Cast embedments in Clear Resin

I could watch this all day.

Leonard Cohen Hallelujah (Style is joy!)

Hey, hey, hey:
Style is joy!

"You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah"

Kate Bush-Wuthering Heights

"Ooh! Let me have it.
Let me grab your soul away.
Ooh! Let me have it.
Let me grab your soul away."

Kate Bush - Sat in Your Lap

"Some say that knowledge is something sat in your lap.
Some say that knowledge is ho-ho-ho-ho.

I want to be a lawyer.
I want to be a scholar.
But I really can't be bothered.
Ooh, just gimme it quick, gimme it, gimme gimme gimme gimme!

Some say that knowledge is ho ho ho.
Some say that knowledge is ho ho ho.
Some say that heaven is hell.
Some say that hell is heaven.

I must admit, just when I think I'm king,
(I just begin.)
Just when I think I'm king, I must admit,
(I just begin.)
Just when I think everything's going great,
(I just begin,)
Hey, I get the break,
Hey, I'm gonna take it all--
(I just begin.)
When I'm king--
(-- just begin.)"

Stevie Nicks - Rooms On Fire

Always, this will always be my favorite song.

"Lovestoned," Justin Timberlake

Those flashing lights come from everywhere
The way they hit her I just stop and stare
She's got me love stoned
I think I'm love stoned
She's got me love stoned

I think that she knows, think that she knows, oh, oh
I think that she knows, think that she knows, oh, oh


Those flashing lights come from everywhere
The way they hit her I just stop and stare
I'm love stoned from everywhere and she knows
I think that she knows
Think that she knows, oh, oh

And now I walk around without a care
She's got me hooked
It just ain't fair, but I...
I'm love stoned and I could swear
That she knows
Think that she knows, oh, oh
She knows, she knows, oh, oh

CAConrad's (Soma)tic Poetry Exercises

CA Conrad's new Wolf Recording exercise on his (Soma)tic Poetry exercises page is just amazing! Check it out: Conrad's poetry exercises

Within the exercise, he asks the following questions of us: "How do you fit into the world you see? How you do not fit into the world? Wolves worry about such things all the time, making certain to understand where they fit."
These are really important questions to answer while you are writing a poem.

Also, I think the instincts and ideas behind his creation of the page are wondrous--to give exercises "free to everyone who want to write some poetry." There needs to be more pages like this. And until there are, I am so glad that CA Conrad continues to do his great and generous work. It is just what this world needs.

Also, I love this song: Lovestoned
Whenever I get to 3:30 in the song, I think of a woman all dressed up like a black butterfly gracefully dancing through Justin Timberlake's city streets.

Weird Deer has Deadpan today

Check out Weird Deer today for some of my Deadpan collaboration with Thom Donovan.

Memorizing things

I am working on an ongoing poetry/dance collaboration with Kathryn TeBordo, the most recent iteration of which will be a duet poetry/dance duet this Saturday in Philadelphia. Anyway, yesterday we were working on the thing and especially practicing memorizing the poems, so that we could say them in unison while dancing. And while memorizing with her, I realized that it has been a long time since I have memorized anything. Long ago, in 9th grade Latin class, I memorized declension endings with a kind of urgent passion I can still remember. I like to memorize things, like poems and lyrics to songs, because to me knowing means truly knowing if there is a drive to do so. The act of memorizing the poems with Kathryn made me think about how in schools it used to be quite customary for students to memorize poems and how this is basically a practice out of favor now (or one that has no space in most struggling public schools). Still, the experiential act of memorizing the constructed words of the poems yesterday was especially magical to me and worth noting here. In a poem, there is a space (and I mean space, as there are spatial relations in a poem's syntax) that one can walk through while reading. It is a deliberate space, as any piece of writing is. But more so than any other writing, a poem makes most obvious the object relations of words to themselves and to the world around them. When one puts in the work of memorizing poems, they become more in tune with the material state of words, their specific and magical states within specific poems. This is good. Schools should do more of this, but not in the way that they do so now. Now so, schools test memory by simple binary relationships of questions to right answers (I am thinking of NCLB testing most specifically). The right answer is simply the construction of things that are beautiful. Once you begin to know that, you can know anything. Or more so, you are well on your way to knowing.

Now memorize this song: I Just Want to Love You video because it is good.

Can I Get A...

Closet leg of The Tiny Tour up on Birdinsnow

Check out the closet leg of the Tiny Tour up on birdinsnow.com today. It features Eric Baus, Ish Klein, and me.

Mariah Carey - Say Somethin'

孔雀舞 - Peacock Dance

Awe seen in blue and yellow

manic/depression

Jeff Mangum, "Holland, 1945"

The dialogue here of sounds in Mangum's performance is more than simple duende as we have come to know it (is duende ever simple?), but instead is what EB always talks about in terms of the split of a voice (is this what you mean EB?) into something that is more an authentic self than a voice all whole, in its more mundane and everyday parts. I know it is in this splitting sound in Mangum that rises the song into oblivion (or takes it from there for us––which is the same difference). Jay-Z (below) has the split too, but it is more in his beat than in his voice.

Jay-Z, "Lost One"

May 30th, people! Get ready!

The best movie ever made will be out on May 30th, 2008. If you need me on that day, you can find me at your local cineplex, bawling my eyes out, laughing and yuckin' it up, taking notes on Julianne Moore's exact shade of hair color, sketching her outfits, and writing an entire book of poems about this movie. If you call to ask me a question on this day, my only answer to you will be "why." So, get your glad bags on and get ready for this movie, cause the world is not ready for a movie such as this one, but I am hoping that you are.

More sadness and longing from Camilla Schofield (or what we have all come to expect from her)

Milla, I really like your drawings from yesterday:





Could you draw these people sometime: Spiritual Love?

(Check out more of Camilla Schofield's One Doodle Every Day project here.)

Madonna Material Girl

The Magnetic Fields - All You Ever Do Is Walk Away

Love is Like a Bottle of Gin