they are demanding a title - dictators!
I've been almost all about music of late. I've been working a lot (at the good new job) and reading a lot but music seems to work as both a prop, a crutch, a pillow. I've been thinking about hard things, thinking about doing hard things. Not sure that I have the strength right now, the energy. We'll see what happens, if changes are made, or if it all goes through the wash.
But anyways. There have been some things that have been getting a workout on the iPod:
- Ida's My Fair, My Dark from the Believer 25th Issue Compilation - there is so much of this album that is unlistenable, so it was a shock to come across this wonderful, luscious, dirge. It doesn't seem like it has a hook, but it does, brothers and sisters, it does. It's a David Schickele cover (yes, PDQ Bach's late brother).
- Veda Hille's This Riot Life - I've been unable to stop listening to this album, based on songs from the United Church of Canada hymnal. There is something irresistable about the repurposing of church music for me, especially with Hille's voice and arrangements, and this album touches on all the high points: joy, pain, anger, grief. While I loved Spine, which was the most accessible of her work, I'm almost glad she's moved away from that older sound.
- Regina Spektor's Begin to Hope album. Just lovely.
- Nina Nastasia's Bird of Cuzco. This has been one of my favorite things to sing on the freeway, scooting to work. Don't know why. It just sticks in my head like peanut butter in your teeth.
- The Raincoats' Fairytale in the Supermarket - I don't need an explanation for that one, do I?
- Aimee Mann's I'm with Stupid. Aw!
- And the usual obsessive Neko Case/New Pornographers problem...
Likewise, I flew through Barbara Novak's The Margaret-Ghost, an odd, wonderful novel about an academic writing about 18th century proto-feminist Margaret Fuller. Fuller wrote about how women should have the same right to education, and the right to participate in intellect conversation (with men), but in the end, she traded high-level discourse for domestic life with an illiterate man. Meanwhile, as the academic is assembling her notes, she finds that her life is echoing Fuller's in some discomforting ways.
Which sets me to think about women in love. I've certainly been guilty in the past of being a little unhinged in the past when confronted with someone that I'm really interested in. But I feel like that's been a symptom of being young, and feeling powerless in the world. While I'm not single now, I can't imagine that I would ever go back to being that passive wallflower waiting for someone else to express interest, waiting for an opportunity that might never come.
But when it happens the next time: when I'm single and interested, or even not interested, am I just going to watch from the river shore, or am I going to jump in? I know it's way too simple, the way I'm looking at it. But I refuse to be afraid of life. I've been afraid for way too long.
