song of the day (once more)

Nick Cave and Warren Ellis - Falling

(the piano darts, like a horse's soft hoofclaps on dewy grass. like early dawn still hanging among horizons. obscured by mist.

once more a sense of purpose. movement on the grass. to go forward.

the air feels cold, moist.

when the violin sets in. a stringing wind that cuts through clothes and bones. it's not there to unsettle, it's not there to support. it's only there, never to mourn.

and the falling, not of the day, or the moment, but the music, the hours. the lines all downward, crisscrossing, intersecting, all toward the grass, down like lost leaves.

never the rhythm is abandoned, never the movement stopped. the hoofclaps resume. the grass allows.

what is that purpose, so early in the morning.)

an end, once more. a start, even more.

happiness # 61:

no matter what has happened, no matter what happens -- i'm still here. i'm always here. it's the one thing i can be sure of - to be here, to be now - and all else fades into oblivion. no, forget that. all else comes into existence, in the best way possible.

sadness # 9:

no matter what has happened, no matter what happens -- i'll always still be here. even though i sometimes want to be nowhere. (but that is just a responsability i have to take up.)

song of the day:

Goldfrapp - Clowns

nice words # 16:

hymn

nice cd cover # 18:

Pink Floyd - Meddle

song of the day (oh yes)

Air - All I Need


(To remember this. From the first downwards. Opening.

It must come.

It moves, finds its own place. All sadness, smiling into flow. Small stream of what is.

Moody tones of new sunlight. Moving past; desert-born winds. Opens its arm around who i was, some time, some other time, and now still. It tells me who i will become. As i remember, and find back, and find back. And never fight back.

It knows me. We tumble on. I do not mind the sand it brings.

What we became; i so remember. Like the first summer i ever saw. It would tell me how all others were but follow-ups, trying to be. As much as. The first. Painting a palimpsest of green-feet blue. All cataclysms of one root.

As i was once. A different same. And needed so. To find me in here. And did.

As i was once. Me. And did not know if this would ever change. And yet the song. We were there. Ready to listen to. With eyes closed. Ready to touch. With hands near. Only the music. Low-angled shadows. Windows shining in through unbreakable yellow. And how i hoped to find. How i hoped to find. And knew the time would come, and stay. As i was once.

As i am still.

Along the blur of long-past midday.

A slow-falling afternoon, a non-descript day. It could be any day, but it can only be this one. Suspended, i would say. Suspended in the windless streets, the neverblown rooms. Hanging in the foothill of heat; a night that will never come. The simple melancholy moves.

There's the repeat. But only to take along with it. The streams no day can bear. The streams no day can bare. I move my feet so. In the shallow waters that tell. That this is right.

That this is how it should be. And that.

It will stay with me.)

and here it ends again. no, forget that. here it begins--

happiness # 57:
over the past year i've written 13 happiness-posts. this means there was, on average, at least one thing every month to be happy about.
and i had a spare.

moreover, it's been a year since i last wrote a 'sadness'-post. which is nice.



sadness # 8:
all that passes



song of the day:
Eels - Fresh Feeling



nice words # 11:
cataclysm



nice cd cover #14:




Moby - Wait for Me (deluxe edition)

song of the day (or a great part of my life so far)

Tchaikovsky - Arab Dance (from The Nutcracker)


(it sweeps. oh yes it sweeps.

i always saw black water, deep. cold. even as a child i saw. all of this.

thoughts moving like plants underwater. a gentle serenity. brushing feathertails. it must be night. in the water.

some creek. i was here as a child already. because it has been here for so long. to revisit. always a great unknown, always embracing and letting go of that one particular cassette, old by now, black with a yellow sticker and on it, black letters. black paper-cut people i did not know yet.

so enthralled. an intrigue so vague it would stay with me for years.

and then to see Fantasia. and see the. dark, black. cold. water. and to believe how i was not the only one to see this. shared minds and translucent fishes.

yes, this water. of such an ink-color you'd think you could stir it like hardened cream, but where would your hand go?

what must lie between the pebbles and the sand, which i cannot see.

it is a smooth rhythm, jagging on, never hurting, like a march into. somewhere. it invites, and dances. goes on. like the water.

sideways of reed.

and then the oboe. that one, long-drawn oboe. the central stained bird gliding over the surface, or under it, among. everything parts aside, and lets it slide through. the oboe.

gently.

serene.

it sweeps.)

song of the day (this has been a while)

Philip Glass - The Poet Acts


(It bursts. Open. A wind.

