if you don't know black moth super rainbow, i highly recommend starting your research and getting out your headphones now. i discovered them years ago and fell in love with the way they twist sound like a scritchy educational film through a 1970s projector. yeah, it's sorta like that. they remixed "just for the night" (from wanderlust) quite awhile back -- it's been playing on my myspace page for ages -- and i'm happy to say that, yes, you can finally get your very own copy. the remix will be released this fall as part of their special edition scratch-n-sniff ep called drippers. you can preorder a hard copy here. or you can wait for the digital release through itunes on november 4th.
love laura.
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Currently
listening
:
Dandelion Gum
By
Black Moth Super Rainbow
Release date: 2007-05-22
my friend kathleen started crocheting a few years ago. since then, she's made things for everyone else -- blankets for her niece, hats for her friends (i have one), scarves for her family -- but nothing for herself. so one day she decided she deserved something -- a crocheted hat. she went to a fancy yarn shop and bought expensive yarn. she worked for weeks on her hat til it was perfect. it was winter at this point and she wore that hat everywhere. well one day, a work day, she went out to lunch and lost her hat somewhere between work and the restaurant. she was bummed, but she eventually forgot about it... til one day she was walking through a tunnel in the metro -- the same tunnel she walks through everyday on the way to work, past the same handful of pan-handlers -- and she saw her hat -- on the head of a homeless woman who was asking her for change! she said, "hey where did you get that hat?" and the woman said, "my friend gave this to me, why?" and kathleen said, "oh, no reason. it just looks like something i made." well, of course it was something she made. and there wouldn't be another one like it anywhere in the world with the same yarn and shape and handmade care. the homeless woman looked her straight in the eye, jutted her lower jaw out and said, "you tryin' to say i took your hat!? 'cause my friend gave this to me five years ago!" and kathleen told her no, don't worry about it, and walked away. then she ran into the homeless vet she likes to give money to. he looked at her and said, "you look terrible. you always wear the worst clothes!" and she laughed and handed him a dollar. "he always tells me he hates my clothes," she told me. and for some reason she thinks it's hilarious. and she always gives him some change.
two:
yesterday after work i was walking to the metro and this woman came up to me and pleaded, "please ma'am, can you help us," (she nodded to her friend and the three kids around the two women's legs). "we live in the shelter and we're tryin' to get some food for our kids. someone gave us half a sandwich and a soda, but that's not enough." these women looked clean, well-dressed. the two little twin girls with twin frizzy pigtails were wearing clean yellow polo shirts. the boy (a little bit older, maybe 8), was wearing a nice striped shirt. i wondered if they were just scamming me. then i thought, what the hell, who cares. i've got some money, so why not. i reached into my wallet and handed her two dollars and walked away. but as i walked i felt worse and worse. why didn't i offer to buy the kids dinner? i have more than enough. and what would ten or even twenty dollars really mean to me? i looked over my shoulder, thought about going back, but they were gone. i took the escalator down to the metro, boarded the train and made up my mind. the next time that happened, i would buy dinner. period. the conductor called out "woodley park, adams morgan" and i rode the escalator back up, striding down the street to mr. chen's. i was craving some good tofu. i put in my order and felt guilty about buying myself food when my money should've gone for something better. i went to the bathroom and washed my hands (letting the guilt drain away), and thought about how wonderful the world is, how complicated. and i thought almost aloud, how could there not be a god, some higher power, some idea of perfect order that lies behind everything, puts everything in its right place at exactly the right moment? my food still wasn't ready, so i took a seat at a table by myself. this horrible high note started buzzing, at first softly and then louder. it got so unbearable, i considered walking out and waiting on the stoop. but just when i could almost bear it no longer, i looked up, caught the glance of this middle-aged man eating dinner alone, and it broke into silence. he waved a finger at me and i smiled. then he nodded, stood up, and walked over. he put his hand on my table and said, "i'm buying your dinner tonight." i said, "oh no, that's very sweet of you, but that's too generous." "no," he said, "i insist." i tried to refuse again, but he just smiled and stepped back, pulling his hand away to reveal a twenty dollar bill. my eyes widened and the waitress brought me my bag of food. as i walked out of the restaurant, i dipped my head down by the man's table and said, "you really shouldn't have, but i do appreciate it. i really do." he smiled and i smiled back. because i knew why i had to accept his gift. it's the money i'll use to buy dinner for the next kids who need it.
three:
after finishing my tofu, i cracked open my fortune cookie and read it aloud: "you will inherit a large sum of money." and in a very chinese proverbial sort of way, i knew that it meant something bigger. because you see, i already inherited a large sum of money last night, before i ever read that paper. whatever i will have, i already do have. it's just a matter of time catching up.
kathleen didn't know she was saving her pennies til she could give that homeless woman something better than money -- a handmade hat to keep her warm through the winter. and i didn't know i already had the money to buy those kids dinner; it was just gonna take a little time to wind up in my pockets.
sometimes timing *isn't* everything.
