Edmund was at his father's apartment building, a building filled with many retired people and elderly couples that jog. Edmund's father Peter was a member, in fact a co-founder, of the Helping Hands committee, a service put in place to assist the families of those who pass away in the building. If someone dies and they have a small family, or in some cases an unsupportive family, Peter and four other men in the building have volunteered to help sort personal effects and clean up the unit. Edmund calls them the "Corpse Troopers", which Peter is somehow able to laugh about. On his visit today, Edmund was conscripted to help with a clean-up, that of Judith Martin's apartment, a little yellow-haired lady of 91 who owned three closets full of sundresses.
As they boxed and bagged tablecloths and stacked plates, both decorative and non, Edmund told Peter about his new girlfriend May. "She's great, she works for the province." He had been reticent to confess about seeing her, because he'd anticipated that special look in his father's eyes, that look of "here we go again". "Oh yeah?" said Peter, not looking up from the china trays and photo albums, "You talk to Jen recently?" Jen, Edmund's third wife, had been Peter's favourite. Probably because Jen's natural state was flirtatious and her magnetism was felt most acutely by those just outside her closeness. "Jen? Why do you ask?" Edmund thought about why they couldn't just destroy all this left over stuff. It would be so soothing, to rip a sundress in two, send death a real message: don't mess with me. "Oh, I don't know..." One of Peter's time-perfected fade-outs. Edmund considered not following up. "No, why?"
"I just think you should have fought for her. I thought she was the one."
Edmund was not usually one to rant. He hated ranting because whenever he watched someone do it there were dips and valleys of meaning and focus, where they lost the plot and tried to bring it back. A rant's never a planned thing, and that means it's almost definitely going to go wrong, if even for a second: "Fight for her? Dad, what are you talking about? Fight for her?! I fought everyone else in the world so she'd love me and that wasn't enough, I'm not gonna fight her too!"
Peter took a breath, panting almost as much as Edmund. "Well--"
"And don't give me this bullshit about the 'the one'! Fuck 'the one'! 'The one' is dead! There is only the many. It's taken me this long, forty years of seeking steadiness and pattern to realize that steady is a lie, it's not that it doesn't exist, it exists, it's just a lie. It's like smoking. It's only the transitions that keep things going. Rooms are over, Dad, it's all about doors now!" And he slammed the door to the apartment, with the 419 nailed to it, Judith Martin's 419. Or rather, no longer hers.
Avec pas d'casque - "Talent". As kids, our wishes are simple. For cake, for kittens, for magic wands. The wishes take on different colours as we grow older. For peace, for requited love, for two parents' reconciliation. As adults, some of us stop wishing. Not because we have stopped believing; there is still that slim chance that fate will hear our murmur, throw back an echo. No, we stop wishing because the wishes become so complicated. Our wishes become so complicated. Tu as ce talent, sings Avec pas d'casque's Stéphane Lafleur, You have this talent
for painting wolves without really knowing them
and you love people
in the same way.
You, you have this talent.
You have this talent.
Lend me a little.
I can't wait for Astronomie's release on March 20. Pre-order it now.
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+ A sad farewell to the blog I (Heart) Music, which spent six and a half years being so generous, passionate and thoughtful about Canadian music. May the wind fill your sails, Matthew.
+ A reminder that I'll be speaking at Saturday's Polaris Record Salon in Montreal.
Tate ate pancakes and berries and Edmund thought about the moment he was conceived. He and Jen were housesitting, at their friends' Ben and Susan's place. Ben was an ex-Olympic swimmer, Susan was a physiotherapist. Their home was large, larger than Jen and Edmund's, and carpeted in pink. They self-described their home decor as "mostly accolades and exercise equipment". And it was true, the basement looked like a Hall of Fame that was built around a workout gym. Jen and Edmund, however, had no complaints. They'd watch the huge tv and walk the three dogs (Stanley, Pudge, and Michael Phelps) and make dinner on the giant marble island with the pots that hung from ceiling racks. And they'd make love, in the California King, all memory foam and super-high thread counts. It was like dressing their love in formal wear, like painting the face of their pairing. And another face did emerge from that time together, Tate came from the time they were pretending to be rich and successful and happy. And here he was, eating berries with his hands from a small bowl, unable to know if he should be thankful or not.
Three modern legends return, prove themselves relevant. One newcomer tosses her hair, rhymes, spits. Some weeks I just love music so much - hours that unspool little treasures, gemstone songs, like an automated mine. Not all of these jewels will last - some diamonds you lose, throw in the river. But I feel so rich, on weeks like these, when my chest is full.
