dreamlog

Tired Pony - HMV Forum, London 14/07/2010

2010-08-01T17:09:00.000+01:00

bluesy, again

2010-07-28T12:49:00.003+01:00

The little box's leaning towards the blues. This was a tough one, couldn't find any any decent Foy Vance recordings and that was only the beginning.

I got the reason ( Conor Oberst) seems to be talking to me, but i couldn't find To all the lights in the windows.

There's J.Tillman, Molina & Johson, Langhorne Slim, The Avett Brothers, Fink, Iron & Wine, Foy Vance and Conor Oberst.

If yous don't care for the blues, spare yourselves the effort. Life is short

Enjoy.

"Yous" is not a spelling mistake, it's hiberno-english, why it's not standard beats me. And a sad attempt at rhyming with blues.

The Girl Who Fixed the Umlaut: newyorker.com

2010-07-20T19:42:00.000+01:00

The Girl Who Fixed the Umlaut: newyorker.com

tired pony

2010-07-13T19:23:00.003+01:00

This is it.

Will write more later.

The play list respects the order in which they appear on the album.

The last track is missing.

Band Of Horses - Factory (on 'Later with Jools Holland')

2010-06-09T01:45:00.000+01:00

Snow Patrol - Open Your Eyes @ HMH Amsterdam 01-06-2010

2010-06-02T15:47:00.000+01:00

here's one i made earlier

2010-05-24T01:26:00.003+01:00

foals, typhoon, villagers, the qualia

(e não é que HIGH VIOLET finalmente me converteu?)

typhoon é tão lindo, que tem direito a repetição aqui e a um lugar especial.

tiny little gift

2010-05-24T00:45:00.000+01:00

your're in my eyes

2010-04-20T20:59:00.005+01:00

Grey floaters inside my eyes
And visible when you look into a clear blue sky
Memories of days gone by activated by a mirror ball shining bright
In a provincial disco on a Thursday night

You appeared from nowhere beside me on the floor
Identical in every detail to the way you were before
The best part of a decade since you went out of my life
The worst part of a decade, and here you are tonight
By my side

You're in my eyes, you're in my face
Just like before you went away
You're in my arms, I feel your warmth
And I will dance until the dawn
'Cause I don't want to lose you again, oh no
Yeah, I don't want to lose you again, oh no

A trick of the light, a disco hallucination
A waking dream, an impossible situation
Oh but you (??) don't stop, don't disappear
I need you here
I need you here

You're in my eyes, you're in my face
Just like before you went away
You're in my arms, I feel your warmth
And I will dance until the dawn
'Cause I don't want to lose you again, oh no
Yeah, 'cause I don't want to lose you again, oh no

And I don't want this song to ever end, 'cause I know if it did then you would disappear again. Let this be forever through the air. Caught in a loop that repeats on endlessly. It was the mirror ball that did it. A chance reflection that sparked you back to life, like you'd just been to the bar for a little while. And you smiled and there was nothing in your eyes like the silt in mine making it hard to get around. I thought you'd gone but all this time I'd been carrying you around in my eyes.
In my eyes
In my eyes

You're in my eyes, you're in my face
Just like before you went away
You're in my arms, I feel your warmth
And I will dance until the dawn
'Cause I don't want to lose you again, oh no
Yeah, I don't want to lose you again, oh no
Yeah, I don't want to lose you again, oh no

make hay

2010-04-17T23:28:00.004+01:00

A jumble mix of songs i love, including three of the my favourite will-you-please-leave-now-just-go tunes.

A woman's voice and "you once were a dish sponge, now you clean tiles in the bathroom where sponges go to die" from A Weather's Midday Moon.

And a poem. There you go.

A Weather, Jarvis Cocker, Jason Collett, Goldheart Assembly, David Ford, Arcade Fire, Interpol, Glen Hansard.

The Harbor Dawn

2010-04-17T19:18:00.004+01:00

Insistently through sleep—a tide of voices—
They meet you listening midway in your dream,		400 years and
The long, tired sounds, fog-insulated noises:		more . . . or is
Gongs in white surplices, beshrouded wails,		it from the
Far strum of fog horns . . .signals dispersed in veils		soundless shore
		of sleep that
And then a truck will lumber past the wharves		time
As winch engines begin throbbing on some deck;
Or a drunken stevedore's howl and thud below
Comes echoing alley-upward through dim snow.

And if they take your sleep away sometimes
They give it back again. Soft sleeves of sound
Attend the darkling harbor, the pillowed bay;
Somewhere out there in blankness steam

Spills into steam, and wanders, washed away
— Flurried by keen fifings, eddied
Among distant chiming buoys — adrift. The sky,

Cool feathery fold, suspends, distills
This wavering slumber. . . . Slowly —
Immemorially the window, half-covered chair
Asks nothing but this sheath of pallid air.

And you beside me, blessèd now while sirens		recalls you to
Sing to us, stealthily weave us into day —		your love,
Serenely now, before day claims our eyes		there in a
Your cool arms murmurously about me lay.		waking dream
		to merge
While myriad snowy hands are clustering at the		your seed
panes —

your hands within my hands are deeds;
my tongue upon your throat — singing
arms close; eyes wide, undoubtful
dark
drink the dawn —
a forest shudders in your hair!

The window goes blonde slowly. Frostily clears.		— with whom?
From Cyclopean towers across Manhattan waters
— Two — three bright window-eyes aglitter, disk
The sun, released — aloft with cold gulls hither.

The fog leans one last moment on the sill.		Who is the
Under the mistletoe of dreams, a star —		woman with
As though to join us at some distant hill —		us in the
Turns in the waking west and goes to sleep.		dawn? . . .
		whose is the
		flesh our feet
		have moved
		upon?

new in

2010-03-23T21:25:00.001Z

chumbawamba and turin brakes, enjoy!

arrogance, ignorance and greed

2010-03-04T18:11:00.005Z

All I wanted was a home
And a roof over our heads
Somewhere we could call our own
Feel safer in our beds
There was a storm of money raining down
It only touched the ground
With a loan I took I can’t repay
And the crock of gold you found
At every trough you stopped to feed
With your Arrogance, your Ignorance and Greed.
I never was a cautious man
I spend more than I’m paid
But those with something put aside
Are the ones that you betrayed
With your bonuses and expenses
You shovelled down your throat
Now you bit the hand that fed you
Dear God I hope you choke
At every trough you stopped to feed
With your Arrogance, your Ignorance and Greed.
You're on your yacht, we’re on our knees
Through your Arrogance, your Ignorance and Greed.
Toxics bring you tact and soul
Poisoned every watering hole
Your probity, you exchanged for gold
Working man stands in line
The market sets his price
No feather bed, no golden egg
No one pays him twice
To enter thrift and caution
Your only sound advice
You know you doubt yourself and meaning
And loaded every dice
At every trough you stopped to feed
With your Arrogance, your Ignorance and Greed.
I pray one day we’ll soon be free
From your absolute indifference
Your avarice, incompetence
Your Arrogance, your Ignorance and your Greed.

swim until you can't see land

2010-02-28T22:59:00.004Z

a radiohead day

2010-02-27T16:31:00.000Z

waiting

2010-02-25T21:55:00.000Z

north or south?

2010-02-18T22:11:00.003Z

The trees in my street are getting ready for spring, one of them didn't make it.

Phone messages, emails, all telling me the patrol is coming, the rumours had been going on for a while.

Have a ticket to see Grizzly Bear on the same day and rock in rio is not my kind of thing, but it feels oddly rude not to go given the time you've spent in airports and on trains and planes to see them.

And what's worst, they're playing before Muse, they will definitely need a few heads looking their way.

I'll get one of those gadgets for you to vote and then i'll follow my heart.

The sun breaks the morning and lifts up the day
Such a wonderful sight
Watch and anticipate the beginning
Of a usual day

The skyline spans across farther than your eyes
Allow them to take
Pause and wait for the breath to take inside
It's all that we need

Shut out the sound
Perfect silence is all around
Away from the crowd
A chance just to see what they're about

The sin of the calf or happy apis

2010-02-16T23:46:00.002Z

Fell in love with my boiler.
It has been there for quite a while, never really got the appreciation it deserved. Ipod and potato masher were the ones closer to my heart. While the tinny music box made public transportation bearable and spared human relationships from much trouble, the tatty masher retrieved real mash from the realm of dreams.
Until last night. That not so pleasant and yes, slightly irritating sound of winter months indoors was replaced by utter silence as the tenth parts of Celsius found their slow but steady way down the thermostat. -1 ºC outside the night before, i had heard. The heaters had gone cold. Slight panic, if panic is ever slight. Behind the grey door, the pressure is fine, let’s give it a little push anyway. Nothing, no little yellow light the shape a flame, no irritating sound. Turn it off, restart, nothing. And tomorrow’s a holyday, I’m going to freeze. Restart again, no way am I staying here, start packing, hot water’s running, Shame i never got used to sleeping in the shower. Two in the morning, to degrees down, try to multiply that by the number of hours till morning and the lovely droning is back, the little yellow flame alight and my boiler is second to none.

