[i'm not here] - a rob ryan fanmix (dublin murder squad)
I've been thinking about a couple mixes for this series for a while but kept getting held up on what to make the actual subject(s). This one kept going between a more general In the Woods mix and one for Cassie/Rob so I settled on making Rob the subject, though in some places it has a more general focus.
∫ZiP∫
"These children will not be coming of age, this or any other summer. This August will not ask them to find hidden reserves of strength or courage as they confront the complexity of the adult world and come away sadder and wiser and bonded for life. This summer has other requirements for them."
(1) Songs from Friday Afternooons, op. 7 - "Cuckoo!" (Benjamin Britten)
[nursery rhyme]
In April I open my bill;
In May I sing night and day;
In June I change my tune
In July far, far I fly;
In August away I must.
∫
(2) "The redeemed one" (excerpt - narrated by Steven Crossley)
∫
"I was uninjured except for some minor scratches on my calves, splinters (later found to be consistent with the oak of the tree) under my fingernails, and a deep abrasion on each kneecap, both beginning to form scabs...I was also near-catatonic: I made no voluntary movement for almost thirty-six hours and did not speak for a further two weeks. When I did, I had no memory of anything between leaving home that afternoon and being examined in the hospital."
(3) How to Disappear Completely (Radiohead)
That there
That’s not me
I go
Where I please
I walk through walls
I float down the Liffey
I’m not here
This isn’t happening
∫
"I suppose the whole thing must have had its effects on me, but it would be impossible-and, to my mind, pointless-to figure out exactly what they were. I was twelve, after all, an age at which kids are bewildered and amorphous, transforming overnight, no matter how stable their lives are...But here it was again, all of a sudden, resurfacing smugly and immovably in the middle of my life, and I had absolutely no idea what to do with it."
(4) Come In Please (Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes)
Once upon a time I was the hurricane boy
There is no eye in me for you to hide
Head low don't show oceans in my eyes
As the waves clap goodbye to sorrow
Daddy's on the mountain yellin' at the bloody sky
Mama's in the mirror actin' out another life
Children in the schoolyard singin' "everybody dies"
And I am on the corner with a sentimental eye
I am on the corner singin' sentimental lies
Hopped up on a gypsy train with tracks that you can hide
That way no storm could follow our tomorrows
∫
"Those lost, liminal pockets of time are usually solitary; there is something about the idea of a shared one that makes me think of twins, reaching out slow blind hands in a gravity-free and wordless space...I remember a passionate conversation about Dylan Thomas, I think, Cassie kneeling up on the sofa and gesturing, her cigarette burning away forgotten in the ashtray. Bantering, smart but tentative as shy circling children, both of us checking covertly after each riposte to make sure we hadn't crossed any line or hurt any feelings. Firelight and the Cowboy Junkies, Cassie singing along in a sweet rough undertone."
(5) Sweet Jane (Cowboy Junkies)
∫
"'The other thing,' she said,'is why I went in there in the first place...He had this very thick country accent-Midlands, I think-and it sounded like he might have said, 'Do you want marvels?' I mean, I knew he hadn't, I knew he'd said 'marbles,' but a part of me thought just maybe he was one of those mysterious old men out of stories, and inside the shed would be shelves and shelves of scrying glasses and potions and ancient parchments and tiny dragons in cages. I knew it was only a shed and he was only a groundskeeper, but at the same time I thought this might just be my chance to be one of the children who go through the wardrobe into the other world, and I couldn't stand the thought of going the rest of my life knowing that I'd missed it."
(6) Just the Right Bullets (Tom Waits)
You must be careful in the forest
Broken glass and rusty nails
If you're to bring back something for us
I have bullets for sale
Why be a fool when you can chase away
Your blind and your gloom
I have blessed each one of these bullets
And they shine just like a spoon
To have sixty silver wishes
Is a small price to pay
∫
"So much for Cassie's mysterious wild animal, then. But there had quite possibly been someone in the woods that day, someone who, if he had seen the rape, had in all probability seen us, too; someone who might have been there again, a week or two later."
(7) Was It You? (Spoon)
Someone doing something not right
Shocked to see us interrupting their delight
Who was it that we saw that night
Was it you?
