The Dog in Humble Inquiry Along the Ground, the Child Who Credits Dreams and Fears the Dark, Know More and Less Than You

That's new Yo La Tengo, serendipitously discovered yesterday as I planned some cascades by bands and artists in the Inner Most Circle of Bands and Artists That Rotate In and Out of the Two Non-Permanent Spots in My Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game now that I'm fixated on My Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game, what with the recent coup. Here are five of them.

Two unrelated to My Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game updates for those who follow along despite updates to My Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game:

Earthgirl's leg is much improved. It is far less colorful, the bruise around her ankle is gone, and the sensation of a thousand bees stinging is down to a couple of hundred. She wouldn't have been hike-worthy this weekend, but we're booked socially this weekend - Saturday for her family, Sunday for mine.

Napoleon only has three months and twenty-two days in quarantine left! Still no sign of rabies. His hair that was shaved to fix the bite wound has grown back. He complains rarely. He's lovely.

• The debate over the local helmetball team's nickname has exploded in DC over a recent court ruling. Iraq falling apart, Eric Cantor losing his power, the midterm elections and their impact on POTUS 16, the biggest political storm in DC is the helmetball team's nickname. Same game, different topping is all, the hate, people are gleeful. Fine metaphors, as always, abound.
• Something you should know about DC: baseball's Nats, basketball's Bullets Wizards, ice soccer's Caps could all go undefeated through a season and the playoffs and win championships and the local Helmetball team, off a 3-13 season, would still be the only team in DC. This debate, it can't be avoided around here. 
• Let me give you an unassailable truth about the Washington helmetball team's fight to retain the current nickname: no matter whether the name is changed or not, this will never be over, and the team will be referred to as The Redskins forever in and around DC even if the name is changed.
• Me, I'm all about despising Tiny Daimon Snyder, fucking fuck. If the nickname debate is causing him grief, then yay. He's Tiny Daimon Snyder, fucking fuck.

• Matters of character.
• Derrida and Zizek, for those of you who do.
• On football and national identity.
• An autopsy for Spain and Tika Taka. It's interesting to me the two biggest bores in international football, Spain (on purpose) and England (because they're England) have both crashed out two games into group.
• Been a bad couple of months for Stevie England, yes?
• The terrible embarrassment of the goalie on the Crown Prince's birthday.
• Rockville weighs in on NoBeSoRo.
• David Markson, for those of you who do.
• Beckett (Molloy in particular), for those of you who do.
• Rothko and Taggert, for those of you who do.
• Not today, but yes, the word Rothko sets off a Morton Feldman cascade in my head, soon here.
• Tuxedomoon, for those of you who do.

DOGS ARE SHAKESPEAREAN, CHILDREN ARE STRANGERS

Delmore Schwartz

Dogs are Shakespearean, children are strangers.

Let Freud and Wordsworth discuss the child,

Angels and Platonists shall judge the dog,

The running dog, who paused, distending nostrils,

Then barked and wailed; the boy who pinched his sister,   

The little girl who sang the song from Twelfth Night,   

As if she understood the wind and rain,

The dog who moaned, hearing the violins in concert.   

—O I am sad when I see dogs or children!

For they are strangers, they are Shakespearean.

Tell us, Freud, can it be that lovely children   

Have merely ugly dreams of natural functions?   

And you, too, Wordsworth, are children truly   

Clouded with glory, learned in dark Nature?   

The dog in humble inquiry along the ground,   

The child who credits dreams and fears the dark,   

Know more and less than you: they know full well   

Nor dream nor childhood answer questions well:   

You too are strangers, children are Shakespearean.

Regard the child, regard the animal,   

Welcome strangers, but study daily things,   

Knowing that heaven and hell surround us,   

But this, this which we say before we’re sorry,   

This which we live behind our unseen faces,   

Is neither dream, nor childhood, neither   

Myth, nor landscape, final, nor finished,   

For we are incomplete and know no future,   

And we are howling or dancing out our souls   

In beating syllables before the curtain:   

We are Shakespearean, we are strangers.