A small crack of such streamings. The pain somewhere in between. The subtle animosity.


A shift in tone.


Once again, but stronger now. Long, sharper string thread. A bold march through a field of dark gray notes, leaning against your legs, warm somehow.

Minor.

Let it bloom. Let it swallow. Me. I go.

This is how it comes, this is how it disappears; stronger, weaker. Tidal refrain. I along.

Once again. Once again. Still at the same pauses as first, but so much more now, so much more.


Until it dies a moment, into less.


Only to come back again. A rephrase, a thought. Still those same notes. Endless field. Leaning slower. In the wind.

Straw and straw and straw. All added, all joining. The march. As with a million feet. Under hidden faces, staring at the ground. This will never end. I hope this will never end.

Despite the


Sadness.


The cold stream like sea pier wind enwrapping encasing cutting around desperate certain feet.

Until only wind. And off.)

and so this concludes for now

happiness # 43:
being me


sadness # 7:
being me


song of the day:
Radiohead - Reckoner


nice words # 8:
conundrum

nice cd cover # 9:

R.E.M. - New Adventures in Hi-Fi

song of the day (loomings)

Pink Floyd - Cluster One


(the waterside it was. where i sat. looking out.

there was a sun all right. hanging low and tired but in tune with the world. she was only slightly hidden behind a broad, long-drawn shroud of cloud, starting somewhere in the infinity hovering above the horizon in front of me, and ending way behind me, way above me. a cloud thick enough to pale this light into a pastel shine. a cloud thin enough to interweave with the almost reddening sun, almost painting a Turner.

it should have been an abomination how waterside industry mingled with the original inhabitants: trees and all sorts of plants. but it wasn't. it just fit. windmills generating electricity. low and heavy buildings of certain unknown functions. a valley of electricity pylons on a peninsula.

oh, and water.

water like the piano notes. slow, meandering. mesmerizing. me.

water like the carefully singing guitar, blinking notes somewhere in between joy and sadness.

thoughts and branches floating downstream along the river, ignoring anything in their path. if they got stuck, they got stuck. if not, they kept on floating toward what would one day be the sea somewhere. hard to believe that. no sea in sight. just the river.

so gently the drums. they don't intervene, they don't disturb. they just merge.

the image was so big, as if it was the largest photograph i have ever seen. every microscopic fragment of my retina saw everything at once; what i perceived had the span of the world and i even saw myself sitting in it, like a small Friedrich figure. the scene enveloped me as i tried enveloping it vice versa.

somewhere in between joy and sadness. the music. but peace. so much peace. how i miss sitting there. how i will always be sitting there.

oh, and at one point: three hot air balloons. against the evening sky.)

song of the day (obscured by clouds)

Ludovico Einaudi - Fly


(it's dark here. shun light.

just a few rhythmic piano notes. they’re in minor.

they get company. but these newer notes only emphasize. they do nothing but sculpt the negative space around this stretched-out, claustrophopic solitude. they repeat themselves. vicious and tender.

we hope light. and somewhere, light is breathing. telling us we’re there. telling us we're here. we’re not forgotten. here, in the darkness. where we shun ourselves. where we must be winter.

but no note rises. they fall, all of them. fall, and disappear. until nothing is left. and that empty residue embraces us.

just a brief flicker of hope again. there is an echo? there is an echo.

a repeat. a rhythm.

how can we think of the sky when all we see is this? when all we see is a room within a room within a room?

i hide between these notes, look for a place, a niche, where i cannot be found by myself any more. but the notes disappear. they fall. fall and disappear.

somewhere, someone is screaming. muffled voices. how i wish to be inside my head. how i am inside my head. everything becomes an echo. everything becomes momentum. but there is no beginning. only the echo. only the momentum.

only the scream now; only.