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Currently
reading
:
Good Blonde & Others
By
Jack Kerouac
Release date: September, 1993
the u.s. should take a lesson from the chapter in the psychology-on-friendships textbook -- particularly that one on buying your friends. the lesson? it never works.
seriously, everybody has known someone like this: the kid with money who didn't know how to develop real relationships (he/she wasn't taught) and so gained admiration and made "friends" with his/her parents' big house and collection of flashy new things. coming from a small town where swimming pools (particularly the in-ground variety) were such a rarity, i always felt especially bad for the kids who had them -- the influx of friends in the summer and the rather lonely months that followed must've been tough to handle... this is, of course, not to say that all kids with pools are socially awkward or emotionally underdeveloped and wander through life forging only shallow, meaningless relationships. that is not my point at all.
what i'm getting at is the u.s.'s most recent plan to sell arms to saudi arabia and "five other oil-rich Persian Gulf states as well as new 10-year military aid packages to Israel and Egypt" -- all in an effort to gain allies should iran decide it wants to pick a fight. what's most awesome about this is that we've tried it before, and it backfired -- literally. take, for example, the iran-contra affair. shit, you mean we sold weapons to IRAN a mere 20 years ago, the very enemy we may be up against next? and how about those weapons sales to iraq in the 80's? wait, that country -- iraq -- that sounds familiar. i feel like i've heard of that place recently...
there were also the billions of dollars of arms sold to afghanistan in the 80's, which, according to this report from the u.s. arms trade resource center "ended up empowering Islamic fundamentalist fighters across the globe." just in case you don't follow the link, i'm gonna paste the most illuminating quote here:
"Perhaps no single policy is more at odds with President Bush's pledge to 'end tyranny in our world' than the United States' role as the world's leading arms exporting nation... Although arms sales are often justified on the basis of their purported benefits, from securing access to overseas military facilities to rewarding coalition partners, these alleged benefits often come at a high price."
if that doesn't outline the large-scale failure of arms deals, i don't know what does.
what the u.s. should consider is billion-dollar deals of medical and educational aid -- or something else real and meaningful -- with the countries we want to make friends with. i mean, think about it. had we supplied afghanistan with truckloads of medicine and books in the 1980's, the early 2000's might have turned out a lot differently.
scene: the oval office. the president sits at his desk, stacks of official documents piled high. an aide bursts through the door, his hair a mess, sweat dripping down his temple, his tie loosened and top shirt button undone. he's clutching a thick, rolled up report in his left hand. he shakes it as he speaks:
"mr. president! mr. president! i've got some bad news... al-qaeda's gotten ahold of the penicillin. and goddammit, we think they might know how to use it!!"
"i looked at the sky just to see what it felt like. i pretended i was pausing before telling him about the secret feeling of joy i hide in my chest, waiting, waiting, waiting for someone to notice that i rise each morning, seemingly with nothing to live for, but i do rise, and it is only because of this secret joy, god's love, in my chest. i looked down from the sky and into his eyes and i said, it wasn't your fault...
"do you have doubts about life? are you unsure if it is worth the trouble? look at the sky: that is for you. look at each person's face as you pass on the street: those faces are for you. and the street itself, and the ground under the street, and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you. they are as much for you as they are for other people. remember this when you wake in the morning and think you have nothing. stand up and face the east. now praise the sky and praise the light within each person under the sky. it's okay to be unsure. but praise, praise, praise."
...
you once asked why people are mean. i said i think it is because we forget the grand unification of all things. sometimes we need to go one step further. we need to look at the sky and at each person's face as we pass on the street and know that these things are us. and there is never a reason to feel alone.
my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is my heart is your heart is [ad infinitum]"
why don't we have old fashioned listening parties anymore? let's settle into a room with a record player and our favourite records and take in the real scritch and hum of songs and then say a little piece, brainstorm. like a dance party, but with total motionless silence while the music plays. we'll all sit enraptured, reverent, like we're at church and these sounds before us have been around since time began. these records are genetically linked to the first sound. the source of the very first noise is right in front of us and all we have to do is reach out and touch it. damn. really. generations to perfect, arrange, rearrange, and get to the point of now. amazing to see how far we've come.
i wanna live a life like brian eno.
