I be blown up?

I am unabashedly biased in most of my artistic preferences. I gravitate towards Celts & Southerners. Particularly in high school, Tennessee Williams & Faulkner & Flannery O’Connor (and of course, Margaret Mitchell) were about all I needed in the world. (I’ll get to Celts later, but today, Southerners—one in particular.)

I’m hanging out with my old boss this weekend in beautiful Forrest Hills Gardens, so I was reminded of the time a few years ago (I was really struggling about [the ususal] writing, the human condition, etc) when he sent me Faulkner’s Nobel Acceptance speech.

There’s also this “video” which is just a still, but has the original audio (practically inaudible due to Faulkner’s [amazing] thick drawl) which I’m including as well. Apparently, in the room, (because you couldn't make out what he was saying) most folks didn't realize the magnitude and power of the speech. It was only later, when they saw it printed. 

The kind of calamities and world tension of today seems to echo his sentiments of 1950. For as specifically period & specifically local as Faulkner writes, his world view transcends all of that.

I love looking at other people’s lists of “Greatest Writers of All Time.” This one, of the 100 Best from This Recording, is one I can pretty much get behind. (Keats is #30, Tenn is #55 , Flannery #57, Dickens #16 [I’d rate him nearer #1, personally]  Iris Murdoch #40. I’d ditch at least one of the people on this list in favor of Camus, of course, but  It’s got this guy at number one, which I’m cool with. 


(More on Faulkner here)

Stockholm, December 10, 1950

I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work — a life’s work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand here where I am standing.

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

an excerpt from Rise

Eugene Talmadge

For the first time ever, I've decided to release a few excerpts from the novel, Rise, I wrote from age 18-23 (and have been writing and rewriting from age 24-28-- don't ask, it's a long story.)


In trying to decide what I want to focus my time on while I'm in Scotland, I'm faced with this question-- do I want to continue on with this project that I've been so close to getting right so many times, or just let it go and move on to a new novel... ??... and if I start a new novel, what kind of animal will I want that to be?


So my thought of how I would answer that question to is work through some problematic (And also some fun) sections and see how I feel about them. And get you all's help. Then, in September, I'll see how I feel.


For example, this much older section (Written probably around 2001, when I was 19.) It's an important scene in the beginning where the two main characters first briefly meet.


In case you're wondering, Rise is an exploration of my generation's relationship with religion and spirituality told primarily through the eyes of two would-be loves who meet at a Theological seminary camp in Georgia as teenagers. It alternates between their two perspectives over many years, but this section is just from the pov of Meg. The girl is a spunky Buddhist and the guy is a Methodist from Texas. It is in no way autobiographical.


:) Enjoy after the jump!

blackbird

I love this rare footage of Paul McCartney singing "Blackbird." I love when he messes up & that the photographer chose to film Paul's shoes most of the video. Part of why I still have a record player is I like how real records sound. That they recorded an actual moment, vs. being the best take and split take of who knows how many instruments and faux sounds.

I love that on "Sittin' on  the Dock of the Bay," you can hear Otis's fingers on the frets. The moments where you can hear the fingers on the frets are rare in this world of modernity. Everything's clean and sterile, but I think I like things a little more grainy.

Goodnight!

luna tigerlily

My friend Josh (Udo online?? I don't know the protocol...) was kind enough to remind me of the lovely Luna song, Tiger Lily. He sent me the track, which I've been listening to all day. It warms my heart to know that something about the little lady seems to resonate with people. I knew as soon as I saw her that Steven and I were going to write a song about her. I'm not sure what it's going to be yet, but I'm excited!

I'm off to see a show. More later this evening. In between now and then, here is a live version of front man Dean Wareham & some folks singing "Tiger Lily."

haunted by geography

I'm always looking for modern day poets. Most of the time, they take on other forms-- they aren't publishing anthologies or sonnets in The New Yorker. Like Jonathan Harris, (a sort of visual poet) and of course, musicians. I think possibly the best living poets for me are The Indigo Girls.


The way they can hang a tone in the air, palpable, a kind of world building. You know exactly where you are. Pick a song, any song. Starkville, for example. Typically, I favor the songs that Emily writes (they're brighter or at least softer) when Amy's tend to be both darker & harsher. But Starkville.  Starkville sounds exactly the way I feel in the most melancholy part of my soul.


The way  that I have no idea what "haunted by geography means" except that I know exactly what it means.


