Tag: flickr

tag “john peel” should make this easier

Mark on the calendar, October 13th 2005 is the date of the first John Peel Day. Later I hope to have time enough and the inclination of the awake to collect together as much John Peel as I can to share with you all. audiography has dedicated this week to him and has already been posting some very choice music. However, my main contribution to the discovery of new music will be slightly early, as Nicholas has pointed me to loveliness this evening.

The artist is that 1 guy, and he is the best one man music I’ve ever heard. His lyrics are superb, his wacky home-made instrument intimidating awesome. It’s called “The Magic Pipe” because it is. I’m not sure I know of anything so captivatingly versatile. There’s a Listen To Entire Album button. I highly recommend it and also say, watch the video too.

I’ve discovered that I’m still twanging in dangerous ways from my dancing binge. It’s effort to turn my head, it goes against the natural reaction of my body complaint. I’m impressed. I walked away from an afternoon a few weeks ago attempting to teach Graham and Ryan how to use a sword with less bruises. (And Graham catches on quick to the idea of being hit without being hit). Course, part of it is the stupidly long walk I took with Alastair earlier today. He’s only in Vancouver a few days before leaving for San Francisco and Fiji, so we went for breakfast at Slickety Jim’s Chat & Chew this afternoon. My first mistake was expecting service on a holiday, my second was walking with him from there to Commercial and First, then up to Broadway. My eyes waved at some houses I knew and some interesting landmark graveyards, but the blisters are trying to argue that it wasn’t worth it. Lying on the couch at Korean Movie Monday was like sinking into hot chocolate on a cold day.

The film tonight wasn’t astonishing, My Beautiful Girl Mari was too mellow for that, but it was legitimately beautiful. The IMDB summary tells you nothing of use. What’s needed is an appreciation for magic realism, for the illusion of edgeless animation, and a commiseration with the logic of children. There is no painfully basic plot, only a gentle climb into a remembered summer that unwinds into terrifically averted disaster and cleverly prosaic goodbyes. The alternate world the boys enter is deeply reminiscent of dreaming, (that the cat also visits this world, they do not bother to explain, and nor will I, as it should be evident), being a place of clouds and peculiar consequences that drops them back into the real world without any warning, though certainly with the sadness of parting.

everything that you are, because this crown of love won’t fall from me.


E smokes a cigar
Originally uploaded by George H..

I love re-dying my hair. Colours get everywhere, marking me guilty of vanity, guilty of having more fun than blondes. Red like roses, like letterboxes, like the inside of your lips when we kissed that once and my eyes were closed. That’s my hands now. That and purple. Purple like a Kate Bush song. In the shower, the dyed water is bright enough to blind and I have to watch where I touch else I leave vivid murder prints on the walls. It makes me giggle.

The Arcade Fire has made music geeks exceptionally sexy. One member, particularly, stood out as an embodiment of everything Right with them by the way he played accordion like it was a superhero power, hips out and mouth howling, his mop of curly Dr. Egon hair falling into his steamed up glasses. Another played the tambourine as if it was an enemy he could kill with physically demanding theatrics. Wolf Parade was equally intense, a squeezing wall of traditional everything that made rock and roll dangerous to the adults experience, all the way down to the seething mass of crowd that shoved me to front and center at the expense of my breathe and balance. The lead singer still looks too wrung out to be alive and sings like he’s going to continue past us all on sheer adversity. (The other lead singer, the man on the electric piano machine, he came into the shop yesterday. It cheered me up immensely when he didn’t buy anything.)

Most concerts end with the finality of the period at the end of a favourite novel, but not this one. They crowded both bands onto the stage for the first encore, bringing up a member of the audience to look lost among them, then took their instruments into the crowd for a second one, leading the crowd around with a charming skeleton version of a New Order song. I’m terrifically glad I went. I feel as if my life would have been less interesting without them. If anyone’s got a full album of anything Arcade Fire, I would greatly appreciate it, as all I have to listen to are carefully collected little scraps of from ‘Funeral’.

a contract signed with a kiss like the x of an illiterate pirate


powerbooklounging
Originally uploaded by pinkbelt.
  • Societies worse off ‘when they have God on their side’. (original study here).
  • A proposed bill hopes to make criminals out of unmarried women in Indiana who conceive
    “by means other than sexual intercourse.”

