Music: February 2008 Archives

'Do you remember the way that you touched me before?' - Natalie Merchant, My Skin (she's my crush this week)

For those who don't know (and until a few days ago I too did not know), there is this funky little function on youtube.

You can make playlists of videos you like. Then youtube just plays them one after another.

Under the video you're watching you'll see next to the favourite button, a button that says 'add to playlists'. Make a new playlist and then add randomly until you have a list to suit your mood.

Then listen and be happy.

Who needs itunes? Oh, if you want to liberate your itunes purchases, you have to get Doubletwist.

There's also a cool little widget, Twist Me for facebook.

And now it's time for a poem, because it's Sunday, I'm in a strange mood and it's been too, too long.

Today's choice is inspired by number 73 on Francine's list.

Text

I tend the mobile now
like an injured bird.

We text, text, text
Our significant words.

I re-read your first,
your second, your third,

look for your small xx,
feeling absurd.

The codes we send
arrive with a broken chord.

I try to picture your hands,
their image is blurred.

Nothing my thumbs press
will ever be heard.

-- Carol Ann Duffy, from Rapture

'Why dream a dream that's tainted with trouble and less than it seems, why bother bothering, just for a poem or another sad song to sing' - Emilie Autumn, The Art of Suicide

I have nothing to say
I'm running away
take your place in the queue
someday, one day, I'll get to you

Emilie Autumn's poems and music here. Cover of Billie Holliday's Crazy, He Calls Me, here. Faces Like Mine here.

'I loved them 'til they loved me.' - Carla Bruni, after Dorothy Parker, Ballade at Thirty Five

Serendipitous, again.

On Wednesday I heard Carla Bruni for the first time, singing in French, her first album. Not in person, obviously.

I was captivated by her voice. Not a clue what she was singing, no French spoken here, but it sounded beautiful.

I bought No Promises when I got home. Love love love it. Poems read in that breathy voice to music. Dorothy Parker's Ballade at 35. Ok, I'm 34, but give me a year. 

Today, relaxing, I opened my Esta and there, in the back was an article written tongue in cheek about how if your man walked past Carla Bruni, sat with a coffee at a cafe, poetry book in hand, he'd be quoting Auden and thinking 'Carla Carla Carla' for the rest of his life. The shorts and the sneakers, and the hair and the poems, oh the poems.

Auden's The Secret is Out.  Christina Rosetti's Promises Like Pie Crust:

Promise me no promises,
So will I not promise you:
Keep we both our liberties,
Never false and never true:
Let us hold the die uncast,
Free to come as free to go:
For I cannot know your past,
And of mine what can you know?

The Observer and Cool Hunting had something to say about this album too, and it's all good.

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Glad or sad. Emotion analysis of photos as part of a University of Amsterdam study. I submitted a photo, please go vote on mine so I can get the analysis. I want to see if I'm really happy! Just in case I need reminding in the future.

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New shoes really make you go faster. 5 km in 35 minutes today. This was serendipitous too. Last week three different people told me my shoes needed replacing. Then Wednesday I ran with them and hurt my shins. Yesterday I bought some new shoes, and these are them. And only 49 euros.

Last week I was running 4 km in 31 minutes. It's all the shoes, I tell you.

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Son #1 told me today 'Mama, you put on weight.'

Hah. How to tell the boy that mama has pre-menstrual bloat and combined with PMS saying things like that might not be the best way to win favours?

Then he compounded the pain by saying 'Ja echt, mama, you look fatter around the middle'. Careful boy!

He turns 8 soon. We're going disco bowling, yeah babay! Mama gets to bowl too. For Amstelveen.

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Job interview on Monday. 2 days a week in Schiphol-Rijk. I could do that, right? 2 days a week and not go crazy?

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If you don't read Neil Gaiman's blog, you should. But, if you don't, you wouldn't know that there is a free download of Harlequin Valentine on Last.fm.

So now you do.

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Books bought yesterday:

India Knight's The Dirty Bits for Girls. I hesitate (and blush) to share that I read most of the books that have excerpts in this book. Notable though, in the Dirty Bits reading was Lace, which my mom caught me reading lying down by the side of her bed. Ooh la la. I was 11 and already naughty.

The New Granta Book of the American Short Story. I have a weakness for short stories. They're so cut and dried. A beginning, a middle and an end. Swift and succinct, short as a love affair, there is no time for disillusionment. My shelves are full of them.

Books I want:

Four Letter Word, New Love Letters and Francine Oomen's Gek van Liefde. Ben je gek van de liefde? Or is it all a matter of choice? Crazy not crazy crazy not crazy... Love is a conscious choice. Chemistry, ah, that's different.

A bit like this:

sitting across from him in the cafe
I thought for a minute that I could see
that brief moment of truth
of how it could be
the ins and outs, the shine
then just as quickly it went again.

Book club I joined:

One in Amsterdam, on Wednesday nights. Book being read right now, Andrea Levy's Small Island.

Book club I started, linked with the Dutch Word of the Day:

First book. Boudewijn Buch's de kleine, blonde dood. Grab a copy and come join us on facebook. We start in March.

Go read the Dutch Word of the Day too. Those guys do a fantastic job of making Dutch accessible.

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I just realised I could have spun this blog post out into a whole week, but today I have so much to say. Funny how that happens sometimes.

