José González has long been a favorite, and I was pleased to discover (via last night's Breaking Bad, a bit embarrassingly) that in addition to his somewhat subdued solo work, he puts out more heavily layered work as part of a duo called Junip. "Line of Fire" is the standout track for me so far on their eponymous album, challenging the listener:
Though I now identify as an atheist, I grew up the son of a Presbyterian minister. My father, having long since hung up his robes and now working as a creative director, still pulls from two decades spent behind the pulpit at moments of life's passing, be it at celebrations, at remembrances, or most recently, at the holidays.
Before this year's Christmas dinner, he read the following passage by writer and theologian Frederick Buechner. Stripped outside its religious context, I think it still carries a particular potence.
"I speak to you as men of the world," said the Innkeeper. "Not as idealists but as realists. Do you know what it is like to run an inn-to run a business, a family, to run anything in this world for that matter, even your own life? It is being lost in a forest of a million trees," said the Innkeeper, and each tree is a thing to be done. Is there fresh linen on all the beds? Did the children put on their coats before they went out? Has the letter been written, the book read? Is there money enough left in the bank? Today we have food in our bellies and clothes on our backs, but what can we do to make sure that we will have them still tomorrow? A million trees. A million things.
"Until finally we have eyes for nothing else, and what-ever we see turns into a thing. The sparrow lying in the dust at your feet-just a thing to be kicked out of the way, not the mystery of death. The calling of children outside your window-just a distraction, an irrelevance, not life, not the wildest miracle of them all. That whispering in the air that comes sudden and soft from nowhere-only the wind, the wind.
[...]
"Later that night, when the baby came, I was not there," the Innkeeper said. "I was lost in the forest somewhere, the unenchanted forest of a million trees. Fifteen steps to the cellar, and watch out for your head going down. Firewood to the left. If the fire goes out, the heart freezes. Only the wind, the wind. I speak to you as men of the world. So when the baby came, I was not around, and I saw none of it.
[...]
"All your life long, you wait for your own true love to come-we all of us do-our destiny, our joy, our heart's desire. So how am I to say it, gentlemen? When he came, I missed him.
Here's to not losing ourselves in the unenchanted forest this coming year. It's a damned beautiful world, and I don't want to miss a single second of it.
This song is summer sweat in a jeep with the top down on the way to the beach in your cut-offs and sipping coke from a bottle and crushing on your best friend's older sister in her two piece and I simply can't approve more.
Charleston, in a paragraph (not actually about us, but oh how familiar a scene - I'm shaking my head at you, CofC boys):
I often see young men on dates, dressed in T-shirts, jeans, and sneakers, accompanying well-groomed, prettily clad girls in dresses and high heels, and it looks like they are going entirely difference places. I somehow hope that the fellow is a chauffeur [...], but I know better and I think, Where did our culture go off the rails?
On those things which matter:
A man should be prepared to hold out for life on matters of principle such as tie width.
The summer of twenty-eleven started in a basement bar with a beach boy band banging out match box blues in sweat stained hues -- out back were the swings and the misses and the fumbled first kisses of kids doublin' down on their dues.
In hindsight, every time I thought the stars were lined right
It only meant the punchline hadn't landed yet--
Turns out that most everybody's working on a future regret
From the title track of the new Slowrunner album.
These boys know how to make hurting sound earnest and honest and relatable and learn-from-able instead of like pubescent whining. Go. Buy. Listen.
And then be sad that you missed a fantastic release show on Saturday that set itself way apart from Yet Another Show In The Typical Fashion By Local Band You've Already Heard Five Times This Month. The show rejuvenated my sense that live music needn't die out as long as it continues to adapt and renew itself. People are willing to pay for and be excited about a good product with novel presentation (the trick, of course, is balancing on the ride of side of the thin line between "mechanic" and "gimmick").
Heard this one in undergrad as "computer science is as much about computers as astronomy is about telescopes", but really holds true for just about every discipline where people geek out on gear - that new keyboard I'm lusting over? It's just not going to write better songs for me than the one I've got now.
adrnsly:
People keep asking me what kind of camera I shoot with, but I think they are missing the real point at hand.
In reality cameras have about as much to do with photography as pencils have to do with writing.
[... W]hy do 70% of [SEWE] exhibitions promote sport hunting the species we are being educated to conserve? Game hunting and fishing for meat- fine- but zebra killing, safari slaying, and the like? Barbaric and disrespectful.
The sustainable seafood dinners held at the aquarium used to make me uneasy too - come marvel at these amazing creatures and then... eat them? But I think that at the core you've identified what separates the two: a moment of recognition, the removal of any sense of entitlement or dominion, and most importantly, the presence of a bit of respect and wonder for other life.
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