and i think. hope. yes, these are notes in minor. but we’re not forgotten.)

song of the day (...before yesterday)

Ozark Henry - Sun Dance

(it felt so forlorn. sitting in a railway station, waiting for the next train. i felt like i was standing by a road which appeared to go on endlessly, at both sides, reminiscent of the beginning of Hitchcock's cornfield scene in North by Northwest. yes, there was wind, but not too much. enough to blow hairs in my face. it was easy to ignore them.

the structure of this song is such that it leaves empty spaces, empty spaces which leave room for the vastness of the mental images they procure. Sun Dance depicts a world that is a waste land, but with beauty at its side. broken branches, dried-out wood. a crusted earth, once red, now colorless, odorless but for the foul stench of absence. how can so little bring about so much?

i was all alone in that railway station, apart from the other people. nobody else felt it, nobody else saw it. nobody else heard it. but i did. and who could believe what i felt, what i saw, what i heard? who in that station could believe they were part of a tableau vivant only i was aware of?

in all its silences and dispersed notes, the song goes on, and does not seem to want to. because it knows what will come. because it knows sadness by its maiden name. but it knows even more of pulling through. of saying yes, i know what is to follow, but i will go on, i will not rest until i end. i have to. there is nothing else.

and then the climax comes. it is a common trap with songs of this nature to throw in everything possible. but not here. no, what happens in Sun Dance is that the climax itself cannot get rid of the subtle, understated nature of the rest of the song. which is good. here are strings, such lovely strings. and they do so much, in that little bit of space they are presented with. they do more than enough.

and then it ends. abruptly. and so do you.

there was no other song i could listen to afterwards. they all felt so bland. and i was an empty vessel, and i was so gladly filled by whatever landscapes were poured into me, zooming past the train window, as i felt there could never exist such a thing as reluctance again.)

song of the day (wedged in between tuesday and wednesday. and i have to get up early tomorrow)

Sigur Rós - Gobbledigook

(makes me happy in a very special way. not ecstatic, but rather... as if looking at things from a distance and feeling joy out of an abstract empathy with just about everything. as if i am a father watching his children play at a summer barbecue, even though i am not playing myself but merely sitting, in the sunshine, watching these children, my children, as they play. that kind of happiness. to be inside and outside of the world at the same time. and it is exactly that dual position that, paradoxically enough, is a soothing ointment to heal all schisms that perturbed me before. how i like to sit at that barbecue, on that summer afternoon. how i hope my children would never stop playing. how i am playing with them, even though i am sitting here. how i am playing with them, even though they do not exist yet. that is Gobbledigook for me -- and perhaps even more.

i also wish to thank the person who, during Sigur Rós's live concert at Rock Werchter on 5 July (a couple of days ago, indeed), had decided to start blowing bubbles. not loads of them, just two or three every now and then. it fit the music and the atmosphere perfectly. i watched just about every bubble floating by, soapingly encompassing the setting sun after a rainy day. i believe you, bubble-blower, are a girl, for i might have seen a flicker of you on one of the big screens. but whoever you are: thank you. you made a perfect moment last. i know you will probably never read this. but that's okay. i am certain you may feel this little emotion of mine, somehow, someday, someplace. let my thanks float out like bubbles.)

song of the day (no, yesterday. yesterday!)

Maurice Ravel - Pavane pour une enfante défunte (the orchestral version)

(i've liked this one a long time now. but yesterday, hearing it again, i suddenly felt all tired -- in a nice way. as if here there was contentment.

such grace, as if our sighs are caught in the endless robes of a slowly dancing princess, all alone, not entirely there. such tenderness we might feel for her. we are floating on a strange instance of eternity, and never does it seem to bother. we are ever moving, and no one might be watching.

i would never want it to end.)

song of the day (it's a nice night. it was a nice sunset. it was a nice day.)

Little Dragon - Twice

(a special one, this. it manages to be very comforting and peaceful, and, at the same time, very saddening and full of private agony, as if this is the moment after mourning -- that mourning still in our blood, still so very much in our blood, but also fading away, and therefore hurting so much, even though there is comfort in knowing, in knowing that there is fading, that there will always be fading. everything fades. which is beautiful. which is terrible.

