JOURNAL: MY OLD PERSON MUSIC TASTES + BUBBLES

Me and Bubbles the yeti whom we've been making at work when we get the chance. He's so hug-able.

Aside from the usual favorite songs like Lou Reed's "Perfect Day," Velvet Underground's "Found a Reason," and The Smiths "There is a Light that Never Goes Out," I've found a lot of new musical obsessions lately. In playing DJ in my office, I instituted cultural music mornings which my coworker heartily embraced and which have taken over the whole day. Some of our forays are more adventurous than others, like that time we tried didgeridoo music.

On stressful days we may put on the Chet Baker radio station; when we're peppy it's the Regional Mexicano station. Our lists of internet radio stations are ever expanding. My coworker is regularly calling out requests, we're both always looking for new things. Tonight I found a Russian songstress who sings in Russian I'm excited to delve into, and I believe I've figured out how we can listen to more of Benoit Quersin and Esole Eka Likota's Anthologie de la musique Congolaise. I bring all these up to spread the delight I find them to be, I think you should all be listening to them. Also, to point out that I am largely out of touch with whatever may be on a contemporary radio station. Don't worry, I'm really 87 not 27.

Accordingly, I've got two treats for you tonight you must immediately listen to.

One is the Accordion Tribe's "Waltz for Sandy."

Accordion Tribe - Waltz for Sandy (Klucevsek) from Boléro on Vimeo.

The other star is Nino Ferrer's "Les Cornichons." That translates to a song entitled "Pickles." The entire song is about food. It's largely comprised of lists of foods and condiments like mayonnaise, mustard, mushrooms, chicken, chocolate, etc.



That is all, now go about your ways with love and fascination.
xoxo

JOURNAL: SPILT BRAIN ON SPLIT LIP*

"Anyone lived in a pretty how town" says e e cummings. In sixth grade I tried to write my name on my papers in a lower case letters. I don't think I knew much of e e cummings poetry, I definitely wasn't much of a poetry fan in those days, but I knew of him and his small e's. My teacher asked me if my name wasn't a proper noun. Proper noun. What a strange term. I went back to capitalizing my name. 

There is another term, ambiguity tolerance, that in the context in which I learned it refers to how well you handle broad instructions on an assignment. Do you prefer itemized rubrics asking for a personal essay that's five pages long, single-spaced, Times New Roman 12 point font, making sure to cover the points of your birth, most embarrassing moment, graduation from high school, and how good you are at sticking to a grocery list? Or do you prefer the looseness of being asked to write a personal essay, taking as long as necessary to fully explain your thoughts?

Or, outside of the classroom, does your heart feel at peace when you read:

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did

Or, how frustrated do you become with my blog?

My ambiguity tolerance in liberal arts and the kitchen is usually very high. For instance, my ideas for Halloween costumes this year have been: The Beatles' "Revolution #9," Light as a feather/Stiff as a board, or a constellation which was such a concrete idea it quickly transmuted into Outer Space. (Which, in reality, just looks like I'm wearing a giant navy blue mumu and trying to be a wizard.) However, situations that are typically classified as straightforward are highly foggy to me. Like biology and this goals/performance review worksheet I'm to do for work. I've an email here with a list of questions to help me come up with goals. "What career goals do you have? What sorts of training do you need to get there?" Within the confines of the job I'm at now, because they require temps to participate as well, these questions seem the height of ambiguity and therefore must each require three pages of conjecture. Instead, I have a spreadsheet to fill in. This is a part of business that confuses me. "Here, human, tell me your hopes and dreams but in a succinct enough matter that it will fit in these 4 merged spreadsheet cells but compelling enough that we promote you, give you health insurance, and treat you like a human being."

Have I been dropped in an unfamiliar sea? In a place where the sun casts its light so evenly there's no telling cardinal directions and what land awaits me who knows where? Never mind, New Sea, I don't worry, I can swim.

all by all and deep by deep

and more by more they dream their sleep

noone and anyone earth by april

wish by spirit and if by yes.

