Falling into 2010

iTunes shuffle provided me with Malory's "Falling" from Not here Not now and it seemed like the best thing to gently ferry me into the night and into next year. Couldn't find a corresponding video on youtube, so I'm going with "Spring," the track that follows "Falling."

Clever, you German shoegazers.



Put on your headphones and drift away into the next chapter of your life. See you there.

My first blog crossover post! Like Grey's Anatomy & Private Practice, only without the hot actors and cheesy made-for-weepy-tv music!

A Mi-nute Minute

So much brewing in the cast iron kettle of my brain. Mostly, though, I want to talk snow.

An unexpected 'storm' dropped several inches into the Willamette Valley today. Is it that I was born midwinter that explains why I love the snow so much? A late February baby, Piscean and possibly even Rilkean... there is something in me that knows no peace until the snow falls. Sure-- falling flakes are known as tranquility personified to a shockingly cliched degree... but the snow falling in blankets on the city makes me well up with awesome and provides some kind of spiritual ecstasy that I can get nowhere else.

Maybe it is snow's absence from my life that makes me adore it so. I'm sure I couldn't hack it in a truly snowy climate, but for now-- with ignorance as my guide, that's what I'm secretly seeking.

I just want to connect.

Nothing original about that statement, but since I live by cliches and other people's wisdom-- so be it.

I just want to CONNECT.



*posted from my mobile device*

PLENTY.To.Think.About

I've got a few minutes before the dryer finishes, which I think it is pretty much what EVERYONE is waiting for on a Sunday night... am I right?

Thinking, though I can't say long and hard... more like short and shallow... Thinking about MOTIVATION. Or the complete absence of motivation. Perplexed why some people have it in spades while others don't even have it at all. Does motivation really just mean 'whatever is important to you'?? Like-- if all you really do is lay on the couch eating ice cream, are you motivated to be doing that? The conventional wisdom (ie, cliches) would say that you are not motivated at all, rather just fucking lazy. But perhaps instead of being completely unmotivated, you're just motivated by different things.

There are things I *want* to want. I *want* to care about metadata, CSS, APIs. I *want* to enjoy going for a run. I *want* to love broccoli. I *want* to learn to shred a Kirk Hammett solo. But even though I am telling myself I want those things, I know I don't want them-- otherwise I'd be doing them.

Life is a riot.

Waiting For Snow

I feel a modicum of disappointment that the snow is late... emerged from the basement expecting to look out and see falling flakes, I would whip out my laptop and indulge in a nice long piece about the snow... how lovely... how serene... how equalizing...

Instead, back to bed with a cat near my head, purring loudly, and the manufactured comfort of an electric blanket on 'Hi'...


*posted from my mobile device*

A Test of Technology

Ah, mobile publishing.


*posted from my mobile device*

A Scrap!

Just found this little tidbit (I almost just unconsciously typed out turdbit-- wtf?!) while tidying a dusty corner of my iMac's documents folder:


im calling you, your majesty.
do you remember me?
i've always trailed behind you
doing anything youve asked me to

...i want to be done hurting you
<  />

we hurt the ones we love, my dear
i've been felled by you a million times
but i still can't shed a tear

i live now to haunt you, far and near
to exact a revenge on your crimes
we hurt the ones we love, my dear

i'm spilling your secrets, did you hear?
each reveal, a churchbell chime
but i still can't shed a tear.


I know on sight that I wrote this after reading Christopher Ciccone's book last year. I went on to write something else on the subject-- exactly the same thematically, if a bit different in form... wonder where I put it down... Obviously I reached for a forms of poetry handbook-- no way would I have come up with that crazy scheme on my own (the last 9 lines)... and I gotta give a shout out to Shakespear's Sister -- I rip off this one particular lyric of theirs all the time :


We hurt the ones we love the most
It's a subtle form of compliment

So it takes me a while, okay?!

Was it only last month I went apeshit retooling this itty bitty repository? Time flies. Tasks fall to the floor. I ignore them, gingerly stepping over the ones I know I need to get back to eventually... to boot-- no shortage of upcoming events, either... :)

A PATRON OF THE ARTS... originally, that was just a way to stay anonymous on Blogger while leaving a hint at some part of me... but as of late, I have been thinking long and hard about PATRONAGE and the fact that it is a dying art (pun unintended, there's just no other way to say it!).

Modern life (the life I lead with my laptop close by at all times) connects us in so many new ways, even as it disconnects us in the old ways. You can't stop progress. I have made impossible connections over the wires in the last year, but -- let it be said aloud for all to hear-- I'd much rather have a drink with you face to face. 

PATRONAGE.

There are a few musicians that I absolutely adore-- and have come to realize that they are too important for me to just be a fan. I am a huge fan of music and musicians, and it would be a real LIE if I said that there weren't songs & bands whose work I enjoy on a purely casual level...

...but then there are the songs that keep me up at night, not because I am listening to them but because they are inside me. This magical phenomenon strikes awe into my heart-- that the work of someone else's sloppy or methodical, emotional or logical, major or minor tune is absorbed into someone else so wholly and intuitively, sometimes as if I've written it myself (but truly just wished that I had!)...

I want to be a patron. A supporter. A champion.  A conduit. A piece of the machinery that moves music inside other people. As music strikes nerves & chords within me, I want to help conduct it back out, into the person standing closest to me. Pisces are allowed to talk like this without seeming straight-up-mentally-ill, right?! Good.

The process is changing, the delivery is changing, the experience is changing.

Make it what you want it to be. The time is right, now. The time is RIGHT NOW.

The Eye Kills the Camera

Just noticing on the way home how beautiful the view was-- the view of dark clouds coming in over the West Hills, the maniacal splatter of rain on the windscreen, the dim lights of South Waterfront 'high rises' through the mist.

I wish there was a way to take a picture.

the GIFT that arrived today : OOOM + MAdM = ♥

OOOM 

I'm completely blown away time and time again by the power of music. Somehow, I find myself still caught off-guard at how quickly and deftly a song can punch its fist into my chest and then either gently massage the heart inside or send said heart careening into cardiac arrest...

The cardiac arrest of awesome...

After six years of waiting and wanting... Melissa Auf der Maur is on the horizon. I've been half-assedly keeping track of her these last six years-- half-assedly because its hard to track someone who is off the grid. Yet, every autumn in Portland, a day comes where summer is unquestionably over... The sun packs up and heads to another hemisphere; clouds blanket the entire valley; rain soaks you to the bone in a way that tells you that you're not gonna dry off for a few months. Every year on that day, I break out Auf der Maur, Melissa's debut record from 2004 (?) and it is the record whose arms I wrap myself in to make it to Spring. It is unstoppable. It is like nothing else ever. A sound of its own invention.

I was a fan of MAdM during her stints in Hole & Smashing Pumpkins-- her sheer badassedness, I think, is evident to every man, woman, or child who sees her... at the time I could never have predicted what she was capable of, but... time and time again, her music punches its fist (heavy metal rings and all) into my chest and careful, gentle fingers squeeze my little muscle in time with the bass. I see the stars and I smell the woods and I feel like...

... OOOM ...

OOOM {Out of Our Minds} will be released sometime in 2010 -- head over to MAdM's official website to grab the title track for free, while supplies last... before you listen-- buckle your seat belt, put on your viking helmet, and turn it the fuck up!

RECEIVING.

Receptivity.

Just a quick note to myself that I am hearing AND listening.