Something to do with me being a nomad of sorts-- always trying to get back to someone; get to somewhere I've never been. Something to do with my times at YTI, as all things Indigo Girls have a way of doing. Some kind of connection to a foreign faith.  Some kind of abandoned town. The way I just keep moving and somehow that makes me feel still.


Ranier Maria Rilke said, "Things aren't all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsayable than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life."


That's true. But I think Amy & Emily sure do bridge that gap between what's sayable & unsayable about an experience. I can't decide whether I know more about how this song makes me feel because they articulated so well, or because of what isn't articulated.


The ineffible. I'm going to come back to that. But for now...




If you were here in Starkville, the townie boys would love the way you stare.
If you were here in Starkville, the local girls , they wouldn't have a prayer.
I spent a reckless night inside the wonder of your everlasting charm,
now I'm haunted by geography, and the flora and the fauna of your heart.

At the dawning of some road worn day,
I called you on a whim just to say-
"The morning birds are singing",
but I could not do them justice, so I hung up and fell back to sleep.

I'm in love with my mobility, but sometimes this life can be a drag;
like when I noticed your nobility and how my leaving only held you back.
I remember one occasion- you were drinking,-when you asked me to the coast,
but I was hell bent on agony back then, so I missed the boat.

At the dawning of a road worn day,
I called you a whim just to say,
"My regrets become distractions when I can not do them justice",
then I hung up and fell back to sleep.

When I was down in Starkville, I was hiding out inside some Comfort Inn
from a local gang of troubadors, when the homecoming queen -she come riding in.
I slipped out of my room into the rain and I went running for my health.
The headlights turned to moonlight, and finally I was running by myself.

At the dawning of this road worn day,
I call you a whim just to say,
"The morning birds are singing". 

your opinion, please

which blog header do you like best? I like the one with the picture (so dreamy! thanks eternal, Corinne!) but the shape, size & simplicity of the toile wallpaper from Timorous Beasties (it's a pic I took at my birthday party at Highlands) What do you think? Which should I keep?

PS- Bonus, poetry lovers...can anyone name which poet/poem the phrase "Timorous Beasties" comes from??

what a miracle

After all the waiting, the tears, the drama (whoa, the drama) to have met Tigerlily and know that she is safe and a part of a truly one of a kind family is the best feeling in  the world. I feel protective and lucky to be part of such a family, myself. At Emily's wedding, I thanked them for raising me...me & every other kid who gets within a 10 foot radius of their house. I could thank them every day for their special kind of together.


After everything Emily & TL have been through together, there was, finally, such extraordinary moments of peace. I know that they are bonded forever. To finally hold her... oh I just love this little baby forever. And being a part of this experience certainly made me affirmed that I want one of those little folks of my own someday.


All my love to the indigo child, Miss TL.

so alive right now

here's another from way back that just felt right for the moment:

originally dated April 28, 2006

Today, I saw a man lie down in the sun by the elementary school on 4th street and die.

I don't want to give the impression that this kind of thing happens often around here or anything...it certainly does not. We don't even really have any homeless people in my neighborhood, except Buster, and he doesn;t really count. I'm not sure if this man was homeless and giving up or whether he had some kind of heart attack....I have no idea.

But the people on the street tried to wake him up and then me and another girl called the police. We waited and waited. Eventually most people broke off and the girl's boyfriend came to wait with her. They told me they would stay and wait for the cops and so, after giving him a sansho, I left.

Everything is so alive right now, it's a real jolt to remember that anyone could die. Life is so long and so short. And lately, despite all these new beginnings, I had been feeling in kind of a funk. Not any actual negative thoughts or depression...just a lack of the ridiculous glee that had taken over my life since moving to New York.

I'm all about being grateful in the moment...often I am overwhelmed by gratitude and have to take a moment... so I guess it's easy if I'm not careful to be annoyed when I feel unappreciated. But what's nice about life, is that it's always teaching me patience (something I am only recently starting to grasp) Patience to know that in the end, I am appreciated. In the long run...at first, most people think I'm a nut (and I am). But those are the people the normally end up as my best friends. Eventually, they accept the weirdness of me, see the method in my madness (I hate that cliche, but it's true) and I feel more importantly than being appreciated, that all the energy I expend....has a purpose...a mission....that I have done some good in the world.

I mean, that's what I'm in it for. In the long run...

the mission that is.

which always leads me back to Broadway.