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Happy to announce that I'll be part of Montreal's first Polaris Prize Record Salon. At Casa on Feb 25, 4-6pm, I'll join Erik Leijon, Emilie Côté and Polaris's Steve Jordan to talk about some of our favourite Canadian albums since last June. It's free, with earphone doorprizes or something, but mostly I'd just love some thoughtful music fans to heckle, provoke and prod. (Full details.)
Alison sat at her desk and cut an apple core with a pair of scissors. Out the window, she could see three roofers on the apartment building across the street. They looked like action figures from where she sat, they would've fit on the shelf next to her printer, next to her picture of Frank. It was 11:05, and it refused to be 11:06. Over the little wall of her cubicle, her neighbour Marsha had a dozen roses, baby's breath, poking their blossoms over top, peeking over top. Marsha was married to Reid, he worked down the hall and through the security door that her fob didn't let her access. Level 3. Where the big secrets lived. But it's not like Reid really knew any big secrets, Alison knew more secrets about him than he probably knew about government security. She knew he laughed when he orgasmed, like it tickled. She knew he liked having sex in hot tubs, so said Marsha. She knew he was concerned about his body hair, and rarely wore short sleeves, and never wore short pants in the summer, and sweated profusely for it. His secrets, just like those of Level 3, probably, weren't very interesting.
Alison pulled home at 3:41, and sat listening to the end of the news in the driveway. She didn't really hear the words, she just wanted to let the person finish their reading. It was impolite to cut them off. She looked at her tupperware lunch, stained with sauce, and she looked at the vent settings on the dash. Fan hits face, fan hits face and feet, fan hits feet and defrost, or just defrost. Air comes from outside, or it just keeps going around inside. Always better to let the fresh air in. When the newsperson finished and the music started, she turned off the car and went inside. Frank's empty hi-tops, his bag, his coat in a heap, like he left a trail. She heard the TV in the other room. Japanese cartoons, must be, all that shouting. She slowly ran her hand up the doorway to the empty kitchen and looked in at the way the light came in at this time of day. So bright, so warm, like winter never even stood a chance. On the table, a little card. A valentine. A drawing of Zorro. "Happy Valentine's" and Zorro carved the shape of a heart with his sword. She turned it over. "mom". And her stomach turned to glass.
Frank was staring with his mouth slightly open and an empty jar of olive brine next to him, looking up at the TV. Alison came up behind him and hugged him and closed her eyes. She hugged him like she had a secret. Like she couldn't tell him how much he meant to her, because he would just disappear. You can't tell your son that they're your secret sexless husband, that they're the period at the end of every sentence, that they're your best friend. But you can hug them, and that's what she did. She hadn't even taken off her coat.
i literally downloaded this song minutes before you posted this.
synchronicity = "it gives us a sense of hope, a sense that something bigger is happening out there than what we can see, which is especially important in times like this when there are so many reasons for despair"
Whitney Houston - "I Will Always Love You". Houston's version of "I Will Always Love You" was one of my favourite songs when I was 12 years old, because I would sing along, at bat mitzvahs and middle-school dances, warbling with a grin on my face, making friends laugh. These days, I am not so fond of it - I fell too hard for Viking Moses' rendition, and Dolly's original. But still that opening minute, before the shiny band shows up, give a tremulous thrill, butterflies. I wonder now what Houston was singing for, or whom. "I Will Always Love You" was recorded for a film that is only 38% good. In The Bodyguard, Houston plays Rachael Marron, a fictional pop singer, and this song is one of Marron's hits. Thus: "I Will Always Love You" is sung in character. If Houston were a good actress, "I Will Always Love You" would be a perfect sublimation of Marron's feelings - a message from the pop-star to Kevin Costner or whoever, informed by the finaglings of an imaginary producer, an imaginary record label, an imaginary buying audience. It would not be Houston's song - it would be Marron's.
And so, thank goodness, Houston was not such a good actress. And "I Will Always Love You" is thus a ballad of this reality, true in this world, for Ottawa 12-year-olds and Chicago 30-year-olds, for you and you and you, everyone with a breaking heart or a whole one, the day before Saint Valentine's Day, when you just wait for a legendary singer to hit the right high notes.
