overplus

 

Francis Bacon in his studio.

Dear Someone,

I am having a little crisis of overwhelm on my computer!  82 tabs.  57 tabs.  The 78 tabs I lost in a shipwrecking storm of button clicking (sniff, teary drips, sadness).  I MUST do some cleaning up on this aging pc.  So, this is kinda like a digital garage sale- here are a bunch of tabs I have been saving to give to you in a more lengthy form, a more thoughtful explication.  Please, take them!  I have too many!  On the other hand, if you have too many also, well, maybe you can give them to someone who has no tabs open?  Is there anyone like that?

You Make Me Feel

Invisible Wounds 

Je n'oubelierai jamais

Once I had a love; had a dress of glass.

Nothing Can Stop Us

Sophie von La Roche

Lux (Rosalía)

Bernadette Mayer's excellent list.

Going Down Fast

Avian Memory

Claire-Louse Bennett's excellent list.

About a Boy

The Greatest list.

Comfort Me

PS  Apologies, as they say, for the hyperphantasic trauma dump!

59

 

Dear Siblings,

Your song for today is 4th and Vine, because my parents just had their 59th wedding anniversary.  This event is notable for its age (just like the things in museums), of course, but a strange cause for celebration, as 'married' can be defined as: two difficult people living in the same house.  I got married when I was older than they, and if I had had any sense or courage, or any combination of the two, I'd have just had a family without the wedding.  But not, I think, without the marriage.  I still like the idea of becoming a we in some official capacity.  I have mentioned the kind of alliances and compromises having a wedding can demand- it's a commitment to extended family that isn't necessary and once you feed the wild animal of Extended Family like that, it becomes voracious and will eat you right out of your wedded bliss.  

It's really something else!

 

     

         

Dear People,

I just finished making and eating dinner, and I then ran to the computer to tell you this:  If you try nothing else here, in the 13 years we have been meeting, let it be Ham El-Waylly's tomato sandwich!  It is so good!  May the beneficence of the season provide you with tomatoes that are worthy of this sandwich!

PS  Like the man says, do whatever the hell you want, but I made this sandwich too, and it is also SO good!  

I bought my baby a red radio

Image from the Museum of Radio & Technology.

 

Dear Radio-istes,

Here is a song, ooh, so good!  Turn it up!  Play it over and over!  I had forgotten it, but the big bad corporate corporation subscriptiion transmission confliction radio played it the other day, in my big bad new(ish) car- and hearing it once is worth plenty of months of lousy Duran Duran hits.  Ah, but, you don't have to pay anything today, because it is your song of the day!

PS  It is also a very typical tale of girls meets boy, unrequited love, and a very sad story, but only if you happen to be an oyster.

PPS

And while we are on the radio, let's have some other ab fab radio songs and one gem from the jukebox:

Roadrunner 

On the Radio

Radio Radio

Mr. Radio

Mr. Radio

Border Radio

Radio Clash

Turn on Your Radio

Last Night a DJ Saved My Life

Transmission

Listen to the Radio  

Radio Sweetheart 

Video Killed the Radio Star

Mohammed's Radio

You Turn me On, I'm a Radio

Oh Yeah

Hey Mister, That's Me Up on the Jukebox

Notes:  You already know how I feel about Jonathan Richman and The Modern Lovers: J.M. is the nicest man you'll ever see in concert.  Donna Summer is SO underrated.  Never can decide what I think about Harry Nilsson: unrecognized genius or just another pretty song face?  Indeep is also underrated.  Nanci Giffith IS America's Sweetheart.  Video Killed the Radio Star is absolute genius- listen for all the little details they put in to remind you of old radio sounds.  I refuse to live without the poetry of Mohammed's Radio.  Warren Zevon looks like every man I can remember seeing in the mid to late 1970's.  Everything Joni Mitchell does is genius.  I can't live without Roxy Music, either.  James Taylor- what to do with him?  He's uncool, he's often annoying; this song IS fantastic.

double double

 

Dear Y'all,

My DJ* played this great and true song for me, the other day, and now I play it for you.  I can't imagine why I haven't played it for you already: it's a big favorite of mine, as is the related, second song for today.  Oh, maybe just get on the bus, too.

