Spike Jonze’s short film Mourir Auprès de Toi (To Die By Your Side):
Spike Jonze: Mourir Auprès de Toi on Nowness.com.
Read about it — and watch a brief making-of film — at Brain Pickings. (And I should probably add, “…of course.”)
Midweek Music Break: Warren Zevon
In a music-rich culture, how do you decide what (and whom) to listen to in the first place? And what keeps you listening to it, over time?
My kid brother and I have had this pervasive and often subconscious back-and-forth influence on each other ever since he arrived on the scene. (Well, that first year was sort of blurry for me. Kindergarten, y’know. (“You’re leaving me where? By myself?!?”)) He has numerous stories about borrowing my stuff, from wherever I thought I’d stowed it securely, when I was looking the other way (i.e., often); he claims that the music he found on these occasions influenced what he listened to. (The books supposedly influenced what he read and, no doubt, the whole thing influenced how he sneaked.)
For my part, I haven’t always had an easy time “getting” the music he listened to. Some of it, like Pink Floyd, came along just a wee bit too late to make much of a dent in my awareness. But even obvious greats with whom I should have been familiar — The Who, for Pete’s sake! — didn’t click at first.
I think the problem was that I’d early fixated on melody in music (although I couldn’t and still can’t explain what melody is). No doubt, the hearing thing played a role: if I couldn’t reliably make out the lyrics, I at least had to like listening to whatever-it-was, as background to whatever I was really paying attention to. (Hence, for example, my early Herb Alpert fascination.) Once I’d listened to it a few times, okay, then I could move on to the lyrics. But if the sound didn’t strike me right, I might never care about the lyrics at all.
The first honest-to-gods musical bull’s-eye which he scored in my consciousness was Talking Heads. Even with them, I remember saying something like: I really like their music, but none of their song titles ever appear in the actual lyrics. He stared at me for a beat before answering, as tactfully as he could, That’s not true. So much for trying to fake my way through an assertion about lyrics which I didn’t, like, actually know.
Then we have the case of Warren Zevon. It may be the one recommendation whose failure with me has most surprised Little Brother.
I sympathize. On the face of it, what a natural fit: the guy wrote witty, sardonic, outright mordant (and often macabre) songs. Just look at some of the song titles, and know that the lyrics fall into line behind them:
- “Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner”
- “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead”
- “Bad Luck Streak In Dancing School”
- “You’re a Whole Different Person When You’re Scared”
Yet he also had a side capable of great tenderness. “Hasten Down the Wind,” anyone? And over the course of his career, he befriended and worked with some artists I flat-out loved: Linda Ronstadt, the Everly Brothers, Bonnie Raitt, Stevie Nicks, Jackson Brown, Neil Young, Bryan Setzer, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris — if I didn’t know any better, I’d swear the guy had been rummaging around in my head.
But somehow, a taste for the guy’s music itself always eluded me. Consequently, I’ve never listened to Zevon enough to “get” him. This breaks my heart as much as it may break my brother’s. (He’s been trying so long, and he’s so… so earnest about it, y’know?)
Well, Little Brother, tell you what. I’ll take this as a personal challenge, nay, mission: over the next year, I’ll commit myself to “getting” Warren Zevon. And I’ll check back with you about it in 2012.
In the meantime, here are a handful of Zevon selections that have already begun to grow on me, on the off-chance that some of the rest of you might not have encountered them.
Let’s start with “Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead” (originally from 1991’s Mr. Bad Example album; this is a solo acoustic performance in 1994):
[Lyrics]Next, “Sentimental Hygiene” (from 1987’s album of the same name):
[Lyrics]Finally, a selection from 2000’s Life’ll Kill Ya (released a couple years before Zevon’s diagnosis with the mesothelioma from which he’d die in 2003) — “Don’t Let Us Get Sick”:
[Below, click Play button to begin Don’t Let Us Get Sick. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 3:04 long.]
[audio:dontletusgetsick_warrenzevon.mp3|titles=’Don’t Let Us Get Sick’|artists=Warren Zevon]
[Lyrics]
Happy birthday, Little Brother — the family’s very own, our one and only excitable boy.
Too Little Then, Too Much Now
[Video: introduction to The Present, a Kickstarter project to produce a clock which takes a whole year to complete a cycle. The clock will mark the passage of time by subtle changes in the background hue to which the clock’s single hand — a “season hand”? — points.]
From whiskey river’s commonplace book:
Do you really believe that the sciences would ever have originated and grown if the way had not been prepared by magicians, alchemists, astrologers and witches whose promises and pretensions first had to create a thirst, a hunger, a taste for hidden and forbidden powers? Indeed, infinitely more had to be promised than could ever be fulfilled in order that anything at all might be fulfilled in the realms of knowledge.
(Friedrich Nietzsche)
…and:
Now there is present in the world at the moment, or at least I like to think so, an impulse which I have named the archaic revival. What happens is that whenever a society really gets in trouble, and you can use this in your own life — when you really get in trouble — what you should do is say “what did I believe in the last sane moments that I experienced” and then go back to that moment and act from it even if you no longer believe it.
(Terence McKenna)
…and:
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.
(Philip K. Dick)
PBS: Dogs Decoded
Every dog owner thinks he knows how his or her canine companion thinks. I doubt that many dog owners already know everything covered in this single one-hour program on PBS’s Nova series, (re-)broadcast last night. Here’s a brief intro:
Watch Dogs Decoded on PBS. See more from NOVA.
Sample tidbit: genetically, via mitochondrial DNA (passed down, unchanged, in the maternal bloodline), dogs are gray wolves. Not similar to gray wolves. Identical to them. MicroPooches, Irish wolfhounds, chihuahuas, mutts, pit bulls, Labradors, collies, shar-peis, Afghan hounds, setters, Mexican hairless, basset hounds, German shepherds, poodles… gray wolves.
For now, if it’s not being rebroadcast any time soon on your local PBS station, you can watch the whole thing online, in eight- or ten-minute chunks, by following the link highlighted above, just below the embedded video.
Midweek Music Break: The Fleetwoods
The Fleetwoods were one of those groups more successful than one-hit wonders — they had several hits — but they never quite broke through into super-stardom, either. They seemed to be here, and then not-here.*
The group seems to have formed almost by accident:
In one version, high-school students Gretchen Christopher and her friend Barbara Ellis had been trying to organize an all-girl vocal trio in the late 1950s, in their hometown of Olympia, Washington. They’d already been working on some songs but felt they needed a third voice to complete their “sound,” whatever it might turn out to be.
Gary Troxel, a boy in their class, played the trumpet; Christopher and he were waiting for her mother to pick them up after school one day, when he started humming a jazzy little tune he’d been thinking of. The story goes that Christopher (as Wikipedia puts it) “recognized that it was based on the same chord progression as the song she had been writing.” They invited Troxel to sing with them and, well, instant history: their first hit song.**
The title of the whispery number: “Softly, Softly.” Billing themselves as Two Girls and a Guy, they performed it at a couple of school functions, changing the name somewhere in there to “Come Softly.” They tape-recorded it that way, all but a capella — their only accompaniment the jingling rhythm of Troxel’s car keys — and Dolphin Records eventually picked them up.
Dolphin Records seems to have been haunted by nomenclature: the group was renamed The Fleetwoods — supposedly — by picking the name from a phone book; the song was retitled “Come Softly to Me,” although that phrase occurs nowhere in the lyrics, because the company thought “Come Softly” a bit too suggestive… and the label itself shortly had to be renamed from Dolphin to Dolton, because a Dolphin Records already existed. Whoops. Details, details.
After “Come Softly to Me,” the trio charted something like ten more songs. Of these, The Missus’s personal favorite is “Tragedy”:
[Below, click Play button to begin Tragedy. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 2:43 long.]
[audio:tragedy_fleetwoods.mp3|titles=’Tragedy’|artists=The Fleetwoods]
Lyrics:
Tragedy
(by Gerald H. Nelson and Fred B. Burch; performance by The Fleetwoods)Wind and storm (wah-ooh)
Gone’s the sun (wah-ooh)
From the stars (wah-ooh)
My dark has come
You’ve gone from me, whoa, whoa,
TragedyOh, come back (come back)
Have me here (right here)
Hold me love (my love)
Be sincere
You’ve gone from me, whoa, whoa,
TragedyLike smoke (like smoke) from a fire (from a fire)
Our love (of love) whoa oh oh whoa
Our dreams (our dreams) have all gone (all gone)
Above (above) whoa oh oh whoaBlown (blown by wind)
Kissed by the snow
All that’s left is the dark be-ee (below)
You’ve gone from me, whoa, whoa, tragedy
Whoa, whoa, whoa tragedy
The Missus has told me a few times of the first occasion on which she heard this song. She was both young and old enough at the time to be swept away by the title, the lyrics, and the whole sound. Melodrama in her soul even then!