    • I hesitated at the front of the walk, a flitting bit of pained imagination painting another woman in his bed, but I walked forward anyway. This is my place to do so, I thought, this is my entreaty, my voice, my bloody pain. I am allowed whatever I say I am. Nervously, I tapped on his window and went to the porch. I watched his confusion melt into welcome as he opened the door. “Were you knocking? Come in, please.” I settled in like I was home. The house knows who I am, it tells me hello. The other moving pieces, the western world, they like me.

    We stayed up late. Appleseed on screen and our legs eventually tangled on the couch. My knife edged feeling of assumption dulls when I see that he’s as aware of the placement of my hands as I am of his. His breathing is a give-away, a prize win understatement of I’m the right number of customers. Coughing confetti, coughing something I’m used to. I hold my hand on his chest and don’t flinch anymore. He is going to die, just like we will, but maybe quicker. In the bed he coughs too, my body holding itself rigid in sympathy, letting his body subside before relaxing back into a doll-like pool of blood and closed glass eyes, but we sleep. Our first real sleep in months.

    The morning was an adventure in boundary lines, roommates, that one’s in a housecoat yet I’m in my underwear, where’s the coffee? Fine details lined under eyes, the newsprint, oh we missed it. There’s a good write-up in here somewhere. Lean over and read. My hand sprouts a silver spoon, nothing I was born with and neither were they. The comments are complimentary, which is gentlemanly, and comfortable. Breakfast cuts itself in half to soothe the hungry hearts that exhausted themselves in the previous night while errands start to thicken out of gossiping fog. Head of the house, heed the commands. It’s too late. I’m already lying in the sun on the porch, one arm around a dismembered leg and a forbidden book page one hundred thirty-two. The neighbors look then look away and I haven’t had a chance at the internet yet.

    Sitting in the back of the minivan feels like the television expected childhood I never had. We buy chain and rope and try to find shelves, daughter to my lover, daughter to the inevitable opposite, and sister to my rockabilly friend. We let the parents bicker over music and pretend to dance, letting conversation drift. Leaves on a stream, coloured and dropped from only modern trees. The beat comes from Bollywood, the lyrics hate our guts. I buy wings at the second hand clothing store. Black ones, feathered, they scratch the air when I put them on like a record skipping sound behind me.

    The angel was unexpected. Not a dream, not entirely solid. She pulled his hair. “This was supposed to be prose, what are you doing here? Get out.” From his throat poured heterodyne modulations of voice and information static. “This paragraph can’t start with you here. I need you off my page.” His hands tore from the paper, shredding metaphor, leaving behind crumpled, stained ideas. Frustrated, she kicked them. “These are broken now. Look at the point of view! Ruined.”

    What am I going to do with you?

    I’m sitting in china flavoured ivory silk and wondering if any intentions have coalesced into something real or even vaguely legible. There are so many undercurrents to conversations, so many tones of voice possible with which to set a scene. I could stand in my doorway and merely shrug to express how necessary the awkwardness of roommates can be or you could call me at three in the morning and not know what to say, but not need to, because the gesture was enough to remind us both that we love each other. We could dance with the idea of innocuous topics while bringing to the table everything mother told us we shouldn’t take from strangers. We could even smile (or want to) at the mention of a number overheard in passing because six by six was a room once, but none of it helps when the air from the window is cold and I am curious with no immediate answers. No invisible cowgirls swinging their hips can save me, no assumptions of data paper are forthcoming with the tiny musical ting of inkwell spurs, only your voicing of desideratum, digital or otherwise.

    I cried at the party I went to, after the burlesque show. At exactly the wrong moment, that third-of-a-second where my throat was too tight to let anything out but misery, Michael asked how I was, and I dissolved. On the porch I held a twenty minute court, curled in my coat against the dawn and an outpouring of explanation, friends at my feet and holding my hand. Earlier was amusing, a boy in the kitchen drunkenly spinning fancies of admiration and delay while he worried about something entirely different that I pushed him toward, but when it came time to go, they found me as a black cloth lump between the stove and the corner kitchen cupboard. Occupational hazard, I warrant, when I’m not very good at being betrayed. I’m much better now. I began to fix most of everything the very next day, after Nine Inch Nails.