Twice manages to be balmy like a summer evening seeping into late night, and inevitable like an autumn afternoon which cannot go anywhere.

it's the piano that leads the way. everything else rests on it; hills are climbed, hills that wish to be mountains but are not. they are not.

the piano leads the way, repeats itself, is ever there. will always be there. will always fade away.)

song of the day (no, actually of yesterday and of the day before, but hey, my blog, my rules)

song of yesterday:

José González - Storm

(as the sky started lying down on the lands, covering itself in earthen rust-gold colors, going all Steinbeck on me, this is what started playing, and it attached itself to nothing, as there were no clouds to grab on to, and by attaching itself to nothing, it attached itself to everything. no, there was no storm. but i did touch some grass, just because i wanted to. and it was great.)

(by the way, there's a tiny fly sitting on my laptop, looking at the screen. i hope it understands english.) (hello tiny fly!) (god, i'm an idiot.) (and proud of it!)

(the fly is now walking toward my left hand. makes typing difficult, because i don't want to crush it. not that you'd notice.)


song of day before yesterday: (now she/he/it is on my scrollpad. woops, it jumped on my spacebar. i guess it likes the trampoline-effect of me typing.) (yes, i am wasting your time -- were you expecting anything else?)

Underworld - 8 Ball

(actually, the sentence "today, i saw a man using an empty whiskey flask as a walkie-talkie" at first seems to be Karl Hyde's standard gibberishy-jabberwocky, but i actually find it quite... endearing. there seems to be something sad in it, even though Hyde sings it without negative emotions -- a sadness ascribed to that man who is not all there, a man who is child-like in his twisted imagination. an empty whiskey flask - he probably emptied it himself, or he found it on the street and liked its shape, making him even more innocent - and now sees it as a means for communication, while it is that very act of using the flask as a walkie-talkie that cuts him off from the rest of this world. and who might he be trying to reach? someone like him? his mother? a pair of arms that might welcome him? an ear that would understand him, a mouth that would tell him that everything is going to be okay? sad, sad, sad. or maybe it's just me. but isn't everything me -- for me?) (i also like the intense subtility of this song, by the way)

(the fly is now crawling at the edge of my screen. i guess she likes it here. either that or she's a spy from Microsoft studying every Macbook out there.) (no, that was not a funny joke.)

(yes, i've decided that the fly is a she. why? because i can thus make it seem i'm attracting da ladiezzz. hurray!)



...this post makes no sense, does it? oh well.

(for your information, i can't find the fly any more.) (oh wait, she's sitting on my pants.) (bye, fly)

song of the day (wednesday or thursday, but actually somewhere in between)

Orbital - Mock Tudor


(definitely listen all the way to the end: the final notes are almost like whispers and despite this being a detail, it does so much for the song, even though it didn't need much more. everytime i remember Mock Tudor, i remember the 'whispers' first. and then i want to play it in its entirety again, just to end up with those final notes. perhaps just like life -- i'll be able to tell you when i die.)

song of the day (sun-drenched sunday)

Underworld - Jumbo


i need sugar... (and the flowers!)

song of the day (a thursday, somewhere in the void of space)

Weird Al Yankovic - Dare to Be Stupid


always, always, always makes me happy. it's... eh... über! silliness may very well be one of the hardest arts to master. (by the way, should you be interested, the clip is weird as hell too, and therefore definitely worth it!)

song of the day (Tuesday, but actually Sunday, because then i listened to it after jogging, and it was excellent, love the complex structure)

Tool - Jambi

...always nice to find music on which time has been spent and doesn't follow a set pattern.

last post

of 2007.


song of the day: Radiohead - Videotape

happiness: the dried, sticky salt of tears on a glowing skin

sadness: nothing has changed, not in this year. maybe next year.

nice word: helix


that's it for now. the curtain falls. perhaps nothing will change. sometimes this is good, sometimes this is bad. let us just live, and live, and live. close eyes and think not; i embrace you.


love,

peter

songs of the day (this rather cold Thursday on which it is dark so early)

1. Talvin Singh - Traveller

2. Talvin Singh - Butterfly