(no subject)
I recently learned that the North American Blue Jay can make a pretty remarkable sound. The internet described it as a “rusty hinge.”
http://www.math.sunysb.edu/~tony/birds/sounds/97sounds/bluejay1.au
I never cared much for birdsongs. My father would sit in his basement office, glassy-eyed and reeking like chardonnay, memorizing different sounds. He would emulate a hawk, whistling in the dark, or a yellow-bellied sap-sucker, practicing in the morning over coffee.
I remember only one - the cold-air “caw” of carrion crows in cowfields (alliteration award?) - from walking to school alone in the autumn. Later I developed a fondness for crows and ravens, which I suppose makes me a stereotype.
* * *
As many of you know, I recently started a band with a law school friend. We are called “77 & Granite,” in honor of his second-home-state North Carolina, and of course, my beloved first-home-state, New Hampshire. We are highly marketable, I assure you, and I have created a myspace page to prove it. The project came out of a number of different currents, including but not limited to the overflowing amount of anger and sadness both of us have been feeling this summer.
So, that said, I have been recording and re-recording a song I wrote called “nicht so eng.” The title means “not so close” or “not so near,” and is a line from a somber Paul Celan poem. The phrase, divorced from its original context, has stuck with me like a theme this summer. Not so close, not so near.
It’s August in a breath, and I am looking back at the months since May 30. I see legions of egg and cheese sandwiches and pilfered coffee, and day after day writing motions; I see myself, standing up in court, terrified that any person whose case I touch will wither in misguided criminal prosecution purgatory; conversely, I see dinner of basil and tomato pasta and oversized coronas with a radical queer punk rocker in South Brooklyn; I see weeknights spent drinking Johnny Walker Red and recording amateur indie rock in Queens; and I see dozens of late nights spent alone in bed, under a pale shower of christmas lights, watching Law and Order or The Notorious Betty Page .
What’s really sticking, though, is averted eyes and sadness, a sad girl and the longing for a touch; and the incorrigible fondness I feel for people who tell a story like it means something.
Rapt, you see, I would listen, for the sound of a rusty screw, or a cold-morning caw. At some point I developed a fondness for such things, which I suppose makes me a stereotype.
http://www.math.sunysb.edu/~tony/birds/sounds/97sounds/bluejay1.au
I never cared much for birdsongs. My father would sit in his basement office, glassy-eyed and reeking like chardonnay, memorizing different sounds. He would emulate a hawk, whistling in the dark, or a yellow-bellied sap-sucker, practicing in the morning over coffee.
I remember only one - the cold-air “caw” of carrion crows in cowfields (alliteration award?) - from walking to school alone in the autumn. Later I developed a fondness for crows and ravens, which I suppose makes me a stereotype.
* * *
As many of you know, I recently started a band with a law school friend. We are called “77 & Granite,” in honor of his second-home-state North Carolina, and of course, my beloved first-home-state, New Hampshire. We are highly marketable, I assure you, and I have created a myspace page to prove it. The project came out of a number of different currents, including but not limited to the overflowing amount of anger and sadness both of us have been feeling this summer.
So, that said, I have been recording and re-recording a song I wrote called “nicht so eng.” The title means “not so close” or “not so near,” and is a line from a somber Paul Celan poem. The phrase, divorced from its original context, has stuck with me like a theme this summer. Not so close, not so near.
It’s August in a breath, and I am looking back at the months since May 30. I see legions of egg and cheese sandwiches and pilfered coffee, and day after day writing motions; I see myself, standing up in court, terrified that any person whose case I touch will wither in misguided criminal prosecution purgatory; conversely, I see dinner of basil and tomato pasta and oversized coronas with a radical queer punk rocker in South Brooklyn; I see weeknights spent drinking Johnny Walker Red and recording amateur indie rock in Queens; and I see dozens of late nights spent alone in bed, under a pale shower of christmas lights, watching Law and Order or The Notorious Betty Page .
What’s really sticking, though, is averted eyes and sadness, a sad girl and the longing for a touch; and the incorrigible fondness I feel for people who tell a story like it means something.
Rapt, you see, I would listen, for the sound of a rusty screw, or a cold-morning caw. At some point I developed a fondness for such things, which I suppose makes me a stereotype.