Tracks

2010-02-13T22:27:00.005Z

Came back to my sea hut again (was away for three days only).
Took the five fifteen train, the best train this time of the year. A clear blue sky and a fifty-five minutes sunset follows the rail tracks along the river and the soaked rice fields chase a distant silver horizon and turn the view into a strange desert of green becoming grey where it meets blue.
The water becomes snow-white and the fields black as slanted evening light turns my eyes into peeping slits; ribbons of silver make patterns of strange curves in the blackness; hidden waters become discernible among the grass and shiver as they run.
The river is quiet and brimming as a sleeping lake and the round white metal towers melt in the water, the bridge is visible now as it rises from the river in a mist of grey.
This train is quiet too, no commuters on a Saturday, a nearly empty compartment.
Shearwater in my ears, if only I could open the window and stick my head out to feel the wind.

Fear is the first weapon of the oppressor. It blinds us all from seeing the humanity of the other

2010-02-08T03:37:00.002Z

Endgame (2009) documents the covert talks which took place in England in the late eighties, leading to the release of Nelson Mandela and ultimately to the end of apartheid. With a group of Afrikaners on the one side, and the ANC and Pan-African parties on the other, the talks were brought about by the efforts of an Afrikaans philosophy professor and a British PR for the gold mines How they came to find a path in what was probably the most volatile post-colonial aftermath to not lead to civil war is the story.
The movie shares its title with a canonical play about fear in relationships, fear of loosing when sharing power. No coincidence, I think, when at the centre of this story is a character who’s representing the gold and making sure the key to the larder doesn’t get lost in the process.
Shot in a manner which places the viewer among the players, actually as someone who seats at a stranger’s table and watchfully but tactfully scrutinizes the other guests. The outstanding editing again adds to the sense of character observation, cutting from one face to one glance to one shrug.
It illustrates the long road that had to be travelled from intention, through concession to achievement, without losing sight of the inescapable emotions at play.
It’s a movie about humanity, Mandela’s humanity even, his suit and his trip to the sea.
For those of us who remember him walking through the prison gates it is a strong reminder of the best that humans are capable of.

This isn't your song: a year in blogland

2010-02-07T01:22:00.004Z

Soon it'll be about some of the good that came my way last year, but not now.

My life lost most of its meaning last year. The battle was already lost, it's been three years since the end began. And out of the emptiness tried to build the simulacrum of fulness, tried and failed and tried again. Most of what was lost will remain unsaid, for now.

Always had a knack for building my own bubble, my sanity depended on it: coming out for a smoke, earphones plugged deep into my ears, looking at the way the wind shapes the trees, strolling through the park looking for twigs, by the the river bank looking for stones, hiding away by the seaside on weekends. Travelling, gardening, painting. Cooking for friends, designing clothes. And music.

lost most of the bubble.

Music has been filling up most of the holes.

A year ago someone said "come to new york, you'll love it, i'll show you around" and i made up excuses, then "come see the show in london, we'll meet up" and i cried all night.I still use the present tense.

It still hurts to know he's gone.

This isn't your song, this isn't your music
How can there be wrong, when by committee they choose it all
They choose it all

You're gonna grow old, you're gonna grow cold
Bearing signs on the avenues, for your own personal Waterloo
You're bearing signs on the avenue, for your own personal Waterloo, now

We'll fight, we'll fight
We'll fight for your music halls and dying cities
They'll fight, they'll fight
They'll fight for your neural walls and plasticities
And precious territory
And precious territory
And precious territory

This isn't our song, this isn't even a musical
Think life is too long, to be a whale in a cubicle
Nails under your cuticle

You're gonna grow old, you're gonna to grow cold
Before the sun can deliver you
You're bearing signs on the avenue
You're bearing signs for your own personal Waterloo, now

We'll fight, we'll fight
We'll fight for your music halls and dying cities
They'll fight, they'll fight
They'll fight for your neural walls and plasticities
And precious territory
And precious territory
And precious territory

bluesy

2010-02-06T23:30:00.007Z

The little box's leaning towards the blues. This was a tough one, couldn't find any any decent Foy Vance recordings and that was only the beginning.

I got the reason ( Conor Oberst) seems to be talking to me, but i couldn't find To all the lights in the windows.

There's J.Tillman, Molina & Johson, Langhorne Slim, The Avett Brothers, Fink, Iron & Wine, Foy Vance and Conor Oberst.

If yous don't care for the blues, spare yourselves the effort. Life is short

Enjoy.

"Yous" is not a spelling mistake, it's hiberno-english, why it's not standard beats me. And a sad attempt at rhyming with blues.

have you seen a black cab lately?

2010-02-04T21:16:00.007Z

A frenchman with an english nick had a great idea when he came up with lablogoteque, the thing is there are no black cabs in Paris, mate. nor cabbies.

This flaw was brought to the attention of some lovely people in grey drizzly London who thought it a better idea to get bands to perform in the much roomier friendlier quintessential black austin, departing from different postal areas, the cab driver hosting each performance.

And here we are, Blackcabssessions.com.

The singer in the Maccabees had this to say: "you should do a minicab version, with remixes. covers, not quite as good as the real thing".

No occasion

2010-02-03T21:35:00.007Z

is the title to a J. Tillman song. i've been looking all over youtube for a half decent live rendition and this is the best i could come up with. Tucked away in Vacilando Territory Blues, shy and quiet "I don't want to live again 'cause i don't want this life to end", it says. J. is the drummer in the Fleet Foxes, too much of a good thing, and if i had to choose between him and his combo, i'd choose his delicate sombre words like thoughts composing dreams.

This live performance is a wonderful example of the silence you need to hear him, the silent audience in an amateur video shows the respect he deserves and the reason why such artists prefer europe to the states. American audiences bring their own animated urgent conversations with them to the shows and use them as background to every kind of act they attend, as can be heard in this video of Fleet Foxes playing the ho so beautiful White Winter Hymnal (click here, i couldn't embed it), accompanied throughout by an extra chorus of professional conversationalists. What a shame, it's the best live version of this song i've ever heard, it's worth trying that link for that reason only.

It would be a tough choice and i'm glad i don't have to make it. I hope J. Tillman never does. One of these days they're going to fill that little box on the right, him and his combo.

And btw this is art, not entertainment.No nice little songs here, hardly.

just for you

2010-02-02T04:37:00.009Z

The photos were taken by me - a roundabout way of saying they're mine, you know me-, some are good, some terrible and one of them is probably the most beautiful picture i've ever taken, just by accident. It was the light, i guess, and the fact that i'm five foot two and sometimes forget to look up and look straight ahead instead, and the detail of peter pan's statue was the result.

The photo of the policemen was a great opportunity, and is one of my favourites. Oh, and that round head in a suit singing into a microphone, in the middle of those horrible concert shots is Michael Stipe, taken at that concert where i didn't know i was for the best of twenty minutes. There's Foals and Duke Spirit, too. The Duke Spirit picture is the best i've ever managed when it comes to taking shots of live shows, I quite like it, actually, the girl with the tambourine.

And then there's Jack Horner's, maybe not the best pub in the world, but certainly the best food and the best quiet lazy talk in the middle of the afternoon in W1.

They're all pictures of that place, of things that happened there.

Enjoy!

queixas e actualização

2010-02-01T23:12:00.003Z

Parece que havia quem não conseguisse ver os vídeos que fiz. Pois a solução foi torná-los públicos, o que é um crime, mas pronto, já sabem, fumo SG filtro.

Quanto aos comentários no youtube, só moderados, como aqui.

Já podem ouvir My Brightest Diamond, Eg white, Iain Archer e Snow Patrol.É só clicar nos labels.

Juntei um link aos blogs, no fundo deste. Blowin' your cover é um blog só de... covers! Acho que me vou viciar.

another old song coming

2010-02-01T21:59:00.003Z

The world discovered the patrol via grey's anatomy, when chasing cars closed the season in 2006.

They're on their way to their third life through the movie Dear John, coming out on friday. Based on a Nicolas Sparks' book, it includes Set the Fire as the love song, and will be something like Up Where We Belong was to An Officer and a Gentleman, a song so glued to the movie you can't tell them apart, and a duet as well. It features in the trailer and in the killer love scene, and it's all over the youtube.

As was the case with chasing cars - no one knew who the band was or if there was one -, Set the Fire, from 2006, will be it's own thing.

This particular song, however, has always been a favourite to play live since it came out, the audience being invited on stage to sing it with the band has a hand in it. From Martha Wainwright to these teenagers who had the stage to themselves, one fine day, back in 2008.

The first time it was played live on tv, on the Jules Holland show. The comments on this video in youtube were past 900 last time i looked, and mostly have to do with the male singer's posture and if you need a laugh, you'll find it: is he a) an epileptic b) on drugs c) on withdrawal d) freezing f) incarnating joe cocker? I didn't know incarnating people who are actually alive was an option, but i´ll go with f). Which brings me back to movie songs.

where "Run" came from

2010-02-01T00:10:00.005Z

Iain Archer is credited for composing Run.

Who wrote what back in two thousand no one knows, probably not even the writers themselves. As i've listened to iain's music all day today, while trying to put some order into my music files, i came across some instances of runnesque melody, the guitar line, the way of singing every word by braking it down into long syllables, as slowly as possible. Just like the patrol sounds in their second record.

There's plenty of archer's songs on youtube, but not this one, so i've tried my clumsy hand again.

Wanted to thank you for your goodness

Wanted to thank you for the times we’ve had
Was I over-enthralled?
Were you without a pulse?
When you said it was nothing at all

I put up a sweet surrender
I tried to show you a place inside
And you seemed to respond ‘til we formed a bond
Then you said it was nothing at all

And I’m still waiting and nothing is changing
The silence you leave me just breaks me inside
I’m still waiting and nothing is changing
Who stole the person just there in your eyes?

