Beyoncé - "1+1". I did not expect it to be so easy to find happiness. I was twenty one years old when I met her. I still drank Bailey's Irish Cream and I still listened to Oasis. I feel funny even writing that down. Six years later, I don't do these things. I pour M red wine and we put on Ethiopiques. In the morning we kiss goodbye and in the evening we ride our bikes over overpasses, along canals. You cannot see the stars in the city but still we lie on our backs in the grass and we pretend we can, like when I was twenty one and she swept me off my feet. Six years. I did not expect it to be so easy to find happiness.

Last night she turned to me with colour in her cheeks and she said something that felt complicated and direct and unwavering, like she was taking my hand and putting it in a fire, and taking my eyes and making me see that our hands were in a fire. As she spoke, I listened without any confusion, because she is M. I watched each expression flicker across her face. Colour in her cheeks. In my heart I said, secretly, Okay, enough. Let's. Let's. All our lives, we shall lie in the grass and see certain stars that one-another has imagined.

[Beyoncé's 4 is out June 24]

The Brian Michael Roff Catastrophe - "Symbols". Toward the end of this song, there is a synthesiser - or a guitar? or a saw? or a small man happily tearing his arms off? i can't tell - and this is one of those rare moments when an instrumental solo says just as much as the entire rest of a song, not because that song is simple, but because the solo is bizarre and magnificient and very slightly wrong. It's the fitting end to a song about symbols, some of them clear and others opaque. Roff sings of symbols in the light, a phrase that can stand for film, or ink, or even our computer monitors' projections. Such symbols are at once art and distraction, thin reassurances. Roff cannot decide if wants or needs them. He sings the asking, with shambling drumbeat and a living electric guitar. These are his friends; with warmth and care, they refuse to answer each question.

[buy the Ball of Wax Audio Quarterly, Winter 2011 issue]

(photo source)