Cancion Brava!

What I'm listening to:



John Vanderslice-Pixel Revolt

Jordan you are so right. Oh god. I never knew I needed this until I needed this. What the hell is the brilliant second song "Plymouth Rock" about? A Native American war party told from the point of view of a young man? At first, humourously enough, I thought it said "My first Rave/dressed up like a Shawnee brave" and that totally made sense too.



Kate Bush-Ariel

This is an amazing album. Very much more ambient and listener-friendly than her albums in the past, but still dangerously silly (she sings the digits of Pi in one song). The first song is about Elvis, and so gorgeous. I guess in her age she has mellowed out and gotten rid of her small army of snorting singing dwarves and anthropomorphic lynxes.



Patrick Wolf- Lycanthrope

I am extremely drawn to this indie-gothic-experimental-British-boy-genius because of his wierdness (I love my British Eccentrics!) and the fact that he is totally hot and waifish and plays accordion and fiddle. It doesn't hurt that he casually talks about uncomfortable subjects in his songs a la Nick Cave, sort of like the listener is actually a GROWNUP and can handle hearing rape or murder mentioned in a song.



The Waxfire

This Olympia band opened for Garrett at his CD release show. Fronted by a singing girl with a cello, they built a lush and beautiful wall of melancholy sound, much like, oh, I don't know, Godspeed You Black Emporer, if said band was fronted by Milla Jovovich. If that sounds bad, it aint. Seeing them live is better than the CD, but the CD is so Good-they-deserve-fame.



Os Mutantes

Zina, queen of Latin American music, turned me on to this some time ago. However, I haven't gotten anything by this pyscadelic Brazilian band from the 70's until now. I love them. My housemates love them. I notice that Brazilians can't help making mellow and groovy music no matter what genre they make music in. Except, of course, Pantera. Haha.

Tra la la

Tra la la
Originally uploaded by kai smart.

It was rainy on Christmas. Perfect. When it rains at my parents' house it becomes a misty and green and dripping world with tendrils of fog spiraling out of valleys like a japanese floating world painting.

Nothing for a girl to do but pose on the front porch with a Venetian masquerade mask. In the cold rain.

My weekend was good. Christmas used to mean intense magic for me, almost a spiritual experience. Secrets and woodstove fires in the cold dark country nights...the smell of pine, sharp, sweet and pungent. The possibilty of an intruder down the impossibly small stovepipe. Reindeer and gingerbread and an awareness of the top of the world, where it was dark all the time and bitter and lit by oil lamps and soft jingling bells.

Now it means the sedative power of soft couches, quiet (country quiet is almost a sound in itself), and enough food. I feel sleepy just being there. The fog and clouds close in around the trees and the house and hug it tight. We are at the will of the flowing water and dripping trees and mudslides, and the punishing dark and torrents of rain. The way it should be. Nursed by nature in the wild depth of winter.

tar spoon dreams

i bussed my room (meaning: i cleared out the cumulative dishes) earlier tonight. the result: 7 spoons, none of them blackened. clean as whistles.

so why do i still dream about cassidy at least once a week? weary this morning from a long and involved one. can this be my subconscious burden unloading itself upon my slumbering mind? i don't know what to do. hold my little torch i guess. it's wierd being a figure in a tragedy of such shakespearean proportions. and then i go to work and home and be in the world and pretend everything is ok.

Holiday Glitz at the Expansion!

Holiday Glitz at the Expansion!
Originally uploaded by kai smart.

Merry Stuff everyone. Hope your Holiday bar experience is a-dripping with tinsel and awash in fake greenery as mine.
Christmas: in the past, my worst enemy*, but I realize that I really like giving gifts. Too bad, tis the season to be broke.
I make do with used books and bits of yarn. I cast a glamour on them so that they look like jewels, and wrap them in spider silk.
Oh gee, It's really time to go to sleep.
One thing I do still vehemently hate: Christmas Carols. No one can possibly like a holiday-themed song. I will listen strictly to the devil's music this christmas, I promise.


*working in retail does this to you. The people that you buy Christmas gifts from? Not your friends. Give them your money and then run far far away.

Illustration Friday- Total Cop Out

ILLUSTRATION FRIDAY- *IMAGINE*
Please tell me that someone else posts these things at three in the morning. This topic stumped me. Can anyone alive not hear the song or see the inspirational poster with dolphins and rainbows hanging in your highschool counseler's office?? Here's my litle illustration of THAT. I'm the unicorn (duh) being stumped. The deer is all that is pure and good. Maybe I'm too cynical. Why don't they have topics like "Waste" and "Cesspool"? Hehe.

oooh...musica

I'm really into this song right now. Garrett left this CD at my house so that I could have something to paint to, and to get freshly obssessed with. Well, that pretty much happened, and this is my favorite song off of the album "Elk-Lake Serenade" by the single-monikered Hayden. I guess it's also the hit single, but whatever.



Hayden-Hollywood Ending

enjoy my sweets!

XXXmas

I do believe that it was about a week ago that someone said (probably my mom) that Christmas was "in a week and a half". Which really hit home for me, since I apparently believe that time does not pass, and that the fateful day was not arriving at full tilt. And I work retail. Go figure.
Since I am a huge snob and will not give store-bought gifts unless they are books or CDs, I am caught up in crazy craft-mania, which is not a bad place for a girl like me to be. Funnily enough, Michelle and I had the exact same idea for our stock crafted Xmas present, and came home last night to find out we were working on the exact same thing for each other.

Still on my list is our family friend Roy, a libertarian with a long white beard and sort of bizarre sense of humor. He's spending Christmas with us (along with his wife Jane, a crafty woman who REALLY needs her own blog) and I am stumped as to a gift under 10$ that I can get him. I may have to fall back on the old standby of "a-book-which-i-heard-that-people-in-your-age-bracket-with-your-political-leanings-really-enjoy".
Thank god I do this kind of thing 154 hours a month.

