the pluralistic universe

I HOPE you weren't asleep," Bird said as Himiko opened the door for him.

"Asleep? At this hour?" the girl teased. Himiko held up one hand against the midday sun but it didn't help; the light at Bird's back descended roughly on her neck and shoulders, bare where her violet terrycloth bathrobe fell away. Himiko's grandfather was a Kyushu fisherman who had taken as a wife, abducted really, a Russian girl from Vladivostok. That explained the whiteness of Himiko's skin; you could see the web of capillary vessels just beneath the surface. In the way she moved, too, was something to suggest the confusion of the immigrant who is never quite at ease in his new country.

Wincing in the rush of light, Himiko stepped back into the shadow of the open door with the ruffled haste of a mother hen. She was in that meager stage of womanhood between the vulnerable beauty of a young girl, which she had lost, and the mature woman's fullness still to come. Himiko was probably the type of woman who would have to spend a particularly long time in this tenuous state.

Quickly, in order to protect his friend from the revealing light, Bird stepped inside and closed the door. For an instant the cramped space of the vestibule felt like the inside of a hooded cage. Bird blinked rapidly while he took off his shoes, trying to accustom his eyes to the dimness. Himiko hovered in the darkness between him, watching.

"I hate to disturb people when they're sleeping," Bird offered.

"You're so timid today, Bird. Anyway, I wasn't asleep; if I nap during the day I can never get to sleep at night. I was thinking about the pluralistic universe."

Pluralistic universe? Good enough, Bird thought, we can discuss it over whisky. Glancing around him like a hunting dog nosing for a spoor, Bird followed Himiko inside. In the living room it might have been evening, and the gloom was dark and stagnant like a bed of straw for sick livestock. Bird squinted down at the old but sturdy rattan chair he always sat in and carefully lowered himself into it after removing some magazines. Until Himiko had showered and dressed and put on some make-up, she wouldn't turn on the lights, much less open the curtains. Company had to wait patiently in the dark. During his last visit here a year ago, Bird had stepped on a glass and had cut the base of his big toe. Recalling the pain and the panic, he shivered.

It was hard to decide where to put the bottle of whisky: an elaborate confusion of books and magazines, empty boxes and bottles, shells, knives, scissors, withered flowers collected in winter woods, insect specimens, and old and new letters covered not only the entire floor and the table, but even the low bookcase along the window, the record player, and the television set. Bird hesitated, then shuffled a small space on the floor with his feet and wedged the bottle of Johnnie Walker between his ankles. Watching from the door, Himiko said as though in greeting, "I still haven't learned to be neat. Bird, was it like this the last time you were here?"

"Damn right it was; I cut my big toe!"

"Of course, the floor around the chair there was all bloody, wasn't it," Himiko reminisced. "It's been ages, Bird. But everything's the same around here. How about you?"

"As a matter of fact, I had a kind of accident."

"Accident?"

Bird hesitated; he hadn't planned to start right in with all his troubles. "We had a child but it died right away," he simplified.

"No! Really? The same thing happened to friends of mine - two friends! That makes three people I know. Don't you think fallout in the rain has something to do with it?"

Bird tried comparing his child who seemed to have two heads with pictures he had seen of mutations caused by radioactivity. But he had only to think to himself about the baby's abnormality and a sense of extremely personal shame hotly rose into his throat. How could he discuss the misfortune with other people; it was inherent in himself! He had the feeling this would never be a problem he could share with the rest of mankind.

"In my son's case, it was apparently just an accident."

"What an awful experience for you, Bird," Himiko said, and she looked at him quietly with an expression in her eyes that seemed to cloud her lids with ink.

Bird didn't trouble himself with the message in Himiko's eyes; instead, he lifted the bottle of Johnnie Walker. "I wanted somewhere to drink and I knew you wouldn't mind even if it was the middle of the day. Have a drink with me?"

Bird sensed himself wheedling the girl, like any brazen young gigolo. But that was the way men whom Himiko knew generally behaved toward her. The man she had married, more openly than Bird or any of her other friends, had played up to her as though he were a younger brother. And suddenly one morning he had hanged himself.

"I can see the baby's death is still close to you, Bird. You haven't recovered yet. Well, I'm not going to ask you anything more about it."

"That would probably be best. There's almost nothing to tell anyway."

"Shall we have a drink?"

"Good."

"I want to take a shower, but you start. Bird! There are glasses and a pitcher in the kitchen."