As for “Come Softly to Me,” numerous other artists have covered it. Here’s an hypnotic interpretation by The Roches, from their 1985 Another World album:
[Below, click Play button to begin Come Softly to Me. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 3:02 long.]
[audio:comesoftlytome_theroches.mp3|titles=’Come Softly to Me’|artists=The Roches]
Lyrics:
Come Softly to Me
(by Gretchen Christopher, Barbara Ellis, and Gary Troxel;
performance by The Roches)Mm dooby do, dahm dahm, dahm do dahm ooby do
Dahm dahm, dahm do dahm, ooby do
Dahm dahm, dahm do dahm, ooby do
Dahm dahm, dahm ooh dahmMm dooby do, dahm dahm, dahm do dahm ooby do
Dahm dahm, dahm do dahm, ooby do
Dahm dahm, dahm do dahm, ooby do
Dahm dahm, dahm ooh dahm
Mm dooby do(Come softly, darling)
(Come to me, sta-ay)
(You’re my ob-session)
(For ever and a da-ay)I want, want you to kno-o-ow
I love, I love you so
Please hold, hold me so tight
All through, all through the night(Speak softly, darling)
(Hear what I sa-ay)
(I love you always)
(Always, always)I’ve waited, waited so long
For your kisses and your love
Please come, come to me
From up, from up above(Come softly, darling)
(Come softly, darling)
I need, need you so much
Wanna feel your wa-arm touchMm dooby do, dahm dahm, dahm do dahm ooby do
Dahm dahm, dahm do dahm, ooby do
Dahm dahm, dahm do dahm, ooby do
Dahm dahm, dahm ooh dahm(repeat to end)
_________________
* “They” continue to perform — in various combinations of original personnel and replacements… singing their original hits.
** A different but more complete version of this story, 
suggesting that Troxel and Christopher have squabbled over who deserves how much credit, appears at Troxel’s site. That site also contains this tidbit: the license plate on one of Troxel’s restored antique cars — a 1932 Ford Roadster — reads NDOBEDO. Ha!
You Think You Know the World
[Image: Supper at Emmaus (1601-02), by Michelangelo da Caravaggio]
From whiskey river:
October
1
There’s this shape, black as the entrance to a cave.
A longing wells up in its throat
like a blossom
as it breathes slowly.What does the world
mean to you if you can’t trust it
to go on shining when you’renot there? and there’s
a tree, long-fallen; once
the bees flew to it, like a procession
of messengers, and filled it
with honey.2
I said to the chickadee, singing his heart out in the
green pine tree:little dazzler
little song,
little mouthful.3
The shape climbs up out of the curled grass. It
grunts into view. There is no measure
for the confidence at the bottom of its eyes—
there is no telling
the suppleness of its shoulders as it turns
and yawns.
Near the fallen tree
something — a leaf snapped loose
from the branch and fluttering down — tries to pull me
into its trap of attention.4
It pulls me
into its trap of attention.And when I turn again, the bear is gone.
5
Look, hasn’t my body already felt
like the body of a flower?6
Look, I want to love this world
as though it’s the last chance I’m ever going to get
to be alive
and know it.7
Sometimes in late summer I won’t touch anything, not
the flowers, not the blackberries
brimming in the thickets; I won’t drink
from the pond; I won’t name the birds or the trees;
I won’t whisper my own name.One morning
the fox came down the hill, glittering and confident,
and didn’t see me — and I thought:so this is the world.
I’m not in it.
It is beautiful.
(Mary Oliver [source])
…and:
When
When it’s over, it’s over, and we don’t know
any of us, what happens then.
So I try not to miss anything.
I think, in my whole life, I have never missed
the full moon
Or the slipper of its coming back.
Or, a kiss,
Well, yes, especially a kiss.
(Mary Oliver [source])
Midweek Music Break: Barr Brothers, “Beggar in the Morning”
The Barr Brothers, Brad and Andrew, report the following at their Web site, among other facts:
- They hail from Providence, RI.
- They “discovered rock ‘n’ roll” in 1983.
- Their “spirited, improv-based rock trio, The Slip” toured the country for around ten years.
- “In his first apartment in [Montreal], Brad shared an adjoining wall with Sarah Page, a classically trained harpist from Montreal with a propensity for the experimental… a friendship developed and the brothers, with Sarah, began recording and performing around Montreal. Soon, their friend and multi-instrumentalist Andres Vial was brought in to lend his wide array of expertise to the outfit, playing keyboards, bass, vibes, percussion, and singing.”
