homesick

I lose some sales and my boss won't be happy
But I can't stop listening to the sound
Of two soft voices mended in perfection
From the reels of this record that I found
Every day there's a boy in the mirror
Asking me, "What are you doing here?"
Finding all my previous motives
Growing increasingly unclear

I've traveled far and I've burned all the bridges
I believed as soon as I hit land
All the other options held before me
Will wither in the light of my plan
So I love some sales and my boss won't be happy
But there's only one thing on my mind
Searching boxes underneath the counter
On a chance that on a tape I'd find
A song for
someone who need somewhere
To long for

Homesick
'Cause I no longer know
Where home is

--Kings of Convenience
Riot on an Empty Street

This is one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard. You should buy it, because no words I can offer will make it clear just how poignant this is. Kings of Convenience are the new Simon and Garfunkel in some important ways.

[anyway]
-brian

Hide and Seek

Go. Buy. NOW!

Imogen Heap (lead singer of the group Frou Frou--you heard them at the end of Garden State) has come out with her own album, which is startlingly compelling. I was afraid from the single they released ("Goodnight and Go," which made its debut on the show The OC that the band had gotten all poppy on me.

But nay.

In fact, it's clear from a few listens that "Goodnight and Go" is easily the weakest track on the CD.

The song "Hide and Seek," however, is incredibly moving. It's synth-capella... there's nothing but Imogen's processed voice to hear. Now before you shrug it off as silly electronica, please listen to the 30-second clip on iTunes.

This is one of those places where processing serves to pull out elements of Imogen's voice to create an incredibly moving sound. It gets me all emotional-like every time I hear it.

So, listen to Imogen muse about the way in which we hide our true selves from others, and why that is stupid.

-brian

The Aeolian Harp

My pensive SARA ! thy soft cheek reclined
Thus on mine arm, most soothing sweet it is
To sit beside our Cot, our Cot o'ergrown
With white-flower'd Jasmin, and the broad-leav'd Myrtle,
(Meet emblems they of Innocence and Love !)
And watch the clouds, that late were rich with light,
Slow saddenning round, and mark the star of eve
Serenely brilliant (such should Wisdom be)
Shine opposite ! How exquisite the scents
Snatch'd from yon bean-field ! and the world so hush'd !
The stilly murmur of the distant Sea
Tells us of silence.

               And that simplest Lute,
Plac'd length-ways in the clasping casement, hark !
How by the desultory breeze caress'd,
Like some coy maid half-yielding to her lover,
It pours such sweet upbraiding, as must needs
Tempt to repeat the wrong ! And now, its strings
Boldlier swept, the long sequacious notes
Over delicious surges sink and rise,
Such a soft floating witchery of sound
As twilight Elfins make, when they at eve
Voyage on gentle gales from Faery-Land,
Where Melodies round honey-dropping flowers,
Footless and wild, like birds of Paradise,
Nor pause, nor perch, hovering on untam'd wing !
O ! the one Life within us and abroad,
Which meets all motion and becomes its soul,
A light in sound, a sound-like power in light,
Rhythm in all thought, and joyance every where--
Methinks, it should have been impossible
Not to love all things in a world so fill'd ;
Where the breeze warbles, and the mute still air
Is Music slumbering on her instrument.

 And thus, my Love ! as on the midway slope
Of yonder hill I stretch my limbs at noon,
Whilst thro' my half-clos'd eye-lids I behold
The sunbeams dance, like diamonds, on the main,
And tranquil muse upon tranquility ;
Full many a thought uncall'd and undetain'd,
And many idle flitting phantasies,
Traverse my indolent and passive brain,
As wild and various, as the random gales
That swell and flutter on this subject Lute!

 And what if all of animated nature
Be but organic Harps diversly fram'd,
That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps
Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,
At once the Soul of each, and God of all?

 But thy more serious eye a mild reproof
Darts, O belovéd Woman ! nor such thoughts
Dim and unhallow'd dost thou not reject,
And biddest me walk humbly with my God.
Meek Daughter in the Family of Christ !
Well hast thou said and holily disprais'd
These shapings of the unregenerate mind ;
Bubbles that glitter as they rise and break
On vain Philosophy's aye-babbling spring.
For never guiltless may I speak of him,
The Incomprehensible ! save when with awe
I praise him, and with Faith that inly feels ;
Who with his saving mercies healéd me,
A sinful and most miserable man,
Wilder'd and dark, and gave me to possess
Peace, and this Cot, and thee, heart-honour'd Maid!

---Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I just love this poem. The question is, where does Coleridge land? Sometimes I read it and get the sense that Coleridge really couldn't be orthodox. It sounds like he almost begrudges the truth, if the truth is as boring as Sara. His romantic imagination makes wilderness so much more fun.

Then other times, I wonder: if Coleridge believed that all writing was an echo of the "I AM's" original creation, then how could he be blasting the Church in this poem? Am I misreading it?