It’s a curious thing to lose you
Such a beautiful thorn in my side
And now I’m left with this hole I don’t know how to fill
Maybe fill it with nothing at all

And I’m still waiting and nothing is changing
The silence you leave me just breaks me inside
I’m still waiting and nothing is changing
Who stole the person just there in your eyes?

Tick the box

2010-01-29T15:43:00.009Z

Robert Francis, Before Nightfall, se pudesse, punha o disco inteirinho na caixinha. Nas palavras do Examiner ,The intrigue of Francis’ sound is that he is like nobody you’ve ever heard, and at the same time the best of everything you’ve ever listened to. His music reaches beyond the shallow recesses of your mind and into your soul. Perhaps it is the maturity of his own soul that, when given voice through his music, embodies the emotional connection he makes to his listeners. He possesses a quality that many artists aspire to bring to the stage over the course of their career but many never achieve; a quality that takes the human experience and turns it into a melody heard with the ear and understood in the heart.

Nas palavras do próprio, Junebug and Mescaline were the first songs written on the record and do the best jobs of setting up and illustrating the volatility that surrounded a five year Los Angeles love affair that inspired two records while nearly, hmm, killing me.

Do what i can, ao vivo. Depois de se ouvir, fica cá dentro e volta de vez em quando e faz lembrar nina simone, Há maisaqui.

The Magnetic Fields, Realism,

Owen Pallett, Heartland,

LAU, Arc Light, foi a melhor surpresa e é o pior representado na lista ao lado só porque não há muito disponível no mixpod. Há mais aqui. Depois de se ouvir The Burrian, recupera-se a beleza infinita da música, imprevísivel.

A juntar à wish-list no fundo deste blog, Chris Wood, Handmade Life. Há duas músicas para ouvir aqui.

Enjoy!

dreams love stairs, stairs love paintings

2010-01-27T22:26:00.008Z

Burne-Jones is the odd one out. He provided the stairs, The Golden Stairs

Millais, Ruskin

John Ruskin is at the top of the stairs when this portrait's finished, not in Scotland where he was when the story told by the picture began. Between beginning and end, the painter fell in love with Ruskin's wife. She had already posed for Order of Release, so she's here too, the wife of the the Scottish Rebelwho secures his freedom. There was a messy and shameful annulment, Effie Ruskin is now living with Millais.

And still, They are both there, facing each other, the majesty of the landscape gone, John Ruskin cartoonized, almost bluntly glued on to the background. Why did they do it, finish a painting that no longer was? Ruskin's eyes evade our gaze, or is it ours?

Effie was buried in the cemetery portrayed by Millais in Vale of Rest, which is also here, posted a few days ago. It depicts two women, one of them as a grave-digger.

Millais, A Huguenot on St.Bartholomew's Day Refusing to Shield Himself from Danger by Wearing the Roman Catholic Badge

Millais, Order of Release

Millais, Dew-drenched furze

two more reasons, as if i needed them

2010-01-25T23:03:00.006Z

The song i can't hear

Take back the city for yourself tonight
Or I’ll take back the city for me
Take back the city for yourself tonight
Whoa

God knows you put your life in two a times
And it’s both cradled you and crushed
But now it’s time to make your own demands
Whoa

All these years later and it’s killing me
Your broken records and words
Ten thousand craters where it all should be
Whoa

No need to put your words into my mouth
Don’t need convincing at all
I love this place enough to have no doubt
Whoa

It’s a mess
It’s a start
It’s a flawed work of art
Your city, your call
Every crack, every wall
Pick a side, pick a fight
Get your epitaph right
You can sing ‘til you drop
Cause the fun just never stops

I love this city tonight
I love this city always
It bears it’s teeth like a light
And spits me out after days
But we’re all gluttons for it
We know what’s wrong and it’s right
For every time it’s been hit
Take back the city tonight

Tell me you never wanted more from this
And I will stop talking now
One perfect partner, one eternal kiss
Whoa

Take back the city for yourself tonight
Or I’ll take back the city for me
Take back the city for yourself tonight
Whoa

It’s a mess
It’s a start
It’s a flawed work of art
Your city, your call
Every crack, every wall
Pick a side, pick a fight
Get your epitaph right
You can sing ‘til you drop
Cause the fun just never stops

I love this city tonight
I love this city always
It bears it’s teeth like a light
And spits me out after days
But we’re all gluttons for it
We know what’s wrong and it’s right
For every time it’s been hit
Take back the city tonight

I love this city tonight
I love this city always
It bears it’s teeth like a light
And spits me out after days
But we’re all gluttons for it
We know what’s wrong and it’s right
For every time it’s been hit
Take back the city tonight

I love this city tonight
I love this city always
I love this city tonight
I love this city always

Sheer acoustic, sheer guts, great lyrics

Sworn to secrecy
I might go after school
She was an angel
I saw her swimming there
I am in such a mess
I can't cope with this
She just teases me
Pretends she can't see me here

So let me go up there
I can be fresh air
Stay with you all night
Just let me love you
Just for a while or two
Be with you all night
Be with you all night
Till I fall asleep
Till I fall asleep
Till I fall asleep
Till I fall asleep

Just let me be here
I won't tell anyone
Don't wanna wake up
Don't wanna wake up

The blind lead the blind
So I can't help find my way
This could be heaven
I don't know where I am
I am too scared
To come out from behind here
My body is aching
It feels like it's wearing me

So let me go up there
I can be fresh air
Stay with you all night
Just let me love you
Just for a while or two
Be with you all night
Be with you all night
Till I fall asleep
Till I fall asleep
Till I fall asleep
Till I fall asleep
Just let me be here
I won't tell anyone
Don't wanna wake up
Don't wanna wake up

cooking with eg white and there are some good things you won't find on youtube

2010-01-25T01:13:00.010Z

As this song wasn't on youtube, it took me five minutes on moviemaker to do this and a lifetime to figure out how to upload it (my youtube account is private, i'm too thinskinned), just to share this with you passers-by. Switch off the music box ( button looks like a pair of sticks, just click it) and have a listen, the pictures are great but didn't put much work into it, it wasn't the point.

Couldn't find the lyrics anywhere, but i guess no one will need them

This man writes for everybody - google him up, your jaw'll drop. Last year he decided to do his own thing, Adventure Man.

I cooked for D. today, her favourite pie and a pasta dish, It had been promised as a Christmas gift, so i'd better do it before the end of the month.

I put Adventure Man on and EG White gave me a hand.

This song is another instance of my kind of subtlety. It feels like i felt today, and last night and yet it gives me some hope, the sweetest thing.It means a lot of things and that, too.

Lost a friend, lost a song yesterday. When a song is connected to someone, you lose both. Some words cannot be taken back and, as i say, it's not a marriage, when it's causing you so much pain, better let go. Give it some time, we might become

acquaintances, i could never manage indifference though.

Cooking for someone made me feel better. It always does. With a little help from EG, this time.

My heart is a big place, full of ghosts and longing, a crowded junkyard and a sunny back garden.

Mascarpone and tuna pie with tomato and sage tagliatelle

Onions, mushrooms, some olive oil some garlic.

leaving them to dry before you add the oil is a good idea.

Any kind of pastry works. Bought this puff pastry

fresh, rolled it out, greased the pan.

Mascarpone in, tuna in, white pepper in, salt in, parsley in, it'll cook in the oven.

That's the oven timer. My favourite kitchen knife and second best wooden spoon, say hello to the lovely people.

If you can't open it, just cut through it, some tomato and sage sauce for the pasta while i'm at it, some onion, garlic and olive oil repeating themselves like old people, like i do all the time. Oh and some piri piri as well.

Pie looks good, oven not so much.

Didn't get it? Made some snippets of the main steps:

MeteorMusicAwards: Padraig Rushe, Snow Patrol, BellX1, my choices, my votes, explained, plus something completely off topic i couldn't resist

2010-01-23T20:36:00.025Z

Padraig rush is a nominee in the best new artist category. Thank god, he wasn’t on the first list that came out, I thought, well, I’m not voting then. And didn’t, couldn’t, anyway, it was Ireland only. Now that the rest of the world can vote, I already did.
He's spent the last few years singing with the Dublin Gospel Choir and is their current musical director. He's on hire for private events, corporate or matrimonial, so, a true musician. His album Greyworld has been on my wish-list at the bottom of this blog, you wish!
I’d give him the prise for Best voice ever, male or female, since Lisa Gerrard.
His name’s been tagged all over my December posts. Been there, you say. There’s a new one for you, two actually.
Here’s a version of the song he’s been nominated for, sung live on television (starts with an interview in Gaelic, great if you get it, I don’t, but worth the wait though), and god where does he keep those lungs, and the gipsy- gospel-blues-folk-you-name.it-modulation. Enough, just hear it.

And his version of a Lady Gaga’s hit, the sound’s not ace, but the way he makes it his own is wonderful.

Now, for Snow Patrol, they have my vote as best irish band and best live act, just in case you wondered.

I'd nominate them BEST LIVE ACT IN THE WORLD, as a matter of fact, wonder why they're not in as best international band or at least uk band, that's what they are. Well, probably for the reasons i love them: they play for the audience, they're there with us, no gimmicks, just music and people, and honesty. And the best singer-songwriter-performer-no-dance -moves-no-uniform- fuck-i-forgot-lyrics i've ever seen.

So, here's what happened when Oasis pulled out of a festival and the lads were moved up the bill.