in addition to all of the amazing musical work he's done (insert the endless, ever-impressive list), he created the start-up music for windows 95:
"The idea came up at the time when I was completely bereft of ideas. I'd been working on my own music for a while and was quite lost, actually. And I really appreciated someone coming along and saying, 'Here's a specific problem – solve it.' The thing from the agency said, 'We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah-blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional,' this whole list of adjectives, and then at the bottom it said 'and it must be 3¼ seconds long.' I thought this was so funny and an amazing thought to actually try to make a little piece of music. It's like making a tiny little jewel. In fact, I made 84 pieces. I got completely into this world of tiny, tiny little pieces of music. I was so sensitive to microseconds at the end of this that it really broke a logjam in my own work. Then when I'd finished that and I went back to working with pieces that were like three minutes long, it seemed like oceans of time."
the other day i saw an advertisement and really felt my age. our generation is becoming the media's main focus. we are the target market. we are the consumers of cars and gadgets and food and housewares and energy and all the wide range of song and dance and film and culture as commodity. while this is at first frightening, just think for a minute about all that power. and it's ours. whether we want it or not, we have a power that we can use to turn the tides of all sorts of destructionist oceans of men (who've been sweeping our coasts like tsunamis).
so what will you do with your power?
someone forwarded me the words of bill moyers that he shared in a recent graduation address. it's a little lengthy, but entirely worth reading. and if you get turned off by religious references, don't let them interfere with the deeper meaning. while most of us may be well out of college, i think this speech fits perfectly. we graduate every day. and on the brink of our graduation into our seat of world power (our generation is not just "american"), these are good words to keep in mind.
"My young friends, you are not leaving here in ordinary times. The ancient Greeks had a word for a moment like this. They called it 'kairos.' Euripedes describes kairos as the moment when 'the one who seizes the helm of fate, forces fortune.' As I was coming here to Dallas today to ask what you are going to do to make the most of your life, I thought: Please God, let me be looking in the face of some young man or woman who is going to transcend the normal arc of life, who is going one day to break through, inspire us, challenge us, and call forth from us the greatness of spirit that in our best moments have fired the world's imagination. You know the spirit of which I speak. Memorable ideas sprang from it: 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness'…'created equal'… 'government of, by, and for the people'…'the only thing we have to fear is fear itself'…'I have a dream.' Those were transformational epochs in American politics, brought forth by the founding patriots who won our independence, by Lincoln and his Lieutenants who saved the Union, by Franklin Roosevelt who saved capitalism and democracy, and by Martin Luther King, martyred in the struggle for equal rights. These moments would have been lost if left to transactional politics - the traditional politics of 'You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours.' But moral leadership transcended the realities at hand and changed the course of our history.
"Never have we been more in need of transformational leadership.
"America's a great promise but it's a broken promise.
"It's not right that we are entering the fifth year of a war started on a suspicion. Whatever your party or politics, my young friends, America can't sustain a war begun under false pretenses because it is simply immoral to ask people to go on dying for the wrong reasons. We cannot win a war when our leaders don't have the will or courage to ask everyone to sacrifice, and place the burden on a few hundred thousand Americans from the working class led by a relative handful of professional officers. As is often said - America's not fighting the war; the American military is fighting the war, everyone else is at the mall. Our leaders are not even asking us to pay for it. They're borrowing the money and passing the IOU's to you and your kids.
"America needs fixing. Our system of government is badly broken.
"You are leaving here as our basic constitutional principles are under assault - the rule of law, an independent press, independent courts, the separation of church and state, and the social contract itself. I am sure you learned about the social contract here at SMU. It's right there in the Constitution - in the Preamble: 'We, the People' - that radical, magnificent, democratic, inspired and exhilarating idea that we are in this together, one for all and all for one.
"I believe this to be the heart of democracy. I know it to be a profoundly religious truth. Over in East Texas where I grew up, my father's greatest honor, as he saw it, was to serve as a deacon in the Central Baptist Church. In those days we Baptists were, in matters of faith, sovereign individualists: the priesthood of the believer, soul freedom, 'Just you and me, Lord.' But time and again, as my dad prayed the Lord's Prayer, I realized that it was never in the first person singular. It was always: 'Give us this day our daily bread.' We're all in this together; one person's hunger is another's duty.
"Let me see if I can say it a different way. A moment ago, when the reunion class of 1957 stood up to be recognized, I was taken back half a century to my first year at the University of Texas. In my mind's eye I saw Gilbert McAlister - 'Dr. Mac' - pacing back and forth in his introductory class to anthropology. He had spent his years as a graduate student among the Apache Indians on the plains of Texas. He said he learned from them the meaning of reciprocity. In the Apache tongue, he told us, the word for grandfather was the same as the word for grandson. Generations were linked together by mutual obligation. Through the years, he went on; we human beings have advanced more from collaboration than competition. For all the chest-thumping about rugged individuals and self-made men, it was the imperative and ethic of cooperation that forged America. Laissez-faire - 'Leave me alone' - didn't work. We had to move from the philosophy of 'Live and let live' to 'Live and help live.' You see, civilization is not a natural act. Civilization is a veneer of civility stretched across primal human appetites. Like democracy, civilization has to be willed, practiced, and constantly repaired, or society becomes a war of all against all.
