connexion: the selector

I Author My Own Disaster, Volume Four, Part Six

Nick Gentry, Self-Portrait 02, location unknown, 2010

(They say this is the noise that gets made as my life is lived.)

+When a body in motion hits an immovable object somebody’s going to end up with injuries deep and painful to a degree directly related to the velocity and fury with which the body and object collide.

+It’s always when I start to describe things aloud that they begin to disappear.

Download: Loscil - The Making of Grief Point
Buy the Album: Loscil - Endless Falls

I Author My Own Disaster, Volume Four, Part Five

the trick is figuring out how tight to hold on

i needed to do it before i lost any more days.

(i don’t know where i’ve been. i can’t explain what i’ve been doing.)

+ keep me still for my own good

Download: Six Twilights - Scarf, Bed
Buy the Album: Self-Titled

I Author My Own Disaster, Volume Four, Part Four

Rebecca Belmore, location unknown; date unknown.

And now the only thing that settles me down enough to be able to fall asleep is wrapping my whole head up tight

I leave a small space for my nostrils, just enough to breathe

but my whole head is wrapped up tight

and I wrap my arms around my shoulders
and bring my legs up to my chest
and imagine sinking down into the sea and

this calms me

and I can sleep.

Download: Beach House - Heart and Lungs
Buy the Album: Beach House - Self-Titled

I Author My Own Disaster, Volume Four, Part Three

Rochelle Haisley, location unknown; date unknown.

It’s not a case of share and share alike
I take what I require

Download: The Cure - Play for Today
Buy the Album: The Cure - Seventeen Seconds

I Author My Own Disaster, Volume Four, Part Two

Weegee: Small Time Hood Andrew Izzo Killed By off-Duty Cop, Broome St, New York City 1942

I can feel it making the places where my seams come together uncomfortable
itchy
almostpainful.

+(There’s something missing.
I’m not unhappy, I spend most of my time smiling.)

There’s a hole,

an empty space.

+(I am still trying to make out the shape,
then I will know what to do.)

Download: Kristin Hersh - Run Letter
Buy the Album: Live at Maxwell’s, Hoboken (Thank you, Internet!)

Let’s Be Very Small, Part One

untitled, warezhka; location unknown, 18 november 2008

If it wasn’t for some accidents then some would never ever learn.

Download: Elvis Costello & The Attractions - Chemistry Class
Buy the Album: Elvis Costello & The Attractions - Armed Forces

I am More than Tone, Part Ten

confessional; seattle, wa 27 june 2009

Last night I dreamt of horses and catching up.

In the middle of the night I woke up because the scarf I tied around my eyes was far too tight, and my eyelids were sore.

This morning the inside of my bottom lip was swollen because I had been biting it all night while I slept.

I don’t know how to better explain what’s going on here.

+oh,don’tcrossyourfingers

+Sayyouweremethenyoucouldseetheview
+You’llknowweareequallydamaged
+Don’tbeafool,makeiteasier
+You’lllearntosaywhen
+Signalifyoucan’tsay,”nomore”

(Don’t cross your fingers
Sundays will never change
They keep on coming
You’ll be a freak
And I’ll keep you company)

Download: Blonde Redhead - Anticipation, Four Damaged Lemons (3rd Eye Remix)
Buy the Album: Blonde Redhead - Misery is a Butterfly, Melodie Citronique

I am More than Tone, Part Nine

i wanna stay here with you forever (porgy); seattle, wa 27 june 2009

it will take days and days and days still to not collect details with the express purpose of giving them to you.

i am starting to write just to myself again

+ on napkins,

+ the backs of receipts

+ in the margins of the quarterly

+ on the soles of my feet

there are pictures of cherry-stained fingertips and lips

handmade postcards

pressed petals

and my scent,

waiting for a home.

Download: Björk & Matmos - Unravel, You’ve Been Flirting Again
Buy the Album: Björk & Matmos - Live in Boston (Thank you, Internet!)

