Things will end before they start *

…

The dots join and they always comes back to the same thing…

::

By way of a wonderful documentary on the BBC’s iplayer last night:
The World of Nat King Cole. I recommend it if you’re in the UK- it’s available for most of this week. Wrapped around the story of Cole’s career, this feature length documentary, using fantastic archive footage and insightful, often uncomfortably honest interviews, explores Cole’s world – the unfolding musical and cultural history of America through the 30s, 40s and 50s. From the jazz mecca that was Chicago to Los Angeles, from pre-Castro Cuba to polite 1950s London, it tells of the bitter racial oppression that marked those decades. Shocking and wonderfully insighful in turn. Artistry and bigotry side by side.

A key moment in Cole’s career was the explosive success of Nature Boy...

:: The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return ::

Baz Luhrmann was interviewed. He said all the songs in his film, Moulin Rouge, save one, advance a scene. But this song tells the entire story. Luhrmann was emphatic that this line for him is a human truth that cannot be denied. It is fundamental. The undeconstructable perhaps? In one perfectly phrased lyric, Eden Ahbez captured what I guess we might call the human gospel.
…

By way of the iPod shuffle. Ask by The Smiths...

Shyness is nice, and
Shyness can stop you
From doing all the things in life
You'd like to

Shyness is nice, and
Shyness can stop you
From doing all the things in life
You'd like to

So, if there's something you'd like to try
If there's something you'd like to try
ASK ME - I WON'T SAY "NO" - HOW COULD I ?

Coyness is nice, and
Coyness can stop you
From saying all the things in
Life you'd like to

So, if there's something you'd like to try
If there's something you'd like to try
ASK ME - I WON'T SAY "NO" - HOW COULD I ?

Spending warm Summer days indoors
Writing frightening verse
To a buck-toothed girl in Luxembourg

ASK ME

Because if it's not Love
Then it's the Bomb
That will bring us together

Nature is a language - can't you read ?
Nature is a language - can't you read ?

SO ... ASK ME

Because if it's not Love
Then it's the Bomb
That will bring us together

…


By way of Adam Phillips, for the umpteenth time,

We are most creative in the ways in which we frustrate ourselves.

…

By way of Fox Mulder, albeit flagrantly out of context,

You think you are getting rid of a headache. Well you’ll come to see you’ve only done it by cutting off your own head.

….

By way of prayer,

give me patience…
I think we must drive you to distraction.
tell me that at some point we are we gonna wise the fuck up.

LB

* by way of Holland by sufjan stevens, from Greetings from Michigan. best of American.