I think I can make it now, the pain is gone / All of the bad feelings have disappeared / Here is the rainbow I’ve been prayin’ for / It’s gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright) sunshiney day.
If you’re seeing this in a reader or in email and can’t see the video, click through because I promise your spirits will be lifted (higher, if they’re already lifted):
Here is that rainbow I’ve been praying for… Isn’t that a great song? Sitting at my desk this morning, I looked out the window at the very bright sun and the post title came into my head, so I had to track down the video. I really hope it’s a bright sunshiney day where you are, as it is here. I want to go outside and turn my face to the sun, as the singer in the video does, and dance just like he does.
My head is not cotton-foggy today (yay!!) so I’ve got to make hay while the sun shines and get some work done, but I wanted to share a few interesting things here:
- ScoutieGirl has a nice post today about growth — it’s not all grace and epiphany. Good to remember when you’re in the slog of change.
- BrainPickings has a wonderful post (the only kind she makes, I think) about psychology, to-do lists, and free will. The author of the book (Roy Baumeister) is a friend of mine; I signed him to write a lot of books at OUP, including one controversial book he titled Is There Anything Good About Men? (which prompted the largely-female staff to say, um, no?). The post is very interesting, especially if you keep (or aspire to keep) to-do lists. Paging #1 Daughter on this one!
- Sh!t New Yorkers Write — a fun little post about the history of New Yorkers’ diary entries. The book is organized by day, so an entry by an old Dutch guy is right next to one by Andy Warhol, 187 years later. It’s kinda cool.
- I was reading this piece about hypothyroidism because my husband is currently dealing with it and was struck by the wording of point #4: Prioritize restoration. I think that’s a great to-do list item, one I want to post above my desk. If every single day I gave priority to my own restoration, I doubt it would take too long and I’d bet my day would be the better for it.
- Have you ever heard of Penelope Mortimer? Me neither! Now I want to read her.
- I saw a wordle this morning of Gary Shteyngart’s blurbs and it reminded me: oh yeah! Wordle! Here’s one of my blog, which gives suspicious weight to the word buttons, which I certainly never mention except in one post, from yesterday. HMMM wordle, I don’t think I trust you.
- And finally, I saw this video yesterday and it’s surprisingly not corny, even though it gives every indication it’s going to be corny. I didn’t make it all the way to the end (it’s more than 6 minutes in length), but it was much more moving than I’d expected it to be.
a little catching-up post of the quotidian kind.
FUN: My husband loves to play disc jockey; he used to pull up iTunes and select one song after another from some theme he had in his mind. It was fun, because I never knew what song he’d find next, and it was fun trying to guess the theme. Now he does it on YouTube, so there’s the added pleasure of seeing the performers….especially because the music he plays tends to be from the 60s. We did that last night and I think the theme was “upbeat happy music that makes Lori smile.” One video was of The Lovin Spoonful, singing live on some old tv show; John Sebastian’s pink and orange striped shirt made me at least as happy as the music. The Association, Cyrkle, Herman’s Hermits (I had such a crush on the main guy whose name is certainly not Herman when I was little), it was all such great music, giving us both the body-state memories of that period in our lives. I was very little then, early elementary school, and he was in high school, so our memories were quite different, but they were intense for us both. At some point I took over the selection and the music shifted to (devolved to, from his perspective no doubt) banjo music, Lyle Lovett, Jerry Jeff Walker. We stayed up way too late, but it sure was fun.
BLOG: For some weird reason, my blog has suddenly become a destination for people from all over the world, I have no idea what that’s about:
visitors in the last 24 hours
The searches that bring people to my blog are varied; ~50% are about knitting, and the rest are about such a mish-mash I wonder what the searchers think when they get to my blog and see that perhaps I used one word in their search somewhere in my whole site. Anyway, it’s new, this global deal. I have a reliable cluster of visitors from the UK and from Paris, and then usually just a random one here and there. Late last week I had a flurry from Africa, which was particularly startling because I never have African visitors and I’ve wondered why.
KNITTING: I finally finished the body of Marnie’s sweater and have started a sleeve, which is going pretty quickly:
whee! starting sleeve #1
I think today I’m going to go ahead and soak and block the body of the sweater, so I can seam the shoulders and do the turtleneck. I worry about hitting a slump with the second sleeve, so I want to have something else to do, and I also want to see it so close to finished that it pulls me forward. It’s been such a mild winter I really hope she gets to wear it.
