Good morning, music loving friends. Go, and pump thou likewise jams.
Gotye – Somebody You Used to Know
Ladytron – Destroy Everything You Touch
Pepper Rabbit – Rose Mary Stretch
Ryan Gosling – You Always Hurt the Ones You Love
The New Pornographers – Letter from an Occupant
St Vincent – Cheerleader
Kimbra – Settle Down
Girls – Honey Bunny
Hilltop Hoods – Nosebleed Section
Dengue Fever – Thank You Goodbye
Ou temps qu’Alixandre regna,
Ung horns nommé Diomedès
Devant luy on luy amena
Engrillonné poulces et des
Comme ung larron, car il fut des
Escumeurs que voions courir;
Si fut mis devant ce cadès,
Pour estre jugié a mourir.L’empereur si l’araisonna:
«Pourquoi es tu larron en mer?»
L’autre responce luy donna:
«Pourquoy laron me faiz clamer?
Pour ce qu’on me voit escumer.
En une petiote fuste?
Se comme toy me peusse armer,
Comme toy empereur je feusse.»In the days of Alexander’s reign,
a man called Diomedes
was brought before the monarch,
his thumbs and fingers in irons
like a thief, for having been
a pirate on high seas;
thus he came before this judge
to be condemned to die.The Emperor said to him,
“Why are you a robber on the sea?”
The other answered him,
“Why am I being called a robber?
Because some men have seen me
sail a little pirate ship?
If I could arm myself like you,
like you I’d be an emperor.”
—François Villon, lines from Le Testament
Nobody tells this to people who are beginners. I wish someone had told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase; they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know that it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you finish one piece. It’s only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take a while. It’s normal to take awhile. You just gotta fight your way through.
—Ira Glass (via Shauna Roberts)
But here my Muse her wing maun cour,
Sic flights are far beyond her power;
To sing how Nannie lap and flang,
(A souple jade she was and strang),
And how Tam stood, like ane bewitch’d,
And thought his very een enrich’d:
Even Satan glowr’d, and fidg’d fu’ fain,
And hotch’d and blew wi’ might and main:
Till first ae caper, syne anither,
Tam tint his reason a thegither,
And roars out, “Weel done, Cutty-sark!”
And in an instant all was dark:
And scarcely had he Maggie rallied.
When out the hellish legion sallied.
—Robert Burns, from Tam O’ Shanter
To be real on this path you must be humble—
If you look down at others you’ll get pushed down the stairs.If your heart goes around on high, you fly far from this path.
There’s no use hiding it—
What’s inside always leaks outside.Even the one with the long white beard, the one who looks so wise—
If he breaks a single heart, why bother going to Mecca?
If he has no compassion, what’s the point?My heart is the throne of the Beloved,
the Beloved the heart’s destiny:
Whoever breaks another’s heart will find no homecoming
in this world or any other.The ones who know say very little
while the beasts are always speaking volumes;
One word is enough for one who knows.If there is any meaning in the holy books, it is this:
Whatever is good for you, grant it to others too—Whoever comes to this earth migrates back;
Whoever drinks the wine of love
understands what I say—Yunus, don’t look down at the world in scorn—
Keep your eyes fixed on your Beloved’s face,
then you will not see the bridge
on Judgment Day.
—Yunus, “One Who Is Real Is Humble”
Translated into English by Refik Algan and Kabir Helminski
A single word can brighten the face
of one who knows the value of words.
Ripened in silence, a single word
acquires a great energy for work.War is cut short by a word,
and a word heals the wounds,
and there’s a word that changes
poison into butter and honey.Let a word mature inside yourself.
Withhold the unripened thought.
Come and understand the kind of word
that reduces money and riches to dust.Know when to speak a word
and when not to speak at all.
A single word turns a universe of hell
into eight paradises.Follow the Way. Don’t be fooled
by what you already know. Be watchful.
Reflect before you speak.
A foolish mouth can brand your soul.Yunus, say one last thing
about the power of words—
Only the word “I”
divides me from God.
—Yunus Emre, Poem 11 from The Drop that Became the Sea
Translated by Refik Algan and Kabir Helminski
Unmoved by what the wind does,
The windows
Are not rattled, nor do the various
Areas
Of the house make their usual racket—
Creak at
The joints, trusses and studs.
Instead,
They are still. And the maples,
Able
At times to raise havoc,
Evoke
Not a sound from their branches’
Clutches.
It’s my night to be rattled,
Saddled
With spooks. Even the half-moon
(Half man,
Half dark), on the horizon,
Lies on
Its side casting a fishy light
Which alights
On my floor, lavishly lording
Its morbid
Look over me. Oh, I feel dead,
Folded
Away in my blankets for good, and
Forgotten.
My room is clammy and cold,
Moonhandled
And weird. The shivers
Wash over
Me, shaking my bones, my loose ends
Loosen,
And I lie sleeping with one eye open,
Hoping
That nothing, nothing will happen.
—Mark Strand, Sleeping With One Eye Open
My favorite bit is:
Oh, I feel dead,
Folded
Away in my blankets for good, and
Forgotten.
My room is clammy and cold,
Moonhandled
And weird.
The rhymes here are aces. “Feel dead” to “Folded,” and “for good, and” to “Forgotten.” Ah, me.
Also, “weird” in this context connotes more of the Weird Sisters than the overused adolescent epithet of lazy confusion. A good example of the elevation of language Stevenson was on about, which Borges referenced in his lecture, Thought and Poetry.
Aunt Jennifer’s tigers prance across a screen,
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.
They do not fear the men beneath the tree;
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.Aunt Jennifer’s fingers fluttering through her wool
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.
The massive weight of Uncle’s wedding band
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer’s hand.When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie
Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.
The tigers in the panel that she made
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.
—Adrienne Rich, Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers
IF: Would you say there are any basic differences between the English and the American thriller?
RC: Oh yes. An American thriller is much faster paced.
IF: We’ve got into a rather ‘tea and muffins’ school of writing here, I think. Policemen are much too nice and always drinking cups of tea, and inspectors puff away at pipes and the whole thing goes on in a rather sort of quiet atmosphere in some little village somewhere in England. Of course, you’ve got the private-eye tradition which we haven’t got so much over here because our private detectives are on the whole just ordinary people who go and follow married couples around and try to catch them out.
RC: Same as they are in America . . .
IF: Yes, but they’re written up to be much more.
RC: A private eye is a catalyst, a man who resolves the situation. He doesn’t exist in real life. Unless you can make him seem real. He doesn’t make any money either.
—Conversation between Ian Fleming and Raymond Chandler, 1958
I thought it over; it went against me to lay out strychnine for lions, and I told him that I could not see my way to do it. At that his excitement changed over into exasperation. The lions, he said, if they were left in peace over this crime, would come back another time. The bullocks they had killed were our best working bullocks, and we could not afford to lose any more. The stable of my ponies, he reminded me, was not far from the oxen’s enclosure, had I thought of that? I explained that I did not mean to keep the lions on the farm, only I thought that they should be shot and not poisoned.
“And who is going to shoot them?†asked Nichols. “I am no coward, but I am a married man and I have no wish to risk my life unnecessarily.†It was true that he was no coward, he was a plucky little man. “There would be no sense in it,†he said. No, I said, I did not mean to make him shoot the lions. But Mr. Finch-Hatton had arrived the night before and was in the house, he and I would go. “Oh, that is O.K.†said Nichols.
I then went in to find Denys. “Come now,†I said to him, “and let us go and risk our lives unnecessarily. For if they have got any value at all it is this that they have got none. Frei lebt wer sterben kann.â€
—Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa