Moanin'

 If I profane with my unworthiest hand this holy shrine, the gentle sin is this: my lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand to smooth the rough touch with a gentle kiss.

Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, which mannerly devotion shows in this; for saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch, and palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.

Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?

Ay, pilgrim, lips are things to use in prayer.

Oh...O then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do; they pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.

Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.

Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take. Thus from my lips by thine, my sin is purged.

Liberia ’77

"If you don’t know where you came from, how can you know where you are going?”

I had the privilege of attending a screening of Liberia ’77 recently. It documents the return of two brothers, Andrew and Jeff Topham to Liberia, thirty years after living there as children. They grew up as expatriates due to their father working for Exchem, a Canadian manufacturer of mining explosives. The Topham family lived in Charlesville, a small village, for three years and left prior to civil war ravaging the country. Upon moving back to Canada they became known as the kids who grew up in Africa. Time spent in Liberia made a distinct impression: memories of a vibrant community, the beloved housekeeper James, their pet chimpanzee Evelyn and the freedom to run amok in nature.

It was these memories coupled with a large volume of photographs that their father took that prompted the desire to return to the West African country. Originally there was two main ideas behind the trip: they were going to try and find James or recreate their dad’s photographs, to do before and after shots of each. However things evolved when an unexpected individual turns up and leads the documentary in a different direction. (trailer embedded below)

Liberia '77 is well made, poignant without being depressing and captures the strength and humour of the Liberian people. It explores how photography has become part of cultural identity and how the people of Liberia rebuilt their lives after two devastating civil wars.

Most of the images of Liberia's peaceful past were lost and in an effort to help rebuild memories and images of the pre war country, the Tophams have set up a project. "Many lost all their images and have no way to look back on happier times. Many fled Liberia at the last minute, leaving all their belongings behind. Your photos might contain people and places other long to see again. Your photos can help heal." If you have photographs of pre war Liberia please upload them here. There will be an upcoming exhibit at the National Museum in Monrovia consisting of images submitted.

Click on the link below to watch the film in full (watch now tab):
http://www.knowledge.ca/program/liberia-77

To learn more about the film and project in full:

http://liberia77.com/

Fizzy Good Make Feel Nice

Places, Loved Ones

No, I have never found
The place where I could say
This is my proper ground,
Here I shall stay;
Nor met that special one
Who has an instant claim
On everything I own
Down to my name;

To find such seems to prove
You want no choice in where
To build, or whom to love;
You ask them to bear
You off irrevocably,
So that it's not your fault
Should the town turn dreary,
The girl a dolt.

Yet, having missed them, you're
Bound, none the less, to act
As if what you settled for
Mashed you, in fact;
And wiser to keep away
From thinking you still might trace
Uncalled-for to this day
Your person, your place.

Philip Larkin

Bad Music for Bad People

In addition to creating some of my favourite music, Lux and Ivy were avid fans of surf music, blues, northern soul, rockabilly, 60’s garage, novelty songs and general aural weirdness.


A Cramps fan painstakingly compiled a list of songs that Lux and Ivy had referenced in interviews and books or in his own words "It started as a way to keep track of some of the songs Lux, and or Ivy, mentioned in THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE MUSIC BOOK. It was never really intended as anything but a way for a friend of mine and me to have 2 really kick ass compilations. So we went about the arduous process of finding all the songs mentioned in that interview. One thing lead to another and when word got around that these compilations were out there, they started being traded from fan to fan to fan. So, at some point I decided to put them up on Napster and let anyone who wanted them have them. As the years went buy, more interviews with Lux and Ivy kept popping up, and the list of songs they mentioned got longer and longer. This resulted in new volumes. "

The compilations are a musical education featuring the likes of Ersal Hickey, Slim Harpo, Jackie & The Starlighters, Charlie Feathers, The Sparkles, Booker T. & the MG’s and the 13th Floor Elevators. I downloaded all eleven and it has taken me months to wade through the amazing and often difficult to find tracks.

Links to download the 11 compilations are at:
http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2009/02/lux-and-ivys-favorites-mp3s.html


and click after the jump for a full track listing

Murmuration

A spectacular murmuration over the River Shannon in Ireland.

"Sit with me a while
And let me listen to you talk about
Your dreams and your obsessions
I'll be quiet and confessional

The violets explode inside me
When I meet your eyes
Then I'm spinning and I'm diving
Like a cloud of starlings
Darling, is this love? "

'Starlings' by Elbow

Locura

in·san·i·ty/inˈsanitē/
Noun: The state of being seriously mentally ill; madness.
Extreme foolishness or irrationality.


“Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.”

Rita Mae Brown

Wild Woman

Eagerly counting down the days to November 21st when the new Kate Bush album '50 Words For Snow' is released. Embedded below is the gorgeous new single 'Wild Man' .

http://www.katebushnews.com/

Judge A Book

Out of Print clothing are a Brooklyn based company producing unique tshirts and accessories featuring iconic book covers. Their tshirts feature some of my favourite books such as The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov , Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut and The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway.