READING: If you’re the same kind of nerd as me, you might like the book I read yesterday (Stylized: A Slightly Obsessive History of Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style, by Mark Garvey). It’s a loving look at The Elements of Style, at E. B. White and Harold Ross and The New Yorker, and the world of people who are passionate about this little book including a host of famous writers who talk about their relationship with the little book. It’s a quick read (about as quick as The Elements of Style, for that matter), and you may — like me — read it with a silly grin on your face. Since I didn’t go online yesterday, I read that book, I read this week’s issue of The New York Review of Books, I pulled everything off my bookshelves and reorganized (and found of bunch of surprises, wowie), I cleaned the bathroom top to bottom, I did some shopping, and I spent a lot of time keeping my husband company. We watched Thirteen Days, that 2000 movie about the Cuban missile crisis — much more his kind of movie than mine, and I was only 3 when it happened. But when the spy planes flew low over the Cuban stockpiles, my heart raced and that surprised me.
HELP: A friend here in Manhattan is heading up a project called Legal Aid Society Trafficking Victims Legal Defense & Advocacy Project (she’s a lawyer for Legal Aid). Victims of sex trafficking are removed from their circumstances and hidden away in safety; she has organized a number of small knitting groups for them and is seeking donations of yarn and needles. Many of these women are from other countries, but some are US citizens. Their larger needs are more urgent, of course, but the knitting efforts are designed to help their spirits, and we know how well this works. The women have nothing and the woman at Legal Aid who is organizing this for them has no specific wish list. Just think about what any new knitter might need/want — yarn, needles/hooks, a nice project bag maybe, notions, anything at all. Others are organizing clothing and coat drives for the women, so we’re the lucky ones who get to give them this kind of joy. If you have any interest in helping, just let me know and I’ll give you the mailing address for the woman at Legal Aid. I posted a note in a couple of Ravelry forums and several knitters are sending boxes, but [unfortunately] there’s a steady stream of women so the need doesn’t stop.
Have a wonderful Sunday, whatever you’re up to! I’m looking forward to spending a few hours with a certain humpbacked wicked king.
oh-so-very much to do. oh-so-too little time.
Why is life so great, so rich, so filled with opportunities, and we can only partake in them serially? Time is limited, there’s not nearly enough of it, and while I overly-multi-task (to my own detriment; when I’m reading and knitting and watching a movie, what the hell am I doing?), there are some opportunities that must be taken singly. Living in Manhattan presents many more opportunities than time (and money) allow, and it can be overwhelming. Just reading the weekly issue of The New Yorker and scanning through the things going on that week is overwhelming! Hell, there’s enough going on in my own small neighborhood each week to keep me busy, and when I bring in the rest — the museums, the galleries, the parts of town that are just fun to walk through, not to mention goings-on in the surrounding boroughs — I curse my need to sleep. And work.
Aside from my recurring pleasures of poetry group, book club, and dinners with friends, these are just some of the things booked in my calendar in the coming few weeks:
Faust, at the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center:
Aida, also at the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center:
Richard III at BAM, with Kevin Spacey as the hunchbacked wicked king (will he be as delicious as Ian McKellan was?):
The Cloud Gate 2 Dance Theater of Taiwan:
Marcia Ball and Beausoleil (the video is just Marcia Ball; Beausoleil is a cajun zydeco band, amazing):
See what I mean? SO MANY WONDERFUL EXPERIENCES! I’m sticking close to home on certain days of the week to help my husband through something difficult, but there is still so much. I do wish there were more of me, or I could shift myself through parallel paths in some way I can’t even conceive. Because this doesn’t begin to touch the list of books I want to be reading, the list of movies I want to be seeing, the time I need for a book I am writing, the beautiful outdoors I want to be photographing. Life is so precious, and so short, and we’re here to eat it up with a spoon, to get it all over our faces, to let it drip down our chins, to gorge ourselves on it, whatever it is. That’s why we’re here. That, and to be kind to others. To help each other when one of us is down, because our own turn at down will come soon enough.
Friday thoughts on this strange and windy day.
meanwhile, here I sit doing a whole lot of nothing.
In the truest meaning of that overused word, this gave me a feeling of awe. Chills. I felt transported, moved, shifted, elevated, awed. (The guy gets a little heavy-handed, literally, at the beginning but straightens up very quickly…)
Yeah? You too? Don’t you imagine that’s how Tchaikovsky heard it in his head when he was writing it?