Tucked away inside of the wood
Tucked away inside and up to no good
Who was it that we saw that night
∫
"But a girl who goes into battle beside you and keeps your back is a different thing, a thing to make you shiver. Think of the first time you slept with someone, or the first time you fell in love: that blinding explosion that left you crackling to the fingertips with electricity, initiated and transformed. I tell you that was nothing, nothing at all, beside the power of putting your lives, simply and daily, into each other's hands."
(8) Careful Where You Stand (Coldplay)
I feel safe
I feel warm
When you're here, can I do no wrong?
Careful where you stand, my love
Careful where you lay your head
It's true we're always
Looking out for one another
∫
"When Sam left, Cassie taught me how to swing dance. We had had inappropriate cappuccinos over dinner, to christen the new machine, and we were both hours away from being able to sleep, and scratchy old music was pouring out of the CD player..."
(9) Mack the Knife (Bobby Darin)
∫
"Here I had been avoiding Knocknaree wood like the plague, I think I would have interviewed everyone in the country and racked my brain until it exploded before it occurred to me to take a step back in there, if I hadn't been battered to the point where I had no defense left against the single blindingly obvious thing: I was the only person who beyond any doubt knew at least some of the answers, and if anything could give them back to me, it was that wood."
(10) The Sound of Silence (Simon & Garfunkel)
Hello darkness, my old friend,
I've come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
∫
(11) "There was that night, there was that one time." (excerpt)
∫
"We lay very still. I could feel the air around us changing, blooming and shimmering like the air over a scorching road. My heart was speeding, or hers was banging against my chest, I'm not sure. I turned Cassie in my arms and kissed her, and after a moment she kissed me back."
(12) What if We Could? (Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross)
[instrumental]
∫
"...I had learned early to assume something dark and lethal hidden at the heart of anything I loved. When I couldn’t find it, I responded, bewildered and wary, in the only way I knew how: by planting it there myself.
(13) Pug (The Smashing Pumpkins)
kiss and kill me sweetly
come and drive me home
drag the miles in me
I am yours alone
inside where it's warm
wrap myself in you
outside where I'm torn
fight myself in two
∫
"My partner. I knew from Cassie's blink on the word, from the tiny shift in the angle of her shoulders, that she had seen me tucked away there at the back; but she never looked my way, not even when the lawyers finally finished with her and she stepped down from the stand and walked out of the courtroom. I thought of Kiernan then; of what it must have been to him when, after thirty years of partnership, McCabe had that heart attack and died. More than I have ever envied anything in the world, I envied Kiernan that, that unique and unattainable grief."
(14) Sorrow (The National)
Sorrow's my body on the waves
Sorrow's a girl inside my cage
I live in a city sorrow built
It's in my honey, it's in my milk.
It's only my half of heart alone on the water
Cover me in rag and bones, sympathy
Cause I don't wanna get over you.
∫
"Sometimes I think about the sly, flickering line that separates being spared from being rejected. Sometimes I think of the ancient gods who demanded that their sacrifices be fearless and without blemish, and I wonder whether, whoever or whatever took Peter and Jamie away, it decided I wasn't good enough."
(15) Innocent Son (Fleet Foxes)
You left me there
Waiting at the bottom of the stairs
with my eyes closed
Holding my right hand in my left
there is no time for hesitation now
you come or go
∫
(16) "Irrevocable" (excerpt)
∫
"I never knew, not then, not now, whether Cassie thought she had hung up, or whether she wanted to hurt me, or whether she wanted to give me one last gift, one last night listening to her breathe."
(17) Who Will Love Me Now? (PJ Harvey)
Who will love me now?
Who will forgive
And make me live again?
Who will bring me back
To the world again?
In the forest, there's a monster
And it looks so very much like me
∫
"I thought about a lot of things, that night. I thought of Cassie in Lyons, just a girl in an apron, serving coffee at sunny outdoor tables and bantering in French with the customers. I thought of my parents getting ready to go out dancing: the careful lines of my father's comb left in his Brylcreemed hair, the scent of my mother's perfume and her flower-patterned dress whisking out the door. I thought of Jonathan and Cathal and Shane, long-limbed and rash and laughing fiercely over their lighter games; of Sam at a big wooden table amid seven noisy brothers and sisters...of all those who hold life so light, or the stakes so dear, that they can walk steady and open-eyed to meet the thing that will take or transform their lives and whose high cold criteria are far beyond our understanding. I tried, for a long time, to remember bringing my mother wildflowers."