I am More than Tone, Part Eight

lucky rabbit’s foot, rose petals, a koi fish, and krakow; seattle, wa 07 june 2009

hours and hours of lectures and cream-soaked honeyed earl grey tea

my obsession with white flowers reaching a fevered pitch

the family of crows who have taken up residence outside my window arguing at 430am,

coming into my dreams and turning into seagulls and seals,

so then i was dreaming of bobbing along gently on the ocean

tracing small drawings on the back of unopened envelopes

daydreaming of remedios the beauty again,

feeling still

Download: Fryderyk Chopin - Mazurka Opus 17 No 4 in A Minor
Buy the Album: Chopin - 51 Mazurkas

Download: Rainy Days (zip file)

1. Melodium - Ive Been Here Before
2. Tape - Beams
3. Guillemots - Falling Out Of Reach
4. Sam Amidon - Sugar Baby
5. M.Ward - Outro
6. The Battle Of Land And Sea - You Are A Sailor
7. Max Richter - Cascade NW By W
8. Erik Enocksson - The Flames
9. Peter Broderick - Below It
10. Ray La Montagne - I Still Care For You
11. Beach House - Gila
12. Kaki King - So Much For So Little
13. Kago - Luftivennad
14. Band Of Horses - I Go To The Barn Because I Like The
15. Grizzly Bear - Deep Blue Sea
16. Six Organs Of Admittance - Words For Two
17. Silje Nes - Ames Room
18. The Drift - Nozomi
19. Riceboy Sleeps - Happiness

I am More than Tone, Part Seven

seattle, wa, 31 may 2009

It doesn’t matter, does it?

Download: Eluvium - Requiem on Frankfort Ave. / The Promise Ring - Miette
Buy the Album: Eluvium - Copia / The Promise Ring - Horse Latitudes

I am More than Tone, Part Six

Picasso’s Blue Period

Oh,
oh
oh oh oh.

Let us never, ever forget how good Calla was.

(we promise to stay still, we hold onto each other, we reach our hands out and say “please, let’s just lay down here…just for a little while.”)

+ should be, could be you.

(a special post for KHM, who understands.)

Download: Calla - Elsewhere (Live on WNYU Radio), Fear of Fireflies (Live on WNYU Radio)
Buy the Album: Calla - Insound Tour Support Series Vol. 22

I am More than Tone, Part Five

we had an accident; seattle, wa, 07 june 2009

They played this album in full at the cafe this morning.

I was done halfway through the songs,

and really I’d been there for so long already

(I was the first customer of the day, bright and early)

but I sat and just remembered for a long, long time.

I sat and watched the cafe fill up around me and I became untethered,

I was somewhere else.

+ long, hot afternoons in the Bay Area,

+ cold, dark mornings in Iowa

+ midnight basements

+ becoming covered to the wrist in paints, wet colorful fingerprints on tumblers filled with bourbon, blue and grey and green edges to our cigarettes

+ sitting up on fish ranch road with these songs streaming out of the windows while we watched the bridge reach up through the fog

+ laying in bed with 3am voices on the phone, my high, empty apartment ceiling blue from the monitor light

+ sitting in the window, watching the factory across the way fill the dark grey sky with soft white plumes, the only beautiful thing i had seen for weeks.

It took a long time to gather myself and it almost seemed like an accident that I was where I was,

For a moment I got stuck in the cotton candy-like gauze of memory.

Download: PJ Harvey - Beautiful Feeling, Horses in My Dreams
Buy the Album: PJ Harvey - Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea

I am More than Tone, Part Four

Bunny, Brian Boner; location unknown, date unknown

+ what happens when you sleep

+ we collect our small moments where we will

+ my spaces

+ damaged details

+ flowers

+ cold

+ everything dies

+ stolen shots

+ a universe between the petals

+ prurient

+ walking home

+ so sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me

The heat broke and now it is raining again.

My windows are still open and the wind is blowing along with the water falling through the leaves

and the smell and sound of it accompany this song as if they were supposed have been part of the recording.

Download: Windy & Carl - Set Adrift
Buy the Album: Windy & Carl - Depths

Everyone’s So Lonely, I Dig It, Part Eight

Clean Teeth, Dirty Streets, mysaliva; Tibet Road, Shanghai, 12 april 2009

The thing is,

I finally understand now that this isn’t my mess to clean up.

So now I wake up happy and just,

so much lighter every morning.

I am really, really happy, because I remember,

clearly

who I am,

the goodness of my heart,

and the unbelievable strength of my will to see things through.

It’s not my problem now,

none of this is my problem.