As funky as I had been feeling, in an instant, it can all turn around, like it did a few days ago, in the very same spot that this man lied down and died.....

I was walking home at night, and I passed a couple. The man was pretty young, and was using a song to illustrate his point. He said:

"New York, New York, helluva town...."

and INSTINCTUALLY, without even thinking about it, I replied:

"The Bronx is up and the Battery's down..."

and there I was. I was back. That uncontrollable grin on my face...who am I??? But the guy laughed and looked at his girlfriend and said, "See?!"

:(

For the first time since all this drama started happening in the lives of my friends, I'm really allowing it to affect me. It's my last full day in Vegas-- a trip I planned to celebrate the wedding of one friend and support another for the birth of her first child (during a very difficult time.)

Well, I haven't mentioned it, but the groom called off the wedding (that was to have been this past Saturday evening) last Tuesday and it looks as though I will leave Vegas tomorrow still having not met Tigerlily. I'm feeling so... useless. Or thwarted. The same kind of powerless frustration to affect ANY kind of positive change on a situation I've felt a majority of my life.

I didn't even see my dad on this trip.

And the idea that this wedding and baby trip would end with no wedding and no baby just makes me want to cry.

thanks a million, corinne!

Super fantastic thanks to my dear friend, Corinne who was so kind as to solve my on-going problem of not having any photos of myself I can use for professional purposes. She's the greatest! (And she donates 30% of all her session fees to charity-- what a gem!) It was really windy, so my hair looks maniacal in almost all of the pictures. hahaha.

I'm still in Vegas anxiously awaiting a baby, but I'll be back writing for real soon enough! xo

home sweet vegas

My view on this beautiful Vegas morning. So happy to be here, driving around with the sun roof down up Sunset, me and Emily hollering at dudes in a tricked out van. And spending time on Mother's Day with one of the only people that genuinely makes me feel like I want to celebrate Mother's Day... Adi Mommy. Emily's mom is easily the best and most accessible mother figure I've ever had. And today, I'm thankful for her.

Last night, we read our cards: everyone's...Emily's, Mike's, Adi's, mine, Tiger Lily's.... they were very thought provoking. We talked about what Tiger Lily's middle name would be on our walk. I think she's coming tomorrow. Everytime I think, "Tiger Lily is coming tomorrow," the wind picks up.

tigerlily

I'm off to meet her tomorrow! Emily isn't in labor yet or anything, but we've got 5 days for her to decide to come on out and say hello to all the people who love her. I'm predicting Monday. I hope she's been listening to my thoughts.

Not just anyone could get away with naming their child Tigerlily (TL) (I think it's such a cool-girl name by the way) but Emily sure can! She's had this as her daughter's name for years before TL was even close to being conceived. She'd always follow it up with, "...and I'm going to dress her only in costumes. Exclusively costumes."

I feel like I already know what her personality will be like... mellow, stealthy sense of humor, feisty when necessary and extremely loyal. I think she'll be really artsy and will super super love her eccentric Auntie Ryann.

For more on Emily and TL, you might enjoy this entry

we feel fine

Do you know of www.wefeelfine.org? I've been obsessed with this website for 3 or 4 years...back to my most demeaning job of all time-- when I was a receptionist for a children's television company. They treated me kinda like an idiot while I was translating the Japanese business deals for one of the VPs. Yeah, it was a low point.

But when your job doesn't require much of you, it means you can start writing musicals while you're there (VOTE), research the limited PhD opportunities in Scotland (or anywhere) in creative writing. Funny where things are born.

It also gives you lots of time to truly get lost on the internet. Which is what I did with the phenomenal, truly modern multi-media artist, Jonathan Harris.

All his stuff his amazing, but I used to spend ages on here, looking at the feelings pulled from blogs all across the world. In some ways, the process is more like computer science than art (essentially, it's large scale blog analysis) but the results are nothing short of luminous.

I could isolate by my area, my age group, my gender. It felt a bit like poetry and looked an awful lot like art. Especially the photo montage area that pulled photos from blogs with the feeling or a phrase posted on it. No matter what, they always seem to be inspired. Ironic or hilarious or touching. There's also the ability to email that image as a postcard to people. Beautiful.

It's also a kind of fellowship. To see who is feeling what you're feeling. And a kind of hurt to see how many days I would check the site and see the most common feeling was "abandoned."