Those oasis fans got to witness some actual singing, that must have been a first, that and some people on stage looking like they were happy to see them. And the humility and the simplicity and the courage of paying homage to the great absentees, and trying to give the crowd some consolation... I can't imagine Oasis doing that for anybody.

Oh, yes, long post indeed. BELLX1, one of the best records i heard last year, their being irish is sheer luck. Words and music, and how they mingle, and contrast, and harmonize. I still think doctor paul noonan could learn something from mr Lightbody, like subtlety in songwriting, he leans a bit towards explicitly explaining when there's no need."Tongue" is a great example, i really don't need that last line, i got it, all right.

Anyway, listening to the nominated album, Blue Lights On the Runway, if i try to leave one song out, it's so hard to, i simply don't.

And then he sounds a bit like, you know.

Couldn't resist it, BellX1 doing the best cover (and there's plenty) i've ever heard of my favourite sad song, Talking Heads' Heaven. It's still beautiful, it's still sad, but they make it bearable.

Everyone is trying to get to the bar.
The name of the bar, the bar is called Heaven.
The band in Heaven plays my favorite song.
They play it once again, they play it all night long.

Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.
Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.

There is a party, everyone is there.
Everyone will leave at exactly the same time.
Its hard to imagine that nothing at all
could be so exciting, and so much fun.

Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.
Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.

When this kiss is over it will start again.
It will not be any different, it will be exactly
the same.
It's hard to imagine that nothing at all
could be so exciting, could be so much fun.

Heaven is a place where nothing every happens.
Heaven is a place where nothing every happens.

She’s fine

2010-01-23T01:20:00.012Z

She’s fine

2010-01-22T00:41:00.013Z

Tired, inadequate and sick of all these misunderstandings around language. After over a decade of dealing with limitations, learning acceptance, life decided it was time to add a few more, with barely any time to adjust.
It’s been nearly two months. I know it could have been worse, I could have lost the ability to talk altogether. I also know that sometimes I can’t say what I’m thinking, in the exact way I know I want to say it, then I get misunderstood and can’t rephrase.It’s not that I can’t argue a point, and I haven’t given in to your argument, I just can’t talk. Can’t find the language, the words, the grammar.
It’s worse when I have to face a question which is unexpected and isolated. I can’t decide what it is exactly that is meant, what sort of information I am supposed to give. And then I blurt out something that is true, but hardly ever to the point.
A great example of this was my reaction to being asked if I appreciated the fine arts, I said no, not at all, appreciation has nothing to do with it, and I don’t even care about art as such. I know I was mad at the ugly commonplace and at having it applied to me, as a form of praise, of all things. I could have said yea, I love beauty regardless if it’s art or not, that would have been simple and to the point.
Writing is really fine, so far, no irony here. Sometimes it’s harder to get your thoughts sorted out into the medium, but then, you only write when you feel you can, it’s not immediate or urgent, and no one is asking you a question but yourself.
So, to silence, a hard day awaits tomorrow.
Silence and paintings, thought out the sequence, carefully, and btw the painting at the top is part of it, and the absence of some of the paintings i saw that day is absolutely meaningful.

No, not art, just some pieces of a Monday morning last November, light and dark on the walls, silence filled rooms, and the implausible sun outside, lost and found again.

from the box, alphabetized

2010-01-20T21:49:00.004Z

Tinha pensado em fazer uma lista só com techno para quem, como eu, não gosta de techno, coisas bonitas para combater o preconceito. I'll do it one day.

A clear proof of how boring i can be, going through my little boxes in alphabetical order. The truth is i skipped some, too weird to share, for now. Well, at least the result is a little bit of everything, ticks almost all the boxes.

A sunny day in Glasgow Apollo sunshine As tall as lions

Asobi seksu Bad veins Band of horses

Bell Orchestre Bonny "prince" charlie

enjoy!

ao campo, aos azuis, ao evangelho e à pedra

2010-01-15T01:29:00.008Z

A americana é uma senhora que vai a todo o lado, aos sítios todos ali em cima naquele título estranho. Pois não é que me mandaram um atalho que vale ouro e a tal senhora se prantou aqui num instante? Alguém que sofreu há algum tempo as consequências dos meus entusiasmos com o bando de galfarros OkKervil River tropeçou neste carreiro e teve esta bela ideia, que me poupa o trabalho de decidir a próxima lista de cantigas prá caixinha.

Trata-se de um vídeo com cinquenta e tal minutos (um bocadinho de publicidade no início porque alguém tem de pagar para nós sermos felizes) em que ainda por riba temos direito a Matt Ward (até o pai dele lhe chama M. Ward, mas um bocadinho de pedantismo fica bem em qualquer poste), o que é assim como um casamento do Utah, mas em bem. Este senhor também é um daqueles que vai a todo lado, até parece que se meteu num projecto solitário de um senhor irlandês do norte que manda num bando de que eu já não falo praí há dois dias.

A frase que tem o carreirito é

God bless good Americana

Já agora, os vampiros vão continuar na caixinha. São parecidos com coisas boas - eu cá até acrescento the Clash, e sobre a originalidade falemos com adão e eva e mesmo assim, sabe-se lá onde foi o senhor roubar a ideia.Não sabia que esta coisa dos Vampire Weekend era uma espécie de Benfica-Sporting, deu mesmo porrada. Calma pessoal, se não gostam, que tal a americana?

Reclamam, reclamam, viram porque é que não escrevo em português?

O fim-de-semana dos vampiros (updated)

2010-01-13T03:02:00.007Z

nope, just the tittle.

Shared a joke the other day about posting something like" Shitty day so far, love to you all", never happens, well, this is it, in fact, the whole week looks pretty lousy, enough said.

some summer, then, i'd jump around to this, i have actually, in my mind.

Wallcot has been my most played last year, it woke me up, cheered me up, made me brave it more often than any other tune.

Plenty of new record stuff on the right, can't tell the difference between new and not so new, which is wonderful, and rare.

It feels like i'm eighty when i think about these guys and go "there's hope in youth", there's a lot more in them: peter gabriel, paul simon, dexys midnight runners (i'm really eighty, sorry), even mika.

It's Africa via new york, and it's playful, it doesn't take itself too seriously.

Now, peter Gabriel's sense of humour got him a place on the player, his own cover of the same song that mentions him, and there's a cover of something i hadn't heard in thirty years, CA PLANE POUR MOI. Oh dear, sound like ninety already.

Couln't resist the photo, and the link to where it's taken from comes with a great hilarious text, to

which my humble reply is, you could be right but, for now, you are so wrong.

love to you all.

My spell checker went french on me, sorry, promise to sort it out before i post again.

UPDATE: for the mtv unplugged videos, click here, courtesy of blitz.pt

dreaming by numbers, inner dialogue and another case of appropriated lyrics

2010-01-11T00:45:00.013Z

Lying in a white hospital cot, looking up at two white clad young nurses, women. They look friendly, they’re smiling.
One of them speaks, tells me they know now what’s wrong with me. “You’ve got the number five flu”, never heard, “it’s what it’s called when you catch the first flu”. It’s not clear, inside the dream, if it’s the first flu of the year or some sort of primeval mother-of-all-flues flu.
Oh the economy of dreams, why two women, both smiling, both nurses in white, if only one of them speaks?
Dreams with figures in it, it takes a lot of work to get round them: if your dream gives you exact figures, they must hold some precise meaning, this is serious business, no lame, vague excuse of a dream.
Well, number five is, my dream tells me, number one, the first, go work it out, that’s what i have to.
My first conscious thoughts as i wake up sometimes bear some connection to the dream. And i think of these three songs as lines in an internal dialogue.
He talks to me in the first song, the second song is my answer to him, the third's his turn again, his the final words, and i'm the one who thinks she can walk, the one who left but took her mother with her.
And i always knew why staples' voice scares me.
As i read the lyrics i realise I’ve always misheard the first line to the first song,
“I shot you full of holes"

A night in

I shot you full of holes
When you first took me in
The path that you led
Wasn't straight to your bed
There's no cots to sleep in
And you showed me
Who I was running from
As if I had not known all along

Oh my old feet
They know this hard street
Stay like old friends
You're flat on the ground
There's no further down
There's no cots to sleep in
So come in
Leave them outside the door
Tear off the paper
Tear off the carpet
Off the floor

And I know you're hurting
And I can't be there for you
And I know you're hurting
And I can't be there no more

I had shoes full of holes
When you first took me in
I had calluses, not sores
And I'd like to keep them
So go turn those sheets
Get back on the street
There's nothing more I can bring to you
See I'm scared of the door
Afraid of the floor
Well, I'll go and walk right through
And I'll show you
Who I've been running from
It's the feeling of waking
And it's gone

I had shoes full of holes
When you first took me in
I had calluses, not sores
And I'd like to keep them
Oh now your feet
They know this hard street
They're like old friends
You're flat on the ground
There's no further down
There's no cots to sleep in
So come in
Leave them outside the door
Tear off the paper
Tear off the carpet
Off the floor

I had shoes full of holes
When you first took me in
I had calluses, not sores
And I'd like to keep them
So go turn those sheets
Get back on the street
There's nothing more I can bring to you
See I'm scared of the door
Afraid of the floor
Well, I'll go and walk right through
And I'll show you
Who I've been running from
It's the feeling of waking
And it's gone

My book has more bookmarks than pages
'Cos it take me ages
Or is everybody reading
Is everybody reading