When you’re weary, feeling small, when tears are in your eyes I will dry them all.
I’m on your side….
My Katie girl loves music from the 60s. She always has. In junior high she wore a different Beatles t-shirt to school every day and could rotate for a couple weeks without repeating. You could name a Beatles song — any song — and she’d tell you which album, and in most cases, which side of the album. She goes to concerts as long as Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, CSNY, or any of those guys are on the ticket. So this afternoon, she emailed me with three youtube links to music she’s been looping all afternoon. She just saw Paul Simon in concert on Sunday so I wasn’t all that surprised by the songs, but I was happy to see the list: Sound of Silence, The Boxer, and Bridge Over Troubled Water. Those songs were popular when I was 7 or 8 years old, and listening to them makes me feel that year in my skin and muscles. Music is awesome that way.
The songs were performed live at Madison Square Garden when they were inducted into the Hall of Fame. I was loving, enjoying, remembering, re-experiencing, and just being lost in the music. But the 3rd one she sent, Bridge Over Troubled Water, was mesmerizing for a different reason. For the second verse, Simon comes out to sing a verse solo, after Garfunkel had sung the first verse solo. But the thing is, he didn’t have his guitar. It was just him, standing in front of the microphone. I didn’t think much about it, but then he started moving, moving his hands, moving his body, and it was really hypnotizing, like watching music in a physical way. Here, see what I mean:
See? Kinda cool. I love watching people make music. It was the only redeeming thing about Sunday’s not-klezmer-concert, watching the musicians making the not-klezmer music.
Back to Simon & Garfunkel for me. Thank you Katie!
ducks in the wind, all we are is ducks in the wind.
For some bizarre reason, a video online about Qaddafi’s reported death had The Eagles’ Lyin’ Eyes as a soundtrack. That’s kind of bizarre and inappropriate, except for the words lying eyes. Nothing else about it fits, weird video maker.
But it got me in the mood for a bit of Eagles this morning. I love the Eagles, and I’m not embarrassed to say it. I loved them in the 70s — a lot — and saw them in Atlanta when they came back with their Hell Freezes Over tour (featuring a song called Get Over It, with the great line “I’d like to take your inner child and kick its little ass”). ANYWAY. Eagles. So I seeded a genius playlist with a great old tune and the resulting playlist is awesome. Pasted below in case any of the songs ring your bell.
| Name | Artist | Album | Year |
| I Can Tell You Why | The Eagles | Greatest Hits, Vol. 2 | |
| Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door | Eric Clapton | Reggae Party 1999 | 1999 |
| When I’m Sixty-Four | The Beatles | Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band | 1967 |
| Dust In The Wind | Kansas | The Best Of Kansas | 1984 |
| Heart Of Gold | Neil Young | Live, Austin City Limits | |
| Angie | The Rolling Stones | Goats head soup | 1973 |
| Hungry Heart | Bruce Springsteen | The River | 1980 |
| Hotel California | The Eagles | Hell Freezes Over | 1994 |
| You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet | Bachman-Turner Overdrive | Number 1′s: ’70s Pop | 2007 |
| Oh! Darling | The Beatles | Abbey Road | 1969 |
| Wonderful Tonight | Eric Clapton | 1974 | |
| Baby, I Love Your Way | Peter Frampton | Greatest Hits | 1999 |
| Riders On The Storm | The Doors | Best Of The Doors (Disc 2) | 1996 |
| Hook | Blues Traveler | Four | 1994 |
| Time Is On My Side | The Rolling Stones | The London Years | 1964 |
| Daydream Believer | The Monkees | Groovin’ 60′s | 1998 |
| Hello Goodbye | The Beatles | Magical Mystery Tour | 1967 |
| Layla | Eric Clapton | Unplugged | 1992 |
| Light My Fire | The Doors | Best Of The Doors (Disc 1) | 2001 |
| Jungleland | Bruce Springsteen | Born To Run | 1975 |
| New York Minute | The Eagles | Hell Freezes Over | 1999 |
| Where Did You Sleep Last Night | Nirvana | MTV Unplugged | 1995 |
| Back In The U.S.S.R. | The Beatles | The White Album (CD 1) | 1968 |
| White Rabbit | Jefferson Airplane | ||
