listen.

Wed 7:03 pm December 31, 1969

that would be the date my ibook claims it is. 
a minute after i turned her on a sign popped up telling me my date and time MIGHT not be correct
a new window then popped up asking me if i would like to restore to my previous "firefox session"

which i guess was way back in 1969, the glory days of fire fox as it were.

also, doesn't "firefox session" sounds dirty?

regardless:
RHAPSODY IN BLUE!
and new york city...

now - it took my love for the song to investigate what, in musical terms, is a rhapsody.

and folks: a rhapsody is:
A one-movement work that is episodic yet integrated, free-flowing in structure, featuring a range of highly contrasted moods, colour and tonality. An air of spontaneous inspiration and a sense of improvisation make it freer in form than a set of variations.
(thanks wikipedia!)

now -- gershwin wrote rhapsody in blue in the hopes of capturing all the different sounds one encountered as they moved about the neighborhoods of this city.  he was this guy from tin pan alley living uptown composing scores and songs rapidly.  and they were about this city.  it's amazing.  have you seen the fanatasia 2000 that uses this piece and partner it with animation inspired by al hershfield?  it's worth a viewing.


so here is rhapsody in blue....
george gershwin -- rhapsody in blue
(leonard bernstein and the the LA philharmonic)

and (further down) a little walt whitman - who also captures the voice of this city.

and a few more songs that also contains moments of life here (for me).
some specifically reference the city and others fit (in my mind).

So, listen to these songs, read the poems. do both, or: one or the other OR niether (the less good option)

life is on the sidewalk.

ani difranco - both hands (with a symphony orchestra)

now, some of you may have rolled your eyes when you read "ani difranco."

but, listen: it's epic, and i know we have all painted the walls of an apt white, especially an apt where we shed some blood, sweat and tears.

magnetic fields - i'm the luckiest guy on the lower east side.

can't you just picture the movie musical scene this song would inspire?

(i would post chelsea morning -- but i've posted two versions already ((better slow my role)))

Nick Drake - Poor Boy

i love this song!  i like how the voice and the piano react to one another. then the saxophone? you gotta love lisa simpson. and those back up singers...

jethro tull - skating away on the thin ice of a new day.
listen to the man who stands on one leg to play the flute with his rock band:
So as you push off from the shore,
Wont you turn your head once more --- and make your peace with everyone?
For those who choose to stay,
Will live just one more day ---
To do the things they should have done.

that almost sounds like a quote on a lame journal in barnes and noble.

but jethro tull makes it work

the clientele - here comes the phantom
ben introduced me to the clientele. so we're coming full circle on this one!
but...sigh. this song?

this is such a good song to listen to as you ride around on your bicycle.... on some saturday when you don't have to be anywhere.

my heart is playing like a violin...

panda bear - take pills
it's like the beach boys smashed into a thick glass wall of animal collective. but it's just panda bear.

and make sure you wait for the shift  that happens around 2:28 -- STELLAR!

also: CYCLISTS!

they are going to build a copenhagen-style bike lane on ninth ave!

also -- on friday sept 21 - there was ticketing blitz to riders getting on and off the williamsburg bridge on the manhattan side. so watch out. the cops big thing was "obstructing traffic"  - personally i think at that specific HORRIBLE patch of nyc street most cyclists are just trying to stay alive and cross the street in the :7 second walk light they get -- not sure if they obstruct traffic.  it's just so dangerous and poorly designed and there is no choice but to brave it -- so to get ticketed is maddening.

in terms of bridges...

simon & garfunkel - the 59th st. bridge song.

our music teacher in preschool, music mary, would make us sing this song. i always think of that.

(poems 19 and (part of) 20 of song of myself)

     19

  This is the meal equally set, this the meat for natural hunger,
  It is for the wicked just same as the righteous, I make appointments
     with all,
  I will not have a single person slighted or left away,
  The kept-woman, sponger, thief, are hereby invited,
  The heavy-lipp'd slave is invited, the venerealee is invited;
  There shall be no difference between them and the rest.

  This is the press of a bashful hand, this the float and odor of
     hair,
  This the touch of my lips to yours, this the murmur of yearning,
  This the far-off depth and height reflecting my own face,
  This the thoughtful merge of myself, and the outlet again.

  Do you guess I have some intricate purpose?
  Well I have, for the Fourth-month showers have, and the mica on the
     side of a rock has.

  Do you take it I would astonish?
  Does the daylight astonish? does the early redstart twittering
     through the woods?
  Do I astonish more than they?

  This hour I tell things in confidence,
  I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.

     20
  Who goes there? hankering, gross, mystical, nude;

-----

  I know I am solid and sound,
  To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow,
  All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means.

  I know I am deathless,
  I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter's compass,
  I know I shall not pass like a child's carlacue cut with a burnt
     stick at night.

  I know I am august,
  I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood,
  I see that the elementary laws never apologize,
  (I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by,
     after all.)

