i want me some walkman

so i can listen to this

The Walkmen cover R.E.M.

plus, it's definitely badass

Stuff vs Stuff 'Walkman vs Hoover' from Sumo Science on Vimeo.

and i still have my cassette tapes

yes! i'm getting one!

of taking flight

The Meridian

(excerpts)

Poetry is perhaps this: an Atemwende, a turning of our breath.

---

It is true, the poem, the poem today, shows--and this has only indirectly to do with the difficulties of vocabulary, the faster flow of syntax or a more awakened sense of ellipsis, none of which we should underrate--the poem clearly shows a strong tendency towards silence.

     The poem holds its ground, if you will permit me yet another extreme formulation, the poem holds its ground on its own margin. In order to endure, it constantly calls and pulls itself back from an "already-no-more" into a "still here."

The "still-here" can only mean speaking. Not language as such, but responding and--not just verbally--"corresponding" to something.

     In other words: language actualized, set free under the sign of a radical individuation which, however, remains as aware of the limits drawn by language as of the possibilities it opens.

     The "still-here" of the poem can only be found in the work of poets who do not forget that they speak from an angle of reflection which is their own existence, their own physical nature.

     This shows the poem yet more clearly as one person's language become shape and, essentially, a presence in the present.

The poem is lonely. It is lonely and en route. Its author stays with it. 

     Does this very fact not place the poem already here, at its inception, in the encounter, in the mystery of encounter?

---

The poem becomes--under what conditions--the poem of a person who still perceives, still turns towards phenomena, addressing and questioning them. The poem becomes conversation--often desperate conversation.

     Only the space of this conversation can establish what is addressed, can gather it into a "you" around the naming and speaking I. But this "you," comes about by dint of being named and addressed, brings its otherness into the present. Even in the here and now of the poem--and the poem has only this one, unique, momentary present--even in this immediacy and nearness, the otherness gives voice to what is most its own: its time.

     Whenever we speak with things in this way we also dwell on the question of their where-from and where-to, an "open" question "without resolution," a question which points towards open, empty, free spaces--we have ventured far out.

     The poem also searches for this place.

---

Enlarge art?

     No. On the contrary, take art with you into your innermost narrowness. And set yourself free.

---

Voices from the path through nettles:

Come to us on your hands.

Alone with your lamp,

Only your hand to read.

---

Is it on such paths that poems take us when we think of them? And are these paths only detours, detours from you to you? But they are, among how many others, the paths on which language becomes voice. They are encounters, paths from a voice to a listening You, natural paths, outlines for existence perhaps, for projecting ourselves into the search for ourselves . . . A kind of homecoming.

---

I find something as immaterial as language, yet earthly, terrestrial, in the shape of a circle which, via both poles, rejoins itself and on the way serenely crosses even the tropics: I find . . . a meridian.

(Speech on the occasion of receiving the Georg Büchner Prize, Darmstadt, October 22, 1960)

Translated by Rosemarie Waldrop

great covers

The Swell Season covers Neutral Milk Hotel

Two-headed boy
All floating in glass
The sun, it has passed
Now it's blacker than black
I can hear as you tap on your jar
I am listening to hear where you are
I am listening to hear where you are

Two-headed boy
Put on Sunday shoes
And dance around the room to accordion keys
With the needle that sings in your heart
Catching signals that sound in the dark
Catching signals that sound in the dark

We will take off our clothes
And they'll be placing fingers through the notches in your spine
And when all is breaking
Everything that you could keep aside
Now your eyes ain't moving now
They just lay there in their climb

Two-headed boy
With pulleys and weights
Creating a radio played just for two
In the parlor with a moon across her face
And through the music he sweetly displays
Silver speakers that sparkle all day
Made for his lover who's floating
And choking with her hands across her face

And in the dark we will take off our clothes
And they'll be placing fingers through the notches in your spine
And when all is breaking
Everything that you could keep aside
Now your eyes ain't moving now
They just lay there in their climb