(18) Haunted (Poe)
You and me, and these shadows keep on changing
And I'm haunted
By the lives that I have loved
And actions I have hated
I'm haunted
By the promises I've made
And others I have broken
By the lives that wove the web
Inside my haunted head
∫
∫ZiP∫
---
∫ZiP∫
"These children will not be coming of age, this or any other summer. This August will not ask them to find hidden reserves of strength or courage as they confront the complexity of the adult world and come away sadder and wiser and bonded for life. This summer has other requirements for them."
(1) Songs from Friday Afternooons, op. 7 - "Cuckoo!" (Benjamin Britten)
[nursery rhyme]
In April I open my bill;
In May I sing night and day;
In June I change my tune
In July far, far I fly;
In August away I must.
∫
(2) "The redeemed one" (excerpt - narrated by Steven Crossley)
∫
"I was uninjured except for some minor scratches on my calves, splinters (later found to be consistent with the oak of the tree) under my fingernails, and a deep abrasion on each kneecap, both beginning to form scabs...I was also near-catatonic: I made no voluntary movement for almost thirty-six hours and did not speak for a further two weeks. When I did, I had no memory of anything between leaving home that afternoon and being examined in the hospital."
(3) How to Disappear Completely (Radiohead)
That there
That’s not me
I go
Where I please
I walk through walls
I float down the Liffey
I’m not here
This isn’t happening
∫
"I suppose the whole thing must have had its effects on me, but it would be impossible-and, to my mind, pointless-to figure out exactly what they were. I was twelve, after all, an age at which kids are bewildered and amorphous, transforming overnight, no matter how stable their lives are...But here it was again, all of a sudden, resurfacing smugly and immovably in the middle of my life, and I had absolutely no idea what to do with it."
(4) Come In Please (Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes)
Once upon a time I was the hurricane boy
There is no eye in me for you to hide
Head low don't show oceans in my eyes
As the waves clap goodbye to sorrow
Daddy's on the mountain yellin' at the bloody sky
Mama's in the mirror actin' out another life
Children in the schoolyard singin' "everybody dies"
And I am on the corner with a sentimental eye
I am on the corner singin' sentimental lies
Hopped up on a gypsy train with tracks that you can hide
That way no storm could follow our tomorrows
∫
"Those lost, liminal pockets of time are usually solitary; there is something about the idea of a shared one that makes me think of twins, reaching out slow blind hands in a gravity-free and wordless space...I remember a passionate conversation about Dylan Thomas, I think, Cassie kneeling up on the sofa and gesturing, her cigarette burning away forgotten in the ashtray. Bantering, smart but tentative as shy circling children, both of us checking covertly after each riposte to make sure we hadn't crossed any line or hurt any feelings. Firelight and the Cowboy Junkies, Cassie singing along in a sweet rough undertone."
(5) Sweet Jane (Cowboy Junkies)
∫
"'The other thing,' she said,'is why I went in there in the first place...He had this very thick country accent-Midlands, I think-and it sounded like he might have said, 'Do you want marvels?' I mean, I knew he hadn't, I knew he'd said 'marbles,' but a part of me thought just maybe he was one of those mysterious old men out of stories, and inside the shed would be shelves and shelves of scrying glasses and potions and ancient parchments and tiny dragons in cages. I knew it was only a shed and he was only a groundskeeper, but at the same time I thought this might just be my chance to be one of the children who go through the wardrobe into the other world, and I couldn't stand the thought of going the rest of my life knowing that I'd missed it."
(6) Just the Right Bullets (Tom Waits)
You must be careful in the forest
Broken glass and rusty nails
If you're to bring back something for us
I have bullets for sale
Why be a fool when you can chase away
Your blind and your gloom
I have blessed each one of these bullets
And they shine just like a spoon
To have sixty silver wishes
Is a small price to pay
∫
"So much for Cassie's mysterious wild animal, then. But there had quite possibly been someone in the woods that day, someone who, if he had seen the rape, had in all probability seen us, too; someone who might have been there again, a week or two later."
(7) Was It You? (Spoon)
Someone doing something not right
Shocked to see us interrupting their delight
Who was it that we saw that night
Was it you?
Tucked away inside of the wood
Tucked away inside and up to no good
Who was it that we saw that night
∫
"But a girl who goes into battle beside you and keeps your back is a different thing, a thing to make you shiver. Think of the first time you slept with someone, or the first time you fell in love: that blinding explosion that left you crackling to the fingertips with electricity, initiated and transformed. I tell you that was nothing, nothing at all, beside the power of putting your lives, simply and daily, into each other's hands."
