This year marked the death of Johann Johannsson. Composer and soundtrack producer for films like The Arrival, Prisoners, and Sicario. I liked his personal compositions best. One of his early works was Fordlandia, which was one of my all time favorites. This live version is spectacular, maybe even better than the recorded because of the way he ends it.Â
Author: Ned (Page 1 of 10)
Toby, and others – Elbow is a band a colleague introduced to me. At first I didn’t go for it that much, but I’m coming back to it slowly. A little 80s. a little Gabriel, and maybe some Smiths or something, but a decent listen.Â
Sara and I are going to see this guy, Nov 19th.Â
The latest Sigur Ros album has really grown on me, especially this track and the first one. I guess they have another album coming out in a few months. But this one is fine by me.
In the Attic by Seamus Heaney
1.
Like Jim Hawkins aloft in the crosstrees
Of Hispaniola, nothing underneath him
But still green water and clean bottom sand,
The ship aground, the canted mast far out
Above a seafloor where striped fish pass in shoals—
And when they’ve passed, the face of Israel Hands
That rose in the shrouds before Jim shot him dead
Appears to rise again . . . “But he was dead enough,â€
The story says, “being both shot and drowned.â€
2.
A birch tree planted twenty years ago
Comes between the Irish Sea and me
At the attic skylight, a man marooned
In his own loft, a boy
Shipshaped in the crow’s nest of a life,
Airbrushed to and fro, wind-drunk, braced
By all that’s thrumming up from keel to masthead,
Rubbing his eyes to believe them and this most
Buoyant, billowy, topgallant birch.
3.
Ghost-footing what was then the terra firma
Of hallway linoleum, Grandfather now appears
Above me just back from the matinée,
His voice awaver like the draft-prone screen
They’d set up in the Club Rooms earlier.
“And Isaac Hands,†he asks, “was Isaac in it?â€
His memory of the name awaver, too,
His mistake perpetual, once and for all,
Like the single splash when Israel’s body fell.
4.
As I age and blank on names,
As my uncertainty on stairs
Is more and more the light-headedness
Of a cabin boy’s first time on the rigging,
As the memorable bottoms out
Into the irretrievable,
It’s not that I can’t imagine still
That slight untoward rupture and world-tilt
As a wind freshened and the anchor weighed.
I was showing a student this artist’s work today to talk about atmospheric perspective, and it occurred to me that Toby and others might enjoy it.
I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.
And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.
Any chance Peters or Toby will be available for some catch-up time Saturday or Sunday? Sara and I have decided that we are going to hear Jerry Bowen at the Bretheren church on Sunday morning.
It looks as though I will likely be in McPee for the 20 year reunion. Sara has been talking to Jantz who will be there so let me know what’s going on. I’d much rather sit around with all of you than with a few classmates I don’t know so well. Toby, you’d better show up, powder blue suit or not.
And here’s another actual music video that’s really got some fun animation/live action combinations.
A new
by a band called, Of Monsters and Men. How am I not supposed to like these lyrics.“The wolf, the wolf and I
We share the same cold meal.
I float on, I float on down.
We ride, we ride, we ride,
We ride it all out.
Alone, I fight these animals.
Alone, until I get home.”
I started a blog. Here’s the link.
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