"You hated me most in the mornings." Edmund and Alison, the second marriage. Edmund would often write little three-or-four-line scenes never-had between him and his partners. Today as he walked by old churches and women's shelters, barely able to look above people's knees, let alone in their eyes, he was ravenously replaying memories that never took place. "I'm trying to play team ball and you're just interested in impressing the scouts," he said, in his mind, to Carolyn, the first. And sometimes they would be things never-said to him, "You wear your coolness like a pair of rollerskates. That is to say, you look ridiculous in most everyday places," said Jen, the third, while smoking. Edmund ate lunch and saw the clouds outside, and that was all. All the shops and people, and trams and taxis and intolerable noise and traffic, was gone. He only saw the shreds of the gray clouds, out the window, and thought about the birds. "What are you thinking?" was something he was often asked, after times of elaborate quietude. "What am I thinking?" he would ask the air, hoping that hearing the question, posed from himself, would be easier to answer. And he wanted to answer, anything. Anything you want.
DakhaBrakha - "Baby". I am still working out which sort of "baby" DakhaBrakha (from Kiev, Ukraine) are referring to. Is this a song about infants growing up, getting down? Or about swooning sweethearts? The plot thickens near the third minute, when witches come out, disrupt the funk - overlapping voices like le Mystère des Voix Bulgares. Despite its beginning, this song does not feel childish. It is not goo goo or ga ga. If the infants do grow up, if the sweethearts do swoon, then there is still the risk of fights, splits, widowings. There are stormclouds brewing, ten million miles away. They can coax an uneasy peace, but it must be coaxed. [website / discovered via Far From Moscow]
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This is a video about serendipity (it's more interesting than it may at first seem):
Evelyn has trouble sleeping. She's been on the phone until one or two in the morning, every night, with her ex. He will cry and beg for her to come back to him, for things to be "like they were". And she doesn't know what to do except let this stuff wash over her. She's 17. She cries with him, and says "I know," the way her mother says "I know" when Evelyn cries in front of her. And eventually he gives up, having gained an inch or lost two, and his tear ducts scrape like sandpaper, and he feels utterly spent, his heart racing and his lungs empty, he says goodnight. And she has to get up for school in the morning, so she takes walks in her mind to help her fall asleep. In her mind she imagines getting up out of her bed, putting on her boots and closing softly the front door. She walks down past the tall hedges and around the corner through the kids park. Through the parking lot to the Becker's, and in her mind she buys a scratch ticket that wins 4$. She can vault over whole blocks or zoom out to see the whole city. She deposits herself in a seedy part of town. Dangerous and poor. She walks around feeling happy and scared, finally surrounded by people with real problems. She wonders what 'dirty' really means and imagines being with a drug addict. She imagines the pulling, the heaviness, the gravity of it all. In her mind she gets hit by a car, it goes right through her, and the license plate says "thug". Evelyn can't wait to finish high school and move out on her own. [Buy Acousmatic Sorcery]
Miguel - "Adorn". He was a flinty lover, parts of him dusted in stone. Elbows, knees, soles of feet. They walked side by side, brushing shoulders, and his skimmed sides set off sparks. Little shiny sparks. It made her laugh. "There you go again." He never wanted to talk about the sparks, the flint: he was embarrassed, she thought at first, but then she realized he wasn't embarrassed at all. He just didn't want to talk about it. He looked at her with a look all full of tremors.
[Miguel's all exquisite rosy earthquake and maybe the best thing in R&B right now.]
Lisa Jaeggi - "I Had to Lie" A pretty little song, acoustic guitar and a trio of murmuring ghosts. Lisa Jaeggi has a thing that is worth so much: a singing voice. She uses it so well, here - singing the word "lie". Singing it as beautiful and seductive as that lie must have been, showing us the way we would have been fooled.
this is a daily sampler of really good songs. all tracks are posted out of love. please go out and buy the records!
to play a song in-browser (flash required), click the . to download a song, right-click the link and choose 'Save as...'
all songs are removed within a week or two of posting.
said the gramophone launched in march 2003, and added songs in november of that year. it was one of the world's very first mp3blogs.
if you would like to say hello, find out our mailing addresses or invite us to shows, please get in touch:
montreal, canada:sean toronto, canada:jordan montreal, canada:dan
please don't send us emails with tons of huge attachments; if emailing a bunch of mp3s etc, use a service like MailBigFile.
if you are the copyright holder of any song posted here, please contact us if you would like the song taken down early. please do not direct link to any of these tracks. please love and wonder.
"and i shall watch the ferry-boats / and they'll get high on a bluer ocean / against tomorrow's sky / and i will never grow so old again."
Sean Michaels lives in Montreal. His work occasionally appears at McSweeney's. Follow him on Twitter or reach him here.
Dan Beirne is an actor and writer living in Montreal. Any claim he makes about his life on here is probably untrue. Email him here
Jordan Himelfarb lives in Toronto, where he is editor in chief of The Mark. Jordan's posts appear at Said the Gramophone only on the last Wednesday of every month. Email him here.
. to download a song, right-click the link and choose 'Save as...'