| Glycerine | Bush | Sixteen Stone | 1994 |
| So Into You | Atlanta Rhythm Section | Best of the 70s (Original Artist Re-Recording) | 2004 |
| Still the One (Re-Recorded) | Orleans | 20 Best of 70′s Rock ‘n’ Roll (Re-Recorded Version) | 2004 |
| Lyin’ Eyes | The Eagles | Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975) | 1976 |
| Perfect Day | Lou Reed & The Velvet Underground | The Best Of Lou Reed & The Velvet Un derground | 1995 |
| Susie-Q | Creedence Clearwater Revival | Chronicles: New Best of Creedence Clearwater Revival | 1999 |
| Janie’s Got a Gun | Aerosmith | The Ultimate Hits | 2002 |
| Octopus’s Garden | The Beatles | Abbey Road | 1969 |
| Blue Bayou | Linda Ronstadt | Simple Dreams | 1977 |
| Wasted on the Way | Crosby, Stills & Nash | Daylight Again | 2005 |
| Jumpin’ Jack Flash | The Rolling Stones | Gimme Shelter [Live] | 1971 |
| Tuesday Afternoon | The Moody Blues | ||
| Tequila Sunrise | The Eagles | Hell Freezes Over | 1994 |
| Lola | The Kinks | Everybody’s in Show-Biz | 1972 |
| She’s No Lady | Lyle Lovett | Live In Texas | 1999 |
| All You Need Is Love | The Beatles | Magical Mystery Tour | 1967 |
| Spirit In The Night | Bruce Springsteen | Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. | 2002 |
| He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother | The Hollies | 70′s Pop Hits | 2001 |
| Walk On The Wild Side | Lou Reed & The Velvet Underground | The Best Of Lou Reed & The Velvet Un derground | 1995 |
| Come and Get It (Re-Recorded) | Badfinger | Best of the 70s (Original Artist Re-Recording) | 2004 |
| Take It To The Limit | The Eagles | Eagles Live | 1980 |
| Flying | The Secret Machines | Across The Universe-Music From The Motion Picture (Deluxe Edition) | 2007 |
| There’s A Kind Of Hush | Herman’s Hermits | Original Hits | 1967 |
| Maxwell’s Silver Hammer | The Beatles | Abbey Road | 1969 |
| Show Me The Way | Peter Frampton | ||
| Crimson and Clover | Joan Jett and The Blackhearts | I Love Rock & Roll | 1981 |
| Can We Still Be Friends | Todd Rundgren | Vanilla Sky | |
| Carrie Anne | The Hollies | The Best of the Hollies, Vol. | 1983 |
| Drunken Angel | Lucinda Williams | Car Wheels On A Gravel Road | 1998 |
| That’ll Be The Day | Linda Ronstadt | Greatest Hits (Disc 1) | |
| A World Without Love | Peter & Gordon | Hits Of 1964 | 1964 |
| Strawberry Fields Forever | The Beatles | Magical Mystery Tour | 1967 |
| Queer | Garbage | Garbage | |
| Imaginary Lover | Atlanta Rhythm Section | Best of the 70s (Original Artist Re-Recording) | 2004 |
| Pale Blue Eyes | The Velvet Underground | The Diving Bell And The Butterfly | 2007 |
| Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon | Urge Overkill | Kill Bill (Volume One) | 1997 |
| Tush | ZZ Top | ||
| Stop Stop Stop | The Hollies | The Best – Vol. 1 | 1988 |
| I Disappear | Metallica | Mission Impossible: 2 | 2000 |
| Golden Slumbers | The Beatles | Abbey Road | 1969 |
| You Don’t Own Me | Lesley Gore | Golden Hits Of Lesley Gore | 1962 |
| Out In The Street | Bruce Springsteen | The River | 1980 |
| Long, Long Time | Linda Ronstadt | Greatest Hits (Disc 1) | |
| I’ll Be Your Mirror | Velvet Underground | Velvet Underground & Nico [Deluxe Edition] | 2002 |
| Right In Time | Lucinda Williams | Car Wheels On A Gravel Road | 1998 |
| Cherry Bomb | Joan Jett | Great Hits (German Import) | 1997 |
| Fixing A Hole | The Beatles | Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band | 1967 |
| Best of My Love | The Eagles | ||
| Temptation Eyes | Grass Roots | Best of the 70s (Original Artist Re-Recording) | 2004 |
| Space Oddity | Natalie Merchant | Live in Concert | 1999 |
| For You | Bruce Springsteen | Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. | 2002 |
| Use It | The New Pornographers | Twin Cinema | 2005 |
| Jennifer Juniper | Donovan | Donovan’s Greatest Hits | 1969 |
| Because | The Beatles | Abbey Road | 1969 |
| There She Goes Again | Velvet Underground | The Velvet Underground & Nico | 1967 |
| Desperado | Linda Ronstadt | Greatest Hits (Disc 1) | |
| Tennessee Jed | Levon Helm | Electric Dirt | 2009 |
| After Hours | The Velvet Underground | The Velvet Underground | 1969 |
| The Laws Have Changed | The New Pornographers | Electric Version | 2003 |