  I exist as I am, that is enough,
  If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
  And if each and all be aware I sit content.

  One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is myself,
  And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or ten
     million years,
  I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.

  My foothold is tenon'd and mortis'd in granite,
  I laugh at what you call dissolution,
  And I know the amplitude of time.

 

song of myself

hey y'all

here is poem 3 and part of 5 from whitman's SONG OF MYSELF.

they're grand.  i'm sharing some music with.  some old stuff and some recent stuff -- some songs the poems brought to mind -- others i just wanted to hear today. 

ENJOY!

Andrew Bird - Scythian Empires

     3
  I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the
     beginning and the end,
  But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

  There was never any more inception than there is now,
  Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
  And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
  Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

  Urge and urge and urge,
  Always the procreant urge of the world.

  Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and
     increase, always sex,
  Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of
     life.
  To elaborate is no avail, learn'd and unlearn'd feel that it is so.

  Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well
     entretied, braced in the beams,
  Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
  I and this mystery here we stand.

Belle and Sebastian - Women's Realm

  Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not
     my soul.

  Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,
  Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.

  Showing the best and dividing it from the worst age vexes age,
  Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they
      discuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself.

  Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty
     and clean,
  Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be
     less familiar than the rest.

Joni Mitchell - Chelsea Morning

  I am satisfied - I see, dance, laugh, sing;
  As the hugging and loving bed-fellow sleeps at my side through the
     night, and withdraws at the peep of the day with stealthy
     tread,
  Leaving me baskets cover'd with white towels swelling the house with
     their plenty,
  Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization and scream at my
     eyes,
  That they turn from gazing after and down the road,
  And forthwith cipher and show me to a cent,
  Exactly the value of one and exactly the value of two, and which is
     ahead?

AND ASLO:

PP Arnold - The First Cut is the Deepest

     5
  I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to
     you,
  And you must not be abased to the other.

  Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat,
  Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not
     even the best,
  Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.

  I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning,
  How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn'd over
     upon me,
  And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue
     to my bare-stript heart,
  And reach'd till you felt my beard, and reach'd till you held my
     feet.

Ain't No Sunshine When He's Gone

enjoy your friday
geo

Brooklyn of ample hills was mine

hey you kings of maine and princes of new england!

sometimes the universe will clearly set your post up for you.
(you thought the universe had bigger things to work towards aligning than a post on a small music blog? you thought wrong...)

so i saw one million forgotten moments this past weekend, and it was truly wonderful.

in my opinion, an amazing and exciting celebration of this city full of millions of different ideas and voices all running into and around each other on the blocks and parks of this city while we try to not get hit by a bus or a taxi.  stopping only to sing or dance or for a little slight of hand.  or, as only could happen here, to pull a chicken wing out of your bra, rub it on your butt, then eat it, with eyeballs painted over your eyelids as a record plays and bubbles blow and your friend wiggles his penis whilst another pours salt on her breast. for real. it was kind of hilariously amazing.

anyway! on my seat as i entered the beautiful little theatre, was a walt whitman quote.  from time to time i get quite obsessed with reading walt whitman.  in many ways i find his poetry unparalleled (in terms of american poets, but how much american poetry have i read? i plead the fifth)
regardless here is the quote:

Flow on, river! flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the ebb-tide!
Frolic on, crested and scallop-edged waves!
Gorgeous clouds of the sunset! drench with your splendor me, or the men and women generations after me!
Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers!
Stand up, tall masts of Mannahatta! stand up, beautiful hills of Brooklyn!

(it is from CROSSING BROOKLYN FERRY. i suggest reading the whole thing.)

anyway - as i rode home along the east river - i kept thinking about that quote and this river and this city. and then i saw a man fishing and i thought, dear god, please tell me you don't eat something that lived in this river.  then i almost hit a chinese lady jogging backwards.

i digress.
so this fall at listen. we shall spend a lot of time sharing music and the poetry of WALT WHITMAN!

so get ready for it.
here's a video to prepare for it.

(it's kinda not safe for work. well, there are a few naked people shown briefly)
but it's funny - it makes me laugh, at any rate. and i like the walt whitman chorus.

it's by MY ROBOT FRIEND (5 points to anyone who can figure out who they are.)

SO what music to begin it with?!?!?!

well. i asked my friend mateo to send me some john denver tunes to post and talk about them and this is what he wrote:

Rocky Mountain High is a beautiful description of an epiphany that the narrator experiences in his 27th year.  Similar to the type of spiritual insights Walt Whitman described in "Leaves of Grass" (oh yes!), John Denver sings beautifully and simply about being born again, seeking grace in every step, and getting high with his friends around a campfire.

Here's a picture (of Denver).

Love,
Mateo

SEE! the universe! whitman! rocky mountain high! it's all so clear!

ENJOY!!!
as whitman wrote:
  I am satisfied - I see, dance, laugh, sing;

Leaving On A Jet Plane.mp3

Rocky Mountain High.mp3

Take Me Home Country Roads.mp3

g