Nick Drake was born 64 years ago today. I've songed this date over the years because it's a notable but not Holy Day in Egoslavia. I really almost love Nick Drake's music, I understand why some hold it holy, though it's complicated by the whole dying young thing - it sucks for the musician, it's GREAT! for the fans, early death isn't guaranteed motherfucking sainthood, but imagine a 69-year-old Jim Fucking Morrison bringing The Motherfucking Doors to Wolftrap this July to celebrate the release of their 24th album, Light My Pyre.
Rimshot. Als0 to0, Happy Birthday SeatSix!
- Garry Wills calls me an etherialist! The etherialists who are too good to stoop toward the “lesser evil” of politics—as if there were ever anything better than the lesser evil there—naively assume that if they just bring down the current system, or one part of it that has disappointed them, they can build a new and better thing of beauty out of the ruins. Of course they never get the tabula rasa on which to draw their ideal schemes... All these brave “independents” say that there is not a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties, and claim they can start history over, with candidates suddenly become as good as they are themselves. What they do is give us the worst of evils. If Professor Unger gets his way, and destroys President Obama, he will give us a Romney deeply in political debt to the party he slimily wooed all through the primaries. He will be in a position to turn the Supreme Court from a mainly reactionary body to an almost entirely reactionary one... Those who think there is no difference between the parties should look at the state that no longer elects any Democrats, the Texas described so well by Gail Collins, with its schools attacking evolution, its religious leaders denying there was ever any separation of church and state, and its cowboy code of justice. If people like Professor Unger, people too highly principled for us folks who muck around in the real world, get their way, they will not give us a prince turned into a frog, but America turned into Texas.
- I'm not going to scratch this day after day - but there is the lesser-evil argument plainly stated, larded with contempt. I disagree but understand it; it's what I once fervently believed. This is true - as I type this sentence the novacaine is wearing off the root canal I had this morning: fine metaphors abound. Read the comments at Wills piece too.
- On the Wills essay.
- Interpreting progressive militarism.
- The list.
- The Coup of 2012.
- S.H.A.M.E profiles prison guard Jeffrey Goldberg.
- The Merchant of Venice and bankers.
- The UVA mess. I've a friend teaches there, says the appropriately named Dragas is without comparison the worse human he's ever, says Dragas is the kind of asshole who takes unabashed pride in being the biggest asshole in the world.
- Throw some coin at Arthur, please.
- Rush plus.
- UEFA is determined to beat soccer out of me.
- KITH map of Toronto. (h/t Planet)
- Prunella's latest playlist.
- John Cale plays all keyboards on the below.
SAINT'S LOGIC
Linda Gregerson
Love the drill, confound the dentist.
Love the fever that carries me home.
Meat of exile. Salt of grief.
This much, indifferent
affliction might yield. But how
when the table is God’s own board
and grace must be said in company?
If hatred were honey, as even
the psalmist persuaded himself,
then Agatha might be holding
her breasts on the plate for reproach.
The plate is decidedly
ornamental, and who shall say that pity’s
not, at this remove? Her gown
would be stiff with embroidery whatever
the shape of the body beneath.
Perhaps in heaven God can’t hide
his face. So the wounded
are given these gowns to wear
and duties that teach them the leverage
of pain. Agatha listens with special
regard to the barren, the dry,
to those with tumors where milk
should be, to those who nurse
for hire. Let me swell,
let me not swell. Remember the child,
how its fingers go blind as it sucks.
Bartholomew, flayed, intervenes
for the tanners. Catherine for millers,
whose wheels are of stone. Sebastian
protects the arrowsmiths, and John
the chandlers, because he was boiled
in oil. We borrow our light
where we can, here’s begging the pardon
of tallow and wick. And if, as we’ve tried
to extract from the prospect, we’ll each
have a sign to be known by at last—
a knife, a floursack, a hammer, a pot—
the saints can stay,
the earth won’t entirely have given us up.
