Archives : all posts by Dan

Frog Eyes - "A Flower in a Glove"

Beginning with legs, jeans, socks, shoes, polish and a ring. Desdemona drinking a glass of milk, still drinks milk, an unbreakable habit for peanut butter toast. A distant family, father in sales (distant, travelling), brothers (one into piano, insular, one a chessmaster, hesitant) mother in jail (innocent-ish).

A fictional daughter asks her a question in the shower and she giggles in response, "It's sex, but you're too young, I'll tell you later". On the bus, she's in another life, tilling fields and working her hands hard and tough and big-breasted raising a freckly family and happily eating a potato a day and maybe some carrots. A hard life looks like fun from the window of a bus, she smirks, twirling her hair between her fingers, on the way to the hospital.

In the spilled water, in the splash of the mop, she hears ocean life and ocean warmth, slapping waves that curl like God breathes water. In the squint of a smoke break, these days begin to feel like thin threads, all delicate and breakable on their own, but add up to something large, some huge work, some final majesty. Possibly a pile of nice threads, checking the schedule for the weekend, working nights. Arguing with a thin aggressive man about visiting hours, she smiles warmly, almost laughing, "I sound like quite the dictator, don't I?" and he leaves without a scene.

Desdemona washes her hands, wipes them on a towel, and thinks of the polish on her toes, it's wine and perhaps tonight she'll have some wine.

There are no words to describe how deep this goes, as she looks down the laundry chute. The gurgling, choking throat of a Sarlacc, stripping a bed with the sun in her eyes.

Your majesty, your tar-covered robes are ready, folding gowns with sore shoulders. Competition is the unnatural order of everything, watching the traffic on the salty walk to the bus stop.

If I had left I never would have met you, I never would have seen this, thought Desdemona, playfully catching the busdriver's eye.

[released Apr. 24th]

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Elsewhere: new music video by Michel Gondry. Humble enough to be inviting, simple enough to be great.

(painting by Paul Lehr)

White Hinterland - "My Love"

The summer rubbed its hands together and cast a quiet spell. Grapes tasted like honey, wood felt like bed sheets, and bats brought the night. A danger blushed in our faces and making love was suddenly a declaration, a challenge to the lake to stir its glassy surface. Foxes patrolled like night watchmen, pissing on the mushrooms to prove they did their rounds. The clouds lit up like moon's milk, hunger exhaled by every living thing, in light billowy vapours. Beneath the ground is all the money in the world, and you can spend your life stealing it, or protecting it. [Buy]

The Feeling of Love - "God Willing"

Like an ESL horror version of Summer Babe. [Buy]

Sparks - "Change"

Like getting a letter in the mail that tells you finally what to do. Written in a language you can never understand. [Buy used]

(photo by Daniel Freytag)

Gigi - "I'll Quit (feat. Owen Pallett)"

"I suppose in some ways I was asking to have my heart broken," said looking blank, at the pitcher of lemonade on the table, covered in plastic wrap with an elastic band to keep out the flies.

"Dr. Nevsky, please," said the young assistant, anxious in a fitted lab coat.

The two crouched in silence and dusted bones. Nevsky had stayed up late the night before arranging the bones in an order he thought indicated the shape and size of the new creature. Three long flat feet, two in the front and one way behind. The tail permanently between the legs, the head tilted ever to the ground, arms outstretched as if trying to fly or walk a tightrope. A large chest cavity, horns with joints, and a leftover bone, that Nevsky looked at for an hour or so. Eventually he laid in the larynx of the beast, and when questioned by the assistant, referred to it as "the screaming bone".

"Dr. Nevsky, nothing has ever existed in history that looks like this."

"I know," he said, checking his watch, sweating, his mind elsewhere, "it's quite a find, isn't it?"

"Dr. Nevsky," said the assistant, suddenly calm, and suddenly, finally, attractive, "I don't believe it is."

Nevsky sighed and poured a glass of lemonade. [Buy]

(image: Strolls Through Time and Space, by Michael Johansson)

Nina Hagen - "Born in Xixax"

I wake up at dawn in a threadbare hotel room, grey light streaming through dirty windows, the stale air like weak paper. The television is blaring the news in a language I don't understand. At the window, from the 81st floor, I can see most of the city. Like the surface of cancerous skin, huge brown patches mar the grey palette, and seem to sink into the world like neighbourhood black holes. I light a cigarette and blow the smoke against the glass, and there are fires in the streets. A snippet of something I understand comes from the television, "Captain Man Pole." I look over, and it's obviously the leader of this wasteland; a short, beady-eyed sex offender-looking dude. He's being shown holding a shovel and passing it to a man with few teeth. Cut back to the anchor speaking quickly and down at the desk, so I look back out the window. In the heavy first light of day, the signs are becoming legible. Almost all of them are written in strange characters, save one enormous sign that hangs over an apartment building. It's a temporary sign that is changed every day, reading "The name of today is ______". The workers are out changing it from yesterday's title "Embellish the Veil" to today's, "Rokirk Picardski". A few floors below, a man is throwing some clothes over his balcony. They fall to the street and some land in the puddles below.