| Jesus Just Left Chicago | ZZ Top | ||
| Something About What Happens When We Talk | Lucinda Williams | Sweet Old World | 1992 |
| Rider on the Wheel | Nick Drake | Time of No Reply | 1986 |
| Birthday | The Beatles | The White Album (CD 2) | 1968 |
| Magnet and Steel | Walter Egan | Best of the 70s (Original Artist Re-Recording) | 2004 |
| The Three Of Us | Ben Harper | Welcome To The Cruel World | 1993 |
| The Angel | Bruce Springsteen | Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. | 2002 |
| This Will Be Our Year | OK Go | Future Soundtrack for America | 2004 |
| Mass Romantic | The New Pornographers | Mass Romantic | 2000 |
| Love Is A Rose | Linda Ronstadt | Greatest Hits (Disc 1) | |
| Joy | Lucinda Williams | Car Wheels On A Gravel Road | 1998 |
| The End | The Beatles | Abbey Road | 1969 |
| Last Train to Clarksville | The Monkees | 1998 | |
| For What It’s Worth | Buffalo Springfield | Forrest Gump [Original Soundtrack] | 1994 |
| Tears In Heaven | Eric Clapton | The Clapton Chronicles | 1999 |
| Day After Day (Re-Recorded) | Badfinger | Best of the 70s (Original Artist Re-Recording) | 2004 |
| Carry On Wayward Son | Kansas | The Best Of Kansas | 1984 |
just sitting in the quiet, feeling happy and grateful this morning for more things than i can say
I don’t quite understand this, but adjusting to the 12-hour time difference when I arrive on the other side of the world isn’t that big a deal, really. For the first few days, I crash h-a-r-d in the late afternoon and take little skipping naps before dinner and go to sleep relatively early but that’s it. Then I’m adjusted and that’s that. Coming home, though, is another story. If you’ve been here long, you know this is what I talk about after every other-side-of-the-world vacation. First, I don’t seem to need very much sleep, which is bizarre. And second, no matter when I go to sleep I’m wide awake just after midnight. I crash h-a-r-d in the late afternoon and take little skipping naps before dinner and go to sleep around 9pm, and then I’m wide awake at 1:30 or 2am, and that’s that.
Boring. Real boring. What I realize this time is that resistance is indeed futile. I have these precious mid-night hours, all to myself. I’ve come to really love and appreciate this and will be kind of disappointed when my regular sleeping pattern returns in several weeks (that’s another thing, why does it take so long on this end!). I’ve been up since 1:30, reading and knitting, and feeling a lot of pleasure for these things:
The delicious humor of John Prine, especially in Dear Abby:
The wistful gorgeous beauty of Judy Collins singing Sons Of:
The color red, in all its punch and power and vivid life. I especially loved it this morning in the work of Catherine Ryan:
I just love the quality of color in that piece, but it’s characteristic of her work and the colors all make me feel grateful to be alive this morning.
Stick with me on this one: death. I’m grateful for death. I don’t want my life ever to end, but the fact that it will makes everything matter. Is this what I would be doing, right at this moment, if I knew I had 3 months to live? Maybe, it’s only 3am and I’m enjoying this moment, but keeping the question in mind makes life vivid. I’m thinking about it this morning especially because one of my dearest friend’s mother died on Sunday. She’d been lost to Alzheimer’s for years, and my friend was lucky enough to spend an hour with her mother Sunday, telling her stories of how much she’d been loved, and then other family members arrived and her mother slipped away, gently. Her mother had introduced her to Mary Oliver’s work, and my friend is the one who introduced me to Mary Oliver’s work, so this morning I remember her mother with this poem:
When death comes — Mary Oliver
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
I’m also grateful this morning for metaphor and the artistic articulation of meaning. My daughter Marnie just got the first part of her new gorgeous tattoo done:
that's Pallas Athena
See this blog post she wrote about the levels of meaning behind her artistic choices, what these images mean for and about her. Since the image and story are on her public blog, I assume she won’t mind my putting them here.