Part of Jonathan's bio goes a little something like this: Combining elements of computer science, anthropology, visual art and storytelling, Jonathan Harris designs systems to explore and explain the human world. He has made projects about human emotion,human desire, modern mythology, science, news, anonymity and language, and created the world's largest time capsule, which was translated into 10 languages.


I mean, who is this guy, right? But it seems to me that his work is just one more really brilliant way to experience appreciation for the day to day.

It's kind of been one of my New York goals to meet him. He gives amazing lectures too. So check out We Feel Fine, which was recently made into a beautiful hardcover book. I also recommend love-lines.

Story telling. Amen, brother.

More story telling after the jump...

plastic surgery

If you hang around me long enough, you'll probably hear me rant about plastic surgery. Or more specifically, boob jobs. And while this video is a genuinely disturbing demonstration of some sad self esteem type things, here is one of my biggest issues with plastic surgery: it's not fair.

I know what you're thinking-- Ryann, you have great boobs (why thank you!) why ever would you care about boobs??

It's not fair.

That's right. I said it. I got the boobs-- me. That's what I got. That's my little genetic flourish. You got something too! You got those legs or perfect skin or no bags under your eyes... depending on who you are. But me (and all the other well-endowed ladies) we got boobs.

It disrupts the balance of power when you can pay for yours. Because there's no surgery that make me 5'10 or speed up my metabolism. Not gonna happen. You can get what I have, but I can't get what you have.

Here's why else it's not only unfair, but disturbing-- building femmebots gives men an incorrect idea about what they should expect from women physically. It creates in their already spoiled and reckless brains the idea that women are supposed to look like that. And that they come a dime a dozen. There will always be another one. I get that men like boobs (supposedly). But I've noticed in the last several years, that men are so used to fake big boobs, they actually prefer them to real ones. I heard an actual friend of mine say, "I think real boobs look weird. I only like the way fake ones look..."

???

My comments on plastic surgery are by no means the best or the first on the subject, but they're mine. Just like my boobs. So back off, ladies. :)

That's all she ever thinks about; Riding with the wind

Tonight, I was reminded a lot of people who aren't with us anymore. It was Erin's going away party (and of course grad school is certainly a more benign "not with us anymore.") But we were at Arctica Bar and Dion & Pete played. Then their friend, Tucker, who was a fantastic guitar player. Back to back, he played two songs that both make me think of funerals. By missing those people, all the people came flooding into my mind.  


First, he played "Little Wing" which will forever and always remind me of my dear friend Gia's mother's funeral, when we were 22. I remember literally every single thing about that day. It was August, it was really hot and dry and blazingly sunny (like always- it was Vegas.) Everyone was squinting. And crying. It was a bad day for eyes. We were at a huge Catholic church and it felt like there were about three thousand people there. All Kathleen's sisters and extended Italian family.


The whole thing never seemed real. It came out of no where. Kathleen was so young and so pretty and was engaged to be married to a great guy that it had taken her a long time to find after she and Gia's dad divorced. Then, all of a sudden, on a desert road near their house, her Escalade flipped and it was all over.  

I remember that this was the first time I ever felt like I knew what I should do in regards to someone else's tragedy. What do you do with someone else's tragedy? I've been on the other end, for sure, and seen really great friends be at a total loss. So often, what starts as an attempt to comfort and "be there" for the grieving person only leads to the grieving person having to be there for the other person. It becomes about the wrong person.
But this day, this one day, I finally felt like I knew what I should do. Not say anything unless asked, and not call attention to myself as "someone to lean on." I said this one thing to Gia: "I'm going to be no farther away than 5 feet from you at all times today. I'm not going to say anything or buzz around you, like I know is going to happen. I'm not going to offer you food or advice or scripture. I'm just going to let you know that if you need me, I'll be no farther away than 5 feet."
The moment in the day when everyone really broke down (there were several almosts, but this was really the climax) was after the last speech of Kathleen's fiance and it lead right into this video montage of her with "Little Wing."
Just...
"Little Wing" is a truly perfect example of not over-writing lyrics. That with very few words and images, if they're that good, you hardly need anything.

Well she's walking through the clouds 
 With a circus mind that's running round 
 Butterflies and zebras 
 And moonbeams and fairy tales 
 That's all she ever thinks about 
 Riding with the wind. 


 When I'm sad, she comes to me 
 With a thousand smiles, she gives to me free 
 It's alright she says it's alright 
 Take anything you want from me, Anything. 


