Music 2010: Best of February

So with February ending, I feel I should comment on what has been a pretty great year for music thus far. We've got the new Vampire Weekend, the final(?) Johnny Cash, new Owen Pallett, up-and-comer Nneka, new Charlotte Gainsbourg, and the new, beautifully confessional Corinne Bailey Rae. And things are set to continue, with the Gorillaz returning as well as the second collaboration of M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel as She & Him.

But the album this last month that struck me the strongest was the compilation Preservation. It's a beautifully put together collection, a benefit to help keep alive the famed Preservation Hall in New Orleans, and features a wide variety of artists doing songs alongside the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. You likely have an idea of what to expect if you've ever heard the band perform before, but hearing artists as varied as Ani DiFranco and Louis Armstrong alongside them, you get a whole different view of New Orleans jazz.

The upbeat way New Orleans jazz is performed might not seem a good fit with some of these artists, a line-up that includes the gruff Tom Waits and indie-songwriters Andrew Bird and Yim Yames (My Morning Jacket's Jim James), but each artist makes the music their own. Waits has never sounded more like Louis Armstrong, using his bourbon-soaked vocals to croon 'Tootie Ma was a Fine Big Thing', while Yames sings what will likely be the most polarizing song on the record, singing 'Louisiana Fairytale' through what sounds like a primitive autotuner in the form of an ear trumpet.

Arguably my favorite song on the CD is DiFranco singing 'Freight Train'. She has gotten away from her darker solo work and seems to be channeling a 1920's flapper, beads, fringe, bootlegged booze and all. The song has an upbeat, quick pulse and she pushes, rather than follows, the band to greater heights.

Jazz, particularly New Orleans Jazz, is often dark, though it uses many a brightly colored horn section and tamborine. This album is no exception, featuring songs with overt religious themes and blues about lost loves, but the brightness, and variance in the vocal and musical styles, make it something worth listening to over and over.

A dearth of good people

I was browsing my usual blogs this morning and came across something interesting over on PZ Myers'. Here's the link to his post:

Shepherd's Hill Farm is a Hellhole

It seems that this is one of those 'troubled teens' Christian camps. You know, the kind where they get you off drugs, help you get in shape, and cure you of being gay. Oh wait. Yeah, this place is a nightmare.

The special meals (a can of beans, one of vegetables, and a chunk of bread) are child abuse, plain and simple. The body needs more than that. And as someone who deals with depression (don't start), I know that this Trace Embry nutjob is putting some dangerous ideas out there. Taking someone off of medication is not a safe move. Especially when some of those taken off their meds were prone to seizures.

Granted, we may not be getting the entire story here, but it seems to me that the evidence for some pretty messed up stuff happening at this camp is strong. And, I don't know, beatings and starving don't seem very, ummm whats the word...CHRISTIAN to me.

Bang!

So how long do you think it'll be before we hear this:

"I had to shoot it, officer! It was coming right at me! Oh and by the way, since I killed it, do you think I could keep the skin?"

Starting today, it's going to be legal to have a loaded gun with you in our National Parks and Wildlife Refuges. Congress passed a law back in May as an amendment on a credit reform bill. What does this mean? Basically, if the state that you live in allows you to carry a weapon, the Park has no control over whether or not you bring it it. It's still illegal to fire it, but I'm (cynically) betting that some asshole will say a bear attacked him within the next year.

I'm sorry, but is there any reason to have a firearm in a National Park? If you follow the rules, they're one of the safest places to be. The animals, largely due to human encroachment, are going to stay away from you. You're there to see the natural beauty. I just don't get this.

Idiotic.

...

It can all fall apart in half a moment, a 17 year old born again into something his Christian parents didn't intend. The draw of swimming in the iced over river, he crosses and, crawling into the paramedics' warm embrace, a hovering black dot tells him that he's meant for something more, a step by step death numbered into figure eight enlightenment. Taken to wearing the skins of long dead poets, he haunts coffee houses and is thrown out with garbaged grounds, a back alley bohemian of the pretentious college school. Catcher comingles equally in his brain and one sun-drenched day he screams "phony" at the confused retriever by the back door. Any opening becomes a staring contest and he crawls into the backyard, tweed soaked through by the rain and leather elbow patches shrinking by the second. A cross hung over his door takes a sailing trip down the gutter and each night his mother cries her way through the Lord's prayer, heaven's lack smoking a pipe in his room, ashing on the carpet and carrying a collection of snapped pipestems in a plastic grocery bag.

