connexion: the selector

You Are Why It’s Happenin’, Part One

kerze, gherhard richter; sometime, 1982

(transcribing:)

Also,

I don’t understand.

Download: Sonic Youth - Candle, Scooter + Jinx, Titanium Expose
Buy the Album: Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation, Goo

No Name Series, vUnknown Part Unknown

wrapped around fingers, just like that, seattle, wa; 20 may 2008

(transcribing:)

The thing is, I just want to be good.

No.

That’s really the only thing.

Download: Nick Drake - All My Trials, They’re Leaving Me Behind, Way to Blue
Buy the Album: Nick Drake - Family Tree

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

i was in the air, somewhere over the pacific; november 2007

Let me sleep,

let me dream.

+I can close my eyes and be some place better.

Download: Lush - White Wood
Buy the Album: Lush - Desire Lines (CD Single)

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

let’s just, can’t we just, seattle, wa; inside may 2008

I know what’s going on in here, and it’s a swelling sea.

It’s confusing how different the morning feels to the night.

(So, this complete devotion to Stars of the Lid has lasted almost a year now. I am not entirely sure what that means. Perhaps that I’ve smoothed out, [the surface of me], to disguise the turmoil sub rosa.

It’s ok: beauty almost always leaves scars.)

Download: Stars of the Lid - A Lovesong (For Cubs) +, Parts One, Two, and Three
Buy the Album: Stars of the Lid - The Tired Sounds of…

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

i look at my feet, san francisco, ca; 8 april 2008

The bad news is,

shaking off being that girl takes more time than most people have the patience to give.

The good news is,

by this age most of us have learned the power of a brave face and a cocoon.

Download: Juliana Hatfield - Ugly, No Answer
Buy the Album: Juliana Hatfield - Hey Babe

Submerged Series, vThree, Part Two

some of us are just so small, artist unknown; date unknown (unknown+unknown)

Some of us are just so small,

we don’t even know how to apologize for it anymore.

+++//Heathcliff, its me–Cathy.
Come home. Im so cold!
Let me in-a-your window.//

+ (((Let me have it, let me grab your soul away.)))

Download: Kate Bush - Love and Anger, Wuthering Heights (New Vocal)
Buy the Album: Kate Bush - The Sensual World, The Whole Story

Submerged Series, vThree, Part One

fuco ueda; date unknown

I took videos and pictures of the fallen cherry blossoms overflowing gutters and creating Great Walls along My Street.

I thought about you for the first time in a long, long time, and for the first time in a long, longer time it hurt,

which I didn’t expect.

But the blossoms were covering windshields like a great Storm,

like salt when you’ve come up from a dip in the Great Salt Lake,

or streamers and confetti forgotten in silent corners after a celebration.

(this is something I understand so very, very well.)

(I don’t know if that means anything, really,)

And for the first half of the day all I wanted was to just leave,

literally walk away from the building, and leave my car where it was parked;

away from my silent corners, and uncomfortable sleep that twists my fine bed sheets around me like a noose,

silken bruises left from nights and days spent in bed just twisting around because I didn’t know what else to do.

I wanted to just walk East until my legs fell apart,

until the skin came right off my face from

Everyting

And I’m not trying to give special color to everything,

especially since the color has drained out of everything for me in the last few days.

But East is away from everything here.

(but because of the lucky curvature of the Earth,

East is towards things too.)

So what can you do?

Download: Neko Case & Her Boyfriends - Bought and Sold
Buy the Album: Neko Case & Her Boyfriends - Furnace Room Lullaby

Everyone’s So Lonely, I Dig It
(But I’m afraid I can’t share this with you.)

parts and parts, san francisco, ca; various april days 2008

So here’s a bit of blaspheme courtesy of yours truly: I’ve always loved the Jason Lowenstein songs off of Bakesale far, far more than the others.

Yes, even more than “Skull”.

That’s just the kind of girl I am.

In other news, today was again borne of sea-legs and I glided across the slimy film of my waking life like a pro, the promise of my warm apt cocoon waiting for me the prize for my properly smiling and nodding at the appropriate cues.

Some days are just like that.

I think there might be something terribly, awfully wrong brewing in me; I can feel it like a dark penny taste growing in the back of my throat.

Today I drank my coffee black, and ate a single packet of oatmeal for sustenance. All I wanted to do is get back into my womb with a pack of cigarettes,

(I like saying yes, and watching you take,

I don’t need to sleep or eat, I’ll smoke a thousand cigarettes.

These days are so nuturing,

When you’re gone I’ll eat and sleep the day away again.)

and when iTunes random selected Sebadoh for me I knew that things were exactly right.

