Stay (Wasting Time) With You.

by | Aug 28, 2008 | Uncategorized

“There is no such thing as a worthless conversation, provided you know what to listen for. And questions are the breath of life for a conversation.”
James Nathan Miller

excellent words from my friend bruce morley in the fall of 2006..

Over a lifetime I’ve played hundreds of different musics, much of it for
money as a professional. It’s been my experience that any music that
abrogates to itself a claim to purity, incorruptibility or metaphysical
significance etc eventually runs headlong into the secular,
hypocrisy-inducing fact that the methods of propagation, distribution, and
attempts to gain widespread acceptance or recognition of said music/s can
differ but little from any employed by “lesser” musics. This has been the
bete noir of the blues, earnest folk music, and new age music, to name but
three. (After several million $, a few Cadillacs, and a few publicity
stunts, can BB King still sing the blues? Nobody seems prepared to admit he
hasn’t made a decent significant album in decades.) In this respect, pop
music is more honest – it simply gets on with a job which is determinedly
ephemeral, where lasting significance is almost accidental, and where
money-grubbing success is regarded as a very worthwhile aim indeed. Can
millions of consumers of this be wrong or deluded ? Actually, in my book,
they can, but that doesn’t alter the hard fact that success on the same
scale for more esoteric musics will require a dance with the Devil, and you
can’t have it both ways. Like religion, the charge of hypocrisy awaits any
music that claims sainthood.

Left Then, What For You?
Only that you are the heart of my heart and the breath of my gasping, the wound of my flesh, the light bouncing off my iris. This one breath, song and dance for you still what does it mean… nothing…

For you would miss it all, eyes cast off in another pallid and dull direction..
Life then, found in these limbs, in this embrace
Truth in these words, my songs alive for your sake
Your strength long sought found in my willingness to lay in your arms
that is strength and truth, that you are strong enough for me..

Review: The Book Thief

by | Aug 6, 2008 | Uncategorized

Inspired By Max
I’ve never reviewed a book here before… and in fact, whilst being an avid reader, I suspect it’s because I’m not a really good reviewer. I can read it, tell you what I think, but I just don’t know if my reviews making inspiring reading. However, Max has inspired me (even his dad is the king of reviews…)

Markus Zusak has written the kind of novel that transcends genre. It’s both historical, highly fictionalised, stylised and character-driven. The narrator, Death, leads you through an interesting, impersonal and yet thoroughly emotive perspective on humanity and death. The motivations of the characters are almost as interesting as wondering why the author chose to include their story, or in fact, why Death remembered each of them. Some of the most fascinating back stories are left thoroughly in the dark.

It’s both poetic, stylistic in construction and deeply moving, yet solidly in novel form, which is very different to House of Letters, that I’m also trying to work my way through.

At times it’s very dark, but never so far that you feel trapped in the awfulness. It’s not a heavy read at all, and consumable over several sittings – the kind of story that wanders at the back of your mind but doesn’t incapacitate you from participating in reality while not reading.

Available in a kids version as well, appropriate given the nature of the main (human) character, I could see teens and adults alike devouring this piece at different levels – there are interesting family dynamics at play that could make for interesting dinnertime conversation.