I don't know. I just felt like writing a prose poem today. I'm not in the best mood. Maybe that helped.

Ice: Sunday fiction

Have you ever just held a water drop?

They're pretty amazing. In the tub, I lay back and let the water play around the islands of my body. Usually, I read. If I get bored, I may just relax before getting out. I sometimes pick up my bath-time pal, a rubber duck rescued from a garbage can outside the mall's fragrance store.

Always so many drops, I like to stop them before they fall completely. I catch them between the tip of my finger and the rubber duck. I keep them a perfect parabolic pillar, stuck in a moment.

I crawled out of the tub, the drip still stuck in between my finger and the duck. Without dressing, I crept out to the darkened back deck. The cold is bitter, but I don't have to stay out too long. I'll probably be sick when this is over. I know I'm in pain right now. But the drop, iced through, I took back inside.

It melted, naturally, but left a red circle on my fingertip, perfectly shaped and unbroken. Pink, fading to white in the middle.

It's been three days and the circle hasn't disappeared.

Better late than never

So, as he's my namesake, I suppose I should give a birthday shout-out to Abraham Lincoln too. You changed the world, and made it a far greater place.

Happy Darwin Day

It's Charles Darwin's Birthday today. Hug a monkey.

Boomdeyada

I had finished my climb, the weather and wind failing to stop me, but taking their toll just the same. I bent over, breathing heavily, then moved towards the temple I could barely see through the driving snow.

The building was only one room, a raised platform with a reclining Buddha across from me, and seated in front of it, the teacher I had come seeking. He was ignoring me, eyes half open. I had come during Zazen.

"Teacher, I have one question for you."

He blinked. I took encouragement from it. I knew my question was cliche but had to ask anyway.

"Why are we here?"

I received a glance, and the teacher sighed. Standing, he left the room through a door in the back. I sat down and stared at the Buddha. The heavy lidded eyes annoyed me.

I heard a rustling as the teacher came back, snow blowing in around him. I stood up and bowed to him. Ignoring this, he held out his hand. I reached out and he dropped a flower petal and a chess pawn in my hand.

I sighed. I was hoping for something different. I pulled the Les Bauer 1911 from my pocket and shot him twice in the chest. His body I left in front of the Buddha, lain across the floor in a poor parody of its reclining pose.

Heading outside, I skipped to the edge of the mountain, spit and tossed the chess piece out as far as I could. I shouldered my pack and checked the gun in its holster. I looked to the west.

Well, there's always the next mountain.

The perils of boredom

I'm bored.

It's not for lack of stuff to do. I work at the bookstore five days a week. I write twice weekly for a movie site. I go to the gym as often as I can. But I'm not happy.

This isn't what I want to be doing. I wake up in the morning, and head to my computer, addicted to the impersonal messages I get from across the world. I shower, feed the cats, watch some television, and then I'm out the door. My mornings are wasted time, lost energy. I can't force myself out of bed to run as I'm up too late the night before, watching television, rotting my brain in time with the flickered images.

I eat when this boredom hits. All of my hours sweating on the treadmill or in the pipes and rubber of a weight machine are negated with a few spoonfuls of pasta. I have trouble finding even the energy to put on a video game, the non-involvement of TV-watching more attractive than laying forth any effort at all.

I know that this is textbook depression.

The funny thing is that I don't feel depressed. I just feel lost. I need something, and looking around I can almost figure out what it is.

Is it the martial arts that I miss so much? Is it the friends I used to have that ignore me or have disappeared? Is it a teacher for meditation or Buddhist thought? Is it a weekly game of chess?

I'm not sure. I just know these are the things that are going through my head at the moment, and I need to figure it out.

I did start a good story at our writing group last night and maybe I'll post the beginning (middle, in reality) here later.