You see, I have been inadvertently circling my adolescence in the last few weeks, becoming giddy over bands, buying band t-shirts (something I haven’t done since I was 15 [which is, frighteningly, over half my life ago, bee thee wee], when I got a t-shirt at the R.E.M. + Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians show at the Forum in L.A. [La Mama brought me, yo]), and even a band poster, which is now on my wall.

So it makes perfect sense that Sebadoh, who were the Kings of what was probably my most important Musical Awakening,

(You know–one of those times when the only thing that is important is Music because you know that all of it,

simply all of it,

was written just for You.)

are my loveslovesloves tonight.

Some days are just like that.

Download: Sebadoh - Careful, Not Too Amused, S Soup, Drama Mine
Buy the Album: Sebadoh - Bakesale

Les Espaces Entre les Choses Que Nous Ne Disons Pas, Partie Trois

(transcribing [e-mail never sent]:)

“i love your lazy window shade

if you know what i mean.”

Download: Edith Piaf - La Vie En Rose
Buy the Album: Edith Piaf - La Vie En Rose

Os Espaços Entre as Coisas Que Nós Não Dizemos, Parte Dois

stars of the lid live, seattle wa; 18 april 2008

Oh, caro coração,

Caro coração eyed doce, sensível, molhado.

Descanse sua cabeça cansada,

seja delicado,

sinta Seguro.

Eu compreendo.

Download: Stars of the Lid - A Meaningful Moment Through a Meaning(Less) Process
Buy the Album: Stars of the Lid - And Their Refinement of the Decline

Artificial Sunlight Series, Part Six

graceewhite (pure genius, she is) via flickr; date unknown

Sometimes I feel like I am made up of a thousand thousand paper-cuts, and the ink that seeps in.

Tiny surgeries, with near invisible incisions.

(I understand that.)

I like

+small sounds,

+and miniatures,

+and shadow puppet theatre on my ceiling made with heavy maglites,

+crossing argyles under new bed sheets,

+journals filled with constellation navigation,

+macro photos of ephemeral pleasure, (pornographic,)

+candle wax fingerprints,

+cherry blossoms exploding outside my window for no other reason than it’s Time,

+unexpected kindnesses,

+and secrets shared with sleepy voices.

I know I am difficult sometimes.

That’s all.

Download: グンデルサンシントリオ - かぎやで風風 / Brothomstates - MDRMX
Buy the Album: Sorry, I don’t have the first clue. Kozy brought it back from her latest trip to Japan, and she’s not online so I can’t enlist her help. Sorry. Here’s their last.fm page. / Brothomstates - Claro

I really did nick the title from an early trilogy by Samuel Delany, and the cover art from the Tower card of the Rider/Waite tarot deck (and from a visual representation of part of the mix process) … but both of those do bring to mind a real-world cataclysm. So no, this mix isn’t ‘about’ 9/11, although it’s emphatically about crescendoes and collapses and apocalypse and the end of civilization. It just grew…

I started from the Savage Republic song — rediscovering them after many years — and looking for things to fit together with it in a mix. Early Sonic Youth was an obvious choice, but somehow I also thought of the eerie decay of the detuned strings in Ligeti’s “Ramifications”. That didn’t quite do it, but it reminded me of the similar intro of the Slow Six album I listened to a lot last year. And sliding the tracks around onscreen I put the entire Savage Republic song atop Slow Six, and goddamn if they didn’t fit together perfectly, like puzzle pieces punched out 25 years apart.

I left it at that for a few months until I rediscovered the unfinished mix last week, and finished the whole thing in one intense evening. It’s a bit on the short side, just under an hour, but there just wasn’t any discernible seam left to splice another track into.

00:00 Ben Frost — “Stomp”
05:16 S.E.T.I. — “Concealment”
05:48 György Ligeti — “Ramifications”, version for 12 solo strings
08:15 Slow Six — “The Pulse Of This Skyline With Lightning Like Nerves”
08:57 Savage Republic — “When All Else Fails”
11:53 Sonic Youth — “Making The Nature Scene”
14:31 Mission Of Burma — “Weatherbox”
17:51 Pain Teens — “Lady Of Flame”
20:39 Hula — “Jump The Gun”
24:24 Hunters & Collectors — “Droptank”
29:10 Tussle — “Eye Contact” (version)
31:40 Amp — “Lightdripglow”
34:36 Rahdunes — “Rivers In Egypt. Set Sail”
38:27 Somei Satoh — “Litania”
42:23 Murcof — “Cometa”
47:22 Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster, Panaiotis — “Suiren”
50:00 Glenn Branca — “Symphony #3 (Gloria)”, first movement
58:47 Total

Download: The Fall Of The Towers [67MB]
Compare & Contrast: Slow Six - “The Pulse Of This Skyline With Lightning Like Nerves” [buy] … Savage Republic - “When All Else Fails” [buy]

The Spaces Between the Things We Don’t Say, Part One

“wait, can i just say,” “shhhhhhh,”“ok.”, seattle, wa; 07 april 2008

(transcribing:)

“i’d let you touch my lips

but only for a second

because i’d blush, and that’s no way to act in public.