There’s a lot more — I seem to be feeling extremely grateful this morning! — but this is getting long and I want to get back to my knitting. Speaking of: I’ll be finished with my Wintry Mix sweater in about an hour, and the yarn for my Vodka Gimlet arrived while I was gone and ohmygod it’s a gorgeous color. Another post on knitting-related things to come soon!
[and p.s., posted here for myself, so I don't forget: two nights ago I dreamed I was being held in the back room by the Chinese. That's it. There were no images with it, I just woke up and knew I'd dreamed that. WTF!! It's kinda funny.]
I know they come looking for me, boy, know they come looking for me…gotta get behind the mule in the morning and plow.
Just in time for the upcoming Christian holiday:
And don’t think he made this up — this page shows you all kinds of chocolate Jesus confections, if you want to get some for the kids this Easter! Chocolate Last Suppers, chocolate crucifixes, crucifix lollipops, something for everyone. 
Me, I love Peeps.
Tom Waits LOVE. I love this one too — the line “come on down off the cross, we could use the wood” — is just so great.
The world is not my home, I’m just a-passin through, that line in the song is from an old hymn my great-grandmother sang for the last dozen years of her life.
And this one reminds me of a specific day with my friend Sherlock.
You will find peace of mind / If you look way down in your heart and soul. Sing it, dudes. And rock those pants.
white girl with an afro. 1976. ugh.
Psychologists have documented the “reminiscence bump,” which refers to the fact that we have the most (and the most dense) memories from our adolescence and early adulthood. Music from that period is kind of like freeze-dried coffee; everything is condensed and just a drop of attention unlocks a whole energized thing. My adolescence and early adulthood took place in the 70s, so I’m unreasonably fond of disco and afros and polyester shirts (memories of polyester shirts, that is). If I hear a song from the 70s, all I have to do is close my eyes and everything comes flooding back, rich with sensory detail. Feelings, subtle edges of how I felt then, who I was then, what my life was like then, it’s all right there even though I don’t walk around remembering all that.
So this morning I was looking on youtube for a John Prine video and in the related video section was one of my old favorites, That’s The Way (of the world), by Earth, Wind & Fire. OH I loved that song then, and seeing the video made me remember just how cool those guys were. The tight tight [tight!] pants, the hair, the moves, man, how cool. Right on. All right. If the 70s are part of your reminiscence bump too, you might enjoy this:
bliss out, man.
Marnie introduced me to Regina Spektor several summers ago, and I was hooked on her voice. BUT…you know, you have too huge a library (my iTunes library 7,082 items) and you don’t always feel like going through it to create playlists but it’s too varied to just random play it, so you tend to rely on the same old playlists all the time. When I’m listening to it at home and not on my iPod, I love the Genius playlists, and try to seed them with music that I like but that’s not on my regular old playlists I’ve listened to a thousand times.
So I’m feeling a good bit of bliss – it is a gorgeous day, I’m making shrimp ceviche and cold cucumber soup, and I’m knitting on Peasy quite happily, and listening to music. I seeded a Genius playlist with Light and Day, by Polyphonic Spree, since that song totally totally blisses me out, man, and I wanted to see what songs would come up as related in some way.
And I came to Someday, by Regina Spektor. She is amazing, if you haven’t heard her. Here’s a live performance of the song on The Tonight Show:
Such a unique voice and woman.
o how i love annie lennox. i really do.
I had a long conversation with Katie, my older daughter, this morning, which was essentially a conversation about what gives a life meaning and value. Like me, her desire is for close-to-home things – meaningful work, a family, being a mom. Like her, I am often intimidated by people whose lives are more dramatic, or whose work is more “exciting,” or whose lives are more something than ours.
And then, while I was uploading my new sock photo to ravelry, my iTunes randomly played a song from Annie Lennox‘s album Songs of Mass Destruction. (If you click the album cover to the left, it’ll take you to the Amazon page where you can buy the music; I very highly recommend it!) I became fixated on the first song released from the album, Dark Road. Sony took down the video, so I can’t show it here. Bastards. It’s a beautiful video, and the song is heartbreakingly beautiful, as many of her songs are.