Standing on a black Ulster hill
I never fear the chill
'Cos everybody's holding
Everybody's holding

I wouldn't swap the pain
For never knowing you
I wouldn't swap the pain
It was worth it for the view

My book has more bookmarks than pages
'Cos it take me ages
Or is everybody reading
Is everybody reading

Of a sparkling Medusa
With snakes of cerise and blue
And though we're all pillars of salt now
it was worth it for the view

I wouldn't swap the pain
For never knowing you
I wouldn't swap the pain
'Cos it was worth it for the view

We're still watching
Your rainbow through the shower
And we still see you
In every sunflower
We're still watching
I make days from the hours
And I still see you
In every sunflower
Every screaming sunflower
And how they scream of you

/p>

She's gone
And it's quiet now
Took her mother with her
Left town
Took her mother's eye
Stole her mother's heart
It's a compromise

We nurture that part and she's gone
Says she can walk now
Says she can walk now
Seen her walking
She totters and falls
And when I'm not looking
Leans onto the wall
And she'll hold on to me only when she wants
And she'll fall and be up again
It's part of the fun
But she's gone
Thinks she can walk now
Thinks she can walk now
Thinks she can walk

She's gone
And it's quiet now
Took her mother with her
Left town
Took her mother's eye
Stole her mother's heart
It's a compromise

We nurture that part and she's gone
And it's quiet now
Took her mother with her
Left town

The wind on top of the hill looking down

2010-01-09T00:02:00.015Z

In the summer of 08 i read Istanbul, memories and the city, by Orhan Pamuk, read all of it except the last few pages, as I often do with books I fall in love with and can’t bear to finish.

I had bought it together with The Black Book, which i got through swiftly and can barely remember – nothing wrong with the book, a lot wrong with my memory. I once bought a book i’d already read and even praised to the point of recommending it to the self same friend i’d borrowed it from in the first place .

I bought Istanbul for my own reasons: the second and last time I was there, in 1997, it found a way inside, that has stayed with me ever since.

The fact that i lost all the pictures i had taken, has paradoxically made me cherish those memories even more, painting landscapes from memory, struggling with light and dark, silver waters, ever changing liquid colours, heavy purple skies, elusive greens and a thousand wood shades, wooden houses now literally gone, swallowed into the golden horn during the 98 earthquake.

The warm wet wind at the top of the hill looking down is still with me, as is the morning i got up around four to go down to the harbour by the Galata bridge and hop on the first ferry and watch the sunrise in the Bosporus, from dark almost black to plumb grey to sepia to purple to pink to all hues.

The Kis Kulesi at down soon become a symbol of my own childhood, the little girl left in the tower by her father the king who died and by dying abandoned her to this water laden solitude. I painted it again and again and to those who were unfortunate enough to get one i state, again, it is tilted, only slightly, or it’s just the way i see it.

The mausoleum of the foreign queen, the frozen clocks in palaces, not one minute more after the death of Ataturk.

Those were my reasons, not what i found. Instead i was offered a child-to- young adult memoir so local yet so universal that glimpses of my own childhood came flooding back, smells, old rooms, relatives houses, cupboards filled with treasures. Pools of rain in the street were again a treat, a hole in the back garden fence an appetite again. Childhood, lived and desired, figured prominently in my dreams that summer, and i dreamt a lot, that i remember.

I finished the book two nights ago, finally got the courage to say goodbye. As i’d lost the mark, i lost myself for a while trying to figure out where i’d left off, then decided to go back to a particularly painful chapter, To be unhappy is to hate oneself in one’s city.

Yet again, i recognized the long dark angry walks of my youth and, as i read on, the conversations with my mother that infallibly turned to rows, humiliations and my bolting out into the night, A conversation with my mother: Patience, Caution and Art is the last chapter.

“The city has no centre other than ourselves”, Pamuk’s apt words, and that is why i haven’t come round to taking back mine, not yet.

So, there’s a song I can’t hear, about someone who has worked it out, this thing between yourself and your city.

And tonight, out of the blue, Lhasa’s gone to the place that ends all pain i hear, and the shock sets off this post about a place and how it becomes sacred, and another place and how it persists to raise its hideous head.

I’ll hear the solitude and anger and obsessed love in your songs as clearly as i feel the wind on the top of the hill looking down, for as long as I live.

Tired Pony explained and REM news

2010-01-05T20:44:00.002Z

Peter Buck is in on it, am i dreaming, please don't wake me up, i knew something good would come out of this and this is almost too good.
The finish line is a great place to start.
Complete interview
zSHARE - Snow Patrol on the Vic Galloway Show.mp3

tired pony

2010-01-04T22:03:00.003Z

the language of freedom and love and blogging

2010-01-02T01:21:00.007Z

Went by themojorising, a few hours ago, read about music and movies and writing in a foreign language.

Share most of the music choices – thank you people who post music-of-the-decade lists, i lack the discipline.

I like his reasons for writing in English, I sympathise, and it makes think of mine.

It began a long time ago, as a teenager with no privacy to speak of, english was my lock and key, the only way to safeguard my writing from the ever prying eyes and fingers of mother.

The language of late adolescence/ early adulthood, to read and write in, to be free in, again.

Edinburgh at the age of 23, listening to Heaney read his poetry one evening in my hall. Cider, jazz and cèilidh, long walks in the morning, long walks late at night, second hand bookshops, and hangovers.

From Scotland down to London, a six-hour bus ride i’ve no memory of, which is odd.

Our first time, me and London, a lifetime love affair. The day before leaving, standing on tower bridge looking eastward and crying for the end of my life, all i saw ahead was a grey future in a grey country in a grey town.

Two years later i granted myself permission to love a man and accept his love, for the first time i faced the big fear to be with someone who was patient enough to be patient while ignoring the cause, and because it was his language, it became the language of hurt, anger and resentment, of surprise, joy and protection.

The perfect language for late night tea making, whatever the reason.

belle & sebastian for new year

2009-12-31T20:50:00.000Z

Enjoy!

One fish two fish red fish blue fish, and you win

2009-12-30T00:41:00.017Z

Song of the decade, votes, not sales, nor props.

Look at the intro to the video, wigs, dance routines, military fancy coats, grand upright pianos, looking mean looks, all in vain.

Way to go, Bighair Littletshirt, making up some new idiom as you're at it, something that manages to pull your leg while popping your cherry, quite handy, come to think of it.

Oh the dr. seuss t shirt, beats kellogs anytime., beats rock star costume anytime.

Look at the original video to the song: dirt and water and this scruffy fellow with wings on his eyeballs. Not that i like it, but it is what it is. By the way, i don't like the studio voice either, why does it have to be filtered and flattened, like decaf when compared to the real thing.

The pantry song - that's affectionate and a bit of a private joke, back from the days people asked about a certain someone and i'd say he's fine, where? he's locked up in my pantry, actually, but i let him out every night, that's where i keep my secrets. so has he been...? no, he's been fine, got a plasma and internet in there, it's quite snug.

As you say, it's weird, the way people relate to songs.

star off star off star off

you're pulling my cherry

this is gonna be a hit

we've not had a hit yet so, in twelve years, so, could you stop saying that

Thank you, leona

Do that leona lewis song

Now there's PPL (your turn to go wtf) who control music licencing in the UK, they've been adding up the number of times a song's been played on radio stations, the internet, public places, shops, well, not your ipod, but then who knows, only to find out http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8434418.stm

No wonder they had to rework it.

My choice would have been Run, it is Run, there's no pleasing some people.

And i still can't pinpoint how i relate to it.

surprise or not so much: the good winter

2009-12-28T20:03:00.006Z

Winter is not summer, finally a good enough way to put it, that's where and when i am, not summer.

winter always felt like punishment, this great desolate space, a frozen lake, a time of repetition, a chore to get through.

Late december feels like the middle of the big long it, you start to miss summer like a long gone youthful memory.

You get warm around a bonfire of glowing music. Beirut and Vampire Weekend feel like cotton short sleeves in May, smell of sea and tanning lotion, fairgrounds and barbecues, open toed sandals and sand in every seem of you.

Le Loup, Guillemots, Megafaun share the glow and all that comes with it, the noise and the places, and of course they sound like winter in the french guiana, weekends in africa, nightfalls by the red sea.

They sound like the good winter.

Rudolph the red nosed reindeer... Wondered where he was coming from? Merry Christmas!

2009-12-24T20:33:00.006Z

So, here it is, enjoy!

madrinhas, afilhados e contadores

2009-12-23T02:34:00.004Z

Menino, arranjaste mais uma madrinha.
E pronto, já cá está o dreamtimer, contador de espreitadelas, não sei é quanto tempo aguenta, vamos lá a ver como é que a minha auto-estima lida com ele.

wee woolly people and chalk little boy

2009-12-22T21:18:00.010Z

Soft spots, yea, one of mine's for anticlips, simple ones, they let you read into them, let you dream into them.
The first is an old favorite.
And then one i've just come across. The song itself should be an anthem, is an anthem. It's a rare thing these days for singer songwriters to sing about something bigger than themselves, thank you Rushe.
The words are so beautiful i just had to add them.

