Elgar, Vicat Cole and the Ghosts of Brinkwells

"This is what I hear all day – the trees are singing my music – or have I sung theirs?"

more trees

first of many, many Madison & Buncombe County NC trees

In San Francisco--

"Photo and video show by Bill Daniel
Sunset Scavenger
Post-Utopia California and Post-Katrina Louisiana

Opening: Wednesday, August 1st, 7-9pm
Exhibition dates: August 1st – August 26th
Opening night sounds by Matt Davignon www.ribosomemusic.com.

RayKo Photo Center , 428 Third Street

Itinerant documentarian, Bill Daniel, mounts a show of large-scale black and white photographs juxtaposing two contrasting landscapes: the floating hippie houseboats of Marin County, California, and the wrecked landscapes of New Orleans and St. Bernard Parrish in post-Katrina Louisiana.

Sunset Scavenger is an on-going film and photography project exploring images and themes of social and environmental collapse in the last days of the petroleum era. This show is part of Daniel's larger project investigating marginal subcultures and their relationship with the environment. Sunset Scavenger is a supported project of Creative Capital."

The Greatest Song Ever

"While every version of Roadrunner begins with the bawl of "One-two-three-four-five-six" and ends with the cry of "Bye bye!", each contains lyrical variations and deviations in the car journey Richman undertakes during the song's narrative, though it always begins on Route 128, the Boston ringroad that Richman uses to embody the wonders of existence. In one, he's heading out to western Massachusetts, and in another he's cruising around "where White City used to be" and to Grafton Street, to check out an old sporting store, observing: "Well they made many renovations in that part of town/ My grandpa used to be a dentist there." Over the course of the various recordings he refers to the Turnpike, the Industrial Park, the Howard Johnson, the North Shore, the South Shore, the Mass Pike, Interstate 90, Route 3, the Prudential Tower, Quincy, Deer Island, Boston harbour, Amherst, South Greenfield, the "college out there that rises up outta nuthin", Needham, Ashland, Palmerston, Lake Champlain, Route 495, the Sheraton Tower, Route 9, and the Stop & Shop..."

see you in a couple of weeks!

Subtext Reading Series: Culley & Donahue:

"Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Subtext Reading Series: Culley & Donahue

@ the Good Shepherd Center, 4649 Sunnyside Ave. N, Seattle, WA

7:30 PM; $5 suggested donation

Peter Culley lives south of Nanaimo, BC and has written several books of poetry including The Climax Forest, Hammertown, and the forthcoming Age of Briggs & Stratton. His writings on art have appeared in numerous publications.

Joseph Donahue currently teaches at Duke University. Born in TX, raised in MA, this ex-New Yorker & part-time Seattle-ite is author of Before Creation, Monitions of the Approach, Incidental Eclipse,
World Well Broken, Terra Lucida, and In This Paradise. Poems have appeared most recently in Hambone, Talisman, First Intensity, Fence, LVNG, and Fascicle."

a beautiful tree from Purmamarca, Argentina

memorial youtube: Papageno! Papagena! from Ingmar Bergman's 1975 Magic Flute--my Dad's favorite movie...

"Stanley Park" novelist Timothy Taylor says something nice about an essay of mine in his Globe & Mail review of the To the Dogs show, which is still up at Presentation House in North Vancouver...

London Hyde Park & Roman Coliseum Trees from Robert Lawson...

Hilary Mantel on Orpheus, Eurydice & Ghosts...

"Often, when people have been bereaved, their friends warn them to let a year go by before they listen to music, knowing how it can break down the barrier we carefully erect between ourselves and the recently dead, and unleash a flood of pain and regret. But it is hard now to avoid music. In a way that Monteverdi could never have imagined, it is in the air around us, sometimes degraded into an annoying background jangle, sometimes blanked out and ignored, but always capable of catching us unawares, infiltrating our self-protection, and making the dead walk..."

new bio of Shelley

"As closely as was feasible, he stared at things. He got right down beside the plate to study pink fatty slabs of bacon or the jutting crag of a teacake. Pressed against fir trees, he inspected and licked the oozy runnels of resin. He read with his face only inches from the page, and watched tiny insects in the palm of his hand with fervent dedication."

Rebel Rebel

"Another problem with the perception that transgressing norms has an intrinsic value, is that this thinking presupposes that there is a conservative establishment which is rigidly keeping a hold on the norm that one is challenging from an aesthetic and political perspective. In an age when even politicians and the government are struggling to appear as oppositional outsiders, and where bank directors at the weekend don their leathers to dream themselves into the role of rebel on their Harley-Davidsons, indeed in a situation where the left-wingers of 1968 join the neo-liberals in order to break down antiquated structures, those who are attempting to repeat avant-gardist and norm-transgressing magic tricks must continually keep creating the enemy that their aesthetics presupposes: an idol in the form of a traditionalist view of culture which was not wholeheartedly embraced by particularly many people, even in the 19th century..."

"To the Dogs" Film Night

Saturday July 28, 2007, 9 to 11pm

Join us on The Presentation House Lawn.

