we fray into the future
I am about to go join the parents for whatever is passing for Dick Clark's Rockin' Eve this year, and then riceballs and asti spumante when the year actually turns, but I figured I'd get in one last post for 2007.
Top Five Seven Songs for December 2007
7. The Wild Ones - Suede
This always makes me think of poor doomed Remus and Sirius in London in the late '70s during the first war, all the promises unfulfilled and the hearts broken. Sigh. We'll be the wild ones, running with the dogs today
6. Small Blue Thing - Suzanne Vega
Another from the writing soundtrack, this is totes a River song to me, and puts me in the frame of mind to write her when I hear it.
5. My Baby Just Cares for Me - Nina Simone
this comes up EVERY TIME I shuffle. My iPod likes Nina Simone, and I can't blame it for that.
4. Gabriel - Lamb
I just added this (and various other Lamb songs) to my writing playlist this month - I'm not sure why I hadn't done so before, but this is the kind of swoony trip hop that makes writing, for me, so much easier, because it just sets the right mood.
3. You Are a Runner and I Am My Father's Son - Wolf Parade
I am going to name a girl!Sam story this, eventually, and it's been on the girl!Sam playlist for a while, as I write the sekrit incest baby story. Sigh. I know you're judging me.
2. As Cool As I Am - Dar Williams
I love this song. I listen to it a lot when fandom is pissing me off. I will not be afraid of women.
1. Set the Story Straight - Tom McRae
Sometimes it takes me a while to like all the songs on an album (sometimes I never do). I'm not sure why I didn't ping for this one immediately (well, except possibly because of the, like, five other songs I did ping for and kept on repeat for months), but it came up a few weeks ago, and I've been listening to it over and over again since.
***
Have a poem:
Year's End
by Richard Wilbur
Now winter downs the dying of the year,
And night is all a settlement of snow;
From the soft street the rooms of houses show
A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere,
Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is thin
And still allows some stirring down within.
I've known the wind by water banks to shake
The late leaves down, which frozen where they fell
And held in ice as dancers in a spell
Fluttered all winter long into a lake;
Graved on the dark in gestures of descent,
They seemed their own most perfect monument.
There was perfection in the death of ferns
Which laid their fragile cheeks against the stone
A million years. Great mammoths overthrown
Composedly have made their long sojourns,
Like palaces of patience, in the gray
And changeless lands of ice. And at Pompeii
The little dog lay curled and did not rise
But slept the deeper as the ashes rose
And found the people incomplete, and froze
The random hands, the loose unready eyes
Of men expecting yet another sun
To do the shapely thing they had not done.
These sudden ends of time must give us pause.
We fray into the future, rarely wrought
Save in the tapestries of afterthought.
More time, more time. Barrages of applause
Come muffled from a buried radio.
The New-year bells are wrangling with the snow.
***
I hope everyone out there has a happy and healthy 2008. You guys are awesome and I don't know what I'd do without you.
*hugs*
***
Top Five Seven Songs for December 2007
7. The Wild Ones - Suede
This always makes me think of poor doomed Remus and Sirius in London in the late '70s during the first war, all the promises unfulfilled and the hearts broken. Sigh. We'll be the wild ones, running with the dogs today
6. Small Blue Thing - Suzanne Vega
Another from the writing soundtrack, this is totes a River song to me, and puts me in the frame of mind to write her when I hear it.
5. My Baby Just Cares for Me - Nina Simone
this comes up EVERY TIME I shuffle. My iPod likes Nina Simone, and I can't blame it for that.
4. Gabriel - Lamb
I just added this (and various other Lamb songs) to my writing playlist this month - I'm not sure why I hadn't done so before, but this is the kind of swoony trip hop that makes writing, for me, so much easier, because it just sets the right mood.
3. You Are a Runner and I Am My Father's Son - Wolf Parade
I am going to name a girl!Sam story this, eventually, and it's been on the girl!Sam playlist for a while, as I write the sekrit incest baby story. Sigh. I know you're judging me.
2. As Cool As I Am - Dar Williams
I love this song. I listen to it a lot when fandom is pissing me off. I will not be afraid of women.
1. Set the Story Straight - Tom McRae
Sometimes it takes me a while to like all the songs on an album (sometimes I never do). I'm not sure why I didn't ping for this one immediately (well, except possibly because of the, like, five other songs I did ping for and kept on repeat for months), but it came up a few weeks ago, and I've been listening to it over and over again since.
***
Have a poem:
Year's End
by Richard Wilbur
Now winter downs the dying of the year,
And night is all a settlement of snow;
From the soft street the rooms of houses show
A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere,
Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is thin
And still allows some stirring down within.
I've known the wind by water banks to shake
The late leaves down, which frozen where they fell
And held in ice as dancers in a spell
Fluttered all winter long into a lake;
Graved on the dark in gestures of descent,
They seemed their own most perfect monument.
There was perfection in the death of ferns
Which laid their fragile cheeks against the stone
A million years. Great mammoths overthrown
Composedly have made their long sojourns,
Like palaces of patience, in the gray
And changeless lands of ice. And at Pompeii
The little dog lay curled and did not rise
But slept the deeper as the ashes rose
And found the people incomplete, and froze
The random hands, the loose unready eyes
Of men expecting yet another sun
To do the shapely thing they had not done.
These sudden ends of time must give us pause.
We fray into the future, rarely wrought
Save in the tapestries of afterthought.
More time, more time. Barrages of applause
Come muffled from a buried radio.
The New-year bells are wrangling with the snow.
***
I hope everyone out there has a happy and healthy 2008. You guys are awesome and I don't know what I'd do without you.
*hugs*
***