We boys we were Soldiers before our day came
A Cowboy, an Indian, a Spy with no name
I’d hide behind you and follow your lead
The brave go before us, such is there need to go

Home, it’s time to go home now, its time to go
Home, sleeping boy, sleeping boy

One by one the ambulance came
Two by two the King and his men
We boys we were soldiers asleep in our beds
The day the sleeping boy fell on his head we sang

Home, it’s time to go home now, its time to go
Home, it’s time to go home now, its time to go
Home, it’s time to go home now, its time to go
Home, sleeping boy, sleeping boy

I ran from your funeral as fast as I could
Past the stone fortress and the secret wood
The lies they were telling too mean to be true
The boy in the coffin could never be you
Oh we boys we were Soldiers before our day came
A Cowboy, an Indian, a Spy with no name
I’d hide behind you and follow your lead
The brave go before us, such is there need to go

Home, it’s time to go home now, its time to go
Home, it’s time to go home now, its time to go
Home, it’s time to go home now, its time to go
Home, sleeping boy, sleeping boy

lighting up your life

2009-12-22T20:12:00.004Z

O Luis mandou-me esta coisa tão linda que não resisti a partilhá-la aqui.
Inspirado nos spots da tmobile, who cares?

next to you: add to the surprise

2009-12-22T05:40:00.012Z

A caixinha aqui do lado parece que está igual mas não está, tem mais uma faixa. É dos Blind Pilot, I buried a bone, é o número vinte e um, mesmo no fim. Por sinal a minha preferida, por isso hesitei tanto, deu-me um surto de egoismo maternal, porquê mandá-la para o mundo se ninguém vai gostar tanto dela como eu?

Give it three days, it'll go away. And it did. Um dia destes até a mando de brinde. Fica prometido, este é o próximo brinde (your catholic upbringing, no matter how halfhearted, will always lash back at you).

Passei o mês de agosto a cantar isto.

Às vezes também me dá para ter saudades de mim.

I buried a bone

and darling you don't know him

darling you don't know him

darling you don't know

and just where you are

might be the right place

might be that sweet space

but you don't know

well look me in the head

I've got nothing on my mind

I've been waiting for you all this time

and I'd seen a path turn to an old road

but the secret's too slow

and we're too fast

look me in the mouth

I've got nothing in my smile

I've been waiting for you

you're just my style

look me in the gut

I've got fear from my own name

I'd dig it up for you if you'd do the same

I buried a bone

and darling you don't know him

darling you don't know him

darling you don't know

Padraig Rushe, esta é pra ti, Maria, you know who you are

2009-12-22T00:09:00.008Z

A luz do meu dia de ontem.

Ainda fico com mais vontade de ir à Figueira ver o Mississipi Gospel Choir.
Alguma da música do próprio pode ser ouvida no myspace dele mesmo, clicando no título deste post, mesmo assim, não resisto a juntar aqui uma jóia do próprio que me dá vontade de ir dançar pró meio da rua, no meio da noite.

Oferece-nos esta outra canção, para podermos guardar, passar para as caixinhas de música ambulantes, ao alcançe de um

http://www.padraigrushe.com/default.asp, e, quem sabe, dançar no meio da rua no meio da noite.
O disco, para já, é que nem vê-lo. Alguém está a pensar em ir à Irlanda?
E já agora, Damien Who?

next to you: surprise or maybe not

2009-12-20T15:44:00.007Z

Mesmo aqui ao lado, pois, não consegui inseri-lo à esquerda, está uma caixinha cujo conteúdo irá mudando sem regularidade absolutamente nenhuma: são amostras do que vou tirando dos meus baús internos, externos e autónomos. Autónomos? Sim, aqueles que andam por aí sem obediência a qualquer cpu, são aquelas fatias redondas e gostosas que já tiveram lugar de honra nas salas de estar, ainda voam de mão para mão. Agumas das minhas voaram mesmo.

Não são propriamente novidades, nem isso é critério, e também é verdade que não tenho ido à pesca.

Por acaso até fui, há uma horita atrás, ver se pescava algo de um rapazinho a quem ouvi uma versão daquela canção do Cohen, e não é que ele se aguenta? Acho até que do seu trono luminoso, Jeff Buckley já lhe deve ter dado a benção.

Acontece que só uma mercearia é que vende a tal fatia redonda, ora nem mais, só no senhor Antunes. Azar que ando um nadita avessa a patrões únicos e universais, esses e outros que tais, desde que das nossas, sim nossas, livrarias londrinas só sobra uma. Haverá, ainda acredito, maneira de comprar o disco ao rapaz.

Pois é, por agora, vão umas gotas de som, a correr aqui ao lado, nesse faz.de conta.que.é.um.gira-discos:

Blind Pilot, Selftitled, primogénito e único, so far, que é o melhor disco do ano na minha categoria melhor disco de 2009 que saíu em 2008.

Sea Wolf, White Water, White Bloom.

Sleade Cleaves, Everything You Love Will Be Taken Away.

E não é que me esqueci de incluir Mountain Goats? Combina bem, ficava um sortido assim como aquele que tem chocolate e marmelada e um bocadinho de côco e debaixo destas delícias a bolachinha.

Nem toda a informação contida neste post está correcta, don't look for accuracy here, it's not that kind of place, in fact, there are no facts here, only dreams.

Snow Sublime

2009-12-19T00:09:00.017Z

You leave it for a while, then you learn how to split videos, then you learn how to split files, as nothing works you give in to youtube, very privately, as there's no other way, and you want to migrate to wordpress, you hate corporate, you won't give in to nespresso, there's some consolation there...

MY BRIGHTEST DIAMOND

2009-12-18T08:00:00.005Z

when all else fails, change the subject

2009-12-18T01:21:00.005Z

Spent the past three days - and nights - trying, very hard to upload my last two videos from the now long gone and forgotten, no way, snow patrol gig. decided to let go of it for a while, here's some My Brightest Diamond playing in my corner of the woods early this month.

What might have been a great show...
Stalls half empty, balcony full, the priciest seats, at 18€, went unsold which, i take, meant not the faintest attempt was ever made to promote this outside campus. Flyers were everywhere, they tell me, yea right, and where is that?
Now, to the the audience, what a sad bunch, they probably wouldn't agree, i know better though, just for once. They looked and sounded like they might be busy trying to grab some pop-corn, catch this on DVD later. coimbra crowds are difficult, they tell me, yea right. Arrogant maybe, no crowd either.
On stage, the diamond shone with her own sound; prince, nina simone and kurt weill shared the glow of shara's voice and fingers.
we couldn't treasure you, we failed you, dear, i'm sorry.

Esta é pra ti, João

2009-12-16T01:08:00.006Z

One day like this

2009-12-15T22:38:00.007Z

Monday, 23rd/11/06
I was putting together a list of my favourite covers for a post, a while ago, as it went all systems down. The draft is tucked away somewhere in the universe of hard drives, external and not so much, it will find the light of screen, some day.
This one is up there, way up there at the top of my top three, my favourite non sarcastic cover - sarcastic ones are fun, Travis' Baby one more time is way up there too. Now this, this is a thing of beauty.

Drinking in the morning sun
Blinking in the morning sun
Shaking off a heavy one
Heavy like a loaded gun
What made me behave that way?
Using words I never say
I can only think it must be love
Oh, anyway, it's looking like a beautiful day
Someone tell me how I feel?
Silly wrong but vivid right
Oh, kiss me like the final meal
Yeah, kiss me like we die tonight
Cause holy cow, I love your eyes
And only now I see the light
Yeah, ly in with me half-awake
Oh, anyway, it's looking like a beautiful day
When my face is chamois-creased
If you think I'll wink, I did
Laugh politely at repeats
Yeah, kiss me when my lips are thin
Cause holy cow, I love your eyes
And only now I see the light
Yeah, ly in with me half-awake
Stumbling over what to say
Well, anyway, it's looking like a beautiful day
So throw those curtains wide!
One day like this a year would see me right!

Snow Patrol One day like this (Elbow cover)

dark roman wine

2009-12-15T21:38:00.006Z

Monday, 23rd/11/06

I will hang on the arc of your splendour
As the night rolls us up in its arms
And the square of your thumbs and your fingers
Is the blanket of the sky that's so warm
I know it's late but I can't help but thinking
That the day hasn't shown all its cards
Now it's out to the stars of the ocean
Let's not retrace our steps to the car
Picking out of the stars that we like
Between finger and thumb
You laugh as you pass me the night
As if it's too fragile to hold
And I hold it so close to my chest
With your hands in my hands
You say this is just how we'll rest
Until the land turns to sand
Now your eyelids they faint and they shiver
Like the wings of the last bird to leave
For the south for the sun for no reason
I watch as they fly for sheer joy
The wind shakes the branches above us
And the cars shake the ground on our backs
But the dark roman wine in our bloodstreams
Makes the cold just a word, just a sound
Picking out of the stars that we like
Between finger and thumb
You laugh as you pass me the night
As if it's too fragile to hold
And I hold it so close to my chest
With your hands in my hands
You say this is just how we'll rest
Until the land turns to sand

Set down your glass

2009-12-14T23:02:00.021Z

Monday, 23rd/11/09

Is it, it can't be, it is, it is, every time.

Every time the sound begins, again, again and again, twenty-six times. Well, there were twenty-seven songs, and i was there for all of them, but there is one i hoped they wouldn't, i knew they would though, and of course they did, and no, it wasn't Chasing Cars, and yes, it found some beauty when it it came to it, enough, that's another post, it will hurt, it will come, the readiness is all.

