connexion: the selector

“This Song has been getting me the transition this week. I love it”

Download: Tegan & Sara - Soil, Soil
Buy the Album: Tegan & Sara - The Con

No Name Series, vUnknown Part Unknown

the way home, somewhere in the air; 22 november 2007

I was in the sky when the sun came up over the horizon.

Download: A Lily - You are the Sun, Your Eyes are the Sun / Deaf Center - Lamp Mien / Yungchen Lhamo - Heart
Buy the Album: A Lily - Wake:Sleep / Deaf Center - Pale Ravine / Yungchen Lhamo - Coming Home

No Name Series, vUnknown Part Unknown

personal collection, seattle, wa; many, many times

I was wracked by hypnogogic sleep paralysis last night.

It probably only lasted 3 or 4 minutes, but it felt like hours and hours, and was terrifying.

But then,

when I finally fell asleep I had what were probably the most vivid, detailed, hot, filthy, consuming, vulgar sex dreams of my entire life.

They were intense and overwhelming, and came one after the other. When I awoke I was certain that I was bruised, dark yellow-purple-blue-green. I inspected all the normal places; there was nothing new.

Then this morning something bad, bad, bad happened.

So you know. What can you do?

Download: Spleen - Beautiful Smell (ft. Coco Rosie) / Savina Yannatou - With Bill Evans on the Record Player
Buy the Album: Spleen - She Was a Girl / Savina Yannatou - Dreams of the Mermaid

No Name Series, vUnknown Part Unknown

redux, many places, ca; date unknown

I’ve come to crave feeling hollowed out and empty.

Download: Last Days - Your Birds
Buy the Album: Last Days - Sea

No Name Series, vUnknown Part Unknown

the muscle, skin, and bone of some imaginary friend, seattle, wa; 15 november 2007

S: do you think that there’s some loves that should remain unconsummated?

J: i don’t know, honestly.

J: i’m like a 13 yr old when it comes to love, so i’m very wrong to ask.

S: i spent my entire life kissing necks and hugging pillows in my sleep.

S: that’s where my train got derailed.

J: um.

S: and i went straight to existentialist self-romance.

S: so for a while i was lost.

J: i.

J: hmm.

J: S.

S: it’s still there, babe.

J: you just wrote my post. again.

S: hi, let’s get in the bath.

J: stay there, let me transcribe. then i’ll wash your hair.

S: huuu!

S: o-KAY!

Download: Belle & Sebastian - Slow Graffiti
Buy the Album: Belle & Sebastian - Slow Graffiti

Name: KHM
Location: Oakland, CA
Interests: Food (and sharing it with rad people), My cat (Buster Keaton), Beauty (natural and man made), Pretty much ANYTHING in miniature, Woodworking, Buddhism, Alcohol, Windows….and Cheese
Favorite Music: SUCH a loaded question! Jeff Buckley, Sigur Ros, Nina Simone, Louis Armstrong, Fennesz, Dntel, The Beatles, Zoviet France, Cat Power, Dizzy Gillespie, Radiohead, Herrman & Kleine, Stars Of The Lid……it just goes on and on.
About: 20 something was about figuring out who you are, what the world (and your place in it) means to you. 30 something is about figuring out what to do with that information.

Contact: KHM@REMOVETHIStheselector.org

Being for Others, Part Eleven

say it again, and again, (alternate title: you are welcome) seattle, wa; 18 november 2007

Download: Tujiko Noriko - Call My Name
Buy the Album: Tujiko Noriko - Hard Ni Sasete

Being for Others, Part Nine

yock; 2007

I have pages filled now, and nowhere to send them.

Incidental things:

- Limbs falling halfway off the bed, gripping sheets, losing pillows, wet fingerprints on the headboard; markings hidden by wrist-to-ankle daytime cover

- Cigarette ashes mixing with pencil shavings on the desktop

- Hands on my chest as my heart goes thump, crash, thump, crash

- Arguments over periods vs. commas vs. semi-colons (guess which side I came out on)

- My disembodied voice from a year ago sending postcards from a distant land

- I don’t mind circling you — I can wait.

- Never too much to hope for: a matching gaze. There will be a time.

Download: Stars of the Lid - I Will Surround You
Buy the Album: Stars of the Lid - Avec Laudenum

Being for Others, Part Eight

(detail), yock; 2004

I’ve started a dangerous thing, as of two days ago.

YWA: I am honey-covered, but in a far more scandalous way than before; I have found that despite my best efforts I am just as Unclean as anyone else, and this makes me proud.

Incidental things:

- Chest-cracking words sent into the Nowhere that still have me dreaming. The uneven attention of true Interest often goes unnoticed, and it is this that gives me comfort in my sheet-twisted 3am non-dreaming.

- I wrote two e-mails today that would have been served far better by paper_+_pen. They were made for steno-pad softness and charcoal pencil scratchings. I have hope still that I might be able to excavate addresses for midnight streetlight bathed thoughts encased in creased vellum, but I’ve always been something of an optimist.

Plus, I am not afraid to use everything within grasp to make a point.

- I’ve started the new habit of not looking down when I walk; there is a whole world of looks to grab, and even secret open-curtain windows to spy.