    (Which if you listen to anyone else, was a masterpiece of sound and light and motion, but to me was reminiscent of a high-school dance, with sledgehammer subtle visuals and terrible acoustics. With all the expectation built up, I was amused to find it was a surprise to see the people on stage only half an inch tall. They’re not twice the size of mere mortals! The rest of the concert was peppered with my mind being occupied on how effects are meant to erase that and create an actual feeling of bigger than life. “This is the audience, where all the lights shine out to blind you, and we are the band, who control this glorious blaze of flash and fury with a shake of our magical hands. We all know our roles, now we are bigger, and you are going to put your hands up in unison and punch the air so the people behind you get the right silhouette.” The most beautiful thing was the BIC constellations that flickered into being at every lull. A hundred hands bravely holding shards of fire above their heads to create a mythical web of stars in darkness.)

    munching on things that maul children carries a certain satisfaction. CLICK ON THE PICTURE.


    Make way jungle, we want oil!
    Originally uploaded by Nick Lyon.

    So it’s not tonsillitis after all. Apparently it’s strep throat.

    This week has been red lights and green. Wolf Parade was exquisite. A hipster sardine packed illicit space with ghetto lighting and terrifying wiring for the stage, I led Ryan and Andrew successfully to the very front. I leaned against the monitors and tried to dance crammed next to a short asian student of cultural ethnicity with my shirt off and tucked into my bag. I suspect her disapproving looks did wonders for my mood. The opening band was fun, stealing back everything from music that Weezer made suck, and when Wolf Parade came on, we offered them James‘ place in Montreal as a crash pad. (You should toss them an e-mail, lovely. See how serious they were, win some points with all those pretty girls with asymmetrical haircuts). Opening with Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts* set the tone well, though they could have been a bit louder with the vocals. You Are A Runner And I Am My Fathers Son is quite the experience live. The lead singer is a lean wrung out guy who froths at the mouth and screams with musical fury through a cigarette that he barely holds onto in a Keith Richard pout, and the keyboardist glares with such concentration it was surprising his intrument didn’t melt. His grandfather was in the audience somewhere, though I would imagine he would have been hiding in the back next to the hole-in-the-wall bar. I was situated a foot in front of the man playing theramin and he was just as impressive, holding his little electric keyboard above him as if that would bring is closer to some holy god, his eyes rolling trance-like into back into his head. The room was dripping wet, sodden with brilliantly sweaty notes that just didn’t translate well onto the album. (Though one must be mad to not to appreciate I’ll Believe In Anything.) In summary, the heat was unbelievable and the music just as hot. The concert next month, with Wolf Parade opening for The Arcade Fire is my next most anticipated thing. Everyone capable should go. *both albums for download with this link

    The Fetish Masque afterward wasn’t half as fun, nor was the burlesque show. Andrew went home and Ryan and I stopped to dress properly for the occasion, gothing to the nines with feathers in my hair and running gold powder down my face. When we arrived, we let someone take us from the burlesque line-up to the fetish one around the side and downstairs, therefore missing the show entirely through a mismanage of poor timing. Aaron was there, and Brian and Kevin, but Herminia stole us away upstairs before I could properly find them. Tristan was upstairs, and a friend of ours was attempting to MC, poor thing, on no warning whatsoever. The show was apparently terribly last minute, so disorganized that it only took me a moment to infiltrate the blueroom and begin ordering people around. “Who’s in the band, you’re up next. This fruit is to go out to the table. You, cut it up with me?” Ten minutes later I was curling someone’s hair in the backstage bathroom and trying to think of ways to get away while the organizer thanked me. I don’t know how to curl hair. I escaped by carrying a plate of peanut butter chocolates out to the covered pool-table and re-collected Ryan. It was getting to be close to shut-down then, so after a bit of dallying, I smuggled us into the freezer and we stole out with some strawberries that no one was going to miss and a pineapple in my skirts. When we came back is when we found Kevin finally. His hair had gone from white to an attractive jewel-tone blue, and I’m remembering now as I write this that I really should drop him a ring. I hope e-mail will do, this not having a voice could make things difficult.