Just close your eyes

And count to five

Let's craft the only thing we know into surprise

Set down your glass

I painted this

To look like you and me forever as we're now

And I'm shaking then I'm still

When you're eyes meet mine

I lose simple skills

Like to tell you all I want is now

You sing and I'm killed

I'm just not the same

As I was a year ago and each minute since then

My jumper tears

As we take it off

And you say you'll sew me good as new and I know you will

And I'm shaken then I'm still

When your eyes meet mine I lose simple skills

Like to tell you all I want is now

And I'm shaken then I'm still

When your eyes meet mine I lose simple skills

Like to tell you all I want is now

Set down your glass, incomplete because i couldn't believe it was what I knew it was

the finish line is the right place to start

2009-12-14T21:19:00.009Z

Monday, 23rd/11/09

Flashes keep coming back at weird times and places.

There was this exhibition at the tate british i went to in the morning, on the sublime. Sitting in the quiet, being sucked into the beautiful frightening chaotic melancholy of turner, bathing blinded in his light, i thought paradise would be spending the night in one of these rooms, in and out of sleep with those wondrous ghosts for company.

In anticipation of the evening ahead, i wondered how much sublime i could take, or how much i deserved, in one day.

As i left the tate and took a cab to the rah to collect my ticket, this idea of sublime kept coming back, the beautiful noise from rehearsals, two of the musical gests passed by me, up the stairs outside as i was going down, slowly, secretly wishing i could stay.

In another time bubble, as my soul was hanging from one the balloons in the skylike ceiling, i saw and heard someone on that stage saying "This is sublime, whatever that is", and i felt the coolness of tears and a strange relief.

And what is true of those paintings is true of you, lovely Snow.

This is sublime and everything that is.

The earth is warm next to my ear

Insect noise is all that I hear

A magic trick makes the world disappear

The skies are dark, they're dark but they're clear

A distant motorcade and suddenly there's joy

The snow and ticker tape blurs all my senses numb

It's like the finish line where everything just ends

The crack of radios seems close enough to touch

Cold water, cleaning my wounds

A sad parade, with a single balloon

I'm done with this, I'm counting to ten

Bluest seas, running to them

I feel like I am watching everything from space

And in a minute I'll hear my name and I'll wake

I think the finish line's a good place we could start

Take a deep breath, take in all that you could want

Snow Patrol, RAH, the finish line

how to save your own life

2009-05-01T00:20:00.012+01:00

From time to time you bump into a song, or rather, into a title or a line, and it blows out inside you like a grenade, hurt, anger, regret, all at once. You heart races, your throat tightens, and the air in your lungs won’t come out. You feel the cold of loss coming from somewhere inside your bones, the need to talk to someone but you can’t and you know you won’t, you know you wouldn’t if you could.
So, that what cannot be said must be written.
So, you would write about a lost friendship, a minefield, to thread into with the lightest footfall, still bound to a stupid sense of loyalty, when you know in your darkest well, every now and then, you wish him dead or suffering countless unbearable aches. You eventually came to peace with his spinelessness, but never with his arrogant and calculated use of a mutual friend as pawn at his game of “coming out smelling like roses."
For all he instantly and callously razed.
For all he chose not to heed.
For all he chose not to treasure.
Years of trust, high regard, loyalty, gratitude, long nights, long talks, drunken humour, wobbly walks, gossip dinners, confided fears, exchanged gifts, birthday calls. Somehow, you’d feel protected from his sharp tongue and his scornful heart; they would never turn against you.
You know you underestimated the consequences of some long gone rebuff, you never made much of it, thinking he was just trying to size you up.
You know you were too honest, almost too honest to believe.
And you know you had stayed up all night with him.
And you know you had saved his life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd07loOpcjw

The Fray, "How To Save A Life"

Step one you say we need to talk
He walks you say sit down it's just a talk
He smiles politely back at you
You stare politely right on through
Some sort of window to your right
As he goes left and you stay right

Between the lines of fear and blame
You begin to wonder why you came

Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
And I'd known how to save a life

Let him know that you know best
Cause after all you do know best
Try to slip past his defense
Without granting innocence
Lay down a list of what is wrong
The things you've told him all along

And pray to God he hears you
And pray to God he hears you

Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
And I'd known how to save a life

As he begins to raise his voice
You lower yours and grant him one last choice
Drive until you lose the road
Or break with the ones you've followed
He will do one of two things
He will admit to everything
Or he'll say he's just not the same
And you'll begin to wonder why you came:

Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night

And I'd known how to save a life

the only light: how someone gave you the world

2009-04-29T19:45:00.016+01:00

This is how it works: i very rarely send forwards. The same applies to viewing them.

I like attaching audio files to my mails, some friends reciprocate. If you like the song, it’ll stay with you.
Last night someone sent me a very beautiful forward, the world and a poem on top of it, literally.

So, there you go, there is beauty in forwards.

...............................................................

Para um amigo tenho sempre um relógio
esquecido em qualquer fundo de algibeira.
Mas esse relógio não marca o tempo inútil.
São restos de tabaco e de ternura rápida.
É um arco-iris de sombra, quente e trémulo.
É um copo de vinho com o meu sangue e o sol.

António Vítor Ramos Rosa, Viagem através de uma nebulosa

dreams coming true

2009-04-23T04:09:00.010+01:00

The Shins, prescribed for the heart; male angel voices and three links to the translucent joy of music

2009-04-16T00:12:00.006+01:00

New Slang and Saint Simon.
The first is a perfect love song, live because i have a soft spot for live versions. Saint Simon for the melody.
A voice somewhere between Gary (sp) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Re1giF36OE8 and Tim (james) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3khFhtLXZjQ
A photo that reinstates my belief in people over imageridden iconography (there’s tautology and then there’s periphrasis, and bad writing).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijxKQ_vwW-Q

New Slang

gold teeth and a curse for this town were all in my mouth.
only, i don't know how they got out, dear.
turn me back into the pet that i was when we met.
i was happier then with no mind-set.

and if you'd 'a took to me like
a gull takes to the wind.
well, i'd 'a jumped from my tree
and i'd a danced like the king of the eyesores
and the rest of our lives would 'a fared well.

new slang when you notice the stripes, the dirt in your fries.
hope it's right when you die, old and bony.
dawn breaks like a bull through the hall,
never should have called
but my head's to the wall and i'm lonely.

and if you'd 'a took to me like
a gull takes to the wind.
well, i'd 'a jumped from my tree
and i'd a danced like the kind of the eyesores
and the rest of our lives would 'a fared well.
god speed all the bakers at dawn may they all cut their thumbs,
and bleed into their buns 'till they melt away.

i'm looking in on the good life i might be doomed never to find.
without a trust or flaming fields am i too dumb to refine?
and if you'd 'a took to me like
well i'd a danced like the queen of the eyesores
and the rest of our lives would 'a fared well.

Tinny little fractures: March was a cruel month

2009-04-05T03:11:00.006+01:00

Margarida, the white cat with black spots, passed away one early Saturday morning. She lived with us for five short years. Noni, the black cat with white spots, howls and looks for her, she’s not greeting anyone at the door, for now, not even me.
My godchildren were mostly on my mind, the anxiety of merely watching as they make lifetime decisions at the top end of their teens.
One of them threading too wisely for her years, pondering options, while I dream of her drinking up the entire world to the last drop, going places, doing things, everything she could ever want.
The other suddenly breaks away from home, lost in feelings of failure and self punishment, sucked in by depression. A child still, in a swirl of anger. I know he’s in pain, and so are we.
These longings, this unremitting void, hoping their life turns out fine, waiting for a time when there will be no more waiting because their life will be definitely fine, all this tells me how much I love my surrogate children.
Why this piece of music then? It contains the sentence every affiliate of the male species utters at least five hundred times, on carefully thought out times: “Is there a T shirt I could wear?” It doesn’t fail to make me smile.

SNOW PATROL, tiny little fractures

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Hnaj3GMmAM

Noni e Margarida na sua praia preferida

To her, in the language of love

2009-04-04T22:38:00.006+01:00

It was from her I heard the harshest words of my adult years.
I saw her eyes lit up with a joyful sparkle across the table, with what I felt were pleasure and pride. Then I knew I was doing well.
Somehow, I’ve always felt the blows were well earned, not the praise.
To the day, it is her I most regret having let down, her I promise myself never again to fail, because she kept her faith in me when mine never was. I still can’t figure out how she did it, knowledgeable as she was in all my shortcomings.
It was obvious I looked up to her, not so obvious I still do. She gave me my scale, my meter, how can I measure up?
She figures prominently in my dreams: she reassures me, tells it like it is, points the way, settles the score. She comes into my dreams as she was around forty, long black hair in a yellow raincoat. All right, forty is a wild guess.
I didn’t know her then, little me sitting around in gloomy corridors waiting for the next class and she would run up the stairs, to the sound of dangling keys (she must be big, lots of keys and her own style).
I once dreamed she had a daughter. That was the moment it all made sense. That’s why I felt so scared, so threatened. Why I was so inadequate, so quiet.
To the day, I owe it to her. That the beauty in words brightens my days, that I still stubbornly translate a poem when its twisted lines ensnare me, that I still read up on those ever much loved subjects.