*A word about my DJ- I had a great station, out in my studio, KCRW; it was good, but DJ-less, and that was a pity.  But of course, and this is why I originally started the Dodo, they took it away; it is gone now, like the empty lot, the bowling alley, the drive-in, and many other treasures of my yesteryear.  But, this is not just another story of loss, this is a story of expansion (albeit somewhat forced): the other two good stations are 1) local public radio, and 2) the movie-music channel from L. A.  You may know the second one as a "Classical" station, but it isn't eclectic enough for me, so I get frustrated with yet another John Williams score.  Also, you have to stand in a particular place, or you get static.  Station 1) is fine, but they have talking shows from noon to 6:30!  So I turned/tuned to the college radio station, which I sometimes have trouble listening to, because it can be a bit 'jangly.'  It can also, I am finding, be just as good as all get out, and I love, love, love, to hear the college DJs tell me why they like a particular song.

Oh, yes, I know, I can make my computer play KCRW, and lots of other good stuff, but, the music, Man, out of the clear, invisible air?!? I love that poetic notion and I am not ready to let go of it.

self-editing

 

From The Waves, by Virginia Woolf, 1931.

Dear Darling,

Today I want to tell you about The Waves- it's just so good!  It's genius; and I feel two weights in my chest:  why did no one tell me??  And, how can I tell you?  You may not love it as I do; but much more than that possible truth, is this feeling of facing another mile of uphill hike, from the trail sign of having come 56 miles already.  What I mean by this, is, I have been enthusing on stuff since I was a toddler.  I feel, like my excitement and interest in a thing is just your ennui at this point.  Or, just another thing you'd have to put on your to-do list.  That seems so sad, doesn't it?  I know, I sound like I am blaming you, but that's not it.  I guess being excited about a mouldering old book seems a bit daft right now.  Can anyone summon up go-juice for anything, anything at all right now?  It's such a relentlessly heavy and grief-filled time.  I suppose I am just apologizing for my frivolous thoughts and I do not need you to absolve me, nor do I expect you to  Let me say just that it is really something, this book, and I don't want you to come to the place I have arrived, where you are thinking, why did no one suggest this book to me?

PS

There is another book (there is always, thankfully, another book: just lying there, waiting to blow your mind, or set you to feeling, or scramble you utterly, or even to let you know you are not alone), Orbital, by Samantha Harvey (no relation).  I adored The Shapeless Unease, as well.  Like The Waves, this book has six people who are overlapplingly, additionally, one: they make an unsubstantial territory.  May it share some of your area soon.  It is a wonderful book.  Both these books will take you there.

Quark, Quaquaquas

 

Dear Dictionary of Light and Ether,

Why are we here?  So many answers!  I figure we might be here to look up words we don't know.  To grasp towards understanding of still further concepts and ideas.  To understand the whole of humanity as evidenced by what it has made.  To commune with the Ancestors by finding out what they thought.  Whoooo; what a lot of effort!  Why?  When you could pour yourself a gin and sit in the sun?*  Well, maybe I don't even need to answer that, but my mind would not be satisfied with the gin and sun.  I have tried it; I become mentally restless.  Perhaps I really am hyper-active in a very speed-of-the-sloth way.  Glacially frenetic.  Hyper-molassesesque.

Marmoreal. Ordure.  Himation.  Kiritanpo.  Incalescent.  Viriditas.  Tipasa.  The quaquaquas.  Gris-gris.  Teiresias.  Coup de foudre.  These are about half of the words and concepts from the last few weeks.  Look up one; hold it and put it somewhere safe; use it if you can, try it if it is available.  Or make a world, a whole world out of it: a doctorial thesis of it, a lifetime practice; a tradition of your one word.  

* To pour and to sit, to drink and to recline, these are metaphors for bodied, feeling states; I use them here contra-mind work.  The line between feeling and thinking, however, is unclear to me.  If you have pondered so long with your ankles crossed that your foot has fallen asleep, you may also be muddled on the difference between thinking and feeling.