Tonight I smell of honey and green tea,

the windows and blinds are open wide letting the almost-summer air in,

the tulips are opening and reaching up to the sky,

and I will lay down in my soft bed,

headphones cupping my ears gently.

I will read my book with pencil in hand to underline and make notes in the margins

(and drawings too)

and I will feel good.

I will feel really, really good.

xoj

Download: Jane’s Addiction - My Time (Live), Rock & Roll (Velvet Underground Cover Live)
Buy the Album: Jane’s Addiction - Self-Titled

Everyone’s So Lonely, I Dig It, Part Eight

I know it’s been such a long time, babies.

I found this old mix and I haven’t been able to lay it down, so I decided to share it.

The funny thing is, I made it at least three or four years ago…

and I’ll be honest and say it may not be the most skillful mix I’ve ever put together,

and it really will take sitting down and listening to it front to back to understand how incredibly MAJOR it is,

but my god, this motherfucker was prescient.

00:00 “Obessions (Edit)” Joe Frank
00:28 “Transmitting Life from Mars” De La Soul
01:35 “The Boogie Man Song” Mos Def
03:56 “I Wanna Get Next to You” Rose Royce
07:44 “Sometime Later” Alpha
14:38 “She is a Rainbow in Curved Air” Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paradiso Underground Freak Out
20:15 “Arabesuku” Lily Chou-Chou
26:00 “How Long has this Been Going On?” Ella Fitzgerald
29:13 “Vibrate” Rufus Wainwright
31:56 “Noon Chill” Arto Lindsay
35:22 “I Came to Your Party Dressed as a Shadow” Piano Magic
39:31 “Cocoon” Björk
43:52 “Haunt Me” Arab Strap
49:30 “My Autumn’s Done Come (Lee Hazelwood Cover, Live at KEXP)” Tindersticks
53:35 “Look for Me (I’ll be Around)” Neko Case
56:47 “Since I Fell for You” Nina Simone
59:35 “You’re Still My Baby” Otis Redding

That’s right, I did it - I ended it with Otis.

What.

Download: filling in the spaces, the cover

Everyone’s So Lonely, I Dig It, Part Seven

artist unknown (but clearly completely rad.)

Good morning, Sunshine(s)!

I woke up this morning in the best mood.

You guys, there was a leetel birdie outside my window talking talking talking,

and she had a friend who was talking talking talking back,

they kept chirping the same melody back and forth,

it was like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, with the same tones going back and forth in different voices.

So lovely!

And then I got out of bed and got everything ready for what is bound to be a beautiful, sunny Friday,

and while I was hopping and dancing around my apt,

Amelia hopping and knock-kneed skipping around my sock-feet,

I thought I should share the songs that were making me so happy.

I don’t know, doods, sometimes you just wake up and all the right angles are set correctly against each other.

Download: Pee - San Salvador / Henry’s Dress - Jimmy / Holiday - Gent / Unrest - Winona Ryder (XX Version) / The Smiths - Rusholme Ruffians / Felt - Down But Not Yet Out
Buy the Album: Pee - Now! More Charm and More Tender / Henry’s Dress - Bust ‘em Green / Holiday - Ready, Steady, Go! / Unrest - B.P.M. 1991-1994 / The Smiths - Meat is Murder / Felt - Forever Breathes the Lonely Word

Everyone’s So Lonely, I Dig It, Part Six

paul newman

Starts and stops,

starts and stops,

start and stop.

+(Also - there is nothing that is not amazing about this picture. My favorite things?

His ankles.)

Download: Versus - Tin Foil Star, Flax, Morning Glory, Crazy Maker (I’m Still in Love with Your Eyes)
Buy the Album: Versus - Dead Leaves, Two Cents Plus Tax

The Things That Make My Heart Beat Faster, Twisted Up Edition, Part Four

catharsis

E-mail never sent, 19 June 2008:

things you don’t know about me:

- i get sad when the bruises get green and yellow and i can’t feel the soreness anymore

- when i look at basquiat my spine feels like it is exploding, one vertebrae at a time

- **you can write on me, and then cross out the words: in fact, i hope you do.

- i want to be a living basquiat; i understand saying it and then pulling it back, taking it away from you.**

- probably the thing i want most is for you to feel my pulse in my lips when my eyes roll back. you know how that feels. i know how that feels. i want you to take it away from me.

Download: The Velvet Underground - Heroin, Sweet Jane (Early Version), Love Makes You Feel Ten Feet Tall (Demo)
Buy the Album: The Velvet Underground & Nico (Deluxe Edition), Loaded (Fully Loaded Edition, Disc 2)

We Collect Our Small Moments Where We Will, Part Seven

peagreen boat by Yoneko, location unknown; 10 may 2009

My dreams have been incredible.

The best ones are when I am on the sea,

or a calm lake.

Last night I was in a small boat,

with a friend

and we were on a still, still lake.

My friend kept scooping up water because the water was just so calm,

and he wanted majesty,

he wanted water in our hair and pooling at our feet.

He threw the water in my face,

it was a sweet gesture, really.

The sky had big, ocean-like clouds,

we picked out rabbits and wolves in them,

and they chased each other.

His smile was pulled like a sweet cupid’s bow,

and I saw the wolves chasing the rabbits reflected in his eyes.

I picked up berries from our lunch basket and

I smashed them against his lips

and then mine.

We both blushed,

and I held his hands so tight that his hands were stained,

blood-berry red road maps,

secret itineraries,

to the soft places in each others hearts.

Download: Lily Chou Chou - Kaifuku Suru Kizu, Lily Chou Chou - Arabesuku, Debussy - Claire de Lune
Buy the Album: Various Artists - All About Lily Chou-Chou

Broken Wide Open

what if we just lay down here for awhile, seattle, wa; 07 may 2009

This is my one time to indulge myself like this.

I miss everything.

everything,
everything,
everything.

+the hardest part is when i wake up in the middle of the night,

not really awake,

and you are all over me

i can smell you,

half-alert

you are all over me,

and i can hear your voice in my ear reading to me,

how it was.

it’s so unfair

because at those times I don’t have control

and I can’t stop it.

No one’s ever known my heart the way you do.

I don’t know what it means that this means nothing, ultimately…

that my heart is just

disposable.

Download: Frank Sinatra - What’ll I Do?
Buy the Album: Frank Sinatra - Everybody Loves Somebody

Ha, Yeah.

Ooh shit: Damn.

Hey y’all.

In case you weren’t given the memo:

Real Girl Tranny Hooker is the hotness again.

I cannot stop listening to this song.

It was so gorgeous out today and I walked and walked and walked,

well really

I bounced and bounced and bounced while listening to this song and just being so so so happy to have a good swerve to my hips.

It felt so good.

This song is so fucking good.

Damn.

Download: Electrik Red - So Good (Remix ft Lil’ Wayne)
Buy the Album: Eelectrik Red - How to be a Lady Vol. 1 (Sooooo…I dunno if this actually has this version of the song on it, the internet wasn’t very helpful on this one. But at least I gave it to you, right? You’re welcome, and kisses for reals.)

I am More than Tone, Part Three

i’ll be straighter with you.

While I wonder what it is you’re after
Keeping company with this disaster.

Download: Elliott Smith - Whatever (Folk Song in C), New Disaster
Buy the Album: Elliott Smith - New Moon

“Once he was showing me a book of twentieth-century art he liked, and there was a picture of an automated sculpture called Dead Birds Fly Again, a thing that whirled real dead birds around and around on a string, and he smiled and nodded, and I could see he felt the artist was a spiritual ancestor of some kind.” —William Gibson, “The Winter Market”

I put together this mix over the past few weeks, and then dedicated it to our Jessica, whose heart had coincidentally been rendered metaphorically akin to a dead bird, with the hope that it might be of some help to that organ, or at least make it feel dizzy.

What we have here is some very, very sad music, mostly classical in nature, together with some less-sad but still fitting tunes to impart some momentum. Hopefully by the end the old ticker is whirling around like, if not quite its old self, then at least like an actual living heart and not a dead bird.

