"THIS IS THE UNSTABLE WORLD & WE IN IT UNSTABLE"

On the twentyseventh May eleven hundred
and seventyseven, eight p.m., fire broke out
at the corner of Tomi and Higuchi streets.
In a night
palace, ministries, university, parliament
were destroyed. As the wind veered
flames spread out in the shape of an open fan.
Tongues torn by gusts stretched and leapt.
In the sky clouds of cinders lit red with the blaze.
Some choked, some burned, some barely escaped.
Sixteen great officials lost houses and
very many poor. A third of the city burned;
several thousands died; and of beasts,
limitless numbers.

Men are fools to invest in real estate.

Basil Bunting from Chomei at Toyama first published in Poetry, September 1933

LIKE SOME KIND OF CURRENCY I CAN'T OWN

i saw foucault at berkeley's little gem of a venue, freight & salvage, over 3 years ago. i'm not sure how i stumbled onto his work, probably just dumb luck. i was immediately drawn to that voice(almost as alluring as jay farrar's), then, the songs themselves. at that time, he'd put out 3 albums & he announced that night that his new album was due out shortly. it would be an entire album of john prine songs. i remember my brain's reaction to that annoucement: "i'll just stick w/prine, thank you." foucault's original material was pretty damned strong & he put on a fine show. i'm glad mr. marcus drew my attention back to him. he's put out two strong albums since the prine covers. it's always gratifying to find yourself on the same page as greil marcus.

(1) Jeffrey Foucault, Cold Satellite (JeffreyFoucault.com)." A collaboration with the poet Lisa Olstein, who wrote the words for Foucault’s drawl—a drawl that sometimes grows a tail so long it curls around itself, with a country feel that puts the people who live in the Nashville charts to shame. Then a deep-ditch electric guitar takes a country song into the blues, and lets it go back where it came from. Nothing is pressed, to the point that sometimes the way the voice pulls away from a word or a guitar from a phrase is its own kind of preciousness—but not in “Twice I Left Her,” which shifts the music into a more resolute kind of quiet, a bigger emptiness in a single room. An acoustic guitar figure comes up against drums buried far away, like a memory. The story creeps out, and stops well short of its end, though you can glimpse it. Foucault drifts over the words so lightly that they seem to fade as they’re sung, and you might stop trying to hear them as words, let them come as sounds." GREIL MARCUS REAL LIFE ROCK TOP TEN FEB 2011

WRITERS DO NOT DANCE

Write this. We have burned all their villages

Write this. We have burned all the villages and the people in them

Write this. We have adopted their customs and their manner of dress

Write this. A word may be shaped like a bed, a basket of tears or an X

In the notebook it says, It is the time of mutations, laughter at jokes, secrets beyond the boundaries of speech

(....)
Say this. I was born on an island among the dead. I learned language on this island but did not speak on this island. I am writing to you from this island. I am writing to the dancers from this island. The writers do not dance on this island

Say this. There is a sentence in my mouth, there is a chariot in my mouth. There is a ladder. There is a lamp whose light fills empty space and a space which swallows light

from SUN michael palmer

SACRED/PROFANE/ELIADE/ARBUS

As long as you have not grasped that you have to die to grow, you are a troubled guest on the dark earth — MIRCEA ELIADE also born today MARCH 14TH

STARING DOWN A VOODOO QUEEN

IN HONOR OF FAT TUESDAY.

if there's any doubt that the white boys who comprise galactic haven't absorbed the new orleans groove, i adduce this stunning piece of funk as evidence to the contrary. furthermore, if there's any doubt that irma thomas can still reach way down & give up everything to a song, just sit back & listen.

this is off galactic's ya-ka-may from last year.

TIME ISN'T KIND OR UNKIND

i suppose the audience wag who yelled "traitor" at sam beam was just shivering at how clever AND ironic he was being in front of all those people. of course he didn't mean it. we've come a long way from having a folksinger cause any kind of commotion at all. nowadays, that sort of thing comes from the ladies & kanye.

there are enough excellent songs on iron & wine's new album, kiss each other clean, to give beam the benefit of the doubt about the other "experiments." his lyricism is still very much intact & most of the melodies support the extra instrumentation. the duds are really where he clutters things up just a bit too much or where he revisits a scene he's already explored on other albums.

dylan warmed up w/bringing it all back home & highway 61 revisited & then he dropped blonde on blonde. i'm not suggesting that beam is one of the many "new dylans" who come along every so often. i'm saying that the move from delicate quirky melodist to full-blown band leader is a tricky one & it usually involves some growing pains. this isn't new coke. it's a strong progression that depends on where he's been & what he's done but points towards new concerns & approaches.

i'll take what's good here & wait for his next move.

kiss each other clean iron & wine

RUN MYSELF INTO THE GROUND

sounding very much like a bored waitress at the local woolworth's lunch counter on palafox in pensacola, ms mayfield delivers a dark & deep album filled w/shame & anger & the occasional glimpse of some kind of solace, which is about all the redemption she's willing to offer. i hear flannery o'connor here; the pre-lupus flannery who went to new york pursuing the idealized literary life, breaking hearts & having hers broken by boys of callow youth. flannery's early work had pain & shame & anger in it too. it was only when the disease drove her back to the "christ haunted" south that she was able to see a way out of quotidian suffering. of course, her way out wasn't easy & ms mayfield seems to pretty much agree.

i think of bob mould's line, "i always find the broken ones, what does that say about me." this album rises out of the debris of a damaged life & insists on finding beauty & redemption whereever it can.

tell me jessica lea mayfield