Two-headed boy
There is no reason to grieve
The world that you need is wrapped in gold silver sleeves
Left beneath Christmas trees in the snow
And I will take you and leave you alone
Watching spirals of white softly flow
Over your eyelids and all you did
Will wait until the point when you let go

What a beautiful face
I have found in this place
That is circling all round the sun
What a beautiful dream
That could flash on the screen
In a blink of an eye and be gone from me
Soft and sweet
Let me hold it close and keep it here with me, me

And one day we will die
And our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea
But for now we are young
Let us lay in the sun
And count every beautiful thing we can see
Love to be
In the arms of all I'm keeping here with me, me

What a curious life we have found here tonight
There is music that sounds from the street
There are lights in the clouds
Anna's ghost all around
Hear her voice as it's rolling and ringing through me
Soft and sweet
How the notes all bend and reach above the trees, trees

Now how I remember you
How I would push my fingers through
Your mouth to make those muscles move
That made your voice so smooth and sweet
Now we keep where we don't know
All secrets sleep in winter clothes
With one you loved so long ago
Now he don't even know his name

What a beautiful face
I have found in this place
That is circling all round' the sun
And when we meet on a cloud
I'll be laughing out loud
I'll be laughing with everyone I see
Can't believe how strange it is to be anything at all

Ramona Falls

I love Brent from Menomena.

Ramona Falls is his solo project.

How he works

I Say Fever

Good Night

Good Morning

yes, you

Lost as a snowflake in the sea

I Am Not Yours


I am not yours, not lost in you,
Not lost, although I long to be
Lost as a candle lit at noon,
Lost as a snowflake in the sea.


You love me, and I find you still
A spirit beautiful and bright,
Yet I am I, who long to be
Lost as light is lost in light.


Oh plunge me deep in love--put out
My senses, leave me deaf and blind,
Swept by the tempest of your love,
A taper in a rushing wind.




- Sara Teasdale

flight

a restless sunday afternoon brought me to a bookstore

and i found this

flight by jacques f. ormond

for five quarters, i took the book home with me.

always, again, at home in flight.

"From the first flight novel, Journey to the Moon, by Francis Godwin, published in 1738. In this naively imaginative tale, man is carried aloft in a contraption drawn by trained birds."

26 July 2010

A rough guide to restlessness

25 July 2010

Good morning, Sunday

my kind of pop

Menomena - The Insulation

Begin to unwind as the process is riddled with fear of mankind, the prospect of failing’s on par with divine. There’s a tip of an ice-burg with wandering eyes, and sights set on melting a hole through your heart or a shoe through the floor, and my only request on your way out the door is that you take a bow. Take a bow. Take a bow.  

So, I must confess with the whisper that pulls at the hairs on your neck, “I’m a clear cutting fool who’s filled with regret” for rings left uncounted from trunks that I’ve split. How could I ever begin to unwind? It’s a process that’s riddled with fear of mankind, the prospect of failing’s on par with divine. There’s a tip of an ice-burg with wandering eyes, and sights set on melting a hole through your heart or a shoe through the floor, and my only request on your way out the door is that you take a bow. Take a bow. Take a bow. Take a bow.

There is a draft coming up the stairs from the tiny room. The vibes aren’t all that good, so I avoid going down there unless it’s a complete necessity which is usually only twice a year. There is a hole in the kitchen wall covered by a stopped clock. The insulation could be better, but I like the thought that I’m sheltered from the elements by a broken countdown towards extinction. There is a hole in the ceiling pointing to the north star, reassuring me I’ll find my way home, as long as there’s no clouds a’rambling in the night sky, my alignments cosmically exact.

Begin to unwind as the process that’s riddled with fear of mankind, the prospect of failing’s on par with divine. There’s a tip of an ice-burg with wandering eyes, and sights set on melting a hole through your heart or a shoe through the floor, and my only request on your way out the door is that you take a bow. Take a bow. Take a bow. 

Begin to unwind as the process that’s riddled with fear of mankind, the prospect of failing’s on par with divine. There’s a tip of an ice-burg with wandering eyes, and sights set on melting a hole through your heart or a shoe through the floor, and my only request on your way out the door is that you 

take a bow.