this empty street, this sky to blandness scoured,
this air, a little indistinct with autumn
like a reflection, constitute the present --
a time traditionally soured,
a time unrecommended by event.

but equally they make up something else:
this is the future furthest childhood saw
between long houses, under travelling skies,
heard in contending bells --
an air lambent with adult enterprise,

and on another day will be the past,
a valley cropped up by fat neglected chances
that we insensately forbore to fleece.
on this we blame our last
threadbare perspectives, seasonal decrease.

-- philip larkin, 'triple time'

yes, i do
feel the need for all those tools of sound
'cause without song we’ll lose our sight of god
(not the god that tells them they're all blessed).

-- norfolk & western, 'at dawn or after dusk'

exhibit a:


jeff mangum - oh sister [live]

if you've known me for any length of time, it's likely i've attempted to convert you to neutral milk hotel obsession, the secular religion which has grasped me since just about the time it was too late to be into them while they were still around. videos like this, along of course with the studio recordings, are really all we have left, except when mangum goes and makes appearances like this, adding his trademark wail and joining in the chorus of elf power's 'the arrow flies close,' one of the best non-neutral milk hotel things to ever come out of the elephant six collective.

anyway, if you've still managed to avoid listening to this stuff, the feeling i had when i saw the video above (which had somehow eluded me, though i do know the song even though it wasn't on the album, as he says) was that a close viewing with an eye to how intense a performance it is could make a convert out of someone. i got/get chills. audio alone does it, and always has for me, but the rarefied quality of a video like this, shot at an enchanted turn of the year, by someone who maybe also caught the fantastic focus and intensity coming out of that face. the only way i've ever been able to describe it is as following: this man is channeling something.

'gardenhead/leave me alone' is still my favourite song ever. you take the normal indie jargon about 'songs that saved your life'-- this is true. an anonymous guestbook comment on my old website--way back before i'd even met elizabeth, and that seems like a real fucking long time ago--directed me to in the aeroplane over the sea, which, i am not exaggerating, defines and enriches life. on avery island helped me to contextualise the turbulence of the turbulent years. i listen to 'everything is' every fall and 'wood guitar' every summer. during downtime at practice or before shows, while brendan was still in the band, we tried to collaborate on 'king of carrot flowers part 1' and 'in the aeroplane over the sea,' and i don't think i ever sat down with my drum set without playing through 'naomi' at least a couple of times. i learned 'engine' on bass and still sing 'two-headed boy part 2' whenever i feel like dying.

i become the again-astounded fourteen year-old who has just reached a singularity of emotion when i try to talk about this. i can't expect these (and the many other) defining experiences to translate into other lives, but if you appreciate the sort of thing that can impact someone in such a way, or just like good music, here is something to look into.

i do believe that's happening one way or t'other, my friend.

'i was speaking exactly like a person who is in a boat being carried along by wind and waves and who when asked the most important and vital question, "where should i steer?" avoids answering by saying, "we are being carried somewhere."'

-- leo tolstoy, a confession

The Ark you're building
in your yard
Will you let me on
Will you let me off
Don't you think
we all should study Etiquette
before we study Magic

-- Leonard Cohen

this is an autumn night
in america
with athletic fields and floodlights
football, lit-up porches, and half a moon.

democracy is at work
that is what you call it
a force greater than your neighbourhoods
preserving your lifestyle
making you think
you have plenty of time.

'from such as this, have i drawn joy and knowledge. in such as this, have i found and beheld myself. i will speak to it. it can speak again. it can yield me thought already formed and alive.'

-- ralph waldo emerson, nature

morning knowledge.

i've been rising earlier recently, trying to get in touch with something that chilly autumn mornings of the past knew-- something of a creativity that was supposed to materialise back in the days when my father had to get me up before six every morning. waking up was kin to morning darkness instead of to the dawn, and it meant that even if i didn't actually watch the sunrise from a preferred vantage point, at least i could apprehend with the rising of my own consciousness the glow, then the light, then the day.

day comes. the glow and the light brighten with the advance of time. what i must let go of is the analysis. the glow and the light and the day are not fully enjoyed unless i begin to conceive of them as spectacular outgrowths of each other, unexpected. a birthing miracle happening continuously every morning. it is dark and will always be so until the sea change of the glow. the world is glow and lightens. the light lasts and must be expended into a new phenomenon that we assign a number and appointments to. place it in a book of other names and it is commonplace, teeming millions of them having passed already, more in the future, we are certain enough. 'days are where we live,' says larkin. true enough, but morning in its stages, i am convinced at least for the moment, is where life most nearly approaches meaning.

so when i awake to the empty enchanted house, grown cold with the windows left open overnight, i tip open a book and i don't look for the brightening, but for continuation of the darkness. in my error, i find the light.