   

*from The Woman Who Laughed on Calgary by Heather McHugh
anyone lived in a pretty how town by e e cummings

JOURNAL: NEW JOB/ELEPHANT TRAINING

It's finally happened: I train elephants for a living. This new job is in the Business Service Center of an Amazon building so you might be surprised that elephants have anything to do with it, but I'm training them to walk quietly. They're showing some promise, it's very hard for them but soon they'll be ready and we'll be able to let them out on the floors to do the daily copy room runs on each of the floors. Of course they're also receiving training on using prosthetics in order to increase their dexterity but that's run through a different office. I'm in the 'walk softly' office. 

You see, imagine you're hunching over your computer screen and have hit a wall, you look up, and there is an elephant tiptoeing past. Wouldn't you find that inspiring? The hope is that if they walk silently enough they won't disturb anyone concentrating but those who need a break will get a burst of joy at the sight of our highly skilled elephants. It's all very experimental but we're really investing a lot here. We're replacing all of the existing elevators with freight elevators to create a workplace that doesn't discriminate against any of our employees. It's very important to us that the elephants get treated with the same respect and have the same benefits we do.

I've been taking the bus to work every day, soon––maybe tomorrow––I hope to ride my bike there, but so far I'm only taking the bus. It's great to have the reading time, though every once in a while I tear my eyes away from the page and soak in the view of the boats and the houses on the lake sinking away into the foggy morning.

In the afternoons I work with a gaggle of gnomes, teaching them how to sing in four part harmony. I've found this to be a demanding but incredibly rewarding task. Gnomes pitch fits quite easily but they're learning to appreciate the music I have picked out for them. Tomorrow afternoon I've arranged for the gnomes to teach me about their traditional music. I had to get permission for us to get access to the most secret basement level of the building, the gnomes tell me the acoustics get better for their folk ballads the more subterranean you get. They also tell me I'm supposed to dress up like a slimy worm, do you think they're pulling my leg? They're teaching me a lot about being a good sport and not taking myself too seriously.

Where exactly the singing gnomes will fit into this corporate landscape continues to remain unclear but it's important to think laterally and between the lines and boxes. Plus, now that I've started with this band of hellions, I want to teach them how to sing "Catch a falling star" until the day I die. It may take them that long to learn it, anyway. 

i'm not quite laughing

Has anyone else looked up the definition of "incubus" and then thought about how it was a name of a band in the 90's they liked and been a bit troubled/amused?


Researching the history of British comedy before the 1960s is only funny when in the midst of articles on music hall musicians, comedians, and analysis on what T. S. Eliot meant when he used the world "popular" in writing a memorial, you come across articles with abstracts like this:


"The article offers tips on how teachers can maintain the interest of special needs students during school assemblies in Great Britain. It is suggested that introductory music be played as pupils enter the hall to offer them something to listen to. The article also provides advice for how teachers can ensure that students on oxygen and students with epilepsy will be appropriately monitored during the assembly."

Oh the incongruity.

mentholated temples

As a young Marge Bjork, entrepreneurship seemed risky and not worthwhile (although I longed to be a potter...).

As a teenager Marge Bjork, I still felt that being your own boss seemed fliberty-jibitty (even though I wanted to be a rock star...).

As a twenty something Marge Bjork I committed to a free lance life (of filmmaking) afraid of making my own way in the world and secretly imagining hiding away in a library or a restaurant my entire career.

It hasn't taken much time of being a twenty something Marge Bjork to get itching for a fully free-lanced life. I'll do it, I will.

I just want to make documentaries. Period.

apollo can smell that girl's couscous

Sometimes I look at our youth (as in the youth we possess and not an age group of people) and I think we've become renaissance men. I don't mean in aristotelian or neo-platonistic ways, I'm bored by those ideas right now. I mean we're becoming jack-of-all-trades-like. I was talking to a friend the other day who has at least six jobs. They relate to Twitter, illegal french fries, socks, and stuffed animals. KB is working on the start-up of an Esty shop because she restores antiques and paints furniture (as well as being the cutest usher you ever did see). She says, "Why not make money doing what we like?"
Of course, the fact that we all have a million jobs may have something to do with the economy.
But before economy, when I was only sweat-shop-work aged, I dreamed of hanging my artwork up outside and selling them to people. It seemed much more appealing than selling lemonade. I figured out I could clothes pin my drawings to hangers and string them up across the front yard. I chickened out.

I plan on all-trading-it for a lot of my life. I like it.

remind me later to tell you my story about the kites.