Altern me

August 11, 2011

JEFF BUCKLEY

Beautiful kid (oh, and singer/songwriter) that changed the genre of...uh, well many genres. My favorite of his styles is when he goes folklore/alternative.

He was uber famous during his time but kept preferring performances in small bars rather than big concerts. In 1997 he drowned in the Mississippi river at 30.

from the same people that bring you nataliedee.com

marriedtothesea.com

August 06, 2011

*notice how the bells evoke different emotions in him as time passes by.

I

Hear the sledges with the bells -
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells -
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

II

Hear the mellow wedding bells -
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight! -
From the molten - golden notes,
And all in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats
To the turtle - dove that listens, while she gloats
On the moon!
Oh, from out the sounding cells,
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
How it swells!
How it dwells
On the Future! - how it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells -
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells -
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!

III

Hear the loud alarum bells -
Brazen bells!
What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!
In the startled ear of night
How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune,
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,
Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,
And a resolute endeavor
Now - now to sit, or never,
By the side of the pale - faced moon.
Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
What a tale their terror tells
Of Despair!
How they clang, and clash and roar!
What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air!
Yet the ear, it fully knows,
By the twanging,
And the clanging,
How the danger ebbs and flows;
Yet the ear distinctly tells,
In the jangling,
And the wrangling,
How the danger sinks and swells,
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells -
Of the bells -
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells -
In the clamor and the clanging of the bells!

IV

Hear the tolling of the bells -
Iron bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
In the silence of the night,
How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy menace of their tone!
For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats
Is a groan.
And the people - ah, the people -
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All alone,
And who, tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling
On the human heart a stone -
They are neither man nor woman -
They are neither brute nor human -
They are Ghouls: -
And their king it is who tolls: -
And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls
A paean from the bells!
And his merry bosom swells
With the paean of the bells!
And he dances, and he yells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the paean of the bells: -
Of the bells:
Keeping time, time, time
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the throbbing of the bells -
Of the bells, bells, bells: -
To the sobbing of the bells: -
Keeping time, time, time,
As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells -
Of the bells, bells, bells -
To the tolling of the bells -
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells, -
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

THE ONION

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July 17, 2011

At the Book Exchange and Champagne Bar, Asheville, North Carolina

2-floor bookstore full of vintage editions of classics in paperback, hardcover, magazines, etc. The shelves cover all the walls and the second floor in maze-form.

There's a coffee bar with great expresso and a champagne bar with prohibitely expensive but delicious bubblies

Earl Grey tea and a Nabokov collection of stories

From a book about old movie classics

From the Complete Collection of The New Yorker Cartoons since the 1920s!

I decided to tour Asheville that day without Ryan and his melodramatic friend, Matt.
I needed a break and thought being alone would do me good. He texted me later that night letting me know at which Patton Ave bar he was. I proudly chose to ignore his message and start writing. This is what turned out 'inking' six long napkins;

Nabokov wasn't doing it
The room was dimly lit and enclosed by shelves of colored book borders that skipped in front of my pupils in vertical rainbow form. They were definitely a distraction. There was a wedding reception in the room below mine. It was probably the best man toasting. His light, humorous tone attracted my hearing, his occasional nervous halts deviated it but he did raise small intermezzos of laughter from the cloud of snobs that surrounded him. It wasn't enough, though; I had to think of something else.
One of the cigarettes was broken. The other one wasn't but both were wrinkled to the fashion of a pocket-to-thigh press. Should I smoke the good one now?
The tea; Earl Grey because of a movie I had watched recently. It wasn't bad, fake sugar and all. Nah, still not enough

Nabokov wasn't doing it
Neither was Faulkner nor his words like mudchinking and ramshackle. Nor the details of a German Shorthaired Pointer's coat illustrated in the restroom [which was short and thick except in the ears and head were it was soft]. His tail and ears were comprehensively explained too.
The table, probably six foot by one, with an indented appearance, with the look and feel of unrefined wood coated with enamel, was covered with books of camping, old cinema pictures, The New Yorker cartoons...It was golden oak and a contre coeur with the black and red chairs, next to the red walls and the green-lined door. I knew I had to think of something else

Nabokov wasn't doing it.
Neither was Faulkner nor the bits of Mahler's No. 2, Saint-Saens' Danse Macabre, Grieg's Peer Gynt that skipped my head to the rhythm of my fingers' flicker of the discs. I delved four of five shelves of $4.99 CDs, curiously placed next to an unused kitchen sink in the library's second floor. The whole place was a continous assembly of mazes made of leaves of pages that smelled humid. I did humor myself by going through them several times, losing the stairs once and hiding for about an hour in the most tucked up corner I found.
There were still scraps and strips of tunes left but not deafening enough to quiet my irascible and persistent thought.
I had to think of something else.
I sat at the table still restless, but very tired. Was it the walking? The thinking?

Nabokov wasn't going to do it. Nor was Faulkner. I didn't care about the castle, the cloud or the lake in Russia or the founding of Yoknapatawpha County. There were a couple of light blue eyes about two blocks away from the books that I could stare at for hours. He probably felt warm and I was feeling cold. Mahler wasn't going to do it. My fingertips liked rummaging through his curls more than playing with this pen.
I lit my wrinkled cigarette as I asked the couple outside where Patton Ave was.