Frightened Rabbit – Nothing Like You
“‘Tis true my form is something odd,
But blaming me is blaming God;
Could I create myself anew
I would not fail in pleasing you.If I could reach from pole to pole
Or grasp the ocean with a span,
I would be measured by the soul;
The mind’s the standard of the man.”
— poem used by Joseph Merrick to end his letters, adapted from “False Greatness” by Isaac Watts.
[Buy The Winter Of Mixed Drinks.]
(Sam thought you might like this.)
Voxtrot – The Start Of Something
The exact locations of the minute and hour hand aren’t important. Suffice it to say that you’re somewhere between drink three and six; that time of night when these things begin.
She’s been in the bar since your second IPA, the one your boy picked up as payback for getting his dinner. Red hair, chopped and dyed at a Hayes Valley saloon in exchange for too many of the tips she earned pouring unending cups of coffee and recommending the spinach, chorizo, and feta omelet. The layers of the cut complement the layers of clothes she’s wearing, that they are all wearing this fall.
Half an hour ago, there was a smile directed, almost certainly, at you. You looked at her, then past her, then back to your drink, knowing it was only a matter of time. There was an expectant possibility in her blue eyes and oval face. You try, and fail, from letting it show up in your posture.
You get off your stool and walk over. The journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step. Then again, so does the journey of a single step.
[Buy Raised By Wolves.]
(Noah asked if we might have him around once a week. We were happy to.)
It’s a song through grainy sands: a sound of muffled clarity. You remember placing and clicking that tape into its deck, and who has forgotten such magic? None, I hope. When the song would play you’d hear everything. You heard sounds that weren’t ever present and you saw colours in mushy pixels, too, but you can’t do that anymore. But then there’s True Blue. The cloudless tune.
The consoling jangle* of rhythm guitar passes play through to its leading sister, sensitive in her approach to the riff, with an almost double-bass delivery. Pluck and boom and soft fizzle…
Swallowed and consumed drums swim in shallow pacing, but it can be felt, and the sound won’t move without it. All backing to the most present of voices. And what of such vocal impression? “I’m beggin’ you, please.” :53. To keep pace with a Ronette, when your own effort is distanced from the original, is to stand alone with strength. That quick-fire mouthed gun; the lip spit-shake chorus change of ‘true blue’ to ‘TCHUBLU!’ – it’s all a whipping paint brush, spurting fantastic and tragic colours on the soon-to-be canvas.
To be a singer is to surprise swoon, for there is no greater charm. True Blue, it belongs in the arms of the smaller fishes of the more focused ponds. It belongs to my arms and their own anxieties. Christ, I must be blunt, hear me out, for this song is majestic in its nature. [Buy.] [View.] [Glare (At).]
* Do you hear Christmas, too?
Architecture In Helsinki – Wishbone
Devin pulled her jacket on while heading out the door. A quick stop at the store later, she arrived at Addison’s house and let herself in; it was never locked. Deep in the utensil drawer, she hid a new wine bottle opener, one of those nice ones with the metal wings that made it so easy to uncork bottles.
Out on the street she saw a parking ticket on the car next to hers. Devin slipped it out from under the windshield wiper and paid it.
Then she drove up past the border into Canada. At the first town, she pulled over and found a post office. There she scrawled the name and address of her neighbor on an envelope and stuffed enough money for two months’ rent in it.
On the drive back, she cranked down the windows and played Architecture In Helsinki at full blast.
A mile away from her house, she parked in the driveway of her friend Ryanne and put a bottle of tequila inside the screen door.
In her car, Devin found a crumpled piece of paper and a blunt pencil. In big letters she wrote:
“Hey,
Listen, sometimes life’s alright and sometimes it sucks. But with friends like you, it’s mostly alright. Sorry to hear about your sister. Just know – now especially – that you’re valued and loved and treasured and I really hope you don’t move away.”
She didn’t sign it, just folded it twice and put it in the mailbox of Taylor across the street.
Whistling, Devin went home. In front of her door she found three green apples in a sack that hadn’t been there when she left. She shined one on her shirt and took a bite. It was crisp.
[Buy In Case We Die.]
In the sweltering mid-afternoon Jerome caught the wind. In his arms, he held two buckets of water. The heat had been beating down on his boil-ridden back for hours as he walked from the well back to the village where his family – his father, mother, and two sisters – were waiting, parched. He resisted the impulse to wash his dusty skin clean. He declined to take even a sip. He walked on. And the heat was terrible, this aching drone on his pores that wouldn’t stop, like a horde of bees in a windowless room. And when the sun had swung highest, sitting perched atop the sky in the midday hour, he had felt closer than ever before to stopping. But the wind had come, just a gentle breeze, and relieved his tired eyes of dust and swept away the dirt from his leathery arms and aroused a soft smile.
The Mamas & The Papas – Dream A Little Dream of Me
And he plugged in.