    Plunderification, bitches.


    it might be a pickle
    Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

    torro-toise

    Sarah has graciously offered her home this evening as an alternative to tonight’s NIN canceled Korean Movie Monday. There will be no korean movie, but it’s practically the same thing, if you squint at it a bit.

    My day’s gone by with nothing addressed. I’m going to be in desperate need for some food later. I feel like going to sleep in a public park, let them erect a fence around me, and just wake me up when this all ends. I’ll be a public exhibit, free of charge, until the apocalypse has come and gone to the mountainside. When the weather is nice for ducks, I may turn to my side and let the wind destroy my possessing dreams a little, but that would be all. The grass will grow around me and tickle my hair into fantastic shapes. When it gets dark, it might get lonely, but I fail to see how that’s any worse than my current overwhelming lack of comfort, and maybe little animals might burrow in my skirts. Squirrels curling up for the heat of my body and sharing the night with me. Pets with human eyes I never see.

    Did you know Queen Anne was buried in a cubic coffin?

    Whipping past reflective surfaces, I make it though the day without looking at myself as much as possible. Work has two change-rooms, one next to the other, that are walled on three sides with mirrors. This makes it difficult, so when I stand in front of them, I try to focus on the colours in my hair or the angle of my shoes against the carpet. People tell me I’m pretty and I want to bite them. Pretty is useless. Pretty is not a skill. There are mirrors in the back as well, one in the hall and a large one in the bathroom. I’ve hung manniquin busts on the bathroom mirror, and so far no one has moved them, but the hall mirror makes me twitch whenever I pass and catch myself in the corner of my eye. The manniquins, however, I have fallen in love with. My hands trail over their bodies when I dress them, and I feel remembered sparks of tenderness when I smooth their artificial hair. I want to take them home with me and curl myself around the hard plastic bodies, protect them from the people who treat them as objects instead of people. I feel for them almost the same way I felt for the people who were the BodyWorlds Exhibit. A deep abiding respect with an underlying current of wanting to know their names. It’s commiseration that runs like oxygen through blood.

    I remember when I was beautiful to you

    Donald Rumsfeld is giving the president his daily briefing. He concludes by saying: “Yesterday, 3 Brazilian soldiers were killed.” “OH NO!” the President exclaims. “That’s terrible!” His staff sits stunned at this display of emotion, nervously watching as the President sits, head in hands. Finally, the President looks up and asks, “How many is a brazillion?”

    The bottom of the world fell out beneath me when I saw you on the street. My lungs dissipated, my breath sinking out of view. I was in the wrong company to stop, with the wrong people to demand they leave me behind. I’m wide awake, wishing the lights were out, but knowing that it wouldn’t help at all. Sheer certainty makes your name a holy thing, hard in my mouth like stones on a pale horse. In between the click of my teeth against yours, there used to be rare moments of brevity. Now there is a vacuum. I am in no safe hands, there is no warming me. I told Michael the truth, that every night I wake up crying. Court was held on the front porch, a open floor on which to pour my wounded emotions. You looked away and wouldn’t speak. Instead there was a comment about speech, about thought, and then a turning around and away. I feel like I’m a symbol for every woman who stood in the street and cried out, “You don’t know what you’re doing to me.“

    I carried a sword with me to the car. Black and silver, same as my hat. Same as my jacket and pants and eyes. The strap of my bag bit into my shoulder and I winced, hitting my knee when I leaned down to drop it into the back seat. The father sat in front of me, in the drivers seat, and reminded his daughter that her ex-boyfriend is now an age where he can be legally tried as an adult for rape. I saw where his direction of conversation was going five minutes before she did, and so I put a fist to my mouth, smothering bitter laughter and looked solidly out the window where she could not see my face. I wanted to believe in something beautiful again, so I tried to remember standing on the beach in California, but all I got was the memory of feeling incredibly unattractive on the white sand of Santa Monica.

