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 |   The catch-all for items related to and/or inspired by the music that shaped me. |
Music has played a role in nearly every situation of my life. This is where I'll be collecting items inspired by those moments- poems, lyrics, blog entries- the soundtrack of me.  I may also contribute blog-style entries here from time to time:
And this month, I've decided to take part in... ![Merit Badge in Quill Award
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Congratulations on winning the 2017 Quill Award for Best Music for [Link To Item #2072393] . *^*Delight*^* See [Link To Item #quills] for more information.](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/group-Quill_Award-1375927_6.gif)    Best Blog |
** Image ID #2076190 Unavailable ** Good afternoon, friends and followers! Today I have a special selection...a book I've purchased a few times for friends (including Kåre Enga in Montana  I believe) because I love it so much and thought the recipients would enjoy it, and for myself because it hasn't survived lendings and moves and such. It's written by a Canadian musician (why'm I always reppin' Canada??), Hawksley Workman, and it's titled Hawksley Burns For Isadora  . The items in this book, while categorized as poems, are mostly short paragraphs of romantic sentiments that originally appeared in print in the Personals section of the Toronto Sun want-ads. For those who don't remember or read newspapers, the Personals section was the place for missed connections, hook-ups, adoptees looking for their birth parents, and so on and so forth. Like a Tinder and Facebook oversharing and Twitter minus the character limit all rolled into one. Like, how dope is that? You open up the paper, looking for a job or a car or whatever, and your eyes fall to the Personals, and there's a fucking love note from one stranger to another that seems simultaneously oddly specific and vague, at the same time. Like, deeply personal. And all of the sudden, there's a book that collects them all. And I don't know if you clicked on the Amazon link  in the opening paragraph, but there's a small illustration of an average naked woman. Top bits, not the bottom. All throughout the book there is very tasteful artwork of women created by, of all people, Hawksley's mother. She's a multimedia artist who says in the book "Feminine based imagery documents beauty literally and symbolically through ample space, texture, bellies and organic elements...giving substance to time." You can't front on that. I first came across Hawksley when Buffalo used to hold a weekly summer event called Thursday in the Square, a free concert series on Niagara Square downtown. Most went because it was a social event, but I preferred to go for the music if there was a decent band playing. Sometimes it would attract a crowd of around 10,000 people. Gord Downie was playing a solo show (I wrote about him two years ago for "Invalid Item" ; "Chancellor" ) and Hawksley was the opener. My sister and I giggled like immature schoolkids cuz his merch tent had thongs for sale, but we decided to check him out. Instantly we became fans for his stage presence...it was theatrical and inviting and loud but soft. The way he'd lurch on the stage, take a big step, and do a high-legged kick in the middle of a song like "Tarantulove" was crazy good. I don't care what People Magazine says; he's The Sexiest Man Alive and maybe the only person I've ever said that about. His lyrics can be sweet and biting, his talent is off the charts (he played most of the instruments on his first couple albums, and occasionally will send the rest of his band off the stage mid-song to perform a long-ass drum solo), and he's basically a sweet, thoughtful guy based on his limited social media. Like, I dunno...he put out a Christmas album of originals that blows everything else away, and this book is him basically longing for a girl who we don't even know if she exists or not. He's also self-effacing; if you get a chance check out the song "Fatty Wants To Dance"...he's talking about himself and the little era where he put on some weight and shaved his head. All in all, the man is a good time. Which leads me to the meat of this entry. All of the prose (if I can call them that) pieces are titled isadora, (lowercase and comma intentional) as if they're a letter (and they're signed Hawksley as well). I'm actually gonna type this one out straight from the book, because I'm not sure it's available online anywhere on the sites that post actual poems. isadora, Pass this one on to the breeze, and keep a kiss. This one is just for you. My lover. My peace. My underwater breath. My green. My blue. We are moss on rocks. Like turtle babies sunning on their mama's back. The heat is ours. The Lucky. The Lovely. Kiss me forever, now. Even as this moment drifts towards its own tiny thimble-size grave, laid to rest beside all the other seconds passed. We celebrate. We move slow. We eat and drink each other. We sing. We scream. We pour. Bulbs flower. Skies dote on our bodies, clumsy and beautiful. We gaze. We know, we don't know. Hawksley My first instinct is to paint this as a note to a long-distance lover, something I know a bit about personally. I love the capitalization in "The Lucky. The Lovely.", as if he's solidifying the inclusion of his lover. Moss on rocks, turtle babies sunning, thimble-sized grave, skies dote on our bodies...beautiful lines. Who wouldn't fall in love with someone who wrote you these things? Yes, I have a soft side. Yes, I enjoy plenty of this man's work, and there are maybe two or three songs that cause me to shed a tear or two in the proper moment. Part of me wishes he were bigger in the US, but part of me also wants to keep him for myself. But I'm a giver and a sharer, so here we are.  