I read voraciously, hoping for clues,
but the philosophers were all too
tied up in the way of the world.
Who cares for little things..

I make coffee in the morning,
button my shirt smartly, and
wear comfortable shoes to dinner.
To take them off slowly and much later.

Even though it never happens.
This is how to behave. Rightly.
This is how we begin. Slowly.
This is how it ends.

I’d never heard of Chris Garneau, though that’s who I’d agreed to go see as part of a Christmas Indie/Folk/Rock Spectacular (that may or may not have been the events title). The show as a whole was mediocre at best, an uneven mash of acts that had no correlation between them. But Chris Garneau, rocking forward on his piano stool, hammering out his slightly uneven notes, his voice soft and small yet still somehow carrying over the crowd, he shined and we quieted down. He had one of those voices that defies logic.  Crackly and imperfect. Too loud and too quiet at times, it was hard to distinguish some of the lyrics. But everyone swayed none-the-less. He had that intangable thing, like Joanna Newsom, something spritely, like he’d wandered into the bar from a nearby forest, magic still clinging to his flannel shirt.

It took me only five months to look up his music, slowed down by the lack of home internet connection and my faltering memory. But today while looking for some new sound to revel in, his voice popped in my head and it seemed like the only good way to let Monday night fade into a Tuesday morning.

Castle-Time
Download audio file (castletime.mp3)

Relief
Download audio file (relief.mp3)

I’ve been taking a few deep breaths and trying to focus on the future instead of the endless now. A reverse zen.

It feels something like moving.

It isn’t exhibitionism that drives me,
I simply don’t know other ways of being.

“….In Fact!….”  -Jel
I Think I’ll Call It Morning -Gil Scott-Heron
Sweet Twilight -Kira Neris
Dawn Chorus -Boards Of Canada
Eastern Glow -The Album Leaf
Into The Sun (with Diplo) -Martina Topley Bird
Daydream In Blue (With The Gunter Kallmann Choir) -I Monster
Beyond The Sun (Featuring Earl Zinger) -Koop
Montego Sunset -Menahan Street Band
Today -Zero 7
La Long De La Riviere Tendre -Sébastien Tellier
Heather’s Golden Shoulder -Absentee

Download and Spread and Enjoy.

(But, Enough of my waxing poetics about… well the same things I usually wax poetics about and lets talk about something… I usually talk about. )

I was reading back and came across this tidbit from my brilliant friend, Daniel, and was amazed as though I had never read it before at his perception of the art making proces in general and specifically about my constant anxiety about creating. I read it again today and thought it was much too insightful not to share:

Do trees have an easy time making leaves? I always imagined that they have as much trouble, angst, anxiety, and doubt about that each spring as we have about love, art, and breathing.

Anyway, who is qualified to judge whether you’ve struggled with your overworked words like an unpolished amateur or spilt onto the page the finest prose like a painter thoughtlessly putting brushstrokes onto canvas, as amazed as any observer that a beautiful form emerges?

Those without stories are preordained to repeat them,
I saw once in the stars.
. . . . . . . . . . Unclear who underwrote that,
But since then I’ve seen it everywhere
I’ve looked, staggering
Noon light and night’s meridian wandering wide and the single sky.
And here it is in the meadow grass, a brutish script.

We tend to repeat what we don’t know
Instead of the other way around -
. . . . . . . . . . thus mojo, thus misericordia,
Old cross-work and signature, the catechism in the wind.
We tend to repeat what hurts us, things, and ghosts of things,
The actual green of summer, and summer’s half-truth.
We tend to repeat ourselves.

- Charles Wright
A Short History of the Shadow

(via whiskey river)

* I blame the excessive amount of last nights champagne for the typo.

“A second chance- that’s the delusion. There never was to be but one. We work in the dark, we do what we can, we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.”

Henry James

Maybe it was all the recent life changes that made me as impressionable as an adolescent school girl (all the more reason to not fraternize with people under the age of four), but I’m looking forward to not waking up to feed children and change diapers (thought it was nice and nice to give the broheim a break.) 

I’m thinking now about the realistic future. At least the future as realistic as after the New Year and resolution making. I’ve got one concrete so far and it entails not making the same mistakes I’ve made in the past. Looking forward instead of constantly looking back, a seemingly difficult feat for someone who loves ruminating and being introspective as much as I. There are some ruts that are a little more difficult to spot than others.  

I’m still a bit discombobulated from the flight and the commute home. So all of my other 2009 thoughts will have to wait, but I have to say, I love this time of year, if only because a lot of people are all trying to figure out ways to make this year better than the one before. And even if they don’t succeed that collective feeling of go-to-do-betterness is fairly fantastic in and of itself.