More Sixty Partridge

Was thinking of posting some more Partridge songs since (twelve are not enough) they're in my head and then friend Greyhoos just sent an email with three requests and thoughts so: the top and bottom are from me, the three below and the words in blue are from him:







Probably my favorite cover tune by any band, ever. (Or at least in the top 3.)

I've been revisiting XTC a lot these past few years, after many years of giving them little thought or time. Giving the occasion to drag out the old records, hunt down all the others I'd never bothered with. At some point just realized that Partridge was perhaps one of the best, most unique & peculiar songwriters of his era. Also, one of the most unlikely r&r frontmen, in many traditional respects. As well as -- in the band's early days -- the most delightfully eccentric vocalizers.

What I said about vocalizations. Total linguistic breakdown -- full-on Dada sound poetry a la Schwitters's "Ursonate."

Simon Reynolds has a long-standing gripe about bands from his home country, that they historically/often tend to frontload things at the expense of the rhythm section, the latter of which are usually weak and underdeveloped (in comparison to their American peers). Be that as it may, I'm thinking the early years of XTC when Terry Chambers was behind the kit would have to count as a major exception.

I've also taken an interest in how fond Partridge was of recording. Check the tracking and mixing for "Living Through Another Cuba." Wonderfully, dizzyingly batshit, it is. 

I love the early stuff, I love the middle stuff, I love the late stuff, but of late I find myself listening most to Nonesuch, my if I can only have one album in that sillyass game.

Sixty Today

Happy Birthday Andy Partridge. XTC (and side-projects) are in the innermost circle of acts for one of the two rotating spots in my Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game (and on mandatory playlist for trips to and around and from Ohio to visit Planet). Twelve Partridge song from twelve XTC albums in this post, eleven below the fold, nothing below the fold but Andy Partridge songs, for links and poems scroll down through yesterday and Saturday please.

Systems of Ecstasy Baked into Bricks

Colin Moulding is 58 today. XTC is in the innermost  circle of bands/musicians that rotate in and out of the two open spots in My Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game, have been for thirty-five years, and if I prefer on the whole and by more than a smidgen Andy Partridge songs to Colin Moulding songs (and recognize that XTC is a Partridge project, which is technically the entity that rotates in and our of the spots) that doesn't mean I don't love Colin Moulding songs.

• So much for the one Clusterfuck Link of the Day plan.
• Also, this past Thursday's post's title is from a Colin Moulding song (song embedded in post), serendipitous rather than planned.
• Communism and neoliberalism.
• Everything paleo is neo again.
• Illogical economics.
• Spying an Americans: summary update. 
• Breaking the rules thousands of times.
• How to trap a whistleblower.
• Despicable human, powerful Democrat.
• Remembering Leonard Peltier.
• Cowardice or avarice? Death to the either/or! 
• Clearly.
• The history of the world in a chart.
• A song of flood and fire. 
• Postcards from Google Earth.

• I got two emails re: my comment yesterday in TNP conversation about blogs that limit readership to an invitation only format. I called it "lame and cowardly." My apologies, I meant to imply that it would be lame and cowardly for me to go to that format after almost ten years of not. I understand completely why someone would choose, in posting personal items among friends - or in posting whatever the fuck you want, it's your blog - to limit the readership to only the people one wants reading.
• Yes, there was an overnight post for my daughter - hope you saw it - it's saved, will be back whenever I need it.
• Breaking kayfabe.
• Authentic ruins.
• Posted solely for the few of you who know why I'd post it. As for the movie itself, I've no idea.
• Mansionalization.
• Ten forgotten classics. Hey, D, your favorite Defoe is one of them.
• The infinity of poetry lists. 
• The Snowmass Cycle.
• Charles Olson in Mexico. 
• Another riff on Against the Day.
• New Pynchon reviewed. It's a peculiarity of musical notation that major works are, more often than not, set in a minor key, and vice versa. Bleeding Edge is mellow, plummy, minor-key Pynchon, his second such in a row since Against the Day (2006)--that still-smoking asteroid, whose otherworldly inner music readers are just beginning to tap back at. But in its world-historical savvy, its supple feel for the joys and stings of love--both married and parental--this new book is anything but minor. On the contrary, Bleeding Edge is a chamber symphony in P major, so generous of invention it sometimes sprawls, yet so sharp it ultimately pierces. All this, plus a stripjoint called Joie de Beavre and a West Indian proctologist named Pokemon. Who else does that? 
• HOLYFUCK! HOLYFUCK! HOLYFUCK! (h/t Mr Alarum) Yes, I posted that last night too.

