Sleep evades as manic passion envelops. Meanwhile they’re closing in. They want what they don’t have and I don’t want most of what I’ve got. But I’m still angry and afraid. It’s in the late night hours that we confront the truths that daylight scatters to the dark corners. It’s when the needle hits the vinyl past midnight that you start to wonder what’s really going on. Drinking this American Water and feeling okay, but in a different uncontrolled kind of way. Maybe side two holds the answers? Maybe not. Maybe there are no answers.
All posts in category music
wearing my badger suit
Posted by sean on August 6, 2010
https://sd-stewart.com/2010/08/06/wearing-my-badger-suit/
my ideals involve observing sleeping raccoons
One day in Maine, I walked to the edge of the bluff upon which sat the house where we were staying. Straight ahead was the sea. Also straight ahead and slightly to the left was a tall tree about 30 feet away or so. Just below my eye level was a hole in that tree. And in that hole a raccoon was sleeping. After discovering this, I took it upon myself to check on this raccoon every chance I got. Sometimes all I saw was a patch of fur in the hole. Another time I spotted the raccoon about to enter the hole. It paused, looking out at me with a guilty expression, as if it had been caught red-handed. I gradually realized that it was not going to crawl into its hole with me staring at it, and so I discreetly moved away. The final time I saw that raccoon, it was lying on its back in the hole, its head sticking out and tossed back like that of an old man dozing in an overstuffed armchair. Its mouth slightly agape, I could almost hear it softly snoring from where I stood. Not a bad life, I thought.
It’s forever a balance, the hours we stare at pixelated images and the hours we don’t. I’m always on the run from this monitor, even as I sit in front of it. And I guess this song keeps meaning different things to me, since this is the second time it’s come up here.
I can’t be held responsible for the things I say
For I am just a vessel in vain
And I can’t be held responsible for the things I see
For I am just a vessel in vain
No boat out on no ocean
No name there on no hull
And it’s not a strain at all to remember
Those that I’ve left behind
They’re all standing right here beside me now
And most of them with a smile
My ideals have got me on the run
Towards my connection with everyone
My ideals have got me on the run
It’s my connection with everyone
Such free reign
For a vessel in vain
Posted by sean on July 7, 2010
https://sd-stewart.com/2010/07/07/my-ideals-involve-observing-sleeping-raccoons/
gargling truth serum
Never swallow, never swallow, but keep that golden truth serum swirling around in your mouth. That way it can become anything you want. A brilliant answer to a dusty question, a missing piece to a bruised and broken puzzle, a misplaced passion found again. Passed by the stairs at the top of this page again a day or so ago. Stairs to the future…stairs to wildness…stairs out of this purgatory. Traveling through the woods with my avian friends…walking the Mason-Dixon trail…coulda kept walking and walking and never stopped. There was no real reason to stop. The birds just kept singing and they just kept moving, and I just kept moving with them, ticking them off as I went. The water was there, too. And the sky. And the trees. The ground below my feet felt good. Everything felt good and right and I felt alive. I felt so good, high on the experience of being where I was and nowhere else at that moment. Something extraordinary seeking to burst out from inside…seeds laid to rest on bare soil and rising toward the warm sun. Rich feeling pervades for mere moments, gulp enough to sustain another few days, few weeks, few months. Don’t wanna be the second-guesser anymore…don’t want to renege, reinterpret, revisit, re- anything. Just clearing the path, one heavy stone at a time….all we can do, all we know to do.
Posted by sean on May 17, 2010
https://sd-stewart.com/2010/05/17/gargling-truth-serum/
going to shows?
I have this thing about going to shows now. I see that a band I like is coming to town and I get excited. But then the night of the show draws closer and my enthusiasm wanes. Maybe it’s that I heard their latest stuff and it lacks an edge it used to have. Maybe I try too hard to picture myself there, and fail miserably. Or maybe it’s simply that I’ve been burned too many times before and don’t want to waste my time and money again. Leatherface was playing tonight. I found my favorite album of theirs available for download today and bought it. I’ve been looking for this album for years. It’s typically only been found as an expensive import or listed on eBay for a ridiculous sum. While I waited for the songs to download I listened to snippets of songs from the brand new Leatherface album, the one they’re touring in support of now. It lacked a spark. The roughness I loved before sounded too polished. It wasn’t bad, but I wasn’t bowled over, either. Don’t get me wrong. I have much respect for Frankie Stubbs. He’s a punk icon who rarely got his due. He’s smart and hard-working, and DIY to the teeth. His lyrics and music consistently ring true in a genre choked with cookie-cutter copies and commodified horrors. Leatherface is still putting out good music, but maybe it’s just not for me anymore. I fully admit to being a flighty fair weather fan of many bands. Maybe that’s why I fall in love with bands that put out few albums, and play even fewer shows. I still remember a few years ago seeing Wilderness play at Floristree. That show was transcendental. It was one of those shows where you feel your soul leave your body and float around near the ceiling. I don’t often feel that way during shows anymore, nor did I even really ever feel that way. Mostly in the past it was drunken flailing around…a primal reaction. Visceral, yes, but different from that floating at the ceiling feeling. Live music is special; I won’t deny that. But these days, it often seems less important to me. I know I can get what I need just by sitting in my room with headphones. I don’t have to navigate the outside world, with its coarse unpredictability. It’s more personal listening by myself, with no distractions, and as such, takes on that much more meaning.