I wrestled with trying to pick a Hawksley Workman song to accompany this entry, because there are so many good ones with exceptional lyrics and/or guitar and/or just a fun-ass video. But I settled on this because it's just him and a guitar in a radio studio, and it's something I've had to remind myself of occasionally in order to survive in this world. "Clever Not Beautiful" -Hawksley Workman"Poets, lock up your words. Your tongues are all tied! But let it be in every history book that the poets all tried to lull us with lilting songs of a struggle to mountain up a notion that we were something more than animals." And that's all I got for today, fam. Things are going on that I don't know if I can discuss yet and I've got a lot going on tomorrow regarding my shoulder, so please, immerse yourself in some Hawksley and feel free to tell me about it...I love that shit. I could talk about my music for days. You know where the comment box is, my friends. And wash your hands!! Peace, as we sun our winter bellies, and GOODNIGHT NOW!! "Emperor Penguin" -The Tragically Hipcovered by Hawksley Workman and penned by Gord Downie "Don't sound so detached; this is you and me. Just give me your opinion before you turn to leave." |
** Image ID #2076190 Unavailable ** Yo yo yo!! Look who's back for "Invalid Item" ! I feel bad for a late start; I told Cinn  that I've got a little stack of poems I'd like to share, and yet that hasn't stopped me from ordering a few more books from Amazon that I used to own. And today, this poem is from one of them.The book is Verses That Hurt ...it's a compilation I first found maybe 15 years ago when I was working a second job as a bookseller at Waldenbooks (RIP). I wasn't too up on "who's who" when it came to poetry back then, but I recognized a few names and bought a copy on sight. Among the many listed were Allen Ginsberg (a legend), Lee Ranaldo (of the band Sonic Youth), and one M. Doughty. Luckily the book has a section at the end with little biographical paragraphs of everyone in the comp, and my suspicions were confirmed: M. Doughty is Mike Doughty, from the (in my head) legendary and short-lived 90's band Soul Coughing. Maybe you've heard of them; maybe not. I got into them as I was moving into my first apartment and "Super Bon Bon" was blowing up on the radio. I remember laying in the tiny, windowless bedroom I shared with my little brother, and waking up one morning, and turning my stereo on in the pitch blacker than black of the room, hearing this for the first time. To say it was dope would be an understatement. But since we're here to talk about poetry, let's take a look at one of the M. Doughty offerings in Verses That Hurt...of his six selections, this is one of two that isn't written like a stream of consciousness paragraph. Other Fish A girl with a backpack on a cellular phone sighs; between the exhale and the first consonant a van barrels through her. And who knows what the boy thinks, his line slipping from her voice, her words sucked backwards through the wire? Two hours from now he’ll be drunk, his slurred thoughts slobbering over motives, why she decided suddenly to leave him and hung up mid-word. The phone yelps angrily from under a bus, and she lays splayed like an asterisk in the dreary sentence of Fourteenth Street. Man...simple but slightly heartbreaking and graphic. One of the early evils of cell phones maybe, where people are too focused on the convo so they don't notice the world around them? And/or perhaps a poke and a sigh at toxic masculinity, because the poor boy doesn't realize his ladyfriend's been murdered by vehicle, so he does what many men do...get drunk and commiserate over why his girl has left him. Can I tell you something? I love the last three lines. "...splayed like an asterisk" is a fucking immaculate description of someone who's been completely obliterated by a random vehicle. That's a visual that's gonna hang in my head for awhile. Mike Doughty has since gone solo; performing some Soul Coughing tunes stripped down as well as releasing his own music. I'll leave you with one of my favorites...I think it's about an ordinary girl who you think is the one and maybe she is or she isn't, but you're so jaded on trying to disseminate your new feelings that maybe it's one of the others you're missing out on, and you've forgotten how good it felt to be in love with anyone. "27 Jennifers" -Mike Doughty"You might be the one that I've been seeking for. You might be the strange delightful." |
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Still remember your address on Penora.
Awwww! I think it took me a little longer than that to become one of the "cool kids" 
. 
But, with extreme shit hitting me I bury under ground and neither internet nor real life can find me then.
