Takk Sömuleiðis

Time Out of Mind

2011-01-11T15:02:00.004-05:00

If you're gonna say the record title is a reference, at least consider this over Shakespeare:

"I have drunk ale from the Country of the Young
And weep because I know all things now:
I have been a hazel-tree, and they hung
The Pilot Star and the Crooked Plough
Among my leaves in times out of mind[...]"

-W B Yeats

Loud Leonard and the Scotch Talking

2010-02-20T17:35:00.005-05:00

I have no idea if the neighbour meant it when she said, "Aw, don't you worry about noise. I love those records. And that guitar, too."

It's a blessing, really. Though I wonder if I was still blessed at 2.46am last night when I put on Songs of Love and Hate as loud as it could go. The scotch talked me into it, I think.

I remembered that when I was living in Reykjavik, the local paper interviewed Sigur Ros. They said something along the lines of "When you listen to Leonard Cohen, it doesn't matter how loud it is... it always sounds quiet."

Harvest Pedal Stealing, or How Could I Steal What You'd Still Own?

2009-11-20T13:25:00.002-05:00

There's a monolith in stereo on my used-bought speakers.

That Out on the Weekend bass drum pedal pounding is the camera film negative of Like A Rolling Stone's first snare crack.

Oh, and on the record, yes the record, well the record

has lilac pedals and hemlock leads not stolen but still

like a dug-up fence rust & all lines of steel.

November Greyhound Records

2009-10-25T18:49:00.005-04:00

The last record was done in November.
This one wasn't supposed to be but it's gonna be.
I always aim to record in October and then something gets delayed.
Like every single time except once when I's taking the greyhound.

Songs are like racing dogs and they get riled up just like 'em too.
There's a certain time when they's most ready to race.
There's also a time when they's too old and too young.
I's always just racing them. Down the track.
On the tracks. Always trying to beat the other records.
My own record, sure - but mostly other records.

In my humble opinion, the best race there ever was was done in two parts.
First in New York, then with a rematch in Minnesota.
Then, in just over 50 minutes there was Blood On The Tracks.

and so those Greyhound ghosts
is all I'm gonna be racing
once again in November.

And all my money is on it.

An Indian Summer Where the Sun Also Rises in Northern Ontario

2009-10-20T20:20:00.003-04:00

Riceboy Sleeps :
not at all a bad idea.

Hemingway:
"The bull who killed Vicente Girones was named Bocanegra, was Number 118 of the bull-breeding establishment of Sanchez Taberno, and was killed by Pedro Romero as the third bull of that same afternoon. His ear was cut by popular acclamation and given to Pedro Romero, who, in turn, gave it to Lady Brett, who wrapped it in a handkerchief belonging to myself, and left both ear and handkerchief, along with a number of Muratti cigarette-stubs, shoved far back in the drawer of the bed-table that stood beside her bed in the Hotel Montoya, in Pamplona."

My grandmother:
also used to bring food to the table on these wonderful silver serving-trays.

Piaf et ses Encores

2009-10-06T00:57:00.004-04:00

Flute. Flûtes.
Bowed Contrebasse.
Don't Cry. Archet.
Amour. Cachet livret paupières parapluie.
Eyebrow Umbrellas.

This little lady dancing on the head of a record needle while angels scratch their heads on the pin.
When Piaf sings in English, she sings twice.
L'accent is something you add to the word.
I haven't met anyone that hasn't fallen in love with someone because of an accent.
Not one.
Sometimes I pretend to have one to see the titled glass of language sparkle against Ms. Stranger's face.

When you live abroad, you live twice. You come back with twice the memories and half your usual life-expectancy.

Listening to this... dans tes grands yeux, rien que nous deux..

My heart pounds fast like a typewriter in a 1940s office and I know I'm using up beats that were supposed to be kept for the older gentleman whose shoes I'm already in.

He'll die young like he wanted because he didn't wait for the lovenote.

Needle lifts.

Elvis 45

2009-10-04T16:50:00.003-04:00

-They remind me too much of you-

I found this record in Memphis, Tennessee.
It's one thing when you just record songs because you've got holes in your Hollywood movie.
It's another thing when it sounds this good.

In August I played the very piano that is heard on this track.
It plays you it's such a beautiful instrument.
So even and light.

I listen to this forty-five once a week, eight times in a row.
I just stare at the needle if I'm standing, or the speakers if I'm sitting.
It's a little bit like going to Church, when you mean it.