Himiko disappeared into the bedroom and Bird stood up. The kitchen and the bathroom shared the twisted space at the end of the hall that amounted to the tail of the little house. Bird jumped over a cat crouching on the floor, the bathrobe and underclothes Himiko had just thrown off, and went into the kitchen. On his way back with a pitcher of water, glasses and cups he had washed himself, two in each pocket, he happened to glance past the open glass door and saw Himiko showering at the back of the bathroom, where it was even darker than the hall. With her left hand upheld as if to check the black water pouring out of the darkness above her head and her right hand resting on her belly, Himiko was looking down over her right shoulder at her buttocks and slightly arched right calf. Bird saw back and buttocks and legs, and the sight filled him with a disgust he couldn't repress; his flesh turned to goosepimples. Bird rose on his toes as if to flee a darkness alive with ghosts: and then he was running, trembling, past the bedroom and back to the familiar rattan chair. He had conquered it once, he couldn't say when, and now it had reawakened in him: the juvenile's disgust, anxiety ridden, for the naked body. Bird sensed that the octopus of disgust would extend its tentacles even when he turned to his wife, who now lay in a hospital bed thinking about the baby who had gone with its father to another hospital because of a defective heart. But would the feeling last for a long time? Would it grow acute?

Bird broke the seal on the bottle with his fingernail and poured himself a drink. His arm was still shaking: the glass chattered at the bottle like an angry rat. Bird scowled thornily, a hermetic old man, and hurled the whisky down his throat. God, it burned! Coughing shook him and his eyes teared. But the arrow of red-hot pleasure pierced his belly instantly, and the shuddering stopped. Bird brought up a child's belch redolent of wild strawberries, wiped his wet lips with the back of his hand, and filled his glass again, this time with a steady hand. How many thousands of hours had he been avoiding this stuff? Harboring something like a grudge against no one he could name, Bird emptied his second glass busily, like a titmouse pecking at millet seeds. His throat didn't burn this time, he didn't cough, and tears didn't come to his eyes. Bird lifted the bottle of Johnnie Walker and studied the picture on the label. He sighed rapturously, and drank a third glass.

By the time Himiko came back, Bird was beginning to get drunk. As Himiko's body entered the room disgust lifted its head, but its function was impaired by the poisons in the alcohol. Besides, the black, one-piece dress Himiko had put on diminished the threat of the flesh it covered: like a mass of shaggy hair, it made her look like a laughable cartoon bear. When Himiko had combed her hair she turned on the lights. Bird cleared a space on the table, set up a glass and a cup for Himiko and poured her whisky and a glass of water. Himiko sat down in a large, carved, wooden chair, managing her skirt with extreme care so that no more than necessary of her freshly washed skin was exposed. Bird was grateful. He was gradually overcoming his disgust, but that didn't mean he had uprooted it.

"Here we are," Bird said, and drained his glass.

"Here we are!" Himiko pouted her lower lip like an orangutan sampling a flavor, and took a tiny sip of whisky.

They sat there, quietly lacing the air with hot, whisky breath, and for the first time looked each other in the eye. Fresh from her shower, Himiko wasn't ugly; the woman who had shrunk from the sunlight might have been this girl's mother. Bird was pleased. Moments of regeneration as striking as this could still occur at Himiko's age. "I thought of a poem when I was in the shower. Do you remember this?" Himiko whispered one line of an English poem as though it were a spell. Bird listened, and asked her to recite it again.

"'Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.'"

"But you can't murder all the babies in their cradles," Bird said. "Who is the poet?"

"William Blake. You remember, I wrote my thesis on him."

"Of course, you were working on Blake." Bird turned his head and discovered the Blake reproduction hanging on the wall that adjoined the bedroom. He had seen the painting often but he had never looked at it carefully. Now he noticed how bizarre it was. A public square walled in by buildings in the style of the Middle East. In the distance rose a pair of stylized pyramids: it must have been Egypt. The thin light of dawn suffused the scene - or was it dusk? Sprawled in the square like a fish distraught mother, surrounded by a group of old men with lanterns and presence overhead, swooping across the square with arms outspread. Was it human? The beautifully muscled body was covered with scales. The eyes were full of an ominous dolor and were fanatically bitter; the mouth was a hollow in the face so deep it swallowed up the nose - a soaring upward, reaching for the turbulence of the night sky even while it burned in the flames of its own scales.

"What's he doing? Are those supposed to be scales or is he wearing a coat of mail like the knights of the Middle Ages?"

"I think they're scales," Himiko said. "in the color plate they were green and they looked much scalier. He's the Plague! Doing his best to destroy the oldest sons of Egypt!"

Bird didn't know much about the Bible; perhaps it was a scene from Exodus. Whatever, the creature's eyes and mouth were virulently grotesque. Grief, fear, astonishment, fatigue, loneliness - even a hint of laughter boiled limitlessly from its coal-black eyes and salamander mouth.

"Isn't he a groove!" Himiko said.

"You like the man with the scales?"

"Sure I do. And I like to imagine how I'd feel if I were the spirit of the Plague myself."

"Probably so badly your eyes and mouth would start looking like his." Bird glanced at Himiko's mouth.

"It's frightening, isn't it? Whenever I have a frightening experience, I think how much worse it would be if I were frightening someone else - that way I get psychological compensation. Do you think you've made anyone else as afraid as you've ever been in your life?"

"I wonder. I'd have to think about it."

"It's probably not the sort of thing you can think about; you have to know."

"Then I guess I've never really frightened another person."