(but it’s ok, if it’s only for a second)”

Download: Cocteau Twins - Touch Upon Touch (Acappella Intro), Circling Girl
Buy the Album: Cocteau Twins - Violane (CD 2)

Artificial Sunlight Series, Part Five

47° 39′ N / 122° 18′ W; 30 march 2008

Oh, you guys.

I am so happy at this moment,

like how you feel after a long, long period of intense pain when you’re given relief.

That kind of giddiness.

In other news, I am going to kick someone in the nuts if the sun doesn’t come out this weekend.

IT’S GOING TO BE MY FUCKING BIRTHDAY ON SUNDAY, YO.

More importantly, though, the cherry blossoms are starting to come out and I want to walk around my neighborhood and take snaps.

Above you can see the first cherry blossoms to open up outside my windows;

I wonder if the people across the way thought I was aiming at them while I was taking my snaps.

True to form, I remain intractably Creepy.

In other, other news, I am going to be in SF starting Tuesday.

Wanna hang out?

Download: Talking Heads - (Nothing but) Flowers, Don’t Worry About the Government, Sax and Violins, This Must be the Place (Naive Melody)
Buy the Album: Talking Heads - Naked, Talking Heads ‘77, Soundtrack for Until the End of the World, Speaking in Tongues

Oneiric Morse Code Transmission, Part Eleven (This will go on Ad Infinitum)

an ocean of, seattle, wa; 06 october 2004

I had to secretly measure my breath and steady myself throughout the day.

It’s not that I was ill so much as I was on edge.

Again, at any rate:

+Today on the way to work there was an ocean in the sky

+I’ve been wrestling with intense dreams that feel like paint thrown across my internal canvas–lots of things to write down, put in the correct

x/y axis

and catalogue

+++I know things that I keep

+++//collected//,

+++written on skin.

+++Push my sleeve up: I dare you.

+It snowed today, so I got to play with the winter bees again, in secret, on my lips

where everyone could see

+The sky turned itself inside out for the drive home, and I got to walk around my neighborhood in the sun

The colors are intensely bright these days, and I find myself filling up whole tiny flip books when no one’s looking.

I always tear them up,

page by page;

I always throw them away.

And you know, it’s not for catharsis

(I have very little need for that, you see);

it’s merely because I have a refined sense of what’s worth tossing aside,

and what’s worth keeping for later.

(unrelatedly: i think i might have a new(ish?) visitor here who knows me in my waking life.

but i could be wrong, i suppose.)

Download: Mad Professor & Massive Attack - Radiation Ruling the Nation
Buy the Album: Mad Professor & Massive Attack - No Protection

Søren Kierkegaard’s Existential Dialectic (or: Søren Kierkegaard’s Disdain for the Aesthetic Life), Part Two

street art: face masks by 200ok via flickr, brisbane, australia; november 2006

That was my big try.

Swung as hard as I could and completely missed the ball,

and found myself spinning next to the plate before I just fell down onto my back;

but as I was down there, steadying myself while inhaling the chalk and dust,

I noticed the sea-color of the sky,

and the animals and faces in the clouds.

Download: Arthur Russell / Jens Lekman (And just for good measure, in case you’ve ever wondered what the night was like here.)
Buy the Album: Arthur Russell - Another Thought / Various Artists - Four Songs by Arthur Russell

Søren Kierkegaard’s Existential Dialectic (or: Søren Kierkegaard’s Disdain for the Aesthetic Life), Part One

fuco ueda; date unknown

Radio silence? Of course I understand.

(come on.)

I am what I am

.

You are what you are

.

I mean, really: Of course I understand.

At any rate:

from desire i rush to satisfaction

but from satisfaction, i leap to desire.
-Goethe’s Faust

Download: Thom Yorke (Live at the Bridge School Benefit, Some Year) - Sail to the Moon, Like Spinning Plates, Pyramid Song
Buy the Album: Thanks, Internet.

Artificial Sunlight Series, Part Four

50% mine (but also ye rin mok’s and timothy bieniosek’s…so, you know.), martinez, ca & seattle, wa; dates unknown (or, frankly, lost)

Last night was the first in weeks that I got more than a few hours sleep.