"Think it over: On one side of this city of Dallas people pay $69 for a margarita and on the other side of town the homeless scrounge for scraps in garbage cans. What would be the civilized response to such a disparity?
"Think it over: In 1960 the gap in wealth between the top 20 percent of our country and the bottom 20 percent was 30 fold. Now it is 75 fold. Stock prices and productivity are up, and CEO salaries are soaring, but ordinary workers aren't sharing in the profits they helped generate. Their incomes aren't keeping up with costs. More Americans live in poverty - 37 million, including 12 million children. Twelve million children! Despite extraordinary wealth at the top, America's last among the highly developed countries in each of seven measures of inequality. Our GDP outperforms every country in the world except Luxembourg. But among industrialized nations we are at the bottom in functional literacy and dead last in combating poverty. Meanwhile, regular Americans are working longer and harder than workers in any other industrial nation, but it's harder and harder for them to figure out how to make ends meet…how to send the kids to college…and how to hold on securely in their old age. If we're all in this together, what's a civilized response to these disparities?
"America's a broken promise. America needs fixing.
"So I look out on your graduating class and pray some one or more of you will take it on. I know something about the DNA in this institution - the history that created this unique university. Although most of you are not Methodists, you can be proud of the Methodist in SMU. At the time of the American Revolution only a few hundred people identified with Methodism. By the Civil War it was the largest church in the country with one in three church members calling Methodism their faith community. No institution has done more to shape America's moral imagination. If America is going to be fixed, I believe someone with this DNA will be needed to do it. It's possible. So as you leave today, take with you Rilke's counsel 'to assume our existence as broadly as we can, in any way we can. Everything, even the unheard of, must be possible in this life. The only courage demanded of us is courage for the most singular and the most inexplicable that we may encounter.'
"Some of the elders among you will remember that Martin Luther King made a powerful speech here at SMU in 1966. It's been said - this part of the story may be apocryphal - that when he was asked why he chose SMU instead of one of the all-black colleges, Dr. King replied: 'Because if John Wesley were around he'd be standing right here with me.' Martin Luther King said at SMU: '…The challenge in the days ahead is to work passionately aand unrelentingly…to make justice a reality for all people.' One of your own graduates - the Reverend Michael Waters - got it right a few years ago when he was a student here: 'Martin Luther King became the symbol not only of the civil rights movement but of America itself: A symbol of a land of freedom where people of all races, creeds, and nationalities could live together as a Beloved Community.'
"Not as an empire. Or a superpower. Not a place where the strong take what they can and the weak what they must. But a Beloved Community. It's the core of civilization, the crux of democracy, and a profound religious truth.
"But don't go searching for the Beloved Community on a map. It's not a place. It exists in the hearts and minds - our hearts and minds - or not at all.
"I pray I am looking into the face of someone who will lead us toward it.
"Good luck to each and every one of you."
...
Currently
listening
:
Volunteers
By
Jefferson Airplane
Release date: 22 June, 2004
and the tides will cease and the oceans will grow green with algae and the air will become one temperature (not a spot of cold in sight) so that the wind will stop and no weather will slide around the earth in great currents. the whales and the geese will migrate in smaller and smaller circles til they barely move an inch. and the monarchs won't make their way to mexico. and the corn won't grow. and our bodies will forget to do what they were made to do.
today from the metro wall i learned that most bones are five times stronger than steel. i wonder when someone's going to perfect a farm for us to grow bones to build bridges -- and skyscrapers and frames for cruise ships and jets... i also wonder if my left arm would have broken when i was thirteen were it made of steel.
googling images for non sequiturs will always lead down an interesting path. take kazumasa nagai, for example. i think i'm in love. in much the same way i fell for max ernst. there's a part of my brain that is very left. and a part that is very right. and i was meant to stumble on these images and fall both sides together on this night, tonight.
may i also say how happy i am that my band has found a home. and a rather good one at that. [insert happy gratitude here]
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Currently
listening
:
After The Gold Rush
By
Neil Young
Release date: 25 October, 1990
"a morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books."
i like to imagine walt whitman behind those panes of glass. he is sitting at a table in the summer kitchen of the heat of his washington, dc address, writing. the war is waging and he's taking a breath by remembering the simple truths that will grow up tall, even in the midst of all that cross-fire. maybe that is the ghost of his smoke-white beard obscured by the reflection of the outside world? yes, i think it is...
...
Currently
listening
:
God Save the Clientele
By
The Clientele
Release date: 08 May, 2007