Posted by sean on May 14, 2010
https://sd-stewart.com/2010/05/14/going-to-shows/
infirm
I picked up some kind of spring bug…it hasn’t been that bad so far, but it’s got me down. I haven’t been sick since early last fall when I had a mild cold. The law of averages finally caught up to me, though. I stayed home from work today, mostly because I can’t stand when people go to work when they’re sick and spread their germs around for all the rest of us to breathe in.
On Friday I went to Philly to see Screeching Weasel on their reunion tour. They played most of the right songs, and they played them well, but it was all very mechanical. Ben Weasel exhibited asocial behavior during the show, never changing his expression and speaking to the crowd with a level of aloofness I’m not sure I’ve ever witnessed from a punk rock frontman. I never saw SW back in the day so I don’t know if he always acts like that on stage, but having read Ben’s columns in MaximumRocknRoll, I always suspected he wouldn’t be the type to effectively demonstrate genuine enthusiastic gratitude to his fans. Sure, he thanked us and all, and maybe he was being sincere, but it seemed very cold and calculated. I told my friend afterward that I felt more like I’d just closed a business deal than watched a punk rock show. The Troc is a really nice place, though. I hope to see some more shows there in the future.
On Saturday, I lurked around out in the countryside all day, visiting flea markets and auctions, and liberating abandoned trees and shrubs from a nursery’s dumping ground. It was good times with old friends, and long overdue.
Last night I woke up at 3:40 AM and a robin was singing. I knew they started early, but I’d never heard them at that hour before. Interestingly, scientists in the UK published a study that showed urban robins sing later (or earlier) based on the levels of ambient noise they have to compete with during the daytime.
Meanwhile, migration is really heating up. The birding discussion list I subscribe to overflows with reports of returning warblers, while I am sick and/or have to go to work. NOT FAIR! Also, this time of year is rapidly becoming the one rare period where I sometimes actually wish I did own a car. Being city-bound seriously limits my birding options, and the easiest spots to bike to haven’t been that great so far this spring. Losing the hour or more necessary to ride somewhere farther away crimps my plans when the most productive time spent in the field is usually in the morning. I’m thinking that maybe next year I’ll just take the entire month of May off and go birding every day. That way I won’t feel so bad about missing so many bits and pieces of prime time.
Posted by sean on April 26, 2010
https://sd-stewart.com/2010/04/26/infirm/
wind watch
We are under a Wind Watch. So this morning I watched the wind. It was snowing and the world outside looked like a snow globe shaken by a vicious god. The relentless wind blew the flakes in every direction, hardly ever allowing them to touch the ground. The vent on the skylight rattled, and I found a feather that had blown in through it and landed on the bathroom floor.
I listened to Fahey’s “America” and watched the frenetic flakes dance outside the window to the rich, odd twanging of steel strings. The coffee went down smooth, as did Heinrich’s ruminations on a winter spent in Maine’s woods. There was a certain synchronicity to my morning that doesn’t often visit.
I fed the birds and repotted a few plants. I recorded my dreams of the night before. Everything seems to be in order, for the moment.
Posted by sean on February 26, 2010
https://sd-stewart.com/2010/02/26/wind-watch/
not really off the wagon
I’ve been making music again. It feels really good. I’ve also finally entered the digital recording age, so I am better prepared to collaborate with a long lost musical soul mate who remains separated from me by a slight, but still significant, geographical divide. However, I have a hard time diverting the creative river inside me to multiple channels. So, the prose writing suffers when the music writing flows. We’ll see what happens.
Posted by sean on January 26, 2010
https://sd-stewart.com/2010/01/26/not-really-off-the-wagon/
fall into music
Some autumnal musical selections of late:
The Mercury Program
The Dismemberment Plan
Six Organs of Admittance
Joy Division (of course)
The Cure (of course)
Red Sparowes
Built to Spill
Shipping News
Pavement
Out Hud
Codeine
Ida
I heard a song from the new Sonic Youth album and I really liked it. I haven’t bought one of their albums in a long time, but I think I will get this one.
Not much to say these days, just living, living, trying not to brood too much. Fall migration is winding down and I’m starting to think about projects for the winter. Lots of possibilities rattling around up there: planning for spring planting, sorting out the zine collection and shipping it off for donation somewhere, going through old recordings and getting this music collaboration with JF off the ground, finishing the painting projects, writing, writing, writing…yep, plenty to do.
Posted by sean on October 13, 2009
https://sd-stewart.com/2009/10/13/fall-into-music/
morbidly beautiful
“Permanent Smile” by Bill Callahan (aka Smog) is one of the more powerful songs about death that I’ve heard. I couldn’t find a video of him performing it on the YouTubes, and reading the lyrics alone doesn’t do the song its full justice, but here they are anyway…
Oh God, can you feel the sun in your back?
Oh God, can you see your shadow, inky black on the sand?
Oh God, can you hear the saltwater drying on your skin?
Oh God, can you feel my heart beating in my tongue?
Oh God, by being quiet, I hope to alleviate my death
Oh God, by sitting still, I hope to lighten your load
When your shadow covers me from head to toe
Curtain every flies, tell me it’s mine, my time to go
Seven waves of insects make babies in, in my skin
Seven waves of insects make families in my skin
(It’s just like animals) It’s just like animals that play
And the flesh…flesh…flesh…rotted off my skull
And then I will have earned my permanent, my permanent smile
Oh God, I never, never asked why
Oh God, I never, never asked why
Posted by sean on April 29, 2009
https://sd-stewart.com/2009/04/29/morbidly-beautiful/
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