All posts in category music

belated lists for 2014

Happy New Year! Here are my belated lists of favorite books read and music listened to in 2014. Neither list is in any particular order. My reading slowed down in autumn when I took on Reiner Stach’s Kafka biographies. They ended up being my top favorites for the year, reminding me once again of my love for a good literary biography. As for music, it wasn’t a big year for new discoveries, but plenty of indulging in old favorites and a few newer passions from recent years. I tend to listen to music seasonally, so not all of these are in rotation year-round. I also plan to post a list of favorite films for the year, but that will take some extra time to compile as I don’t always make notes of what I watch.

Books

Completed reads: 72
Abandoned reads: 4

1. Kafka: The Decisive Years by Reiner Stach
2. Kafka: The Years of Insight by Reiner Stach
3. The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie: Three Novels by Agota Kristof
4. To Whom It May Concern by Raymond Federman
5. The Will to Sickness by Gerhard Roth
6. Kaddish for an Unborn Child by Imre Kertész
7. Yes by Thomas Bernhard
8. It Then by Danielle Collobert
9. Selected Poems of René Char by René Char
10. Life, End of by Christine Brooke-Rose
11. I Am Lazarus: Stories by Anna Kavan
12. Topology of a Phantom City by Alain Robbe-Grillet
13. Mauve Desert by Nicole Brossard
14. Song of the West: Selected Poems by Georg Trakl
15. A Schoolboy’s Diary and Other Stories by Robert Walser

Music

1. The Smiths
2. The Cure
3. Swans
4. Grails
5. Nadja
6. Jesu
7. Om
8. Lycia
9. Caudal
10. Boards of Canada
11. Gravenhurst (thanks, Dan; RIP Nick Talbot)
12. Nick Drake (mostly Pink Moon)
13. Skinny Puppy (mostly Remission, Bites, Rabies, & The Singles Collect)
14. Front Line Assembly (mostly The Initial Command & State of Mind)
15. Slowdive, with Low [live show with JFaunt ♥]
16. Helicon’s 29th Annual Winter Solstice Concert [live show]
17. Danny Paisley & The Southern Grass, with Chester River Runoff [live show]

2 Comments

by sean on January 7, 2015 • Permalink

Posted in books, lists, music, new year, reading

Posted by sean on January 7, 2015

https://sd-stewart.com/2015/01/07/belated-lists-for-2014/

words and music from john fahey

“All I have ever done with music was to depict various emotions in an organized and coherent musical language, especially hate, fear, repulsion, grief, depression, or feeling nothingness.”

—John Fahey, liner notes to The Legend of Blind Joe Death (1996 reissue of his first record Blind Joe Death)

5 Comments

by sean on June 10, 2014 • Permalink

Posted in john fahey, music, music as emotional language, shadow

Posted by sean on June 10, 2014

https://sd-stewart.com/2014/06/10/words-and-music-from-john-fahey/

books!

Since I shut down my Goodreads account, I plan to post more book reviews and bookish thoughts here. This doesn’t mean the blog will morph into a reading blog, but as I’m experiencing a bit of a creative impasse at the moment, there may be more book talk in the near future than anything else. Curiously, even when I’m in a fallow creative writing period I find it possible to write about books. I think this is related to the schismatic phenomenon between reading and writing (creative writing, that is), so that during times of heavy reading one cannot write, and during times of heavy writing, one cannot read. Thomas Bernhard spoke of this (I will have to dig up the quote, as it is typically extreme, and hence, amusing), as have other writers. So, rather than let this blog languish during those times, which is what has occurred in the past, I will endeavor to post about books and writers.

There are a few books I originally wrote reviews of on Goodreads that I will be highlighting, interspersed with whatever books of significance to me that I have recently completed.

Stay tuned for an upcoming post on the elusive Gil Orlovitz.

And in the meantime enjoy this song by Caudal…it’s soothing in a rhythmic, hypnotic way.

Edit: Found the Bernhard quote. It’s from his memoir Gathering Evidence.

“When I am writing I read nothing, and when I am reading I write nothing. For long periods I read and write nothing, finding both equally repugnant.”

2 Comments

by sean on May 15, 2014 • Permalink

Posted in books, caudal, creativity, gil orlovitz, reading, writers

Posted by sean on May 15, 2014

https://sd-stewart.com/2014/05/15/books/

monday fuzz

What is this dialect—tearing the oilskin remnants of time—the sun a hot dripping ball of wax sealing shut another sudden day—a new place a new suit a new matchbox—walk this gauntlet overshadowed by a pair of rotors and a smile—another scene stuck in a feedback loop—(hey who let all these gnomes out in the desert)—welcome to distortion a normality found in the far reaches of a certain type of mind—if it makes sense do not r e p e a t do not report it—a pattern of melancholy strung up like twinkling lights throughout the ages—now we enter the cloud chamber now we genuflect to the amplifier—to celebrate a sudden soaring up of souls on waxen wings of failed entrepreneurs—now there is this feeling this feeling of looking up at lights in windows from sidewalks sewn lifetimes away—a hurt that feels too good not to press on a little—our survival depends on this twisted nest feathered with compulsions—and we pass through the gates—(having entered as sound, blind)—we board the vessel and wait—what ho, off the starboard bow is it Scylla is it Charybdis or is it nothing at all nothing at all—(we exit as light, deaf)—next time take the train it’s said to be more scenic—wait everything changed again—wait wait there is no next time.

a knoblike process

Creeping crepuscule, descrescent light, harbinger of dreaded return to EST, where darkness dampens day’s early end. Decumbent drone diminishes daily, drowsy in the drawing room. Sip long from murky melodies, muddy froth spilling forth in rivulets, dirgeful delights diverging in drone’s ear canals. Mellifluous miasma of musical melancholia!

Dismantling of outdoor seating commences! Desperate attempts to affect staring at nothing continues. Doctor Chumply the Mouth Breather appears, Mickey D’s in hand, heart-attack-in-waiting, following with tiny aggrieved steps the trail of nitroglycerin tablets strewn across the decking. Take the elevator, not the stairs, for they are locked, despite the sign in the kitchen encouraging good health through stairs-taking. O, Dr. Chumply, what will become of you, will you follow those tablets to the Haunted Wood™ where the witch stokes her stove as she awaits your fleshly delights.

[But Christine, what of loneliness, standing there behind the invisibility cloak, always working, always writing, what did engagement mean for you, O Invisible Author, did you drape yourself in a duvet woven with words…]

Glossary

lumpfish: Any of various fishes of the family Cyclopteridae, especially Cyclopterus lumpus of North Atlantic waters, having pelvic fins united to form a suction disk and a body bearing prominent tubercles.

tubercle: A small, rounded prominence or process, such as a wartlike excrescence on the roots of some leguminous plants or a knoblike process in the skin or on a bone.

Quick now! Homophone challenge question: would you rather your words resonate or resinate. Think about it while staring into the clouds.

Nod to From your favourite sky

2 Comments

by sean on November 6, 2013 • Permalink

Posted by sean on November 6, 2013

https://sd-stewart.com/2013/11/06/a-knoblike-process/

asylum party

French coldwave circa 1990 …

Stream the full album here.

2 Comments

by sean on October 29, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in asylum party, coldwave, french things

Posted by sean on October 29, 2013

https://sd-stewart.com/2013/10/29/asylum-party/

i went away alone with nothing left but faith

“I do find mouths fascinating and kind of repulsive. They’re sort of like a … gaping wound in people! They can be really horrible. It’s such [an] intimate part of your body and yet it’s a multi-purpose opening, used for shovelling food and pouring drink into. I find myself sometimes with people I don’t know just staring into their mouths….”

—interview with Robert Smith in The Quietus, May 1989

“I’ve never regretted not having children. My mindset in that regard has been constant. I objected to being born, and I refuse to impose life on someone else. Living, it’s awful for me. I can’t on one hand argue the futility of life and the pointlessness of existence and have a family. It doesn’t sit comfortably.