- I’m beginning to sense that people don’t believe I listening, they don’t believe I notice. Let me warn you: I like to watch.

I Watch.

- Related: I am never the first to look away in a stare.

Do you ever have the sense that you have found an Other?

I slept in that day and missed class, or something, because I never learned what to do when I believe that I have.

(Smaller, smaller.)

Download: Blonde Redhead - (I Am Taking Out My Eurotrash) I Still Get Rocks Off, I Don’t Want U, Down Under
Buy the Album: Blonde Redhead - La Mia Vita Violenta, Self-Titled

Secret Knowledge That Everybody Knows, Part Ten

just like a cunt by trevor brown; date unknown

I know this (it is intractably true):

My creepiness makes me a light in the world

and Untouchable.

Download: Tindersticks - El Diablo En El Ojo (Live, Simple Pleasure Version), El Diablo En El Ojo (Live, the Bloomsbury Theatre), El Diablo En El Ojo (Live, the Botanique 2001)
Buy the Album: Tindersticks - Simple Pleasure, The other two? Thank you, Internet!

Being for Others, Part Seven

do what now?

I’ve discovered something shocking:

It is the easiest thing in the world to say “No.”

Download: Calla - Strangler, Yesterday is Here (Tom Waits Cover), Fear of Fireflies, Ocean Rain (Echo & the Bunnymen Cover), Ghost Track (My favorite.)
Buy the Album: Unknown. Thanks, Internet!

Being for Others, Part Six

camille ryan

Sometimes what I get stuck on is whether what I am saying is getting through.

I mean really getting through.

Everyone wants to be understood. Everyone yearns to be recognized.

Download: Deru Featuring Isaac Sparks - Ahat Grimes
Buy the Album: Intelligent Toys 3 (Full Album Download available here, it’s free from Sutemos, y’all! I highly recommend downloading everyhing you can from this site, their music is nothing short of breathtaking. Thanks Sutemos!)

Being for Others, Part Five

camille ryan

There will be tension as our facticities and transcendences wrestle themselves against each other within the constraints of our foolish little project.

We will construct our own Genet-scented perversions;

it will not be a home-coming, but violent and tumultuous.

Nevertheless we will be merciful under our connected gaze,

because we know of what we are capable.

Download: Mountains - Sewn One
Buy the Album: Mountains - Sewn

Being for Others, Part Four

artist unknown; date unknown

If I am going to be completely honest,

I often choose to be five steps back,

because I am frightened and

I am paralyzed by the specter of Sartrean Bad Faith.

Download: Beck - All in Your Mind
Buy the Album: Beck - Sea Change

Being for Others, Part Three

albert camus reflected by henri cartier-bresson; sometime when the whole of the world was in grayscale

In the debut production of No Exit Garçin was played by Albert Camus.

I am struck by the tension between my conception of myself and how it appears I am perceived by others,

and I think often about where the gap may be,

and why it exists, and my responsibility for that,

and if the two will ever reconcile,

or if I will forever be stuck,

floating aimlessly in the ocean between the two.

(Tonight I’ve filled my glass so high that I could only slip one ice cube into the tumbler, lest everything spill right over.)

Download: Jeff Buckley - I Woke Up in a Strange Place / The Velvet Underground & Nico - I’ll Be Your Mirror (Stereo Version)
Buy the Album: The Jeff Buckley song is from some bootleg. God bless the internet. / The Velvet Underground & Nico Deluxe Edition

Being for Others, Part Two

fu-co ueda

Deep-soul-eyed Ethiopian king, I do not feel pinned by your gaze;

we come from the same cocoon.

Download: David Bowie - Candidate (Ryko Only Demo Version), I Would Be Your Slave, Life on Mars, Heroes
Buy the Album: David Bowie - Diamond Dogs, Heathen, Hunky Dory, Heroes

Cognitive Dissonance Comes in Threes, Part Four
(Alternately titled: Being for Others, Part One)

fu-co ueda

When my eyes opened at three minutes to six this morning I was pulled out of dreams of spreadsheets,

beautiful, calming, meditative dreams of formulas and formats and figures that line up exactly so.

I received a book of correspondence in the mail last night, and added it to the stacks of books that dot my hardwoods; Amelia delights in toppling them over so she can nap on them while I’m at work.

Sometimes I wonder what the Korean grocer at the kwik-e-mart thinks of me, buying nearly the same thing everyday, having the same conversation each time I see him, walking the same way up and down each aisle in the same order almost seven days a week.

I wonder if he knows that this is the most I can bring myself to do by way of human interaction these days, which is why I only ever buy enough for that day–to make sure I have a reason to go back tomorrow.

(side note: He has been simply knocking me out lately with his cold weather collection of Lacoste sweaters and neat argyles.)

I can hear today’s second pot of coffee brewing behind me, and have been listening to the same three songs for nearly three hours now.

I have started collecting numbers and words; I have started taking scraps of paper covered with them in my winter colored, careful script and putting them in a small box,

for later.

Download: Everything But The Girl - Good Cop Bad Cop / Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Lime-Tree Arbour / Guillemots - If the World Ends
Buy the Album: Everything but the Girl - Walking Wounded / Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - The Boatman’s Call / Guillemots - Through the Windowpane