333 Chesterfield Avenue (at 3rd Ave.), North Vancouver

The To the Dogs Outdoor Film Night will present short films and videos,
select clips from feature length cinema including classic Hollywood
melodrama and silent-era comedy, mid-century European art house,
avant-garde, contemporary doc (and mock)umentary, television serials, and
music videos.

The Presentation House Gallery is pleased to present the rarely seen John
Harden's La Vie d'un chien (The Life of a Dog) (2004) in its entirety along
with classic scenes involving dogs from such films as Anatomy of a Murder
(1959), A Boy and his Dog (1975), Umberto D (1952), Tierische Liebe (Animal
Love) (1995), The Brain from Planet Arous (1957), Dog Star Man (1962), Best
in Show (2000), Old Yeller (1957), Eyes without a Face (1959), A Dog’s Life
(1918), Stray Dogs (2006), The Littlest Hobo (1979), along with many others.

Bring a picnic blanket and a dog!

today's YouTube - Pere Ubu - Birdies certainly an accurate assessment of present chittering & peeping conditions outside the Manse--for more birdsong Messiaen - Oiseaux Exotiques - Aimard, Boulez Part 1 & Part 2

I like has a swell Go-Betweens youtube medley, so I don't have to!

Adults Have Misclassified Me As A Handful

"Am I a child who is sometimes difficult? Yes. Am I a difficult child? No. The distinction is more than semantic.

Once you get a reputation for being a handful, everything you do is automatically cast in a negative light. Suspicious glances meet you every time you even think about touching the frame of your younger sister's playpen, and God forbid you come within five feet of a houseplant. You have, in effect, already been accused, tried, and sentenced for actions you have not even taken. From then on, anything you do is retroactively construed as "problem behavior."

Knowingly or unknowingly, adults create a set of expectations that a 4-year-old like me can't help but internalize on some level. After enough humiliating time-outs, those who are treated as handfuls start thinking of themselves as such..."

from the classic 1971 "Harmony Row" YouTube - Jack Bruce- Smiles And Grins lyrics by English poet Pete Brown




"The smiles on city windows
it's only the weekly cleaner
The dials on all the faces
are gradually getting nearer,
So make it careful when you can
Forget it if you've read the plan
Call a friend when you're in doubt,
Nights are hard when you're locked out

Grins painted on radiators
it's only the teeth of laughter
The numbers of all the victories
are stenciled on soon after
So don't regret the leaves that fall
Have a little have it all
Take a bit give just as much
nights are hard without the touch

The smiling suburban collars
they power the city cisterns
Whenever they pull the train chains
they gradually start the pistons
So keep your hair on if you can
When you're living in a van
Call a friend when you're in doubt
Nights are hoarse when you're locked out

Grins painted on petrol tigers
are only the tanks of porter
Statistics of all the campaigns
are written down on water
So don't regret the cars that rust
everything must turn to dust
Cultivate and dig your croft
Nights are hard when you've gone soft

Lovers in the dark
murders in the park
By the silv'ry moon
Blankets from the fear
cars when roads are near
Winter's much too soon..."

"I was keen to ask him about the New York scene. "John Zorn's one of my favourite saxophonists" I offered. "Oh, we go to Chinatown to eat and discuss jazz", said Quine. "I know a hell of a lot about jazz. Can't play it though." Those few words articulated a sentiment I'd struggled with for ages – "he knew a lot about jazz but couldn't play it" will be on my tombstone, if my relatives can find one big enough..."

Terry Edwards & others remember Robert Quine--

check out Quine with Matthew Sweet,
Lou Reed & Richard Hell

long, sad article about George Trow (above left, with Jamaica Kinkaid)

just so I don't go completely yeh-yeh--YouTube - MAGMA La LŽgende du Siecle, French TV, February 26th 1973

an interview with Magma founder Christian Vander--

"Progressively, we were finding ourselves within the story. Anyway, we were finding that we were actually talking about the story of planet Earth. Whether the story happened here or somewhere else, it really didn't matter. We were finding sources to try to explain that which supports us. The importance was that Kontark had to be told in a profound manner. It's a story that many people look for when trying to find their meaning in life. To know our place within the world, and in a manner that is positive. It's in reference to Earth and life."

a shout out to Miles!

"Reserved For Ships Officers


"Aboard BC Ferries' The Queen of Vancouver en route from Victoria to Vancouver, British Columbia Canada.
This bottle was NOT planted. The cafeteria was full of people but for this table which remained empty. Only moments after taking the pic, what looked like the Captain and two guests arrived and settled in. I didn't look back to see if they had seen me. ;-)..."

as a long time sailor on BC Ferries I will here cheerfully admit to having appropriated this elitist "officer sauce" on several occasions...

bonus YouTube - Feist "I Feel It All" on a bus on Jimmy Kimmel Live 5-15-07--she's also recorded with Charlotte G's mum Jane Birkin...

on her birthday, today's YouTube - Charlotte Gainsbourg "The Songs That We Sing"

70's Wednesday icon Banacek comes to DVD...

mp3's of Susan Howe's Radio Pacifica poetry shows with Helen Adam, Bernadette Mayer, Charles Reznikoff etc...

(thx Ron)