You’ve probably already seen this. You should probably watch it again.
Everything this person has written for TUNETHEPROLETARIAT
When does the nightshade kick in?
They say that after his son died, old Earl sat alone in his two bedroom apartment night after night building a contraption, on account of he used to be quite the inventor in his youth, you know, but the bottle of moonshine he drank each night meant his stubby greasy fingers didn’t work right so he always screwed things on the wrong way and it took months before people realized it was some sort of crude jet pack and even then they weren’t sure what to make of it since it had wings and he fueled it with the same muck he poured down his throat but sure enough one night the neighbors heard a crash and policeman Warren found Earl’s crumpled, eerily still body with the jet pack attached still whirring and a huge dent on the ceiling and people said he forgot the roof was there maybe — so celestial was his vision — and that’s why he did it or maybe he knew it was there and that’s why he did it.
[Buy War of Currents, or download it for free until May 1, at which point it will cost your stingy ass $5.]
Things could be different, but they’re not.
Of Montreal – The Past Is A Grotesque Animal
Now that I live on my own, I stopped making my bed. Why bother? I’m just going to mess it up later that night anyways.
I dropped my toothbrush down the garbage disposal. The crunch snap made me cringe. But every day just serves to yellow the teeth I was trying to whiten. Why fight God?
All the quarters I save from skipping laundry go to parking meters. They fit so perfectly in the slot, and the reassuring numbers flash that me and my car are safe, at least for now.
The last thing I ate was some yellow curry from that Thai place a week ago. Sure, I feel weak, but eventually we all lose power, lose strength. Our bones snap easier, our flesh can’t heal itself anymore.
Staying alive is so much work. It takes a lifetime of effort.
[Buy Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? for a pretty miserly $7.]
I am a man; I am self-aware
Vic Chesnutt – Flirted With You All My Life
On December 25, 2009, Vic Chesnutt killed himself. Left partially paralyzed from a car accident, he faced thousands of dollars of debt for hospital bills and other health-related fees. Knowing he could never pay it off as a musician, he overdosed on muscle relaxants on Christmas day.
The only time I saw Vic Chesnutt live, he told a hilarious, self-deprecating story about a complete stranger holding him up as he used a urinal in some bar. I think that works as an excellent analogy for a more ideal health-care system: those able to stand holding the crippled aloft as they piss.
I’ve been listening to this song a lot lately. I find it cathartic; it trivializes my problems. Here’s Chesnutt’s take in an interview with NPR less than a month before he killed himself:
CHESNUTT: Right. Well, this song is a love song. It’s a suicide’s breakup song with death. You know, I’ve attempted suicide three or four times. It didn’t take. And this is really a breakup song with death. You know, it’s talking about flirting with, you know, flirting – I had flirted with death my whole life, you know. Even as a young kid, I was sick and almost died a few times. And then suicide attempts – it’s a kind of – you know, it’s a breakup song.
NPR: Did you try to kill yourself even before the accident?
CHESNUTT: I did, yeah.
NPR: And after the accident?
CHESNUTT: I did, yeah.
David Bazan – Flirted With You All My Life (American Songwriter Sessions)
[Buy At The Cut, with Thee Silver Mt. Zion as the backing band.]
[Listen to Bazan’s American Songwriter Sessions.]
I shall wait for love
Frog Eyes – A Flower in a Glove
And you were always a botanist at heart, I think, stopping to smell the roses, literally, for as long as I knew you. Or pointing out lilacs or hyacinths or rhododendrons when we saw them in the park.
And you were always finding odd places to cram flowers into your third floor apartment. Hanging pots, a stove that didn’t work because instead it had rows of buds under a sunlamp, bookshelves devoted to a mess of bright, growing colors. My favorite was a single pink lotus in a blue glove, hanging by a nail outside the window. You would tenderly bring it back inside during rough weather.
And you were always bringing flowers to me at work. You’d show up with a silly grin and one hand inside your jacket. When the hand came out, so did your latest present. I kept them all, lined my cubicle with them, watered and cared for them as you would have. It didn’t seem to bother you to give them away, as long as you kept growing more.
And you were always talking about leaving, about going somewhere with more exotic species and more tracts of land to make into gardens. We – I – thought you were just talk. We thought you’d stay forever, in your third floor apartment with the flower in the glove hanging out the window.
And you were always saying sorry when you accepted the job. Always apologizing that it didn’t work out between us or telling me you’d come back in a few years. But you were always going to go.
And me, I will wait for your love; I shall wait for your love. I shall wait for love, here in this third floor apartment, meticulously watering the flowers.
[Pre-order the triumphant Paul’s Tomb: A Triumph for an instant mp3 download.]
Roti canai and char kway teow
Hi. This is my real voice, not my fiction voice. Just me casually talking at you. I know, I know, you imagined it deeper slightly less nasally. Fuck you. Just listen.