''Time, it's possible time, can be my soldier and my king in the war for you' - Ida Maria, When it comes to you.

I'm in love again.

I know, I know, every week it's someone new, I'm a musical slut.

So who is it this week?

It's Ida Maria of course! Click for myspace, click to sign up for their newsletter and get a song for free.

Then listen and think 'wow'.

'To such as me who longs to see how an angel ought to be' - OMD, Maid of Orleans

Hey. I'm still a teenager a day later. Isn't it like, uh, cool?

The OMD song up there was one of my favourite songs from the 80s. Also 'If You Leave'.

'Every second every moment we've gotta make it last.. Oooh, if you leave don't look back... I'll be running the other way.'

Just how were the Plain White T's last night?

Well, they were fabulous, in a fifteen year old kind of way. The girls were gaga for the band. The boys played up to the girls. The lead singer wore rock-star sunglasses like a Sims rock star.

Seriously, sunglasses and a black leather jacket and a white shirt and a black tie. So cute it hurt!

There were kisses when he walked in the audience, and this 34 year old teenager was just as wowed as the 15 year old teenagers in the audience. Seriously, if I'd been at the front I would have so demanded a kiss and some sweat from his t-shirt.

Yes, please!

'Caroline talks to you softly sometimes, she says 'I love you' and 'Too much' .  She doesn't have anything you want to steal well nothing you can touch' - The Psychedelic Furs, Pretty in Pink

I have tickets to see the Plain White T's live at the Melkweg tonight. I thought it was tomorrow night ... Imagine the disappointment I would have felt if I had turned up tomorrow night?

'Sorry mevrouw, it was yesterday.' D'oh!

The Plain White T's are like listening to the Breakfast Club and all those other John Hughes' movies.

Which movie was your favourite, of the John Hughes' movies? I think mine are Ferris Bueller's Day Off, followed by Pretty in Pink and Sixteen Candles.  Oh, and another one .. Some Kind of Wonderful!

I had such a crush on Mary Stuart Masterson and one on Ally Sheedy too.. she was so vulnerable and odd. Watched her recently in High Art and it's odd to see how she's become a grownup. Huge crush on Judd Nelson too.. ooooh. Mostly I just wanted to be one of those people. Kind of weird to look back now.

I can remember watching these movies on bootlegged videos from the video store in the dustbowl of a town I grew up in, lying flat on my back on the tweed covered couch in my parent's lounge during school holidays. In between I'd look in the mirror , examine my flaws (which didn't really exist back then, what was I thinking?) and wonder if I could be like Molly or Ally or Mary. We kept the videos for a week. The farm was remote and trips to town were few. So I'd watch and watch and rewatch, and mirror my own teenage heartbreak in the characters on the screen.
 
But the one I loved the most? The 80's movie that makes me go all teenagery still?

St Elmo's Fire, and listen to the love theme here....

Sometimes I am not 34 at all, I'm really just an adolescent!

Which is why I like this alternative Pretty in Pink trailer someone made, with a really cool subtext. Go watch.

So back to the Plain White T's - they're so young and enthusiastic and sing all about broken hearts. What's not to like? 

Especially if you get there on the right day.

'Hush sweet love, hush, and gently fold me in your touch' - KD Lang, Hush Sweet Lover

An even sexier song than before and a poem. In one post, oh my.

Will you give me your all, and fall? At least to the end of the poem?

Anne Sexton's Barefoot

Loving me with my shoes off
means loving my long brown legs,
sweet dears, as good as spoons;
and my feet, those two children
let out to play naked. Intricate nubs,
my toes. No longer bound.
And what's more, see toenails and
all ten stages, root by root.
All spirited and wild, this little
piggy went to market and this little piggy
stayed. Long brown legs and long brown toes.
Further up, my darling, the woman
is calling her secrets, little houses,
little tongues that tell you.

There is no one else but us
in this house on the land spit.
The sea wears a bell in its navel.
And I'm your barefoot wench for a
whole week. Do you care for salami?
No. You'd rather not have a scotch?
No. You don't really drink. You do
drink me. The gulls kill fish,
crying out like three-year-olds.
The surf's a narcotic, calling out,
I am, I am, I am
all night long. Barefoot,
I drum up and down your back.
In the morning I run from door to door
of the cabin playing chase me.
Now you grab me by the ankles.
Now you work your way up the legs
and come to pierce me at my hunger mark.

More here.

I don't care if Monday's black. - The Cure, It's Friday I'm in Love

Isn't this a great video, especially because it's the acoustic version? Robert Smith is still sexy after all these years.

If only today were Wednesday or Thursday but it's not, it's Friday.

Thursday was ooooh, a great day. Strawberry cake at work, dinner that I didn't have to cook, a storm with thunder and lightning and trees waving wildly in the wind watched from warmth through open blinds. Driving home on an empty highway at 1 am in the rain, music loud to drown the swishing of the wipers, sleepily noticing the speedometer creep up over the 140 km/h just before the Schiphol tunnel.

Today is the first of February. I have written a novel outline. I have written every day for 31 out of 365 days.

Personally, January was good to me this year. I networked, made new friends, enjoyed my life, took some risks, made some choices. Sometimes you have to close your eyes and just take that step. It's the only thing to do, right?

So, throw me tomorrow, now that I've really got a chance.