The Waiting is Over

Okay. So I've given it enough time to think about, and here it is. I think it's a classic. A classic in the sense that like everything I like, it had me wondering - in this case worrying - about whether or not I would like it, and like everything I like the most, it digs deeper each time I hear it.

I must qualify this by admitting that there are about thirty seconds scattered over a couple of songs that I don't care for. I understand why she put/left them there, however. For those who compare all of her work to Hounds of Love, waiting in vain for another extension of that - whatever that would/should be - I say: It ain't gonna happen. This album is magnificent in that it is an extension of everything that's come before it, and hence a further development of a great modern artist. I love the piano, the silences, the voice, the songs, and can look forward to discovering more within all of these, somewhere in between...

Up Against the Wall

Milk, Milk, Lemonade's overhead projector experiment was quite a success, and will be recorded onto video tomorrow afternoon. K. Donovan and Hans are great artists, and it is a privilege for me to be involved in this project. Until my last minute improvisation of taping markers together to make a roll for the scroll of transparencies, I wondered about the need to have me involved. Now I remember the kinds of things I'm good for.

Intelligent Design

May I maintain the will to do what needs to be done, and foster a blithesome nature not to worry about anything else. As far as the difference between the two goes, may I be granted the inability to give a shit.

I Remember

As soon as the Twin Peaks theme began to play, the various video recorders came out, began to float in and around my line of vision. I felt a conflict. I had something in my pocket, having also brought it for such a purpose. Not to video Julee Cruise singing Falling—clearly the most popular, most people’s favorite song of the evening, hence the sudden mass of tiny, glowing monitors—but something anyway.

The initial nuisance had me thinking that I could in no way justify doing this myself. Yet I knew I wanted to get something in the machine. Am I a vampire? I’ve tried to fabricate a line which could be crossed, to delineate between them and me, which dictates that what I’ve done didn’t impede anyone’s experience. I can’t know this for sure.

I did suffer the fate that I imagine for the others, however. That is, that I can’t imagine anyone truly enjoying the experience that was before us, to be experienced, now, when they were so pre-occupied with artificial encapsulation. And what an experience it was; except for the twelve seconds that I spent framing her singing my favorite song. I can watch the crappy quality of that imagery over and over, and I just might, to remind myself that I’ll never get a chance to enjoy that twelve seconds again.

I took this picture of the book at the foot of her mike stand when the lights came up after the show. That's a spider on Horton's head. Hmmm.

Intention Span

"Life is what we are given, living is what we do with it, and then we die."

- Robert Fripp

I recently read this quote in the liner notes to A Blessing of Tears. I find this and the subsequent text therein quite stirring in its assertion of a need to honour those around us with our living; not least of which, because I most probably wouldn't have read it were it not for Gock Russ Thom Joe's musical influence upon me, let alone would I be engaging in the practice to which you are now a witness, pretention and all.

I'd like to think that this fact alone is an indication of honour, but worry that my decision to live so far away has led somehow to dishonour, which has never been my intention. I wish that those days of Gock 'n' Roll in the Rec Room could've gone on forever, but it was not to be. The best days of our lives indeed.

I am reminded of Moments of Pleasure, which prompts me to mention that I've bought a single for the first time ever. It's Kate's King of the Mountain with a cover of Sexual Healing as a b-side. I'm happy with my decision, to say the least, and am giddy with anticipation of buying Aerial on its release date. The last time I did that (release date purchase) was when The Red Shoes came out in '93.

I just can't help expressing my own more morbid b-side:

Life is a disease unto which we are born, living is the process of succumbing to it, and death is the end of our ability to deny that process.

Living is dying of a disease called life.