John Wesley Hardin

2009-09-17T13:30:00.004-04:00

John Wesley Harding
Was a friend to the poor,
He trav'led with a gun in ev'ry hand.
All along this countryside,
He opened a many a door,
But he was never known
To hurt an honest man.

John Wesley Hardin once shot a man through a hotel wall for snoring. Despite the first shot awaking the man, John Wesley sent another bullet his way, ensuring the kind of sleep that doesn't wake anybody up.
He wasn't even twenty years old.

"They say I killed six or seven men for snoring.
Well, it ain't true, I only killed one man for snoring."
- John Wesley Hardin

The Needle and the Damaged Elston Gunn (Closing with the White Elephant)

2009-07-11T12:36:00.006-04:00

Shot. Like a photoshoot, nickel needle, a seed'll grow to a tree with a perchin' bird in it shot too.

I see one of those cellars that are two opening doors angled off the ground like they have in those older restaurants. Where they keep the cans and kegs. People like to smoke beside 'em. That's the one the guy'is knocking at.

"Can I have some more?"

Oh, the damage done. Those old live recording, two mics - sound is foolproof. But then they went all hi-fi on us. No screw-ups now. Well, not as much screwin' up. I feel like the microphone feedback is worse, the better lip feedback you get.

Even Dylan's old recordings sound just as good live. Till they cut off the record needle. Now, it's thin numbers sounding, resounding flat.

"Can I have some more?"

Oh no, the damage done. No more real records now.

---------------------------------------------------------------

A secret : What every city needs isn't another bar. It's a first saloon. The one I'm putting together with Yves Bregvin once we have some cash and waitresses is going to be famous. Little hotel room doors at the top and a nice bar with "Some of these days" playing like in Nausea. Bartender with the purple/blue necktie and all.

Those saloon doors. You can see in in Summer. Yes, yes.

It's gonna be called The White Elephant.

The White Elephant Saloon.

Juss' need the money. But these days that's like looking for a needle in a haystack.

"You take the Future" - Hank Snow, "Heysátan" - Sigur Rós

and Dean Martin sang it and I listened to it eight times tonight.

2009-06-04T01:40:00.002-04:00

Wait for the moment where he breathes in a silent pitchfork of straw before touching the whippoorwill's furthest wing. The, the, the hummed chorus almost at a "shoosh" the last time he sings that one and only line - the only line that still stands in country and western to this day : I'm so lonesome I could cry.

...
Hear that lonesome whippoorwill,
He sounds too blue to fly.
The midnight train is whining low,
I'm so lonesome I could cry.
I've never seen a night so long
When time goes crawling by.
The moon just went behind a cloud
To hide its face and cry.

Did you ever see a robin weep,
When leaves began to die?
That means he's lost the will to live,
I'm so lonesome I could cry.

The silence of a falling star
Lights up a purple sky.
And as I wonder where you are
I'm so lonesome I could cry.

Meet Me In The Morning

2009-03-12T18:40:00.000-04:00

Meet me in the morning, 56 and Wabasha.

From the first bend, a big space around (cause crowded notes, like knives, don't pierce) and bass thin, but not too slim, throaty. Yeah, throaty.

The whole track's throaty.

Rooster crowin' - Snow thawin' - Hound dogs. must be barkin'!

Coming and Cohen Where the Draft Comes From

2009-01-19T20:04:00.001-05:00

You don't bring bread to the mouths of sparrows. They have to come to you. Usually, they come to the bread you've left when you're not looking.

I've been living mostly in the swimming blue of 5 o'clock winter in Montreal, even the nights weren't as full. There was something like a hole, but not a hole. A hole is dug out of something - earth compacted or removed and placed aside. It was a space. Wherever the draft is from.

In summer's Paris bistro, a breeze is something else. But a draft is what the closed window still brings me in sub-zero Montreal winter-vetur. And so noticing this draft was like finding the end of a string I couldn't put down til the other end. I followed it to the kitchen when, without expectation, while heating up some soup, it came on.

He came on like a streetlamp at 5 o'clock. Like a freshly famous face to the stage, belying his age.

It sat. When something sits right, it sits right and you can't deny it. As the soup would sit nicely and I in Various Positions.

There is no more draft. At least, not for now. I have made my peace with Leonard, after a war where I never showed my face and I covered up his head of state like the Reichstag, for the sake of art. But it wasn't because he couldn't lead, it was because I was just a damned arrogant fool.

Apologies to you, Leonard, because for too long, I thought your best work was One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong which remains true to its title. You are so right.