He lifted his shirt, flicked and tucked away some dust and mess from his belly button, sat against the wall, back-straight, and fit his spine into the vertical charger. Some rummaging, some swaying, but the eventual click. The mirror opposite told him the dulled whites of his eyes had flicked to lime green wash; he was in. He wanted music and dreams and a home, but he had to wait for the charge. A wait to drink it in. A boy who wanted to be a hanging picture, not the leaning mess on the floor’s back. No surprise.
The back of his head, his backing, took to the cold wall as he ran it across a small clump of dried paint, scratching at a spot somewhere on his scalp. Pop. His back took to the wall, too, and so his curved neck, the space untouched by brick, caused irritation. Phantom irritation.
There was too much hair on his knees, he thought; a sign of diabetes, he had once read – maybe. His shins were balding (both), but of the two patches it was the right-sided patch that lacked subtlety, and through his socks he could see his second toe was longer than the first. These are the type of things you think of in a state of charge, he thought.
Sitting there for hours, the charge bar hadn’t yet reached halfway, but the energy fell into him like fierce surges of electric waves. Progress. Feel.
He drifted in his impatience and dreamed dreams of her and of a home somewhere else. [Buy.]
Flight Facilities – Crave You (f/ Giselle)
I let your fingers wander down the waistband of my skirt and tuck your kisses into the comfort of my breast pocket. I have decided to keep them with me, close to the heart that shakes this ribcage right to the point of breaking. I’ve never before had a vital organ attempt to escape my body, but I imagine this is exactly what it feels like. But I cannot blame her for wishing to be with her rightful owner. My heart knows that she will corrode in my chest and her only hope of survival is to be beside yours. Your interest, however painful, lies not with my heart. If she relocates to my underpants, will you then pocket her in your jeans? You know, the ones you never wash. It is not safe for me to be around you or that I even want to. It’s not fair that, when I tell you I love you, you change the subject or that you speak in one word sentences. I don’t like that everything ends with a full stop as though it’s finite. I’d stand on my head for you, I open my legs for you, I’d kneel on tiles for you, but nothing it seems will do. I’m preparing for the day that you find my heart withered in your closet, homeless and unwilling to forgive. The day you finally voice your love for me. The day I scoff and say “Ok.” [Buy.]
(drawing by Lucia)
(Raezle guests for us today. I can only hope she will again soon.)
SOON AFTER SETTLING in Seattle, nearly everyone acquires a version of the people-here-are-sooo-nice story. There’s the comic after-you-no-please-after-you traffic merge. And the fellow who held the elevator door when you were still 20 feet away. Then that time some lady offered you change for the meter.
Those who move to Seattle also have another kind of story. But you don’t broadcast this one. You keep it to yourself or whisper it to other transplants. It goes something like this:
You’re talking to a co-worker/someone at a party/fill in the blank. In any other town, this person looks like someone with whom you might be friends. Potential friend asks, “So what are you up to this weekend?”
“Oh, I don’t have any plans yet. I just moved to Seattle and don’t really know anybody . . .”
You try not to look desperate.
Friend-to-be smiles and, for a brief, shining moment you think to yourself: Finally, someone is going to ask me to do something. Invite me to a party. Happy hour. Brunch with the girls. It’ll be just like “Sex and the City.” She’ll be Charlotte; you’ll be Carrie!
You feel a chill coming on. Still smiling, Friend-Not-On-Your-Life politely excuses herself, “Well, have a nice weekend then.”
Ouch.
You’ve just experienced the infamous Seattle Freeze. It’s the flip side of Seattle Nice. Welcome to Seattle . . . Now please go away.
[Seattle is] the ideal seatmate on an airplane. We slide in, exchange a smile and a succinct pleasantry, then leave you be for the rest of the flight. Alaska Airlines should capitalize on this with ads that promise: “Uninterrupted service from Seattle — and we mean it.”
(These words stolen from the Seattle Times, specifically Julia Sommerfeld.)
[Pay whatever you can for FUTURE songs, or pay just $10 and get an O.G. cassette tape.]
Say Hi To Your Mom – Let’s Talk About Spaceships
If you were going to converse about spaceships, what would you say?
…that, certain childhood fantasies aside, humanity’s progress in creating flying machines is really rather disappointing?
…that Serenity weighed 282,500 pounds, could carry 18 passengers, and deserved another season?
…that, without any specific scientific knowledge, you’re reasonably sure NASA’s rockets get much worse gas mileage than the average Hummer — at least until you reach the Mesophere; then it’s up for some debate?
…that Will Smith makes a solid pilot but you’d trade him to have Jeff Goldblum as your navigator?
…that we’ll be lucky to last a week when the aliens show up?
…that Bono isn’t the only one staring at the sun; he’s just the one with the most pairs of sunglasses?
…that it would be fun to piss in zero gravity, no matter the results?
…that Luke Skywalker got at least a little lucky?
Ultimately, I think, you’d end up changing the subject.
[Buy Numbers & Mumbles.]
(Noah guests for tune the proletariat today. Zac tells me he lives in San Fran, and used to be the editor of a beer magazine.)
