connexion: the selector

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

probably my favorite thing on the whole, wide internet; 21 march 2007

(transcribing [e-mail never sent]:)

“i love your lazy window shade

and the bravery of dancing in an empty white room.

i grew up in a house with miro and rothko prints on the walls,

and portraits of bessie smith and billie holiday,

(and my mother’s paintings,

and documents from the holocaust too).

i am sure you get so many e-mails like this.

every, every day.

it must be so boring to you.

but i just want to thank you for your bravery,

because it makes me feel like it’s ok when i say things that immediately make me blush,

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