They work closely with artists, authors and publishers to license the content that ends up in their collection. As well as being aesthetically pleasing, by purchasing a product you are also aiding O.O.P.C in their partnership with Books for Africa. For every item purchased a book is donated to a community in need.

http://outofprintclothing.com/

I Deserve So Much Better

"What I want from us
Is empty our minds
We fake a fuss
And fracture the times
We go blind
When we've needed to see
And it leans on me
Like a rootless tree

So fuck you, fuck you, fuck you
And all we've been through
I said leave it, leave it, leave it
It's nothing to you"

A Decade On

Self Evident

yes,
us people are just poems
we're 90% metaphor
with a leanness of meaning
approaching hyper-distillation
and once upon a time
we were moonshine
rushing down the throat of a giraffe
yes, rushing down the long hallway
despite what the p.a. announcement says
yes, rushing down the long stairs
with the whiskey of eternity
fermented and distilled
to eighteen minutes
burning down our throats
down the hall
down the stairs
in a building so tall
that it will always be there
yes, it's part of a pair
there on the bow of noah's ark
the most prestigious couple
just kickin' back parked
against a perfectly blue sky
on a morning beatific
in its Indian summer breeze
on the day that America
fell to its knees
after strutting around for a century
without saying thank you
or please

and the shock was subsonic
and the smoke was deafening
between the setup and the punch line
cuz we were all on time for work that day
we all boarded that plane for to fly
and then while the fires were raging
we all climbed up on the windowsill
and then we all held hands
and jumped into the sky

and every borough looked up when it heard the first blast
and then every dumb action movie was summarily surpassed
and the exodus uptown by foot and motorcar
looked more like war than anything i've seen so far
so far
so far
so fierce and ingenious
a poetic specter so far gone
that every jackass newscaster was struck dumb and stumbling
over 'oh my god' and 'this is unbelievable' and on and on
and i'll tell you what, while we're at it
you can keep the pentagon
keep the propaganda
keep each and every tv
that's been trying to convince me
to participate
in some prep school punk's plan to perpetuate retribution
perpetuate retribution
even as the blue toxic smoke of our lesson in retribution
is still hanging in the air
and there's ash on our shoes
and there's ash in our hair
and there's a fine silt on every mantle
from hell's kitchen to Brooklyn
and the streets are full of stories
sudden twists and near misses
and soon every open bar is crammed to the rafters
with tales of narrowly averted disasters
and the whiskey is flowin'
like never before
as all over the country
folks just shake their heads
and pour

so here's a toast to all the folks who live in Palestine
Afghanistan
Iraq

El Salvador

here's a toast to the folks living on the pine ridge reservation
under the stone cold gaze of Mt. Rushmore

here's a toast to all those nurses and doctors
who daily provide women with a choice
who stand down a threat the size of Oklahoma city
just to listen to a young woman's voice

here's a toast to all the folks on death row right now
awaiting the executioner's guillotine
who are shackled there with dread and can only escape into their heads
to find peace in the form of a dream

cuz take away our playstations
and we are a third world nation
under the thumb of some blue blood royal son
who stole the oval office and that phony election
i mean
it don't take a weatherman
to look around and see the weather
Jeb said he'd deliver Florida, folks
and boy did he ever

and we hold these truths to be self evident:
#1 George W. Bush is not president
#2 America is not a true democracy
#3 the media is not fooling me
cuz i am a poem heeding hyper-distillation
i've got no room for a lie so verbose
i'm looking out over my whole human family
and i'm raising my glass in a toast

here's to our last drink of fossil fuels
let us vow to get off of this sauce
shoo away the swarms of commuter planes
and find that train ticket we lost
cuz once upon a time the line followed the river
and peeked into all the backyards
and the laundry was waving
the graffiti was teasing us
from brick walls and bridges
we were rolling over ridges
through valleys
under stars
i dream of touring like Duke Ellington
in my own railroad car
i dream of waiting on the tall blonde wooden benches
in a grand station aglow with grace
and then standing out on the platform
and feeling the air on my face

give back the night its distant whistle
give the darkness back its soul
give the big oil companies the finger finally
and relearn how to rock-n-roll
yes, the lessons are all around us and a change is waiting there
so it's time to pick through the rubble, clean the streets
and clear the air
get our government to pull its big dick out of the sand
of someone else's desert
put it back in its pants
and quit the hypocritical chants of
freedom forever

cuz when one lone phone rang
in two thousand and one
at ten after nine
on nine one one
which is the number we all called
when that lone phone rang right off the wall
right off our desk and down the long hall
down the long stairs
in a building so tall
that the whole world turned
just to watch it fall



and while we're at it
remember the first time around?
the bomb?
the ryder truck?
the parking garage?
the princess that didn't even feel the pea?
remember joking around in our apartment on avenue D?

can you imagine how many paper coffee cups would have to change their design
following a fantastical reversal of the new york skyline?!

it was a joke, of course
it was a joke
at the time
and that was just a few years ago
so let the record show
that the FBI was all over that case
that the plot was obvious and in everybody's face
and scoping that scene
religiously
the CIA
or is it KGB?
committing countless crimes against humanity
with this kind of eventuality
as its excuse
for abuse after expensive abuse
and it didn't have a clue
look, another window to see through
way up here
on the 104th floor
look
another key
another door
10% literal
90% metaphor
3000 some poems disguised as people
on an almost too perfect day
should be more than pawns
in some asshole's passion play
so now it's your job
and it's my job
to make it that way
to make sure they didn't die in vain
sshhhhhh....
baby listen
hear the train?