“I enjoy myself hugely,” he says, with a laugh, “but you know, it’s despite myself, really.”

—interview with Robert Smith in The Guardian, September 2011

1 Comment

by sean on October 15, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in robert smith, the cure

Posted by sean on October 15, 2013

https://sd-stewart.com/2013/10/15/i-went-away-alone-with-nothing-left-but-faith/

in the light of time*

When nothing is sacred, nothing is safe—John Hay

When there were less of us, we fit inside like tiny figures in a diorama. We ran across the plains afraid of violent storms. Lush greenery threatened to smother us, just as it also lent us sustenance. If we did not pacify this place it would surely destroy us. We squabbled among ourselves, like we now still do, but we were not yet strong enough to shatter our shadow box.

When there were more of us, we burst the seams of the land. We took a liking to engines and asphalt, all distance to traverse only at light speed. We ravaged the countryside, built our cities, made our money. Things trumped being. Our lives soon chased after ways to forget. Prohibition never stood a chance.

When there were too many of us, a few grew concerned. Nothing, however, changed. We kept building and we kept paving. One of our leaders proffered the idea of a system of parks, a way to assuage our guilt, an excuse for free reign on what remained. Of course we seized on it. Those places have since burst their own seams, paved as they are for easy access.

When there are less of us again, perhaps more will notice. It will be too late. For now we careen serene toward the end, a night we try never to see. Perpetual light, shone by our own hands, is what we embrace, for in darkness we fear what we came to create.

*soundtrack

4 Comments

by sean on October 1, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in dark, ecology, flying saucer attack, horror of humanity, human behavior, john hay, light, naturalists, prose poetry, writers

Posted by sean on October 1, 2013

https://sd-stewart.com/2013/10/01/in-the-light-of-time/

unsolvable word problems

the indivisibility of a single word leaves a remainder of yesterday. a woman is overwhelmed by the memories of the first time she ever did anything. a man has no recollection of the last time he did anything. a child does not appear in this story.

the indivisibility of a single word leaves a remainder of scent. all separate parts join together as a whole. name the value of a single part. prioritize a single recurring sensation. freedom to breathe in, a conscious act of breathing out. this is some semblance of life.

the indivisibility of a single word leaves a remainder of shadows. add up the things and people no longer here. also, the activities, the rituals. stretch a taut coalescence of the before over a bony skeleton of songs. e.g., little maggie and mathey grove caper in the yellow lamplight spilled across the hardwood floor, a dream of distance as anchors tug, hold fast.

the indivisibility of a single word leaves a remainder of dreams. of dusty corners. of regret. of a swallowing up. of a diving down. of a spreading out. of a lossless life. of listless eyes. of a luster tarnished by your breath. of every day, an ending, every day a sort of beginning.

the indivisibility of a single word leaves a remainder of nothing. fill in the blank to receive extra credit: _________________.

2 Comments

by sean on July 28, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in amateur mathematician flies into the sun, anchors, dreams, long division, memory, music, parts of the whole, senses, shadows, summer, sundays, the antidote is also the poison, words

Posted by sean on July 28, 2013

https://sd-stewart.com/2013/07/28/unsolvable-word-problems/

ice wrench grip

Clutching the bedside table again. After so many nights with it lodged against my hip. And now while cross-checking your references. The calming effects of copyediting, the sly satisfaction of reducing months of hard labor to a few sentences in need of tightening. I reach in with my wrench and look for loose bolts, as in my ears the sun kills the moon. And now the wind blows. An exchange of smiles is a warm point of light in ice. Now occupied with the business of shuttering another week. So carry me, carry me, Ohio.

11 Comments

by sean on January 31, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in bedhead, copyediting, it's always the smallest things that catch in your throat and fill you with a bit of light, sun kil moon, thursday is my salvation, weather, wind, work

Posted by sean on January 31, 2013

https://sd-stewart.com/2013/01/31/ice-wrench-grip/