It's a beautiful poem, in any case. Thoughts?

-brian

Don't Be There

Link

The song is "Don't Be There" by Switchfoot, one of the most notable Christian bands out there right now. The song is not what most would expect: it has little to do with "Christian things," but everything to do with human sensitivities. John Foreman (lead singer/songwriter for the band) wrote this about a friend who he lost contact with, but loved anyway.

They had a pretty big falling out, and there's a lot of pain in the lyrics, but a deeper love. In fact, the song hurts because of the love. You can just feel it there. So. Here are the lyrics.

"Don't be there,
don't be there,
'cuz I'm on my way.
And I'm already gone
over
and I'm on my way.

I can't recall myself
how I went down.
Did I get shot
or shoot myself?

I'm down here.
I'm down here,
and you're way up there.
That doesn't hurt
(badly)
but it stings right here

I can't recall myself
how I went down.
Did I get shot,
or shoot myself?

I won't pretend there's nothing there.
You be around, and I'll be square.
Don't be alarmed if I'm not there.
You be around, and I'll be square.

If you're a rose,
then I'm the thorn
that's in your side.
And does it hurt
badly,
'cuz it burns right here.

I can't recall myself
how I went down.
Did I get shot,
or shoot myself?

I'd like to say 'Hello.'
I'd like to say 'I care.'
I'd like to let you know
that nothing here's the same with me,
that nothing here's the same.

I can't recall myself
how I went down.
Did I get shot,
or shoot myself?

I won't pretend there's nothing there.
You be around, and I'll be square.
Don't be alarmed if I'm not there.
You be around, and I'll be square.
Don't be around,
don't be there.
Don't be there."

The conflict is real, the pain is genuine, the song is "Don't Be There."

Another insight into me through my love of music.

-brian

I Just Don't Think I'll Ever Get Over You

Here's a link to perhaps one of the most sober, moving love songs I've ever heard. I was introduced to this song through the soundtrack to Zach Braff's amazing film, Garden State. It is Colin Hay's song to his love beyond the grave, and it makes my heart ache to hear it.

Wordsworth said that the purpose of poetry is to move people through common human experience. Well, here's a perfect example of exactly that. I have never lost someone so dear to my heart, and yet I feel (in some small degree) the weight of that burden when I hear Colin Hay sing.

The accompaniement is very solemn. One acoustic guitar sets up the basic melody, and another guitar adds a little texture at exactly the right moments.

"I drink good coffee every morning;
it comes from a place that's far away.
And when I'm done, I feel like talking,
but without you here, there is less to say."

Colin... you're breaking my heart.

-brian

Acquainted With The Night

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
---Robert Frost

This poem paints a beautiful picture of the insomniac's wanderings, a path I have tread hundreds of times myself. It was after reading this poem that I felt a kinship with Frost. He uses common language to paint a picture of a common event, but still writes in a way that makes the event mystical and tragic.

I cannot tell exactly why, but I am haunted by Frost's description of the moon as "One luminary clock against the sky." I see the full moon as a gigantic white orb filling the night sky close to the horizon when I remember this line.

Frost preceded me by many years, but has made my late-night walks and musings more magical in a profound fashion. I hope you enjoy it too.

-brian

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
     And wishper to their souls, to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
     The breath goes now, and some say, no:

So let us melt, and make no noise,
     No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move,
T'were pophanation of our joys
     To tell the layety our love.

Moving of the earth brings harms and fears,
     Men reckon what it did and meant,
But trepidation of the spheres,
     Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers love
     (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
     Those things which elemented it.

But we by a love, so much refined,
     That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
     Careless, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
     Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
     Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
     As stiff twin compasses are two,
Thy soul the fixed foot, makes no show
     To move, but doth, if the other do.

And though it in the center sit,
     Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
     And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt though be to me, who must-
     Like the other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness draws my circle just,
     And makes me end, where I begun.
---John Donne [spelling adapted by me]

Donne's "Valediction" is one of the most beautiful love poems I've ever read. Donne describes relationships as beginningin the sensuous, and journeying to something more transcendent and intimate.

It's hard to move from the first level to the second, but the second level of love is all the more beautiful because it is more genuine. It's also a kind of love that persists: it doesn't die when the people separate.

Donne says that absence cannot kill his love, because his soul is joined to his lover's "like gold to airy thinness beat." Their uniqueness is overwhelmed by a sameness, a oneness that makes them like two legs of a drawing compass.

Finally, the language sounds sexual because it is. Words like "erect" and the ideas of two souls as one and leaning and hearkening after the lover are all obviously potent images. But they're not crass.

I think Donne is trying to say that, instead of killing our appreciation for the bodily experiences of love, the deeper love adds layer and color and depth to the physical experience. They're not enemies, even though some people try to draw them like they're mutually exclusive.

So why do I like this poem? Simple. I feel like he knows what love is. I'd like to believe and participate in a love as complex and rich as this.

-brian