(8) Careful Where You Stand (Coldplay)
I feel safe
I feel warm
When you're here, can I do no wrong?
Careful where you stand, my love
Careful where you lay your head
It's true we're always
Looking out for one another
∫
"When Sam left, Cassie taught me how to swing dance. We had had inappropriate cappuccinos over dinner, to christen the new machine, and we were both hours away from being able to sleep, and scratchy old music was pouring out of the CD player..."
(9) Mack the Knife (Bobby Darin)
∫
"Here I had been avoiding Knocknaree wood like the plague, I think I would have interviewed everyone in the country and racked my brain until it exploded before it occurred to me to take a step back in there, if I hadn't been battered to the point where I had no defense left against the single blindingly obvious thing: I was the only person who beyond any doubt knew at least some of the answers, and if anything could give them back to me, it was that wood."
(10) The Sound of Silence (Simon & Garfunkel)
Hello darkness, my old friend,
I've come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
∫
(11) "There was that night, there was that one time." (excerpt)
∫
"We lay very still. I could feel the air around us changing, blooming and shimmering like the air over a scorching road. My heart was speeding, or hers was banging against my chest, I'm not sure. I turned Cassie in my arms and kissed her, and after a moment she kissed me back."
(12) What if We Could? (Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross)
[instrumental]
∫
"...I had learned early to assume something dark and lethal hidden at the heart of anything I loved. When I couldn’t find it, I responded, bewildered and wary, in the only way I knew how: by planting it there myself.
(13) Pug (The Smashing Pumpkins)
kiss and kill me sweetly
come and drive me home
drag the miles in me
I am yours alone
inside where it's warm
wrap myself in you
outside where I'm torn
fight myself in two
∫
"My partner. I knew from Cassie's blink on the word, from the tiny shift in the angle of her shoulders, that she had seen me tucked away there at the back; but she never looked my way, not even when the lawyers finally finished with her and she stepped down from the stand and walked out of the courtroom. I thought of Kiernan then; of what it must have been to him when, after thirty years of partnership, McCabe had that heart attack and died. More than I have ever envied anything in the world, I envied Kiernan that, that unique and unattainable grief."
(14) Sorrow (The National)
Sorrow's my body on the waves
Sorrow's a girl inside my cage
I live in a city sorrow built
It's in my honey, it's in my milk.
It's only my half of heart alone on the water
Cover me in rag and bones, sympathy
Cause I don't wanna get over you.
∫
"Sometimes I think about the sly, flickering line that separates being spared from being rejected. Sometimes I think of the ancient gods who demanded that their sacrifices be fearless and without blemish, and I wonder whether, whoever or whatever took Peter and Jamie away, it decided I wasn't good enough."
(15) Innocent Son (Fleet Foxes)
You left me there
Waiting at the bottom of the stairs
with my eyes closed
Holding my right hand in my left
there is no time for hesitation now
you come or go
∫
(16) "Irrevocable" (excerpt)
∫
"I never knew, not then, not now, whether Cassie thought she had hung up, or whether she wanted to hurt me, or whether she wanted to give me one last gift, one last night listening to her breathe."
(17) Who Will Love Me Now? (PJ Harvey)
Who will love me now?
Who will forgive
And make me live again?
Who will bring me back
To the world again?
In the forest, there's a monster
And it looks so very much like me
∫
"I thought about a lot of things, that night. I thought of Cassie in Lyons, just a girl in an apron, serving coffee at sunny outdoor tables and bantering in French with the customers. I thought of my parents getting ready to go out dancing: the careful lines of my father's comb left in his Brylcreemed hair, the scent of my mother's perfume and her flower-patterned dress whisking out the door. I thought of Jonathan and Cathal and Shane, long-limbed and rash and laughing fiercely over their lighter games; of Sam at a big wooden table amid seven noisy brothers and sisters...of all those who hold life so light, or the stakes so dear, that they can walk steady and open-eyed to meet the thing that will take or transform their lives and whose high cold criteria are far beyond our understanding. I tried, for a long time, to remember bringing my mother wildflowers."
(18) Haunted (Poe)
You and me, and these shadows keep on changing
And I'm haunted
By the lives that I have loved
And actions I have hated
I'm haunted
By the promises I've made
And others I have broken
By the lives that wove the web
Inside my haunted head
∫
∫ZiP∫
---