Illustration Friday...late!

For Illustration Friday





Here's what I did at first; the begining of a macabre tale about a cheeky jack-with-bow. I just can't help myself, though, and had to add ink and -my favorite- hatching. The result:



Take your pick!

Lamium

This is how you live when you have a cold heart.
As I do: in shadows, trailing over cool rock,
under the great maple trees.

The sun hardly touches me.
Sometimes I see it in early spring, rising very far away.
Then leaves grow over it, completely hiding it. I feel it
glinting through the leaves, erratic,
like someone hitting the sides of a glass with a metal spoon.

Living things don't all require light in the same degree.
Some of us make our own light: a silver leaf
like a path no one can use, a shallow
lake of silver in the darkness under the great maples.

But you know this already.
You and the others who think
you live for truth and, by extension, love
all that is cold.

-Louise Gluck

Your assignment,
{those of you who have still the tolerance and reverance for the outmoded form of communication and prayer called Poetry}:
Find a poem you love, and reproduce it - write it in your own handwriting, or calligraph it, or type it on your computer or typewriter (if you still like poetry, you probably still have a typewriter). Now illustrate it.
I AM CONVINCED THAT THIS IS THE BEST WAY TO ENJOY A PIECE OF WRITING.
(You can also stand on a chair and read it out loud to your housemates)

"We must have been the butt/
of all the jokes in the world/
for trying to live like Pippi Longstocking/"

-the Magnetic Fields "The Wayward Bus"






I always say that one of the reasons I fell in love with Mykle was because he can quote verbatim from "Pippi Longstocking". That is a true statement.


In other news, what is different about this picture?





Hint: I am missing something I wore for 7+ years. I had to grease my finger to get it off. This is significant.

Moomin Papa

So I've been traveling around lately, and have stopped doing the drugs that made me such a good blogger in the first place (!) - sorry about my inattention, I swear it has nothing to do with you. I try to make time fly by having adventures and obliterating party plans. I mean, do I want time to fly? Yes, in a way. I'm lonely a lot, though I have great friends. As I have said before, I am that longhaired streaming dark-gowned girl on the rooftop of the Victorian house, staring out to the grey sea and watching ship capsizing in the distance. Getting her lace-edged hanky all wet. Pointy laced Victorian boots clattering on the shingles. Saying "Woe!" and drinking cups of opium tea and languishing fabulously, spinning on her wooden spinning wheel..... damn, that's a bygone craft I am definately going to have to take up!
Actually, Lucia cut off what hair I did have, and now I have a choppy pixie hair cut, the shortest it's been SINCE I WAS BORN! Can one be a Romantic without waist-legnth red hair? Well I am here to try, folks. Here is my inspiration: Elodie Bouchez~


Who was a great actress in the film "Dreamlife of Angels"...but I don't know about any of her other films. Zina and I used to be sort of obsessed with that one.
I went up to Sacramento/Davis to see my brother and the old Rigg St. folks last weekend, and go to my brother's second rock dance club that he has wrassled seemingly from mid-air in the sleepy/drunken frat town of Davis. It was very fun, just like the last one. The club is called "Rock It", and Jordan wears a baby blue suit and fingerless gloves that I just knitted him to play records:

Certain Antarctic Goths might be happy to know that Jordan played a Sisters of Mercy song- "Lucretia My Reflection", (Though a version that was a cover done by the shockingly gothic band Alkaline Trio. I thought they were a ska-punk band that wore T-shirts. Oh well, I'm an old lady!) and it went over pretty good...certain song choices Jordan made while going over his playlist during the day might have been influenced by his sister sitting next to him on the couch, watching "The Crow", kitting black on black (will I ever stop this madness?), and cackling like a lunatic. Who knows? He did ask for my opinion an awful lot.
I must say that Sacramento seems awful tempting as a place to live, cheap rent in fantastic apartments, and a lot of people I love right in the vincinity. Never thought i would say such a thing, but granted I spent most of my Sacto experience before now having relative-time as a kid in the suburbs, which are less-than-inspiring places. Downtown is lovely, and empty, and right now it feels like winter, I went to a tree-trimming party when I was there for goodness sake!
I'm back in the city now, and it was a sunny beautiful day today. I stayed up late reading a fantastic Angela Carter novel last night (the whole think in one gulp!), one that I would like to recommend to you all:
(the images on the cover of this version make no sense as pertains to the book's subject By the way. I do like it though!)

It really reminded me of "the Cement Garden" by Ian McEwan, another book that I read in one sitting. The themes of out-of-control family life, London working-class slums, and claustrophobia are present in both, as is the good old taboo of incest (note: I take no moral offense at incest, as long as both parties are consenting, so I'm not grossed out by this theme in these books. Some people may be). The Magic Toyshop is more umm...magical though, and less disgusting. I love the modern fairy-tale genre, and this is one of the very best. The Best Single Modern Fairy-tale Story, however, is the brutal "Snow, Glass, Apples" by Neil Gaiman, from his collection "Smoke and Mirrors". Unlike Carter's tale of a domineering puppet-maker and his houseful of dominated and shivering orphans in modern London (ok, like, the 70's I think), Gaiman's story is simply a modern telling of Snow-white, set in the long ago and far away that Snow White was set in. It translates very well my feeling of the brutality and beauty of fairytales and how if you look at them rationally they become horrible and compelling. Another brilliant one (which is also a retelling of Snow White) is by Tanith Lee:



Read it if you live somewhere that winter exists. During the long dark days. You will thank me.