Gabriela Friðriksdóttir — “Tetralógia”
Zoe Keating — “Legions (War)”
Victoire — “A Door Into the Dark”
Alan Morse Davies [after Claude Debussy] — “Claire de Lune [Hotel Commodore Ensemble, 1927; remixed]”
Aram Khachaturian — “Gayane Ballet Suite, Adagio”
Arvo Pärt — “Cantus In Memory Of Benjamin Britten”
Kalter — “Svalbard”
Murcof — “Ulysses”
Kyle Gabler — “Jelly [from the “World Of Goo” soundtrack]”
Philip Glass — “Pruit Igoe”
Victoire — “A Song For Arthur Russell”
Terry Riley — “Half-Wolf Dances Mad In Moonlight”
Marsen Jules — “Brouillard”
Eluder — “Moon Plea”
Gas — “Oktember”
Âme — “Rej [A Hundred Birds Mix]”

Listen, download, etc: “Dead Birds Fly Again”

I am More than Tone, Part Two

collected (we live in haunted attics), seattle, wa; 28 march 2009

For better or worse,

there is no one in all the world

who is like me.

Download: Faunts - Gone with the Day
Buy the Album: Faunts - High Expectations/Low Results

I am More than Tone, Part One

Steve Seely; location unknown, date unknown

Today was the first time in ten days I could listen to music.

Lots of silence, lots of being still.

But in the last few days a fever raged in my body,

it made me shiver and shake,

it made me sweat every last bit of water from my body,

it made me cry and clutch onto my sheets,

it nearly cooked my brain in my skull,

it nearly put me in the hospital.

And then it broke:

I think something’s been knocked loose.

I have my wits about me, I have my heart,

I have everything.

Today was the first time in ten days I could listen to music.

This is what I wanted to hear.

Download: Drive Like Jehu - Caress, Spikes to You, If it Kills You
Buy the Album: Drives Like Jehu - Self-Titled

Songs for Secret Bee-Hiving, Part Seven

like lovers do, seattle, wa; 29 february 2009

We shall touch.

Download: Lift to Experience - Falling from Cloud 9, With Crippled Wings, When We Shall Touch, Down with the Prophets (to be listened to in order.)
Buy the Album: Lift to Experience - The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads

Songs for Secret Bee-Hiving, Part Six

a touch of the poet, seattle, wa; 21 february 2009

to a place beside me

Download: Bonnie Prince Billy - I Called You Back
Buy the Album: Bonnie Prince Billy - The Letting Go

the hero of everyone’s heart, god damn Otis Redding!

Hey y’all.

I’m a big fan of the Sunday Morning Dance Party and this morning it’s all about Otis Redding and a collection of songs I want to Sunday Morning Dance Party to with my man.

Grab your girl/boy, put on your best sock-feet and dance around together ’til you work up a good sweat,

hell, grab yo’self and dance around ’til you work up a good sweat!

These songs are major.

+Baby, I’ll be your hip-shakin’ woman, trust.

Download: Otis Redding - I Can’t Turn You Loose, Lovey Dovey, Shout Bamalama, Announcement, Hard to Handle, Hey Hey Baby, Shake
Buy the Album: Otis Redding - Otis! The Definitive Otis Redding

Songs for Secret Bee-Hiving, Part Five

secret flower garden 1, fuco ueda; 2006

Sundays are always so nice with you.

++favorite, favorite

Ours.

Download: The Softlightes - The Ballad of Theodore and June / Martina Topley-Bird - I Only Have Eyes for You / Incredible Moses Leroy - Song for Erin, The Wonder Mic, L.O.V.E.
Buy the Album: The Softlightes - Say No to Being Cool, Say Yes to Being Happy / Various Artists - Sweetheart 2005: Love Songs / Incredible Moses Leroy - Electric Pocket Radio, The Incredible Moses Leroy Become the Soft.Lightes

I Author My Own Disaster, Volume Four, Part One

sean marc lee, set two, picture eleven, location unknown (and inconsequential); date unknown

Oh gosh.

Jeff Buckley.

I mean, you know–right?

The times he’s been most important in my life are the times when I understand and feel both perspectives,

both sides of what he’s singing about.

It’s hard. All of it.

I try so hard, every day, to be strong enough for it,

but I know I need help because I often feel too weak to just…

I often feel too weak to be able to shoulder it all.

I want to, but the fear of failure is paralyzing.

I mean, what if I’m just not enough?

Download: Jeff Buckley - Lover, You Should Have Come Over, We All Fall in Love Sometimes, If You See Her, Say Hello, You and I (Guitar Version)
Buy the Album: Jeff Buckley - Live à l’Olympia, The rest? Thank you, Internet!