    Tomorrow is the Nine Inch Nails concert. I have a floor ticket, currently in the hands of Christopher. I feel like I should be excited, but I can’t seem to muster any enthusiasm. My hips are going to swing, it’s obvious, but there’s no spark yet. When I get there, I’ve been told, it will be inescapable, and I believe them, but that still leaves me wondering what it is that’s currently wrong with me. I am still glad to meet new people, but how burned out can a human be without losing basic functions?

    Vote a 10 for me.
    if only because Topless Jhayne would make a great name for something.

    Then download this.

    Last night I was madly upset, but earlier than that I stole a pineapple from a burlesque show.

    I got the Real Woman talk again last night. The one that says I Cherish You But You’re Not For Fun. The Adult Elegance talk, the You’re Evil But Untouchable. I Want You But I Am Going To Go Home With her Because She Is Not As Important As You Are.

    Somehow it’s satisfying, it’s a flattery I can only and utterly respect. It quells the worries that spring up whenever I spend the majority of my time with young people that perhaps they are rubbing off on me in ways that I don’t want them to, eroding my prescience with their uncountable dramas, but amusingly, it irks me too. In a completely irrational, very female way. I am fully aware, yes, that kissing me isn’t like kissing most girls, but do you have to point it out? I would like to at least occasionally pretend that I could be permissive too.

    Bah.

    Boys.

    Also, Three dozen trained killer dolphins have escaped and may be armed. True fact.

    no it’s not batman forever


    three legged boy
    Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

    Tonight has been set aside for cinema. Dominique is visiting with a copy of Alphaville to watch before the midnight showing of Corpse Bride at the Van East. As ATIC has announced they do indeed have my power supply in today, today seems to be shaping itself into a day far more pleasant than yesterday. (Excepting you people in Houston, though hurricane Rita has just been marked down from a Cat5 into a Cat4, I still recco hauling ass out of there. In fact, escape the states entirely, I can put you up for a week or two depending on how well you cook. More permanent settling in will have to be dealt with on a case by case basis, and those who bring glitter, chocolate, and pretty dresses will get first dibs.)

    Tyler‘s birthday was pleasant, (minus the being egged on the way and the drink knocked directly into my lap), as the company was splendid. We had a chance to talk about something that had been misunderstood a few months ago that had been bothering him, which is always positive, and I was reprimanded by the staff for being up on the tables, which is also usually a good sign. My real moment of excitement, however, was earlier.

    My very first driving lesson in a four wheeled vehicle. Ray drove Ryan and I out to the airport and let me slide behind the wheel of his Element box. It was a tiny bit terrifying, that distinct feeling of being on the wrong side of the car. What we were doing was vaguely illegal, I don’t have a learners license yet, but as I didn’t hit anything or anyone, and didn’t flub the clutch thing half as often as I thought I would, I’m willing to say that it was a success. The cyclist even managed to get away safely.

    mutable like pushing the body through dance


    Yann Arthus-Bertrand – p146_f
    Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

    I’m listening to River of Orchids, arguably the most perfect piece of music XTC ever crafted. It’s on repeat. I’m singing too quietly for my house to hear, but my eyes are closed as I’m typing this and I’m swaying like the most classic of butterfly catching hippie girl. Pluck, and the strings echo the sound of a drop of water exquisitely caught. Unison, tears, a little thread of hair, two fingers, pluck. It’s something complex simmered down into it’s simplest components. A long haired orchestra, a chorus of flowers. Alchemy, singing into gold. Want to walk into London on my hands one day. The harmony is untouchable, flawless, layered in every direction like the air on windless day in a sunny field full of glory. This is my hindsight soundtrack to everything good in the world. It’s both childish and meaningful, lushly encompassing a world of celebration. Visual paeans flit past my mind when I put this on too long. Winding scenes of incongruous joy.

    It’s bloody addictive.

    I put it on because it’s beautiful, because I’m a little bit nervous. Someone interesting is coming over for dinner and a movie. Something cyclical and charming is required, something that reminds me of stand up memories. The mural we had in the basement always disappointed me, it was always a little too dull yellow for my tastes and they never asked me to take part in any way I felt I could respect. I took pictures anyway, when we left, of that wall that I painted topless, smearing white paint with a demoniacal grin. The home-made bars on the windows were covered in gray electrical tape.