 Fly on little wing

Lullabys, Legends & Lies

I’m a big fan of cross-overs—something-slash-something else (I guess probably with the exception of model/actress—bleh--) and favorites from different genres collaborating.

I even have a whole diatribe about Grace Kelly. Some clueless kid in college once said to me, “I don’t get why everyone was so obsessed with Grace Kelly. I don’t get what the big deal is…” At which time I cut him off, “DON’T SEE WHAT THE BIG DEAL IS?!? She is the only person...ever... to achieve the conjoining of the two most sacred things a young girl can dream about—she was a movie star AND a princess! (!!!) A movie star AND!  a princess… ??”

I digress.

My point is, taking something amazing in its own right and adding another artistic element to it whips me into a giddy frenzy. My writing partner did a musical composition in college based on Keats’ La Belle Dame Sans Merci… and you can bet that it’s right up my alley.

Shel Silverstein, in addition to being a spooky-cool mysterious poet (whom I fawned over as a child), was also a song-writer (just to name a few of the things he was). He actually wrote the Johnny Cash hit, “Boy Named Sue" which I had forgotten about until today when my Cash greatest hits vinyl arrived at my office. Then, serendipitously, John Lundberg, via the Huffington Post discussed a new album from Sugar Hill Records featuring Shel Silverstein covers.

“Twistable, Turnable Man” features some of my favorites, like Lucinda Williams, Nanci Griffith and (sigh) Kris Kristofferson (also wrote for Johnny Cash), as well as a some other folks I’m not hip or indie enough to be well versed in.  

Just listening to a few clips, I remember reading Shel Silverstein late at night when I couldn’t sleep-- feeling  ghosty and haunted.  The feeling that, not only was my house haunted at night, but that I might even be the ghost.

It’s almost like Shel’s stories were the beginnings of an idea which I’m still working on, writing about, and writing through—my idea of urban magical realism (perhaps one day I’ll elaborate or post my college thesis about it here). Or suburban magical realism. At the very least, small, cold coastal town magical realism. A spooky amplification of ordinary life.

Finally, I’d like to say thank you to Shel Silverstein, who, as I’m re-reading some of his stuff now, I feel fairly confident is how I derived my sense of rhythm. I suppose Steven would be the best authority on how I tend to pace lyrics, but even just looking at this little snippet, I think: “Oooh, that’s the kind of thing that just makes me melt.”

And I can say that there are no moments in which I feel more satisfied with myself than when I put all the pieces I want into some lyrics, and they become something whole. Something that makes me think, “Oooh,” like I didn’t even write it.

"Lullabys, Legends and Lies"

Gather round fellows I'll tell you some tales about murder and blueberry pies
And heroes and hells and bottomless wells and lullabys legends and lies
And gather round ladies come sit at my feet I'll sing about warm sunny skies
There's mermaids and beans and lovin' machines in my lullabys legends and lies

"Twistable, Turnable Man" Available June 8th. (You know what else is available June 8th??)

a new orleans point of view

Watching Treme, and hearing stories from friends still living in the area, I've spent a lot of time thinking about New Orleans. One of the things that made me love Rice so much, even after I had graduated, was the wonderful & gracious way they accepted all Tulane students, no questions asked, full transfer credits into Rice. I felt proud to be a Rice grad. 

A fellow Rice grad (and Cronin's creative writing class cohort) Lamar White reminded me tonight that John Goodman's character in Treme is not only fully quoting the late fantastic blogger, Ashley Morris, in tonight's episode, but that the entire character is based on him. I seriously recommend reading Ashley Morris as well as my excellent friend Lamar. When I miss workshopping his short stories, I go read about his wacky capers on his website and feel better :)

For another point of view on New Orleans, I'm including some wonderful shots by the exceedingly talented, Corinne, who finally got her professional photography site up-- don't swarm her all at once, but her stuff is (clearly) amazing and not only is she economical, but she donates 30% of her profits to charities. 

I'll be back tomorrow with more theories on the universe. 

new music friends

Happy Sunday! I'm working on some blog posts, but for this lovely afternoon, here's some new music. My new friends Grant & Mike of 6th Street. I went to their show last night & had a total blast. They have a great rapport with each other, which is always a delight in a live show. Not to mention, they're named in honor of a great place in a great city, where they went to school, the lovely Austin, Texas. And I always love some fellow surrogate Texans. Good times, ya'll. Enjoy!