BON IVER For Emma forever ago

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6S__IpVpSQ

A year in the snow: love and music, and other scary little big things

2009-04-04T21:04:00.009+01:00

Dreamed a scary dream, in a corner there was a church entrance bathed in torchlight, and I could hear a choir singing Mozart’s requiem, and that was where I wanted to go, to find refuge and solace from a nightmare of shame and being left behind on dark muddy paths.
Woke up bewildered, trying to make sense of disturbing fragments, of the feeling of self disgust and inappropriateness encapsulated in dreamt actions, not mine though, but I dreamt them.
The first thought I had was his name. A funny name, male and female, it had light in it. It had lit a long forgotten year in the snow, away from home, whatever home was back then, at twenty-eight. It had Mozart in it.
That was his connection to the dream. Frozen memories awake, words and images rush back as fresh as new, oh the absence of time.
It came back to me that last night someone told me, in conversation, I was a Joyce expert, the ultimate paradox, and quizzed me on the mammoth subject. OK, I admit to not having read Finnegan’s wake, I guess it sets me apart, I own a couple of well thumbed Ulysses copies, including the 1922 edition, fair enough.
All I know about jay jay is that I love the myopic painful majestic sublime beauty of Dubliners, every one of the stories a pearl in a string that is a love poem singing the song of the city. And I go to sleep trying to remember the closing lines of The Dead I used to know by heart and dish out often.
No wonder my dream brought back a year long buried under forgiving ice, and a boy with a bubble that made it possible just to survive that year and to bring back a thing of joy, back from where I had thought there was only pain.

His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

about you now Snow Patrol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4923-5zJGZ8

the forgotten art of interviewing

2009-02-08T21:11:00.003Z

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNORmBJolZQ

Not the best picture, definitely the best picture ou, de novo, o belo e o bom

2009-02-07T21:03:00.008Z

Estava eu perdida entre uma abundância de escolhas pouco frequente: Mulholland Drive (Lynch), Turner (Joseph Mallord William), Snow in London (belated), quando escolhi pegar, novamente, no fio da pintura que me levaria a londres num dia de inverno (no snow then), à tate, à conversa com um funcionário da galeria sobre o quadro que faltava, à peregrinação aos pré-rafaelitas, à national gallery, onde assisti pela segunda vez a uma aula ao vivo, o que levaria à primeira aula do género que vi no british museum, há mais de dez anos, em que um menino negro, praí com sete anos, mostrava ao professor uma figura de um negro num vaso grego, era aquela que ele ia desenhar, a sua alegria inocente, de quem sabe quem é, dizia “I’m here, i belong”.
Comecei por procurar uma imagem da representação do negro em vasos gregos, qualquer coisa como black people greek pottery art, e aparecem-me, nos primeiros resultados, umas imagens adequadas e com boa resolução, todas elas provenientes duma página que promove a supremacia da raça branca, através de discursos pseudohistóricos e pseudocientíficos. Leva-te direitinho para o índice, a ver se alguma coisa te interessa e te suga lá para dentro. Nem pensar, já sei o veneno, não lhe dou nem mais um hit. Tinha as imagens mais bonitas que encontrei, mas usá-las seria legitimar a fonte, aberta ou dissimuladamente.
Parto à procura de outras fotos que me sirvam o propósito, encontro outras e a história repete-se: não sabia da existência de uma raça grega e ignorava que a sua “miscigenação” fosse uma das causas do declínio da civilização em geral e, em particular, dessa coisa a que me apetece chamar branco sujo (off white).
Não vou identificar as páginas nem mostrar as imagens, acredito que, na improvável eventualidade de alguém ler este post, é sempre melhor não fazer publicidade.
Adeus turner, londres, the cheer joy of teaching/ learning, little black boys in greek vases. No Way! Virão mais tarde.
Procuro outra imagem, desta vez, verifico antecipadamente a proveniência. E encontro esta, muito mais bela, porque moralmente boa.

www.uwm.edu/Course/mythology/0100/104a.jpg

E já agora, porque é que acordei a cantar No Surprises?

The lady with the ermine – the stuff of dreams

2009-02-05T21:04:00.009Z

The process of dream interpretation does not differ much from looking at a painting and asking it some questions: how do I feel when first looking at it? What do I believe it tells me? Is it conflict or harmony? What do I think it represents? How do I relate to the subject and or the characters? What does it remind of?
Dreams are, as paintings, sometimes deceptively straightforward, academic, a simple landscape, a simple portrait that is, apparently, just what it is.
Take a step closer, take a step back, distrust the quiet ease, the dream is there to deceive and enlighten, to show and to hide, and so is the painting.
Leonardo’s painting takes me for a ride. A canonical portrait of a lady with her fashionable pet, nothing disturbing.
Yea right, says the back of my brain. She’s holding the ermine to her chest like one would hold a baby, is she a weird Madonna? Her attention seems to be caught by something (or someone?) outside the picture, where the light comes from, now that’s not canonical, is it? In fact, the ermine’s gaze is the one that meets mine, which is confusing: who or what is at the centre of the painting? The ermine? Well, the little rodent certainly has the stage. What about the background? It sets the characters in mere darkness and it leaves me in the dark.
Paintings, as dreams, are symbols. When this portrait was commissioned, in the late 15th C, the ermine was a powerful symbol of virtue and cleanliness: it was a common belief that these animals would die if their coats got dirty. To a contemporary observer, the association of the lady with such animal should have had the obvious intention of proving her purity.
The young woman portrayed by Leonardo was, in fact, the mistress of the Duke of Milan, seventeen-year-old Cecilia Gallerani who, at such a young age had already born her master a son.
The ermine had a prominent place in the duke’s coat of arms, and the clothes worn by Cecilia in the painting were certainly not contemporary, but rather a costume-like middle age attire. In the background, there used to be a door which was later painted over.
Who is, then, the central character? Who paid the commission? Who found a way of portraying his power and wealth through the ambiguity of symbol? Is she, in her quiet pose, listening to his instructions?

http://barlowz.net/b3ta/Ermine-with-a-Lady.jpg

I AM NOT A PHOTOGRAPHER or "art and politics vs selfexpression"

2009-02-04T01:38:00.010Z

i take photos, i am not a singer, i sing, i am not a painter, etc, you got the point by now. I'm moved purely by the need for selfexpression, i don't have the technique, the knowlege, the performative qualities, the narcisism or whatever it takes to be be an artist, i.e. artizan, craftswoman, performer. I don't intend to sell the product.

now on to portuguese- and global - politics: as you might have gessed, i'm not a politician, i'm a citizen.

(dramática mudança de língua)

Sou não-alinhada mas sei onde tenho o coração, não posso nem devo delegar a minha voz nos profissionais da política, verdadeiros artistas, malabaristas, ilusionistas.

Parece que esquecemos a nossa voz, nós que ainda temos convicções, que ainda embalamos a nossa criança interior e a alimentamos de sonhos, que ainda fazemos coisas sem utilidade nenhuma só para sermos felizes ao fazê-las, nós que conseguimos viver tão bem sem tácticas, nós que temos na consciência uma balança que nos pesa a cada acto e por isso arredamos do nosso caminho a validação externa e anónima da excelência.

Nós que nos vemos no olhar de quem nos vê, sem cobardia, nós que só queremos ser, temos obrigação de enrouquecer para que nos ouçam:

Não é verdade que apenas o que é objectivo é válido; o subjectivo, além de eficaz, também pode ser belo, moralmente bom e uma alegria para a eternidade.

Ensinar pode ser apenas bom e belo e será, então, certamente, eficaz.

Ajudar a crescer, ler almas pequeninas, com firmeza na boca e amor na concha da mão, regar sonhos, espantar medos, está para lá de todos os ministérios, de todas as formigas de fato.

Imagina, sente, resiste, resiste.

duas citações encapotadas: "A thing of beauty is a joy forever" e "ants in pants".

E já agora, porque é que acordei a a cantar motorcycle emptiness?

celestial sister

2009-02-02T18:36:00.014Z

eclectic, specific, aquatic, dramatic, subliminal, stable, oblique, audible, enigmatic, nonsensical, aromatic, volatile, palatable, sublime...

sleepless night sleepless place

2009-02-02T12:22:00.004Z

had a ditto night, fortunately they are rare.

they come with early flights, the adrenaline of arriving to empty airports, the glare of artificial light - still dark outside - too much caffeine, too many cigarettes - chain smoking before no smoking, absurd directions, white and blue.

one day, yet, you find an empty beauty at noon, immaculate, deserted desert, you pause to capture the absence of humanity, just shadow and light and shape and line and white.

your destination in reverse, anticipating red.

Chaplinesque

2009-02-02T11:43:00.013Z

We will make our meek adjustments,
Contented with such random consolations
As the wind deposits
In slithered and too ample pockets.

For we can still love the world,

who findA famished kitten on the step, and know

Recesses for it from the fury of the street,

Or warm torn elbow coverts.

We will sidestep, and to the final smirk

Dally the doom of that inevitable thumb

That slowly chafes its puckered index toward us,

Facing the dull squint with what innocence

And what surprise!

And yet these fine collapses are not lies

more than the pirouettes of any pliant cane;

Our obsequies are, in a way, no enterprise.

We can evade you, and all else but the heart:

What blame to us if the heart live on.

The game enforces smirks; but we have seen
The moon in lonely alleys make
A grail of laughter of an empty ash can,
And through all sound of gaiety and quest
Have heard a kitten in the wilderness.

Harold Hart Crane

places in my dreams 1

2009-02-01T23:02:00.006Z

a good dusk dream has been, again and again, going down my favourite london street, spying down backlanes where locals have portuguese barbecues, baking fish on coal fires, my double identity...
there's always a light wind and darkness is not menacing.
btw these pictures were taken coming up, the reverse of shaftesbury av as a dream place.