[buy from amazon.fr]

Horse Feathers - "Orphan Girl"

I came out to scrape off my car after work and there was a parking ticket on the windshield. I was so annoyed because I knew I wasn't in a bad spot, I park there every day without trouble, so I threw it in the car and drove the 30 minutes home in the feathery snow. Before I went inside I grabbed the ticket and noticed there was writing on the back:

Hi, this isn't a parking ticket. Well, it is a parking ticket, it's just the only way I could think to talk to you. I'm a traffic cop and I've seen you on my route every day (you're a great parker!) and I've been really interested in you. I don't know what it is about you, I'm just interested. I guess I'm a bit lonely, but no moreso than anyone else, and I just thought what the heck I'd reach out and introduce myself. I don't want to tell you my name because that's like telling someone your password, I just couldn't bear you knowing my name if you just read this and threw it out. Gosh, I hope you don't just throw this out. But maybe you will, that's okay. Like I say, I'm just really interested in you and maybe if you want, you could just hang around your car the next time you get to work in the morning, and I'll introduce myself. But wear that pink toque (I've only seen you wear that once, it's funny!) and I'll know you want to talk to me, otherwise I'll just leave you alone. Oh, and since the city inventories all these tickets, I had to charge you the minimum 30$, but I'll pay you back, I swear. It's worth it for a chance to talk to you. I hope you have a good night. It's too bad about all the stuff that's happening in the world, huh? Okay, have a good night. [Download 7" for 2.10$]

Capybara - "The Wimp (Wimpybara The Cap by John Bersuch)

(I picture this in Herman-style drawings)

"Kenny, where's all my stuff?"
"I digitized it for you, grandma."
"What do you mean, you 'digitized' it?"
"I digitized it. You can digitize stuff now and I figured you wouldn't know how so I did it for you."
"Where are all my photos?"
"I put them on this digital picture frame, it scrolls through all the pictures so you can have them all in one place."
"Where's my TV?"
"Your TV is your computer now, grandma, c'mon."
"Where's all my furniture?"
"I got you an omni-chair, it takes whatever form you sit down on it."
"Kenny I don't like this. Where are all my dishes and cutlery?"
"I digitized 'em. You can look at 3-D renderings of all your old spoons and forks, FULL 3-D, grandma, totally manipulable."
"Well, not totally."
"And I digitized all your old clothes, now you can virtually try on all your outfits instantly without having to actually try them on."
"Yes, but Kenny, where are my actual clothes?"
"I sold 'em, grandma. My time isn't free." [via TheRecordMachine] [Capybara previously on StG]

(image source)

Love - "Everybody's Gotta Live"

Gary Cartman was the best substitute teacher in the business. They called him "The Cartmeleon". He could show up to any classroom, any time of day, any lesson plan, and perform a perfect substitution. Most students never even knew they had had a substitute, he was that good. Every school day of the week, sometimes 3 or 4 times a day, he'd be performing Mrs. Kater's B-Level English, M. Gontin's 305 French, Mr. Timms' advanced drama, Coach Haglet's health class (the dirtiest lesson of the year) he could take all comers. The Cartmeleon once substituted simultaneously for Mr. Lynch's final Biology 10 bell-ringer lab exam and Chaplain MacDonald's "Intensive Prayer Recital". He didn't come cheap, however, and it wasn't long before school boards could no longer afford his hefty day-rate. In an ethically questionable move, even for someone as morally integral as Gary Cartman, it is believed that he "substituted" for the school commissioner one day in January 2006, when Commissioner Turnbull's secretary received a stern post-it reading: "Pay Gary Cartman whatever it takes. We need him in the system." Whether it was indeed him or not we'll never know, as the press around the issue buried Cartman's reputation and he was essentially run out of town. But fascinatingly, no one has been able to locate The Cartmeleon ever since; he's basically disappeared. Friends and family say they haven't heard from him in over 3 years, though one sick elderly uncle of Cartman's, claims to receive anonymous envelopes with cash in them "every so often". And there is much legend among the students of local schools. If your teacher has a queer look upon his face, or parks his car in the wrong space, was once a tenor but today a bass, The Cartmeleon, The Cartmeleon, The Cartmeleon is in his place.

[Buy Love Lost]

(image - Mask IV by John Stezaker)(Stezaker previously)

Caves - "Points of Light"

In a storm shelter, a meal in candlelight. A clean plate with a bit of oil and a bit of bread. A few leaves from the garden and a few berries from the field. A cup of nuts, and a bit of water. In the distance, the sky is bursting orange and green in fire and guts, but here the candle doesn't flicker, the small bookshelf doesn't sway, the table legs steady and the chair sits solid. Head down, a dim reflection of the candle in the oil on the plate, a dim distant face in the reflection in the oil, contorted and ripped apart by the sopping of the bread. [MySpace]

Woodhands - "Coolchazine"

In a yet unmade documentary, we open to a teenage girl with pale skin applying thick dark eye makeup. Threadbare socks and bad leather, hair product and fingerless gloves. Loud noise rock to drown out the arguing, and to fan the fires of argument, a condom in her chest pocket. Painting her toenails black, pan around the room to reveal dozens of posters, applicable to her tastes, but all upside-down. Bangs covering her eyes like a hood, a voice from behind the camera, "Why are all your posters upside-down?" "Because I don't want to idolize anything, if you look at a face upside-down it looks more like an animal than a human, and I don't want to forget that everything I like is still not me, you know?" Only silence from behind the camera. [Pre-order Remorsecapade]

(image source)