I think I am on indefinite hiatus. I know I’ve cried “retired” before, but I really mean it this time, especially when I say “indefinite.” I’m fairly sure I can manage to post the kind of content I’ve been providing lately through Facebook (ah, another blog bites the dust). If I ever get the momentum up to start being more thoughtful than that, I’ll be back. Thanks to all of you, both of you, for visiting.
To friend me on facebook or follow me on Twitter (microblogging!), leave me a comment and I’ll send you a link.
What is more gratifying than to lie next to your partner in your own bed mornings, thoughts just beginning to take shape, sharp-edged early light coming through the window and warming a patch of floor where your shoes are mixed with hers from the night before? What is more fulfilling than waking to your own satisfying life with someone treasured next to you? What more could we ask for and not be ashamed?
I was happy to hear Joan Osborne’s take on Jump Little Children’s “Cathedrals” on a recent Paste sampler. Makes for a nice conversation partner to her “What If God Was One of Us.” And makes me want to be in a cathedral.
Unlike many purported “best of 2008” lists, I actually wait until all the music that is going to be released in 2008 has been. And maybe a few that really tried to get in under the wire. I then subject every note of every song to an empirical study to determine which albums were, scientifically proven, the best. I will now present you with the facts that resulted from my study.
My 10 and 1/2 2008 personal favorites, at whim, in barely relevant order:
10 and 1/2) Ida, My Fair, My Dark (EP)
10) Ben Sollee, Learning to Bend
9) Mates of State, Bring It Back
8. Andy Gullahorn, Reinventing the Wheel
7) DoDos, Visiter
6) Tokyo Police Club, Elephant Shell
5) Blitzen Trapper, Furr
4) David Karsten Daniels, Fear of Flying (also here)
3) The Whigs, Mission Control
2) The Low Anthem, O My God, Charlie Darwin
1) Sun Kil Moon, April
Stuff I really loved, new to my library, 366 days old or more:
Aretha Franklin, I Never Loved a Man the Way that I Love You
Bowerbirds, Hymns for a Dark Horse Big Mama Thornton with Muddy Water’s Blues Band
Broken Social Scene, You Forgot It In People
Teddy Thompson, Separate Ways
Margot and the Nuclear So-and-Sos, The Dust of Retreat
Van Morrison, Astral Weeks/ Van Morrison, his Band, and the Street Choir
I think you can check out a playlist of my 2008 faves here, on iLike. But I’m just trying it out for the first time.
And here’s The Low Anthem. They might make it to #1 after a few more listens.
Alexander caused the lovely Campaspe, who was so dear to him, to be painted by the great Apelles, who, by dint of contemplating her as he drew, so graved her features in his heart and conceived so great a passion for her, that Alexander discovered it, and, pitying the artist, gave him her to wife, depriving himself for love of Apelles of the dearest thing he had in the world, in which, says Pliny, he displayed the greatness of his soul as much as in the mightiest victory. And so, friendly reader, it seems to me that as a Bishop, God wills me to frame in the hearts of His children not merely ordinary goodness, but yet more His own most precious devotion; and on my part I undertake willingly to do so, as much out of obedience to the call of duty as in the hope that, while fixing the image in others’ hearts, my own may haply conceive a holy love; and that if His Divine Majesty sees me deeply in love, He may give her to me in an eternal marriage.
I write about music, American culture, places I notice God turning up in the world, and attempts to connect all that with folks I get to meet. It's mostly for friends stopping by (and not all of it for any particular one), but anybody's welcome to pull up a chair.
36 Cents for Your Entire Brain 