During a recent visit to Penang, I met someone a girl who enjoyed Damn Dirty Apes, which slightly exploded my brain. Half Swiss, half Malaysian, she wore her hair short and moused, and spoke with a gentle, soothing voice. I didn’t really know anyone else had heard of DDA.
When I was a freshman in high school, a senior named Sina quit his band, Analog Vs. Digital, to drum in a group his brother, back from college in Australia, was putting together. The brother, Pedram, and some random European tourist who was bumming around Malaysia for a couple months played guitar in a band they called Damn Dirty Apes. Since I attended a very conservative Christian boarding school, we spoke of the band in hushed whispers and called it DDA. (Not to be confused with Dance Dance Revolution, which we also enjoyed.)
I remember Sina walking around with stacks of self-printed CDs in red cardboard sleeves, selling them for RM 5 a pop (equivalent to 2 U.S. dollars at the time).
Air is thicker in Penang. Dripping with humidity, it’s gives everything a slightly underwater feel. And it carries smells better. When I listen to Damn Dirty Apes, I can feel the weight of the air on my skin and smell roti canai (pictured above). And then I think of gorgeous, ethnically-mixed women.
[If you find a place to buy this music, tell us in the comments section.]
Blood on my knees
Sharon von Etten – Consolation Prize (Daytrotter Session)
“WHEN I TOLD YOU I HAD A TENDER HEART I WASN’T LYING.”
Sharon screwed the lipstick back down and snapped on the cap. She afforded a shy glance upwards at the mirror, at her handiwork. The words took up two lines at the top, blood red in an almost glaringly white bathroom. He’d be home in a couple hours, he’d see it then.
Fidgeting, she put the lipstick in her purse. Then she took it back out and placed it, standing upright, on the counter next to the sink. Too symmetrical. She moved it four inches closer to the edge and left it.
[Buy because i was in love.]
[Download the entire Daytrotter session.]
Got two tickets to a midnight execution.
Silver Jews – Smith & Jones Forever
At 5 a.m. I pulled on my blue trench coat and jammed a cigarette in my mouth. Out in the nippy air I lit it. A homeless guy took advantage of the halt in my stride to bum a smoke; I tossed him the rest of my pack and kept moving. My headphones were in, I wouldn’t have heard his thanks anyways.
Outside the 7/11 a few blocks from my house some of my buzz started to wear off. I smelled like ball juice from not showering, I didn’t have any socks on, and my body felt coated in the guilt that I’d been awake all night. A spandex-clad jogger bounced by, no doubt to head home and gulp down a cup of raw egg whites and a protein shake before work
Inside it’s my usual: some Arazona Southern Style Ice Tea and Green Machine Naked Juice. At the counter I flipped through Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Edition as the cashier rang me up. I pulled out one earbud, but he doesn’t say anything anyways, just grunts.
Out in front of the QFC a man wanders out and signals that he wants to talk to me. I put down my bag and yank out my earbud.
“Yeah?”
“Is there a QFC this way?”
“I don’t think so. What’s wrong with this QFC?”
“Nothing, there’s nothing wrong with it.”
“It’s all residential housing that way.”
“I’m looking for an AM/FM radio. Is there anything this way that would have it?”
“No, head the other way. There’s a 7/11 and a Safeway and then you’ll get to Broadway.”
“Oh the Safeway is that way? I was thinking backwards. Then the other QFC must be beyond that. Thanks.”
“Sure.”
I put my headphones back in; the man grasped the handle to his luggage and wheeled it away.
[Buy American Water.]
Immutable
Joanna Newsom – On A Good Day
“If I saw Younger Me, I’d kick him straight in the balls,” he said.
She giggled, fingering the circular cardboard cover on her coffee cup.
“Seriously,” he said sternly. “If I saw a younger version of myself out there” – he pointed out the glass panes that made up the front of the coffee shop at the swirling snow on the sidewalk, where a couple huddled together, leaning into the wind, as they hurried by – “I’d march on out there and kick him in the testicles.
“I have so much to teach him, but he wouldn’t listen a jot. He was a little rascal.”
She’d had first dates that went worse.
After the movie, she declined coming up to his apartment for coffee (“We just had some”) and trudged home, hands pushed deep into the pockets of her pea coat.
What if I could tell my younger self something? she thought, sitting up in bed with the comforter up to her waist. Just share one secret. One lesson I’ve learned that could help me get through it all again just a bit better.
She bit the end of the pen, wondering. As she put the pad of paper down and reached over to switch the lamp on her nightstand off, she paused. Hand outstretched, she thought. Suddenly she picked up her notebook again, and started writing.
Our nature does not change by will
In the winter, ’round the ruined mill
The creek is lying, flat and still
It is water though it’s frozen
She looked at what she’d written and re-read it several times.
Then she snapped off the light and pulled the beige comforter up to her chin. The wind sputtered tiny chunks of ice and snow against her window outside.
[Buy Have One On Me.]