FIXED IDEAS

Kenneth Slessor

Ranks of electroplated cubes, dwindling to glitters,   

Like the other pasture, the trigonometry of marble,   

Death’s candy-bed. Stone caked on stone,

Dry pyramids and racks of iron balls.

Life is observed, a precipitate of pellets,

Or grammarians freeze it into spar,

Their rhomboids, as for instance, the finest crystal   

Fixing a snowfall under glass. Gods are laid out

In alabaster, with horny cartilage

And zinc ribs; or systems of ecstasy

Baked into bricks. There is a gallery of sculpture,   

Bleached bones of heroes, Gorgon masks of bushrangers;   

But the quarries are of more use than this,

Filled with the rolling of huge granite dice,

Ideas and judgments: vivisection, the Baptist Church,   

Good men and bad men, polygamy, birth-control . . .

Frail tinkling rush

Water-hair streaming

Prickles and glitters

Cloudy with bristles

River of thought

Swimming the pebbles—

Undo, loosen your bubbles!

Fat and White, On a White Heal-All, Holding Up a Moth

Three facts: first, Spock was born 81 years ago today, admit it, when you saw Fleabus in her Halloween evil-Spock costume you thought Spock. Second, Robert Frost was born 139 years ago today. Third, while true I greatly prefer Frost's short poems to his long poems, and while I may have chosen these two anyway, motherfucking blooger no longer accepts ceepees from the two primary resources I use to find these poems - or to be more precise, blooger will not accept ceepees from the two primary resources I use to find these poems on my laptop but will accept ceepees from the two primary resources I use to find these poems on my work desktop but only in Firefox, not in Chrome, motherfucking blooger - I had no choice, it was these two Frost poems, I don't love his long poems enough to type them out, and I've no intention of touching my work computer again until next Monday. Fourth, fuck blooger, I've no idea where that script overlaying the second poem comes from, I don't see it in the html code, I did no ceepeeing on this post, what the fuck, it must be...

DESIGN

Robert Frost

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth--
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right.
Like the ingredients of a witch's broth--
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like paper kite.

What had the flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
The steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small.

THE SILKEN TENT

Robert Frost

She is as in a field a silken tent
At midday when the sunny summer breeze
Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
So that in guys it gently sways at ease,
And in its supporting central pole,
That is its pinnacle to heavenward
And signifies the sureness of the soul,
Seems to owe nought to any single cord,
But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
By countless silken ties of love and thought
To everything on earth the compass round,
And only by one's going slightly taut
In the capriciousness of summer air
Is of the slightest bondage made aware.

Full of the Same Wind

Full on XTC cascade, YAY! sparked by listening to Nonsuch on drive home from Ohio. Full album at bottom of post. Expect LOTS next week or so. A friend asks, Proust? I failed, will be buying amber Nyquil for TNPers all of 2014. Why I wanted a quieter mind is a larger question than why I thought I could achieve one. Another friend asks, Tablet? Maybe. Another friend asks, fucking blooger? YES! If anyone has any suggestions on how to make the Apply to Template button work, I'll buy you amber Nyquil all the rest of 2013 if you can fix it. Links: Police state. Capitalism. Capitalism. Capitalism. Priorities. The myth of justice. The coming collapse. Dirty Wars. Israel's Tuskegee. More here. Police state practice. One year ago. Why aren't you using these apps to track your death?




 
Did you know Washington DC has a professional soccer team?  Writers on writers. I've never heard of Joseph Ceravalo. While I have failed Proust, I have not failed Olson, Maximus works. William Gass discusses Rilke. Everybody knows this is nowhere. On not like Wallace Steven's poetry. Pynchon and Ashbery. Prunella's latest playlist. Mr Alarum provides a Rainer Maria cascade: Rain Your Hand, Viva Anger, Viva Hate, Breakfast of Champions, Contents of Lincoln's Pockets, Make You Mine. FourTEEN. Gubaidulina.