I’ve done my duty and painted my nails proper,

And so! Though I have run out of sea salt (and frankly, I am thisclose to running to the kwik-e-mart to appropriate their criminally over-priced tiny package of s-s), I have honey bubble bath and monyette paris perfume oil besides,

and I think that would make a very workable bath.

Because I’ll tell you what:

Baths are really the only thing I’m seriously interested in these days.

My priorities are fuckin’ straight as an arrow, babies.

Download: Charlatans - The Only One I Know / The Stone Roses - Love Spreads (When this came out I thought it was just this side of bullshit, but I’ve been recently converted. This song’s fucking genius.)/ Primal Scream - Come Together
Buy the Album: Charlatans - Some Friendly / The Stone Roses - Second Coming / Primal Scream - Screamadelica

Oneiric Morse Code Transmission, Part Ten

33% mine, los angeles ca; 01 may 2007 & dates unknown

For the first time during this good weekend I am quiet and unsure as to what to say.

I think probably the right thing to say is nothing.

But that won’t stop me from posting the Sonata that saved me tonight, or from hoping that it might get through.

There is someone out there who understands the force of this, and though I may never make contact, it’s enough for me to offer it up.

Because I know that they are there.

Download: Yehudi Menuhin - BMV 1003: Sonata no.2 in A Minor
Buy the Album: Yehudi Menuhin - Bach: Violin Sonatas

No Name Series, vUnknown Part Unknown

remembered as, seattle; wa 14 march 2008

Today two great things happened:

1) Driving back into my parking lot the opposite way I saw someone painted, so very carefully, a molar onto the trash bin.

2) Someone in my building succumbed to the ultimate romantic cheesiness and set out a trail of rose petals from the back door to their apt door. It was fucking brilliant, to know that people still lay themselves out like that.

Bravo, lady or man, who doesn’t give a fuck other than to let the person who you’ve gone mad for know that you’ve gone mad for them.

I smiled a wide fruit mouth smile all the way from the back door to my apt door, even though it wasn’t meant for me. It didn’t matter.

Alternately:

I was mashed, once again, against the wall on which it is written that the things that people (often) find most beautiful about me are the things I (often) wish weren’t the case about me.

(this is most probably my problem to sort out and get right with, but still…)

The thing they don’t understand is that these are exactly the things that set me apart (in [often] a painful way) and leave me wondering why I am so keen to find someone who makes me feel just the slightest bit uncomfortable to spend so much time by myself.

I mean, just, you know.

It’d be nice to feel itchy about that–to have it feel not so incredibly comfortable.

(but yeah, you know, “hey slow Jane, make some sense; Slow, slow Jane, cross the fence…hey slow Jane, live your lie; Slow, slow Jane, fly on by” and all that.)

Lastly, I am so interested in something disorienting,

so long as it’s real, and so long as it means even the smallest thing

(to either of us).

But you know what else?

After my doctor’s appointment today, when I was waiting at the pharmacist, I bought a new shade of lip gloss,

and tonight I took what was probably the best bath of my life,

and I’ll be rolling around in bed soon smelling from top to toe of coconut, and gardenia, and even the slightest (and therefore perfect) hint of cream,

and in the morning I’ll probably bury my face in my newly set pillow cases and inhale nothing but everything about me,

and for better or worse I can guarantee you this:

In my half awake early Saturday morning negotiation of accepting a new day that fact alone will get me out of bed.

And, really, how many people can claim to be so easy?

Download: Aimee Mann - Save Me / Scott Appel - Hazey Jane I
Buy the Album: Various Artists - Magnolia Soundtrack / Various Artists - Brittle Days: A Tribute to Nick Drake

No Name Series, vUnknown Part Unknown

it’s ok that it’s every night; seattle, wa 09 march 2008

I don’t mind letting you in.

For now.

(After all, I tell you all manner of ugly things about me, and you don’t even blink.)

I like you most because you always bring me the most genius:

Download: Child Rebel Soldiers - Us Placers
Buy the Album: Kanye West - Can’t Tell Me Nothing

Oneiric Morse Code Transmission, Part Nine

focus, refocus (redux), seattle, wa; 09 march 2008

The tulips have mistaken the light bulb for the sun.

I completely understand how that feels.

Download: Nacho Vegas - La Ley Del Feriante / Juno - A Listening Ear / Yehudi Menuhin - Partita for Solo Violin No.1 in B Minor Corrente - Double (Presto)
Buy the Album: Various Artists - Acuarela Songs / Juno - This is the Way it Goes & Goes & Goes / Yehudi Menuhin - Bach: Sonates et Partitas