55? isn't she gorgeous?!
I’ve been in fan love with Annie since I first heard Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) back in 1983, I think. As a matter of fact, that song always makes me think of Katie; she was a tiny toddler at the time and she was crazy for the song. It could be playing at the other end of the house and she’d squeal, come running, and then stand there, bopping and grinning to the beat. Adorable. Annie’s music has been the soundtrack for much of my adult life; the Diva and Medusa albums truly are the soundtrack to the end of my first marriage, and my devastating divorce. The Peace album is the soundtrack of a year of my life in graduate school, when everything — everything — came together and I was absolutely happy in myself. The Bare album is the soundtrack to one of the biggest changes of my adult life.
So anyway, I’m sitting at my desk, doing my little small life thing, documenting a little sock I knit, for heaven’s sake, and the next song from the album came on – Sing. Sing my sister sing, let your voice be heard, what won’t kill you will make you strong, sing my sister sing. It could be trite, but it isn’t. Annie sings it with urgency – sing, my sisters. Sing. The song is the focus of her Sing campaign to prevent HIV transmission from mother to child.
So there she is (just a couple of years older than me, by the way) making beautiful music and trying desperately to help save lives in Africa, and to help women, and here I am taking too many pictures of a sock.
Of course in light of this morning’s conversation with Katie it struck me. I could say the cliched thing, something trite about “all lives have meaning” blah blah blah (note, it’s not trite because it’s not true! it is true that all lives have meaning. But it’s trite because it’s a too-simple answer to a deeper concern). I don’t know how to resolve it. I feel it, I understand it.
Maybe it’s something like understanding that age 51 I’m probably not going to be an astronaut and should cross that one off my list.
Anyway – here’s Sing, if you haven’t heard it:
now and then, the music is a perfect fit to your moment.
There are moments in life when the soundtrack syncs perfectly. Do you know what I mean? One very hot summer night a couple of years ago, I went out for a walk around 10pm, headed toward the Columbia University campus, which is just a couple of blocks up Broadway from my apartment. I walked to the corner of Broadway, and just as I turned left to head toward campus, someone somewhere started playing Summertime on a trumpet. It was haunting, and perfect, and such an incredible New York moment. The living did feel easy; it was a sultry night, the music was perfectly suited and played by someone who had much more emotion than skill, which made it even better, and I was walking in my beloved city. I got goose bumps then, and I always get them when I recall that moment, like I’m doing now. Perfect, and magical.
blue skies and puffy clouds
And today, just now, another moment like that. It’s the first day of summer, the light is dazzling, the sky is blue, the air smells sweet (so far….check back with me later when the air reeks of trash and urine), shopkeepers are spraying their sidewalks so there is a cool mist in the air all along the sidewalk, and I was walking to the UPS shop with my beloved daughter’s wedding dress in my arms, ready to send her.
As always, I was listening to music. As I turned the corner onto Broadway, a string of absolutely PERFECT songs came on my ipod: Beautiful Day, by U2; Feels So Good, by Chuck Mangione; and Boogie Shoes, by who else – K.C. and the Sunshine Band. I felt my feet leave the ground. And, of course, I cried. That’s so me. You can’t give someone else your synchronicity, but in case you also like these songs, and they fit your day, here they are:
Also: yodeling, banjo music, and laughter in a lot of different languages. Things that add to my feeling that it is fine to be a human being in this world.
This is funny, coming on the heels of my last post, I know. But really, just get yourself ready because you’re about to be very very happy. I found this through Roger Ebert’s wonderful twitter feed (follow him, you’ll be happy about that too!):
Continue Reading–1 words totally
This is funny, coming on the heels of my last post, I know. But really, just get yourself ready because you’re about to be very very happy. I found this through Roger Ebert’s wonderful twitter feed (follow him, you’ll be happy about that too!):
You’re welcome.
what makes YOU happy?
