New Music

I found a couple of music-related links yesterday, so let's make it Music Thursday:

1. There's a new recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations out, recorded under a Creative Commons license--which means you can download everything for free (including the score), or just listen online at opengoldbergvariations.org.

2. I  read about Nick Waterhouse in my round of blogs, and listened to nothing else for the rest of the workday (sorry, Bach).  He's a young kid who's found a horn section and is doing his best to channel 50's and 60's R&B, down to recording and editing everything on analog and overdriving the mics. I know it sounds like it could be hipster-ironic, but it's just really great music--plus, his blog has so many clips of forgotten 45s.

Here's the "official" video  from his first album, Time's All Gone, but you can find more of him on YouTube or Spotify.

Living With Ideas

My favorite singer Neko Case is working on a new album, and NPR is tracking the progress of it through some interviews. In the first interview (that you can read here), she talks about living with unfinished songs and what it's like:

"Because when they're not done, the songs, they're like little nuclear reactors that are throbbing in your suitcase. And you're like, 'When's that thing gonna go off? Is it just gonna die out? Is it just gonna poison the groundwater? What is that thing doing in there?'"

I think that description's pretty right on for living with anything creative/life-shaping that isn't ready to become something yet.

Still Hiking

"As long as I live, I’ll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I’ll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and the avalanche. I’ll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near the heart of the world as I can.”

John Muir from Journal, 1871.

(The view from as far up Thaynes Canyon as I got yesterday. I still sometimes sing this song to myself when I have to turn around.)

Friday Unrelated Information

1. It's a long weekend, hooray!

2. Have you been following the launch of the Dragon capsule from SpaceX? Something American-made is back in space, and it's been successfully captured by the ISS! I've been getting my news from Bad Astronomy. 

3. From the creator of last week's hit, "Lazy Harp Seal," I give you "Cat Licking a Hamster."

Colonies in space!

Happy Birthday, Bob

Bob Dylan and his magnificent haircut turns 71 today.  I was going to pick a favorite video to share, but I really can't--and with Bob, you either like him and you know the song or you're not going to listen to one in the first place.

(Although in my search for a tune I remembered him getting "Soy Bomb"-ed at the 1998 Grammys. Soy Bomb!)

Re-Reading The Dharma Bums

I'm not doing so well on my goal to read a new book a month, but I'm hoping to catch up by the pool when it's full summer. In the meantime, there's The Dharma Bums to re-read. This is from their backpacking trip to the Sierra Nevadas: 

Now the mountains were getting that pink tinge, I mean the rocks, they were just solid rock covered with the atoms of dust accumulated there since beginningless time. In fact I was afraid of those jagged monstrosities all around and over our heads. 

"They're so silent!" I said. 

"Yeah man, you know to me a mountain is a Buddha. Think of the patience, hundreds of thousands of years just sittin there bein perfectly perfectly silent and like praying for all living creatures in that silence and just waitin for us to stop all our frettin and foolin."

Tuesday Project Roundup: Done!

I finished the tunic! I'm pretty happy with it: there's a big Liberty print, the sleeves are really well cut, the collar looks kind of 60s retro, and it's DONE

Fabric:  Liberty of London seasonal print lawn from Purl

Pattern: Wiksten "Tova" tunic

Level of completion: DONE! 

(I talk a lot about my productivity going to hell, but I looked back at the "sewing" tag and I've been getting one project a month done for 2012. So I guess it's not too shabby.)

Shelves!

It took over a year for me to get it done, but I now have shelves in the garage. (I feel like Elwood in my favorite clip.) Look at the storage capacity--a cat and a bucket!

Just kidding, I started filing it up:

If you're thinking this looks similar to the other custom, well-built shelving unit my dad put in the basement last year, that's because he built this one too, and did a similarly excellent job. Thanks, dad!

Friday Unrelated Information

1. From the ever-wonderful Letters of Note blog (check out Steinbeck writing to his former professor, too),  here's Noel Coward giving relationship advice to Marlene Dietrich:

Do please try to work out for yourself a little personal philosophy and DO NOT, repeat DO NOT be so bloody vulnerable. To hell with God damned "L'Amour." It always causes far more trouble than it is worth. Don't run after it. Don't court it. Keep it waiting off stage until you're good and ready for it and even then treat it with the suspicious disdain that it deserves. 

