the higher the tower...

today i am mostly listening to gravenhurst, this time in chronological sequence as advised...

Is it the things we cannot or will not say that hold us back the most…?
Does the creative stumbling, the pen-tiedness not so often come from resisting honesty and failing to express that which is foremost in our thoughts... what burns hardest is that which we are most reluctant to put upon the page. mouth sealed we are our own undoing...

there are so many things left unsaid... i'm rebuilding defences a storey a day and with each brick another story goes unwritten, truths untold...

LB, x

emily said the things in my head are keeping me from sleeping if I don't go to them they'll come for me instead and the company i'm keeping and this is how the damage is done climbing the stairs in the dark I won't reach out for anyone

~ gravenhurst, damage II, from flashlight seasons

about last night...

i am so out of routine it's becoming a routine... but after a 4 day weekend that included a cycle along the lagan towpath (not sure i've ridden a bike at all in last 5 years - oh, no, i cycled for an hour or so on one of the toronto islands in 2002. regardless, great excursion), 2 duke special gigs (very special), a mental after show party, (worthy of an episode of the Creek), and a quality time spent with jayne, gail and mccleary, and unexpected fun watching cartoons with the duke's 3 boys, i hope to get back into the proverbial saddle this week.
i've been missing writing but the commune is box laden and my room has been buried under a mountain of clothes needing sorted, and when i hit clements last night to draft a post there was not a seat to be had. but my room got back to shipshape order at 3 this morning and thus is a nest suited to reflecting. meanwhile, the following is for jayne, who'll be checking in round these parts sometime soon i'm sure...

be back soon...

::

jm,

this is choice number 2 of the twenty tracks... audio to be heard on a leather sofa soon... makes for a dry counterpoint to the first with a beautifully ironic last line...i'll turn the 20 into a compilation for ya...
thanks for...well, everything. that covers a multitude of graces as ever.

Overcome By Happiness

Never think to ever look around
never see it coming at you
with your head in the clouds
Looking like a fool,
drinking like a clown,
worried you'd be nobody,
not so far from that now

You don't feel so overcome by happiness
you're broke
do you think you might scrape your life together just in
time to find you've got no piece of mind
when everybody wants a piece of your pretty white ass

Move around, never moving on,
waiting for the thing to happen
when it's already gone
Looking like a fool,
drinking like a clown,
worried you'd be nobody,
not so far from that now

You don't feel so overcome by happiness
you're broke
do you think you might scrape your life together just in
time to find you've got no piece of mind
when everybody wants a piece of your pretty white ass

Even if you held the sun,
in the colour of your eyes
I would never be so blind, and you,
don't feel the weight rushing out of your life
don't see the light dying out of your eyes....

You don't feel so overcome by happiness
you're broke
do you think you might scrape your life together just in
time to find you've got no piece of mind
when everybody wants a piece of your pretty...

I don't feel I don't feel I don't feel...

::

LB, x

sweet sixteen -- first time tracks

when you really love or believe in something from the gut none can take it away from you... a borrowed love is one that falters...

here's the first set of tracks i chose to play on the iPod that was once gar's but is now mine - between my own collection and what gar left on it - there's just shy of 7,000 tracks on there. bar the first one which was a very intentional choice, these were picked as i went along, just scrolling up and down through the artist list and seeing what caught my eye...

1. there she goes - the la's
2. lithium - nirvana
3. jeremy - pearl jam
4. cigarettes and chocolate milk - rufus wainwright
5. black holes in the sand - gravenhurst
6. picture in a frame - tom waits
7. we looked like giants - death cab for cutie
8. jacksonville - sufjan stevens (ok, i admit i let this run into decatur)
9. everyone's a VIP to someone - the go! team
10. harder, better, faster, stronger - daft punk
11. super disco breakin' - the beastie boys
12. and she was - talking heads
13. higher ground - stevie wonder
14. stand - R.E.M.
15. the more you ignore me the closer i get - morrissey
16. give it up - k.c. and the sunshine band

first new discovery from gar's collection: josh rouse
first album played... illinoise, 'cause this week, i'm falling in love with him all over again...

massive gratitudinal shout out to gar for doin' the deal.

as predicted, a happier LittleBunny am i.

LB, x

Compassion

do you believe in god?
i believe in people. and that sometimes those people can be kind.

i prefer the word compassion to kindness. it's meatier. some might say messier. a weight to it.

there are a multitude of thoughts spinnning around vying to be caught like a snitch and pinned down on an album. but i am neither a quidditch player nor a butterfly catcher and rest beckons...

someone asked me today if everyone is essentially lonely... not everyone is alone but yes, i think it's true. if only because i cannot climb inside your body and inhabit your mind, nor you in mine... we are seperate beings, unique...

i have been pushing out beyond my borders, daring to eat the peach...today i sipped white tea for the first time. i wonder if there isn't another kind of boundary pushing occuring... in which one dares to move out beyond one's defences...or at least, i am aware of some of my defensive reflexes that make me curl into myself... desire to raise my eyes and look into any moment with presence. if i dared to raise my gaze, what would i see in your own? kindness? compassion? a fear just like my own?

what we have in common, is not our strength, but our vulnerability.
-- Sigmund.

LB, x