Ryan + the Machine

Where do we find our inspiration? Why do some people, ideas, places pursue us across space and time, grab hold of us, haunt us?

Sometimes it wafts up through the courtyard in your apartment in Copenhagen and calls you down to the quay. Sometimes it comes up through the floorboards, when the neighbors below are holding a party, and you are instantly and forever drawn to its particular alchemy of voice, instrumentation, and arrangement, however muffled, and you wonder with heartache if you will ever hear this one song again; and then you do hear it again, at a birthday party in a restaurant, and you ask a suspiciously with-it young person whose CD collection (should he know what CDs are) did not reach its apex in, for example, 1996, and he tells you that you are searching for something called Florence + the Machine.

Sometimes you write a really long sentence.

I suppose the mystical answer, the Jungian answer, is that we find something of ourselves in the things that find us. And whatever light (and darkness) we find elsewhere are already in us, our built-in star chart to discovering what strength we may yet possess, what demons below deck we carry.

I do not own a Florence + the Machine CD, have not yet downloaded a digital copy, have only watched several (visually stunning) videos on the website. I know that "Dog Days Are Over" is the thing that hooked me, and that "Cosmic Love" is even better, and so I look up its lyrics and can do nothing but smile, and laugh a little, and give thanks, when I find words from an artist who may as well be on the other side of the Cosmos and yet somehow seems to know what I'm searching for:

I took the stars from my eyes,
And then I made a map,
I knew that somehow,
I could find my way back,

Then I heard your heart beating, you were darkness too,
So I stayed in the darkness with you.

The Conductor

Life is full. Very full. Which is good, very good. Rest assured, dear Readers, that in due time the fullness and the goodness shall be processed and expressed in these pages.

Meanwhile, as they say, Hawk is growing by leaps and bounds and has recently accomplished such feats of derring-do as walking on a balance beam and bouldering (sideways) at a rock-climbing gym (where the minimum age is four, but if Mom’s glance goes elsewhere for a moment you do what you gotta do.) His main preoccupation these days, however, is music. In fact, ever since he was a tiny little guy, Hawk has been crazy about music of almost any kind.

As soon as he hears a tune on the car stereo, the TV, wherever, his index fingers point like little batons, his hands wave to the rhythm as if conducting the whole affair, and his face lights up in a big grin that says, “Hey! It’s music!”

Hawk and I will jam while Jenifer is away somewhere on a secret yoga mission. These sessions may include the African goatskin drum or wooden xylophone he got for his birthday, the shamanic gourd-rattle, or the “jingle box” fashioned out of jingle bells and a container that once held Trader Joe’s chocolate.

Lately he’ll start conducting at the TV and DVD player, our source of CD magic, and this is my signal to put in some Dylan or U2. His other current favorite is mariachi, which he went mad for when a documentary featuring female mariachi players was on TV. In fact, whenever the interview “interrupted” the music, he grew quite angry, indeed. Usually, though, he greets the end of each song with clapping.

It’s too early to tell if he’ll be the next Gustavo Dudamel, but for now he has the requisite wild hair and self-possessed bravado, and (most important) is having a blast.

Hawk Is One

A Few Honest Words

Every so often you come across something so staggeringly new and exciting that you feel compelled to run into the streets and spread the news. Fortunately, a blog also will work.

There we were, enjoying a perfectly nice pajama day, watching PBS as we are wont to do, when On Canvas comes on and this young fellow appears, in Philadelphia’s First Unitarian Church, and he’s singing in the clearest of voices and not playing so much as exercising his cello in the most unconventional and pleasing manner. His music is a refreshing hodge podge of bluegrass, folk, and jazz. His name is Ben Sollee and he will be well known one day.

Hearts and Hands: Seven Songs

This meme comes to you courtesy of Brian from Across the Water: List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now.

Ever since Jenifer and I started carpooling nearly every day, I haven’t listened to much music. We prefer to yammer. Here, then, a minor musical odyssey:

1. “Love’s Divine” by Seal, from Seal IV. This CD recently came back to us after being lost at a friend’s house for four years, not that I’m counting.

2. “Nobody Wants To” by Crowded House, from Time on Earth. The opening track to a CD I listened to nearly every day for probably three months. Wistful, brooding, thoughtful as ever.

3. “Baker Street” by Gerry Rafferty, from Right Down the Line: The Best of Gerry Rafferty (originally on City to City). Quite possibly my favorite pop/rock song of all time, nudging out U2’s “With or Without You” and The Police’s “Every Breath You Take.” I've never been to the place and the lyrics are dark, but for me this is the stuff of childhood: summer heat, that burning sax on the radio, and Star Wars in the theaters . . .

4. “Take My Hand” by Toto, from the Dune Original Soundtrack. Quite possibly a perfect song, except that at two minutes and 35 seconds long it is heartbreakingly short. The film was also too short but not perfect. (And yet still I love it.)

5. “Runnin’ Down a Dream” by Tom Petty, from Full Moon Fever. Saw him in concert for the first time a few weeks ago. Brilliant. I knew he was a great songwriter, but had no idea he was such a showman. Truly an American treasure.

6. “Falling Slowly” by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, from Once: Music from the Motion Picture. Great song from one of my favorite movies of last year. It’s even better on the screen. See it.

7. “The Right Moment” by Gerry Rafferty, from Right Down the Line: The Best of Gerry Rafferty (originally on Sleepwalking). The last track on the Best of album. Has there ever been a more haunting kick in the pants? Yes, and it is “Archaic Torso of Apollo” by Rilke, but that is a poem and not an iPodological phenomenon. Crank dat Soulja Boy!

Bonus track: “Yahweh” by U2, from How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. Some nailed Bono for being too on the nose with the chorus. For me, the track is yet more evidence that no other major act closes an album so well:

Take this city
A city should be shining on a hill
Take this city
If it be your will
What no man can own, no man can take
Take this heart
Take this heart
Take this heart
And make it break

Next up: Brett at A Bucket of Love, Shawna at Shouting into the Wind, Tom at The Bag Means Your Mind, Tony at The Money Pitt, Courtney at ice cream socialite, Gabi and Natalia at Spanish at the Kitchen Table, and Fun Joel at Fun Joel.