Brad Barr, they say, had listened to Sarah Page through the wall of his apartment long enough to learn the melody she was playing — whereupon he went next door and played it back for her. That melody, I’m guessing, is what we hear as they duo in “Sarah Through the Wall”:
The foursome just released their first (self-titled) album a couple weeks ago. It’s eerily mature, feeling almost like some other band’s third or fourth outing. For one single, “Beggar in the Morning,” they had some help from Swiss-Canadian artist and lighting designer Stephan Bircher; its video features a visual storyline which transforms all four band members into slightly creepy marionettes, crafted by Bircher from [pause for sting of organ music] the bones of small animals:
(See more of Bircher’s Corpse Bride-ish work at his own site.)
Lyrics:
Beggar in the Morning
(The Barr Brothers)Steady woman won’t you come on down
I need you right here on the ground
I’ve walked the outskirts of this town
Been terrorized by what I’ve found
I saw a standing virgin bride
Where holy Dionysus died
She tore the heart out of his side
And laid it dead and there she criedOh oh oh ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
She said hello I’m a monster too
What poisons me is what poisons you
To these animals we grew
But when we were young our eyes were blueI take my medicine on my knees
Twice a day, but lately three
It keeps the devil from my door
It makes me rich and it makes me poorI’m a beggar in the morning
I’m a king at night
When my belt is loose
And my trigger is tightMay come without warning
At the speed of light
Make it shine so pretty
Make it shine so brightIt seems I’ve come a long long way
To sit before you here today
they’re yours and yours the songs I play
To take with you to throw awayOh oh oh oh ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Oh I want an angel to wipe my tears
I want my dreams, my hopes, desires and fears
We may capsize but we won’t drown
Hold each other as the sun goes downI’m a beggar in the morning
I’m a king at night
When my belt is loose and my trigger is tight
May come without warning
At the speed of light
Make it shine so pretty make it shine so bright
“I’m a beggar in the morning/I’m a king at night”: that couplet alone is gold. Has the sound of a fairy tale, doesn’t it? I’ve looked around the Web, though, and can’t match the line up with anything other than this song (and of course recast in other words, most obviously The Prince and the Pauper). “Beggar in the Morning” alone would make a great name for a children’s game — one handed down from the Middle Ages, and involving a certain amount of role-playing and -reversal: Tag, you’re poor, and tag, I’m not.
Brad Barr recently stopped in at Guitar World to demonstrate a guitar made from a fishing-tackle box:
…Barr also employs a unique string bow technique, where individual threads are attached to guitar strings and pulled through his fingers to create a static, quivering sound.
The Guitar World article features a video of Barr demonstrating this technique, and a photo slide show of the instrument itself (crafted by a firm called Hobo Nation).
Go Right Ahead
[Image: note dropped by South Vietnamese Air Force Major Buang-Ly onto the deck of the USS Midway on April 30, 1975. It says, “Can you move the Helicopter to the other side, I can land on your runway, I can fly 1 hour more, we have enough time to mouve. Please rescue me. Major Buang, wife and 5 child.” See the marvelous Letters of Note site for the complete story.]
From whiskey river (italicized portion):
Our Valley
We don’t see the ocean, not ever, but in July and August
when the worst heat seems to rise from the hard clay
of this valley, you could be walking through a fig orchard
when suddenly the wind cools and for a moment
you get a whiff of salt, and in that moment you can almost
believe something is waiting beyond the Pacheco Pass,
something massive, irrational, and so powerful even
the mountains that rise east of here have no word for it.You probably think I’m nuts saying the mountains
have no word for ocean, but if you live here
you begin to believe they know everything.
They maintain that huge silence we think of as divine,
a silence that grows in autumn when snow falls
slowly between the pines and the wind dies
to less than a whisper and you can barely catch
your breath because you’re thrilled and terrified.You have to remember this isn’t your land.
It belongs to no one, like the sea you once lived beside
and thought was yours. Remember the small boats
that bobbed out as the waves rode in, and the men
who carved a living from it only to find themselves
carved down to nothing. Now you say this is home,
so go ahead, worship the mountains as they dissolve in dust,
wait on the wind, catch a scent of salt, call it our life.
(Philip Levine [source])
…and:
The truth is you already know what it’s like. You already know the difference between the size and speed of everything that flashes through you and the tiny inadequate bit of it all you can ever let anyone know. As though inside you is this enormous room full of what seems like everything in the whole universe at one time or another and yet the only parts that get out have to somehow squeeze out through one of those tiny keyholes you see under the knob in older doors. As if we are all trying to see each other through these tiny keyholes.