"Gay husbands" give the best advice, don't they? 

2. Here is a song about a lazy harp seal, who has neither a job, nor money, nor camera, nor jacket. It pretty much made my week.

Skyler

He continues to be the cutest baby in the world:

That is all.

Goodbye, Duck

Did you hear that bassist Donald "Duck" Dunn died in his sleep Monday at the age of 70? He was, of course, the long-time bassist for Booker T and the MGs; but I got to know him from The Blues Brothers (of course). Here he is in the white t-shirt, with the pipe:

You can hear more clips from his most famous performances here. 

Tuesday Project Roundup: Look!!

I think the title deserves two exclamation points, because the fact that I had a few hours to work on this tunic is nothing short of amazing. 

It's not quite done yet--it needs a collar and a hem and some topstitching--but I'd forgotten how much I can get done when I have the Fortress of Solitude back to myself.

Happy Birthday, Arthur Sullivan

Yesterday was the birthday of Arthur Sullivan, the second half of Gilbert and Sullivan and the one responsible for the music. Or, in other words, I now have an excuse to post this:  

Also: This.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. Depressed Copywriter is pretty much perfect, especially if you know of or happen to be a depressed copywriter. Some examples: 

2. On a less cynical note, I hope all the moms out there have a Happy Mother's Day. If you need a card for your own badass mother, you can download a printable PDF of this one here. 

What Camping As A Vegetarian Is Often Like

Hippie Poem Wednesday

This hippie poem appeared on The Writer's Almanac today, which gives it far more poetical credibility than coming from, say,  a site with the name of Mystic Mamma. It's by Joy Harjo, whose birthday is today.

Eagle Poem

To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can't see, can't hear
Can't know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren't always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon, within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.

Tuesday Project Roundup: Car Knitting

Before the camping trip I realized that 1.) I would probably not be driving and 2.) if so, then I could knit in the car. So I looked around for a small accessory-type project and landed on a knitted tie (using this pattern). 

No, it is not for me. But it's not a sweater, so I'm hoping to avoid any "sweater curses."  And no, I haven't worked on it since the car ride home.

Sunday Night Conversations: The Right Word

Here's some advice about word choice, as given out by my best friend last night: 

I watched The Universe last night and they were describing things like the scale of our solar system and the speed of light. And that's the time to use the word "awesome"--not when someone refills the ice in your water.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. This is making the rounds in advertising circles and it is awesome: This Advertising Life. 

2. Here are some pictures of Skyler enjoying his birthday presents this week, taken from my brother's blog. 

Playing the piano!

And riding on an inflatable rubber burro...

I have no idea where my parents found this, but it's really great. Every kid needs a red rubber donkey, right? 

Thursday Poem

The opera last night reminded me of this poem. It's not really about opera, though. 

After Love

Jack Gilbert

 
He is watching the music with his eyes closed.
Hearing the piano like a man moving
through the woods thinking by feeling.
The orchestra up in the trees, the heart below,
step by step. The music hurrying sometimes,
but always returning to quiet, like the man
remembering and hoping. It is a thing in us,
mostly unnoticed. There is somehow a pleasure
in the loss. In the yearning. The pain
going this way and that. Never again.
Never bodied again. Again the never.
Slowly. No undergrowth. Almost leaving.
A humming beauty in the silence.
The having been. Having had. And the man
knowing all of him will come to the end.

A Night With My Imaginary Boyfriend

Tonight I get to hear my imaginary Russian boyfriend sing in the Met's "Live in HD" broadcast of La Traviata. I'm looking forward to it. I'm sure he is, too. 

It's been non-stop culture around here lately. I'll have to listen to this if I start feeling too fancy.

Tuesday Project Roundup: (Glacial) Progress

I was able to turn last week's fabric and pattern into a cut out pattern and a finished front! That's not a lot to show but it's progress!

The front is hanging oddly on the dress form because it's just a front. But maybe by next week it will have  a back attached.