Best Birthday Present. Ever.

 

I’m laying in bed reading Tintern Abbey:

“The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e’er prevail against us, or disturb
Our chearful faith that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
And let the misty mountain winds be free
To blow against thee: and in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure, when thy mind	140
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; Oh! then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me”

 

…counting down the seconds to midnight and my twenty-eighth birthday. I felt like I should’ve been doing something interesting, but I’m too sick at the moment to be  involved in any type of activity, so listening to Jawbreaker and reading would suffice. You only turn 28 once or maybe twice, once at midnight and once again if you know the exact time of your birthday — I digress. I looked at the clock, it was 11:59, I closed my eyes, took a deep breath in, and then my phone rang.

Unknown callers usually get ignored, but it’s obviously someone who loves me. The mans voice on the other line was unrecognizable at first. He said, “Happy Brithday I’m just calling to tell you I love you and I have something for you. I just bought a ukulele and i’m going to play you something okay?” At this point it was obvious who was on the other line, and I had the biggest smile on my face. I threw my speaker phone on max volume and shuffled trying to open up Garage Band to record it, and  then he started playing the ukulele as if he’d been playing it for years. The first three notes he played filled me with tears and then started singing… [press play]

I have the the coolest brother in the entire world. This was the Best birthday present ever (and well worth all of the years he spent torturing me). Ever. 

Ode to the West Wind

Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ode to the West Wind” (in Reiman and Powers edn.)

 

I

 

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

 

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,

Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O Thou,

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

 

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,

Each like a corpse within its grave, until

Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

 

Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)

With living hues and odours plain and hill:

 

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;

Destroyer and Preserver; hear, O hear!

 

II

 

Thou on whose stream, ‘mid the steep sky’s commotion,

Loose clouds like Earth’s decaying leaves are shed,

Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

 

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread

On the blue surface of thine aery surge,

Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

 

Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge

Of the horizon to the zenith’s height,

The locks of the approaching storm. Thou Dirge

 

Of the dying year, to which this closing night

Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,

Vaulted with all thy congregated might

 

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere

Black rain and fire and hail will burst: O hear!

 

III

 

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams

The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,

Lulled by the coil of his chrystalline streams,

 

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay,

And saw in sleep old palaces and towers

Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,

 

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers

So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou

For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers

 

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below

The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear

The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

 

Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,

And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!

 

IV

 

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;

If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;

A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

 

The impulse of thy strength, only less free

Than thou, O Uncontrollable! If even

I were as in my boyhood, and could be

 

The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,

As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed

Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne’er have striven

 

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.

Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

 

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed

One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

 

V

 

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:

What if my leaves are falling like its own!

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

 

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,

My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

 

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!

And, by the incantation of this verse,

 

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Be through my lips to unawakened Earth

 

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

How to Achieve Anything & The Beauty of Simplicity

Two favorite articles from one of my favorite people. 

How to Achieve Anything:

The Beauty of Simplicity

There are tons more, but I’ll add them later. These two are good reads though.

 

Suicide Machines Are Not Secret Machines

Adventure #2

Suicide Machines and a dying relationship. The kind where you’ve both reached the point you intentionally dislike pretty much everything the other person loves. It starts out with minor things to get under their skin and builds from there.

And for that very reason he loved the fact that I disliked the Suicide Machines, so much he made it a point to play them as often as possible…

I laugh now, but I recall thoughts of carving that CD into a ninja star and stabbing him in the throat with it. I hated this band with every ounce of me. Even more so – because he just fucking loved them. Young love. So stupid. 

Time warp 5 years and a month ago – I get an invite from a friend to a see the Secret Machines in concert. With profane mumbles, I declined.

This band still haunts me – 2 weeks ago, I’m at work discussing various artists. Boss mentions, the Secret Machines. In utter disgust, I blabber off my hatred to aforementioned band. His response was a bit shocked. Thinking it would be a band I would’ve mutually enjoyed. I was surprised, really… somehwere the conversation ended up with “They’re a shitty ska/punk band that went nowhere… Are we even talking about the same band?”

That’s when it hit me – Suicide Machines are not Secret Machines. They are not them — at all.

All of those years of hostility and hatred for a band with a similar name — and to top it off they are pretty fucking awesome and I can’t stop listening. 

And for that, they are my favorite band of the week — I think everyone needs to listen to them — a lot — and really loud to make up for the hatred.

My Favs:

1. First Wave Intact
2. Last Believer, Drop Dead
3. Atomic Heels
4. Lightning Blue Eyes
5. 1,000 Seconds
6. Faded Lines

HEAR: http://www.last.fm/music/Secret+Machines/Secret+Machines

SEE:

If you really like them, just ask.

 

 

As for the Suicide Machines. The only cool thing about them that I know of is: they were on the Before You Were Punk 2 compilation with the awesome album cover that I think I still own a copy of. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I still dislike them, but to be nice — their least shitty song is probably : 

 

That’s the fuzz.

the end.

Android On My Header

The artist is Jason Felix and I think his work is strikingly beautiful and absolutely brilliant.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 And to add sound to the visuals you can listen to Sad Robot by STARS: on either of the last.fm or myspace links I’ve provided.

Here’s a Pitchfork article for their new EP. Or just go to the website: sadrobots.ca/

First Wave Intact

Adventure #1

Chelsea inspired me to start a blog.  I love her dearly.

She played a game like this -> Here are the rules. 1.go to your documents 2. go to your 6th file. 3.go to your 6th picture. 4. blog about it. 5. tag 6 friends to do the same.

I indulged myself and dug up file #6 in my Documents folder. To my surprise, it was entitled: Asshole.doc

Pretty awesome document title, no?  I thought so. We’ll get back reading the Asshole.doc after this…

I moved on to photo #6 a which was a pretty hummingbird that my buddy Alex Roman painted:

hummingbird

This painting inspired me to have him do the web art for wehearnoise.com. I had an idea for  a Hybrid Hummingbird and a phonograph morphing into a trumpet flower. Each symbolic of various aspects I’d like wehearhoise.com to encompass. He really liked the idea and did a rough sketch so it will somewhat look like this:

 

marias-logo

Neato! huh? So that’s one of the things I’m working on getting together right now as if learning the Music Supervision world isn’t enough to drive me bonkers.