But it does have a knob, the door can open. But not in the way you think… The truth is you’ve already heard this. That this is what it’s like. That it’s what makes room for the universes inside you, all the endless inbent fractals of connection and symphonies of different voices, the infinities you can never show another soul. And you think it makes you a fraud, the tiny fraction anyone else ever sees? Of course you’re a fraud, of course what people see is never you. And of course you know this, and of course you try to manage what part they see if you know it’s only a part. Who wouldn’t? It’s called free will, Sherlock. But at the same time it’s why it feels so good to break down and cry in front of others, or to laugh, or speak in tongues, or chant in Bengali — it’s not English anymore, it’s not getting squeezed through any hole.
So cry all you want, I won’t tell anybody.
(David Foster Wallace, from Oblivion: Stories [source])
Midweek Music Break: Gabrielle Roth and the Mirrors, “The Calling”
Years ago, The Missus and I first encountered — the verb carefully chosen — Gabrielle Roth and the Mirrors via a local greeting-card store known not just for its offbeat card assortment, but also for its soundtrack. “What is that?” we asked the proprietor, and he directed us to the Bones CD propped up by the cash register.
From her Web site:
Gabrielle Roth has turned thousands of people across the globe on to the inner, healing rhythms of their dancing souls, the creative brilliance of their innate originality and the unexpected daring to express themselves in theater, dance and poetry. Through her movement philosophy, the 5Rhythms®, Gabrielle and her certified teachers world-wide have helped people of all ages discover that when you put the psyche in motion, it heals itself.
Based in New York City, Gabrielle has written three books, produced three DVDs and 20 albums. Through her ongoing interactive-live theater, catalytic classes and workshops around the world, Gabrielle continues to inspire and guide people on the path of shaping life itself into a work of art.
[She] is a musician, author, music director, dancer, philosopher and recording artist in the world music and trance dance genres, with a special interest in shamanism. Known as the “urban shaman”, she is music director of the theatre company The Mirrors and has been a member of the Actor’s Studio… She is currently teaching experimental theater in New York based on The Roth 5Rhythms and training others to use shamanic methods within artistic, education, and healing contexts.
I didn’t know almost any of that before working on this post. I knew only her music. (I’d never heard of the “trance dance” genre, either. After reading Wikipedia’s entry on it, I think I know even less about it than I did from pure guesswork.) To “get” it, maybe you just need to know that the liner notes for 1989’s Bones lists the following instruments, among others:
| Synthesizer | Conga |
| Tom-Tom | Shaker |
| Wood Block | Fiddle |
| Whistle (Human) | Whistle (Instrument) |
| Balafon | Dun-dun |
| Rattle | Cowbell |
| Guiro | Jimbae |
| Asheiko | Cello |
| Bells | Cowbell |
“The Calling,” below, opens the Bones album and is typical: eight minutes of complex percussion, underlying and interwoven with something very much like a flute. It doesn’t strike me, exactly, as hypnotic — trance-inducing — but it’s not exactly melodic or “tuneful,” either. You won’t find yourself whistling the melody long after hearing it, even many times over. But you could fairly describe it as absorbing: quietly infectious, especially in the background when you’re working to (say) unravel a knotted plot. Not that I’ve ever used it for that purpose.
[Below, click Play button to begin The Calling. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 7:57 long.]
[audio:thecalling_gabriellerothandthemirrors.mp3|titles=’The Calling’|artists=Gabrielle Roth + the Mirrors]
A Crowded Vacuum
[Image: Giorgio de Chirico, Melancholy and Mystery of a Street]
From whiskey river:
The River
This is my formula for the fall of things:
we come to a river we always knew we’d have to cross.
It ferries the twilight down through fieldworksof corn and half-blown sunflowers.
The only sounds, one lost cicada calling to itself
and the piping of a bird that will never have a name.Now tell me there is a pause
where we know there should be an end;
then tell me you too imagined it this waywith our shadows never quite touching the river
and the river never quite reaching the sea.
(John Glenday, from Grain [source])
…and:
The logic of emptiness is wonderfully air-tight. Like all simple truths, its clarity is immediately self evident. We are. And there is no moment in which we are separate and apart: we are always connected — to past, to future, to others, to objects, to air, earth, sky. Every thought, every emotion, every action, every moment of time, has multiple causes and reverberations, tendrils of culture, history, hurt and joy that stretch out mysteriously and endlessly.
(Norman Fischer [source])
…and:
An autumn night
don’t think your life
didn’t matter.
(Bashō)
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