This was the newest post on Dropped Stitches, and it just caught me at the right moment to think about the question myself. What makes me happy?
great big blue skies full of mountains of white clouds
the smell of bread baking
certain songs that make me so happy i cry. and they’re often unexpected, like the ending of Say You’ll Be There, by the Spice Girls. (SPICE GIRLS!!! really? I’m 51 years old with way too much education!)
that shift in the light and air when fall has really arrived
brownies
my kids’ voices and hands, any time
the plane lifting off the ground
the smell that means i’m home
those moments when i feel peace inside myself
You play along, too! It’ll make you feel good.
click through for a gorgeous song
Do you like very sweet and beautiful harmony? Two girls with voices that mesh so softly and beautifully? Guitar? Ukulele? Feist? (of course you like Feist, 1234, Mushaboom, So Sorry, Sea Lion Woman, Inside and Out, My Moon My Man, Sesame Street for heaven’s sake!)
OK, these girls are not Feist, of course, but they’re singing one of her songs and I have now listened to it 7 times in a row. I place it here so I can always find it, and I hope it makes you feel the same sweet happiness:
I love those girls.
Fraggle Rock or Janelle Monae? How about Fraggle Rock AND Janelle Monae?
You’ll have to decide which is which:
The thrill of knitting, sung by the Doozers on Fraggle Rock:
And it’s really too bad I can’t embed this video because if you saw even a single frame, you’d click through to watch. So please take my word and at least give it a try: Janelle Monae (ft. Big Boi) singing Tightrope. When Marnie was here last week, I thought we’d watched it on YouTube but it’s not there now. Thank you Marnie for introducing me, and you’re welcome, to anyone who clicks through and finds a new true musical love.
listen!
what does your music list say about you? Mine? I love disco.
I just finished a long run of music that made me so happy, and I realized it was a mishmash of genres, probably a lot like yours. Right?
three times a lady – the commodores
crazy train – ozzy osbourne
jesus just left chicago – zz top
let’s get it on – marvin gaye
the world at large – modest mouse
seems like old times (from annie hall) – diane keaton
sugar daddy (soundtrack to hedwig & the angry inch) – john cameron mitchell
wilkommon (sountrack to cabaret) – alan cumming
blue grass breakdown – bill monroe
keep living – jean grae
ode to billy joe – bobby gentry
believe – cher
yellow dog blues – geoff muldaur & the texas sheiks
cello suite V in c minor – rostropovich
hablame – gipsy kings
light & day – polyphonic spree
souvenirs – john prine
liquid dance – a r rahman
sing – annie lennox
bang bang – sara schiralli
boogie shoes – k c and the sunshine band
One of my friends from graduate school did a lot of research on personality and what we know about others from their “behavioral residue” – i.e., how their rooms or offices look, their amazon wishlists, their iPod music lists, etc. So you see a photo of someone’s dorm room and you have a really good sense of them, right? He’s not very neat, he has travel posters on his walls, CDs scattered on his desk, a black leather jacket hung on the chair, and a dead plant. Based on nothing more than that information, it turns out that your description of his personality would be a very good match to a description offered by his friends, by people who know him quite well.
Of course we all know this and operate on it in the world. When you go to someone’s house for the first time, don’t you look at their bookshelves? Their music collection? You probably do it to find points of connection, but you’re also looking for more information about them. You scroll through a friend’s iPod for the same reasons.
What does my recent list of music say about me? If I’d jotted down more, you’d have thought “wow, she really loves disco.”
construction projects
a few new features in Thrums world.
I’ve added a couple of things to the blog, and I thought I’d make a little formal introduction. See up there, on the menu bar under the masthead, where it says Home, About, To-Do, and now….F.O. Gallery! If you’re a knitter, you already know this, but if you’re not, F.O. means finished object. We also have WIPs (works-in-progress), and we frog, which means we rip out our work. I’m not going to have a Frogged tab, though I certainly could! And the WIPs show up here on a regular basis in my posts. So if you’ve got some time to spare, take a stroll through the galleries. They’re broken down by year, which isn’t a big deal because I’ve only been knitting consistently since 2008.
I also added a widget to let me feature recent comments, there on the right sidebar underneath the popular posts. So that’s fun! Hi, my friendly commenters, I’m always so glad to hear from you. If you’re a new (or long-term!) lurker, come on out of the shadows, leave a little note. I’ve found some wonderful blogs this way, and I’d love to visit yours.
And finally, if you’re ever in the mood for some music from the fabulous 1970s, but you just don’t know where to turn for a quick hit, stop by and scroll to the bottom of the sidebar, just underneath the flickr widget. There you’ll see my Grooveshark playlist of a few faves from the 1970s — and I don’t care what anyone says, it was a decade of fabulous hair, great style, and groovy music. I even had an afro!