THE SNOW MAN

Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time

To behold the junipers shagged with ice,

The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think

Of any misery in the sound of the wind,

In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land

Full of the same wind

That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,

And, nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. 

XTC's Nonsuch, what a great fucking album, listened for the first time in maybe a year between Friendsville all the way downhill to Hancock this past Sunday (and at least three times since, and HOLYFUCK! what an XTC cascade I'm only beginning to indulge, it's medicinal). Peter, above. My Bird Performs. Dear Madam Barnum. Humble Daisy.
    




Holly Up on Poppy. Crocodile. Rook. Omnibus. Not only is that one of my favorite songs in the world, there's an allusion - I insist on believing - to Yvonne Craig in the lyrics. Then She Appeared. War Dance. Wrapped in Grey. The Ugly Underneath. Bungalow.

Theme Song January 2013

Fifty-Nine Today

No, I didn't forget: Happy Birthday Andy Partridge. XTC (and side-projects) are in the innermost circle of acts for one of the two rotating spots in my sillyass Deserted Island Five game.

Lurid Conditions Are Facts

Colin Moulding is 57 today. I may have mentioned it already. I generally dig Partridge's songs much more, but still, Egoslavian Holy Day. Hey! Did you know Washington DC has a professional soccer team? It's true! (and they made a trade yesterday), and I looked at the schedule yesterday and I've a moral quandary. There was no Thursday Night Pints last night because there's a Sunday Night Barbeque at L's house for her birthday and SHAZAM! motherfucking MLS scheduled a soccer game for motherfucking five o'clock on a motherfucking Sunday, the motherfuckers. L wins unless a possible clusterfuck in her life materializes, won't know until Sunday morning. >>Deleted bleggalgazing<< Hey, be Kind, check out some new bips on the blegrells.

• Cynical days.
• Motherfucking Pastor Sanctimonious.
• Jesusfuck, it's pisses me off that that pisses me off. Acknowledging motherfucking Obama does not mitigate - why I thought it would, why I still think it can, is proof of my permanent rubity - my recreational disdain I've burnished for decades. Dammit.
• Criminalizing dissent.
• Canons to the Left of me.
• Britain's second empire.
• Sideshow's links.
• War Dance.
• Venus and Mars.
• The >>deleted bleggalgazing<< was actually re: the other place, but I'll let it go at thank you Russian pornbot for all the hits! Tis amazing.
• Who the hell uses stupidass Star Trek allusions?

• How the American university was killed in five easy steps.
• Peace, joy, etc.
• runaway return.
• Runaway.
• Creeley, reading.
• Evan S Connell is 88 today. I remember when the Bridges, Mr and Mrs, were regular reading for lit-folks.
• On Lisa Robertson's prose.
• Roundabout.
• In Loving Memory of a Name.
• What in the World?
• Gass.
• Grass.
• Gass.
• Vanishing Girl.
• Frivolous Tonight.
• In Another Life.

[UNTITLED]

Lisa Robertson

It was Jessica Grim the American poet
who first advised me to read Violette Leduc.
Lurid conditions are facts. This is no different
from daily protests and cashbars.
I now unknowingly speed towards
which of all acts, words, conditions—
I am troubled that I do not know.
When I feel depressed in broad daylight
depressed by the disappearance of names, the pollen
smearing the windowsill, I picture
the bending pages of La Bâtarde
and I think of wind. The outspread world is
comparable to a large theatre
or to rending paper, and the noise it makes when it flaps
is riotous. Clothes swish through the air, rubbing
my ears. Promptly I am quenched. I’m talking
about a cheap paperback which fans and
slips to the floor with a shush. Skirt stretched
taut between new knees, head turned back, I
hold down a branch,

Fifty-Seven Today

Colin Moulding is fifty-seven today. Holyfuck I'm old. XTC (and Dukes and other projects Partridge) is on the short-list for the two rotating spots on my Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game. Cascade later today (requests solicited for Moulding lead-vocal XTC songs, or not), or not. I've both been smacked with the fuck-it and smacked myself with the fuck-it to counter being smacked with the fuck-it. The difference between fuck-it and what-the-fuck is infinite. I'll let you know smacking the smacking works, or not.