"I haven't learned to say in simple words what's going on in my head, and what you did to cause what's going on in my head. I haven't learned that because if I had I'd have learned a lot more as well and what has happened would not have happened."

--Franz Bieberkopf in Berlin Alexanderplatz

I was generally amourous towards my fellow man, wanting very much to kiss and cuddle the populus, but wishing it would make the first move, showing me first that yes, it wanted me.

The confidence to extend one's lips to the world comes from repeated occasions of success and lapses in these makes for tentative lip chewing and ingestion of one's own skin.

Would maybe that a tawdry frolick would do but then if it were only sensation I was after I would suck/kiss my own arm, talk to myself, keep a journal...

Happy-Sad : Correction

What's funny here is that I meant to post the song "Everything That Happens Happens Today" and posted "Home" instead. This is what happens when I don't focus my mind into a laser beam for the purpose of every small task. It's a wonder I haven't yet been struck by a car.



This song is a much better example of the good ol' Happy-Sad. Please continue to post yours below, friends. Ah, friends.

The Sad-Happy Happy-Sad

I had a conversation with friends this weekend about the phenomenon of happiest sad songs and saddest happy songs. The song above "Home" by Brian Eno and David Byrne is an excellent example, but I'm not sure whether it falls into the former or latter categories, not that it really matters.

What's the deal with the happy-sad? After a reading in Olympia when I was still in school, I remember talking with my friend Amy Hitchcock and sort of complaining that people always seemed to find even my happy poems sad. Alternatively, they always managed to laugh at the bits I found the most sad. Amy quickly corrected me in her usual way saying, "Well, Lindsey you're the happy-sad. That's how you've always been." Amy always had a knack for nipping my existential deliberations in the bud--thank goodness. Most art, if it's any good (I'm not saying my college poems were any of that) spans an emotional range. Still, there's something very unique about the happy-sad or sad-happy song. Sometimes it's an upbeat tempo and major chord structure with the most God awful depressing lyrics (Belle and Sebastian) or it's a song about Summer and love but all slow and lethargic and tortured with diminished chords and minor 7ths (I'm making this up). Sometimes maybe there is no need to reason why, just classify. At least it helps a little. So we have the chimerical happy-sad and sad-happy--two very important double-headed beasts.

Here are a two other happy-sad or sad-happy songs that top my list:

"Sunday Morning Coming Down" --Johnny Cash version
"My Dear Someone"--Gillian Conoley

Friends, remind me of yours?

Truly Ridiculous Human Things

I thought perhaps I would never blog again, having nothing to say and being in an almost strictly absorptive mode (as Erika Staiti calls it) until...I found this and had to share it. Watch it and then we'll discuss.

First, it really feels like this respectable if odd looking fellow (His name is M.A. Numminen and he's Finnish) is coming at us like he wants to eat our faces. In fact what he does is sing one of the propositions of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Somehow he manages to combine the figures of Pinnochio and the character Bob from Twin Peaks. The proposition repeated here is "What we cannot say we must consign to silence." I'd like to think that Mr. Numminen went on to sing several others and that this is only a clip. I'm just so glad to have found this. I find it somehow very reassuring.

Numminen is a Finnish musician, composer, artist and general creative gad-about Finland. For more information on this total wackadoo look here.

Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher, logician and uncompromising stick in the mud. For more information I recommend watching this or you can read his biography (The Duty of Genius by Ray Monk) which is what I'm doing and why things are generally a little strange for me right now. You might say ridiculous.

***Special thanks to google video search. Just as fantastic as our friend the image search.

This is the Jam : Do You Love Me?

This makes me very happy. Recently I've been watching it before I go to work and it always does the trick. I'm certain that if you watch this and Obama's acceptance speech back to back, you will experience joy. Joy sure come new. If not, I don't know what to do for you.

Thanks to Mr. Brian Kim Stephans for bringing this to my attention. The video was filmed in Kuwait in 1978 by the lebanese band, The Bendaly Family.

Also: It's strange right? As in unfamiliar? As in, I don't know how to file it away. I'd like to find more like this. Any recommendations?

Also: Maybe I didn't really understand that Kuwait existed before watching this, at least not as a place that has real beaches, real water, real building.. It's not a good thing, but I believe the change is. Sometimes we need an in, and this video was that for me. Please share yours. I want more ins. The first Gulf War may not have taken place but The Gulf is a place and I need to know that.

Yes.

Well, thank goodness. I didn't know how much I really cared. I hadn't let myself care. It's amazing to feel like maybe it's okay to care again and that good things happen when you do.

Election Day

Tuesday FAST DAY 9 the sink. On election day I sat in the sink all day thinking in some symbolic way the water would help wash away my thoughts and the very existence in my mind of the election.

--Hannah Weiner from The Fast

She's Me Twice

the meme has small breasts
not huge ones like we talked about
but then I've used that word incorrectly
so now who's the one with big tits?

It's Like That

Boyman's got the hots
for I-me-mine
say no, say no, say no

Mind Blower : Happy Halloween

I honestly don't know what to say.