But I'd be all right

I saw a heart in a cold, cold west-east moving cloud tonight. A message. An answer. 

It must have dissipated before it reached the lake. 

But I saw it.

Evolution time

New talisman from a 30 year-old experience. I never really did hear all of the lyrics clearly, and I didn't pay attention when I sent off to Grand Royal for a lyric sheet. 

That's okay, "I don't see things quite the same as I used to..." And I can paste them here for posterity. 

Stand Together

I don't see things quite the same as I used to
As I live my life, I've got just me to be true to
When I find that I don't know about just what to do
I turn and look within to see what I should do
Now I'm not sure what it takes to be hip
A lot of people making music that to be ain't shit
So I ask creation for rhymes for this jam
Gimme lickle solo and I'll take the mic stand

Love vibe, love vibe, love vibe, love vibe
Love vibe, love vibe, love vibe, love vibe

Yeah, as the earth spins into a brand new day
I see the light on the horizon's not fading away
Gonna shine from within, like a bright white sun
No need to hide and no place to run
Got the vibrations of the music bringing light to your mind
So you can move and groove, and feel the beat of the time
Sense the power in the air as it starts to move
You get a real good feeling that you just can't lose

Love vibe
Contemplation time
Love vibe
Intuition time
Love vibe
Evolution time
Love vibe
Resolution time

Free your mind, it's time for good times
And let yourself move, it's a time to shine
Spread your wings in the sky, feelin' good inside
Breaking fool with no need to hide
I got the music cuttin' through me
Takin' control of my soul
I can't hold back, I've got to let go

Stand together (people come together now)
It's about time (we've got to get together now)
Stand together (people come together now)
I said it's about time (we've got to get together now), come on
Stand together (people come together now)
I said it's about time (we've got to get together, y'all) 

I think we should stand together

Who has a say on how the way things should be?

This one kept my head up for a time. Happened across it, NPR probably, it burned through a haze, sun in fog.

Everything is set in motion, and then it's set again, and again. Pain burns away what doesn't matter. God damn, that match hurts when you'e holding it, but, later, it's a charred tip of wood or paper, it's an ash, it's the imprint of fire that gave light to something bigger and that has a purpose.

But no matter where the days have left you

You know what the street cafe is. Well, I do, anyway, and that's what matters. 

 

When there's less of it to waste

You know might be getting irretrievably nestled into middle age when you hear this song and suddenly and poignantly and really get the lyrics to the point that you are also crying.

You are also hormonal and middle aged.

And grateful.

Wake me up.

Four years ago today:



Just exactly as I remembered
Every word
Every gesture
I'm a heart in cold ground


RadioHead - the kiNg of limbs - Separator

Take a straight and stronger course to the corner of your life.

Happy New Yes.



Send an instant karma to me.

I let my music take me where / My heart wants to go

To do what you do that you must

Hard to remember what a state I was in

The moment had passed
Like I knew that it should.

I'm not ****ed, not quite

Today it's been a decade since Elliott Smith died. As I said at the time (or Stephanie did), you really have to want to go to go that way.

His fans are legion, and loyal. I came to the party (probably poor word choice there) late, absorbing every syllable and note of XO during my first year in Chicago. And later. And even later.

Is it the best break-up album ever? I say it's the best post- and post-post, and starting-to-feel-stronger-every-day-post- and wow-what-a-distant-memory-but-this-reminds-me-I-did-it post-breakup album.

I know the album is the death knell of...something, the dreaded major-label debut, but if anything, Elliott's Big Sellout gives him more tools to be even better. The production is not too much, and I think I have a pretty decent over-production bullsheet sensor.

Every track takes a mask off of betrayal and renewal. I'll ponder that more, after a visit to the online store.

It was hard to decide, but this one has always meant the most:

When the sun settles down and it takes a lovely form

I discovered this song back when I would bike to the lakefront with my now practically prehistoric mp3 player/radio combo on Sunday afternoons and would sit there and out at that sky/sea line and listen to Herb Kent The Cool Gent all afternoon, until the sun wasn't burning overhead anymore and the water turned into that unreal mercury color.

But it made me think of the end of the day someplace else, on my beloved Anna Maria Island, where we'd carry our gear (chairs, umbrella) and munitions (beer) to the beach after the burning peak of the day, at about 3, and live there--I mean live--until after sunset.

Each of those sunsets is still etched in my heart somewhere, after almost exactly a decade ago and two additional midsummer visits. The day trip a couple of years ago as March dawned was especially special because we brought new visitors with us.

There was a time that this song salved some wounds for me, on those long and solitary Sunday afternoons, and offered the inkling of the constancy of peace in one's heart. It places me there, in the heart, and at AMI with the people and place that I love, and reminds that the part of the day spent in that kind of peace, company and place, is what matters most.

I would rather be alone than pretend I feel alright.

The beauty that surrounds them.

I'm watching dead, brown leaves tumble out of the window and thinking about how I probably got hold of All Things Must Pass exactly two years ago, and how it turned out to become a balm for my heart and mind, and how I can listen to it again without either immediate recoiling or renewal. This track in particular just is what it is: majestic, wise, yearning, soothing, prescient, pushing.

Life goes where it does.

This is one of my favorite albums of all time. I cannot hear it without driving in Southern California in my mind's eye; up, up, over the arid hills east of San Diego, on the freeway curving down to the island, Coronado, gliding on the 5, the ocean on one side and the daunting, vast military base on the other. The towns on the PCH hang from it like gems on a necklace - San Clemente, where Nixon maybe found soulful peace in the horizon line, Dana Point, then, after not much at all, increasingly less lush seascapes at Laguna and Newport, and then Huntington with its oil derricks. The topography is always stark and the sky is perpetually pink. The car navigates the curves as though they are coming from inside me. In Los Angeles County, the 10 is a conveyer belt moving you west to Santa Monica; it drops you into  wide boulevards until you can make some left turns and find the ocean again. But it's below, too far to seem churning, or even real, but it is.

Everything here is foreign and familiar at the same time.

You've got to lead where your heart says go

The actual tune starts about 1:45, but the interview is worthwhile.



I feel hopeful listening to this. Maybe because I read (most of) my party's platform today. Maybe because I'm planning good things like travel and reconnecting friendships. Or that Prince is coming.

The lyrics hit me like a delicate scent wafting out of a full-blown-summer flowerbed. And those aren't going to be around much longer; it was dusk at 7:45 tonight). Instead of feeling the loss, I just felt the sunset.

You Gotta Move to Start

On Repeat: Make love your destination

Today's Shuffle: The More You Try to Erase Me

Turn Up the Future/Turn Off the Past

I have to investigate this lady. As usual, I discovered this the very day after she played in my town.