A day of food, drink and good company; strangers walking by, emblazoned with the national flag. It's strange to see a city so polite as Ottawa overrun with loud, drunken revellers. But also fun.

My feet are sore. My eyes are heavy. My Grados are slung over my head. I'm feeling happy but quiet.

Thanks so much to those who have been sending me music. Please, more is welcome. So many wonderful things - and as I work my way through it, I will absolutely be sharing a lot of it. We start tonight. Such disparate and wise tastes.

The Mountain Goats - "Song for God". An unreleased song that you can also get from Tiny Telephone, but which came to me via my friend Monica. This is from John Darnielle's boombox days. Simpler times. While the two studio albums have given his songs a fine glass sheen, earlier recordings like this one let his plain words resound longer. Spare lyrics, the flow of voice and breath, the feeling of small confessions and large truths. The acoustic guitar sketches a surprisingly detailed landscape - long, straight lines, the dusty dots of dead-end streets. The song dodges the revelation it contains, rides around it as if afraid to stare plainly, silent in its devotions until the very last lines.

Taj Mahal w/ Toumani Diabate and Lasana Diabate - "Queen Bee". Courtesy of Tuwa comes the most beautiful thing I've heard all week, the most soothing thing I can imagine. Moments like this, sitting here, the music darkblue and brightgold in my ears, words fail me. How to say what I feel, what I hear? The dance of kora and guitar, the twine of blues and Mali soul, the dusty yearning of Taj Mahal's voice and the lightrising yearning of Lasana Diabate's. I feel like watching the stars fade into babyblue, like watching the sun rise and the trees sway. I feel like washing in clear water, like learning how the birds fly. I feel like knowing love - not falling into or out of, but simply living it, breathing it, being rocked by it. I feel alive, whole, like the richest man in the world. [buy (i certainly will)]