Last time I’m going to write until after the summer so here goes….Quiet night here in the countryside, apart from a hamster chewing on my socks, I’m thinking of a Mark Kozelek sad song about him staring at the ceiling and singing about all the people he has lost in his life. Thinking too of all my favorite writers – Kerouac, Richard Yates, Stefan Zweig and how they all suffered so much. I’m writing poems again, many disposable lines that I just throw on the fire at the end of the day. I’ve kept a few, but I don’t need a poetry collection, throw them all away 🙂 It’s much better to spend 10 minutes writing a poem about the day than scrolling down facebook feeling disconnected. I’ll read a couple of these poems out at poetry club, but that’s as far as it will go.

International Noise Conspiracy once had a song called “abolish work”. The title “what do you want from me” is from a scene in Reality Bites. Ethan Hawke (of course) trying to explain why he doesn’t want to get a job because he wants to be free. Winona Ryder is saying he’s wasting his life and is going to end up a loser like his dad and doesn’t understand why he doesn’t want to get a job like everyone else.

I use to make that same argument as Ethan 15 years ago. I use to read “days of war nights of love” and had this romantic idea about a better world. I still believe it, but the book has now long gone from my life. I guess things change, people change, life is a weird mix of happiness and sadness at the moment, but hope is eternal.

Enjoy the summer. Here’s a song from a few years ago. It’s a bit crazy, but that’s ok…The best things in life tend to be. Oh, and don’t forget to buy the brilliant new Kathleen Hanna “julie ruin” album.

 

Three songs below, here’s why :

Tonight I’m watching the dvd Norah Jones: Live from Austin, and she’s so talented and so brilliant I always get goosebumps lying on the sofa just listening to her voice. As she sings I’m thinking about things, trying to make sense of sad things – it’s all good. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me, to you, or to anybody but I know what makes sense in life –  it’s astonishing to just be alive and feel free and let yourself be in awe of nature and to surround yourself with words and songs, and “Rosie’s lullaby” is a good place to start.

You can’t get much different from Norah Jones to Dr. Frank from the Mr T Experience. He’s a guy I listened to a lot in the early years of this century. He’s still around, writing novels for teenagers, being all dopey-intellectual. I can’t think of anyone else who makes such happy music, even if he’s singing about his broken heart and how he’s “running out of girlfriends as they keep on running out on me”…anyway here’s “love is dead”

Finally, Elliot Smith. Just those two words have so much emotion to me now, reading  about his life, waiting for the film to come out. So many cool songs, it’s hard to choose one but here’s “everything reminds me of her”

xo