that I wrote down in my ledger . . .
Well, it's vacation time here in the Vingoe-Cram household, except for mom who's working way too hard in Toronto. But aside from that.
Insofar I've been doing most of the things I said I'd do in my 3 weeks of forget-NSCAD-exists. Read an amusingly romantic book called In the absence of men (Thanks Ms. Johnson,) and stay up late with Walt Whitman biography. The pre civil war period in American politics is a definite learning curve for me. I did not even know that Mr. Lincoln was the first president of the then bran-new Republican party. How times, they change! In the days when before he rose to power, the democrats were a mess of corruption and pro-slavery legislation (Also the 2 party system was crumbling as the Whig Party dissolved.) Aside from the apparent corruptness of federal politics, the governments on a municipal level were atrocious. If you guys think today's meagre Sponsorship Scandal is something to cry about, New York City politics in the 1830s and 40s were unimpressive. Now before and after that period, not so bad. It was particularly scummy period.
O.K. Another great thing for me the past day or so is a sort of rediscovery of Joanna Newsom's music. I never really noticed it before, but she is one spectacular bard. Her new record, Ys includes a long -form, beautifully unraveling song called Emily that I've just had the stunning pleasure of listening too. Infact, all of these songs are quite long and unraveling. One contains 199 lines of verse. The song is about her sister who is an astrophysicist and I wanted to share with you this breathtaking section:
And, Emily - I saw you last night by the river
I dreamed you were skipping little stones across the surface of the water
Frowning at the angle where they were lost, and slipped under forever,
In a mud-cloud, mica-spangled, like the sky'd been breathing on a mirror
Anyhow - I sat by your side, by the water
You taught me the names of the stars overhead that I wrote down in my ledger
Though all I knew of the rote universe were those pleiades loosed in december
I promised you I'd set them to verse so I'd always remember
That the meteorite is a source of the light
And the meteor's just what we see
And the meteoroid is a stone that's devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee
And the meteorite's just what causes the light
And the meteor's how it's perceived
And the meteoroid's a bone thrown from the void that lies quiet in offering to thee
-Joanna Newsom
Insofar I've been doing most of the things I said I'd do in my 3 weeks of forget-NSCAD-exists. Read an amusingly romantic book called In the absence of men (Thanks Ms. Johnson,) and stay up late with Walt Whitman biography. The pre civil war period in American politics is a definite learning curve for me. I did not even know that Mr. Lincoln was the first president of the then bran-new Republican party. How times, they change! In the days when before he rose to power, the democrats were a mess of corruption and pro-slavery legislation (Also the 2 party system was crumbling as the Whig Party dissolved.) Aside from the apparent corruptness of federal politics, the governments on a municipal level were atrocious. If you guys think today's meagre Sponsorship Scandal is something to cry about, New York City politics in the 1830s and 40s were unimpressive. Now before and after that period, not so bad. It was particularly scummy period.
O.K. Another great thing for me the past day or so is a sort of rediscovery of Joanna Newsom's music. I never really noticed it before, but she is one spectacular bard. Her new record, Ys includes a long -form, beautifully unraveling song called Emily that I've just had the stunning pleasure of listening too. Infact, all of these songs are quite long and unraveling. One contains 199 lines of verse. The song is about her sister who is an astrophysicist and I wanted to share with you this breathtaking section:
And, Emily - I saw you last night by the river
I dreamed you were skipping little stones across the surface of the water
Frowning at the angle where they were lost, and slipped under forever,
In a mud-cloud, mica-spangled, like the sky'd been breathing on a mirror
Anyhow - I sat by your side, by the water
You taught me the names of the stars overhead that I wrote down in my ledger
Though all I knew of the rote universe were those pleiades loosed in december
I promised you I'd set them to verse so I'd always remember
That the meteorite is a source of the light
And the meteor's just what we see
And the meteoroid is a stone that's devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee
And the meteorite's just what causes the light
And the meteor's how it's perceived
And the meteoroid's a bone thrown from the void that lies quiet in offering to thee
-Joanna Newsom