"I'm sure you haven't - not yet. But don't you suppose it's an experience you'll have sooner or later?" Himiko's tone was reserved, nonetheless prophetic.

"I suppose murdering a baby in its cradle would terrify yourself and everyone else, too." Bird poured himself and Himiko a drink, emptied his own glass in a swallow and filled it again. Himiko wasn't drinking at such a fast clip.

"Are you holding back?" Bird said.

"Because I'll be driving later. Have I ever given you a ride, Bird?"

"I don't think so. We'll have to go one of these days."

"Come over any night and I'll take you. It's dangerous in the day because there's too much traffic; my reflexes are much faster when it's dark."

"Is that why you shut yourself up all day long and drink? You lead a real philosopher's life - a philosopher who races around in a red MG after dark - not bad. What's this pluralistic universe?"

Bird watched with mild satisfaction as delight tightened Himiko's face. This was restitution for the rudeness of his sudden visit and for all the drinking he planned to do: not that many people besides himself would lend an attentive ear to Himiko's reveries.

"Right now you and I are sitting and talking together in a room that's a part of what we call the real word," Himiko began. Bird settled down to listen, carefully balancing a fresh drink on his palm. "Well it just so happens that you and I exist in altogether different forms in countless other universes, too. Now! We can both remember times in the past when the chances of living or dying were fifty-fifty. For example, when I was a child, I got typhoid fever and almost died. And I still remember perfectly well the moment when I reached a crossroads; I could have descended into death or climbed the slope to recovery. Naturally, the Himiko sitting with you in this room chose the road to recovery. But in that same instant, another Himiko chose death! And a universe of people with brief memories of the Himiko who died went into motion around my young corpse all inflamed with typhoid rash. Do you see, Bird? Every time you stand at a crossroads of life and death, you have two universes in front of you; one loses all relation to you because you die, the other maintains its relation to you because you survive in it. Just as you would take off your clothes, you abandon the universe in which you only exist as a corpse and move on to the universe in which you are still alive. In other words, various universes emerge around each of us the way tree limbs and leaves branch away from the trunk.

"This kind of universal cell division occurred when my husband committed suicide, too. I was left behind in the universe where he died, but in another universe on the other side, where he continues to live without committing suicide, another Himiko is living with him. The world a man leaves behind when he dies, say at a very young age, and the world in which he escapes death, continue to live - the worlds that contain us are constantly multiplying. That's all I mean by the pluralistic universe.

"And you know something, Bird? You don't have to feel so bad about your baby's death. Because another universe has diverged from the baby, and in the world developing in that universe the baby is growing healthy and strong this very minute. In that world you're a young father drunk on happiness and I'm feeling groovy because I've just heard the good news and we're drinking a toast together. Bird? Do you understand?"

The smile on Bird's face was peaceful. The alcohol had spread to the remotest capillary in his body and it was taking its full effect: pressure has been equalized between the pink darkness inside him and the world outside. Not that the feeling would last long, as Bird well knew.

"Bird, you may not understand fully but do you get at least the general idea? There must have been moments in your twenty-seven years when you stood at a dubious junction of life and death. Well, at each of those moments you survived in one universe and left your own corpse behind in another. Bird? You must remember a few of those moments."

"I do, as a matter of fact. Are you saying I left my own corpse behind on each of those occasions and escaped alive into this universe?"

"Exactly."

Could she be right? Bird wondered sleepily. Had another Bird remained behind as a corpse at each of those critical moments? And was there an assortment of dead Birds in myriad other universes, a frail and timid schoolboy, and a high-school student with a simple mind but a much stronger body than his own? Then which of those many dead was the most desirable Bird? One thing was certain: not himself, not the Bird in this universe.

"Then is there a final death when your death in this world is your death in all the others, too?"

"There must be: otherwise, you'd have to live to infinity in at least one universe. I'd say you probably die your final death of old age when you're over ninety. So we all live on in one universe or another until we die of old age in our final universe - that sounds fair, doesn't it, Bird?"

Sudden comprehension forced Bird to interrupt: "You're still tormenting yourself about your husband's suicide, aren't you? And you've conceived this whole philosophical swindle in order to rob death of its finality."

"Say what you want, my role since he left me behind in this universe has been to wonder constantly why he died. . . ." The gray skin around Himiko's weakening eyes colored with ugly swiftness. ". . . now that's an unpleasant role but I've stepped into it, I'm not shirking my responsibilities, at least not in this universe."

"Please don't think I'm criticizing you, Himiko, because I'm not. I just don't like to see you fooling yourself. . . ." Bird smiled, trying to dilute the poison in his words, yet he persisted. "You're trying to make something relative out of the irrevocability of your husband's death by assuming another universe where he is still alive. But you can't make the absoluteness of death relative, no matter what psychological tricks you use."

"Maybe you're right, Bird . . . can I have another glass of whisky, please." Himiko's voice was dry, empty of interest. Bird filled both their glasses and prayed that Himiko would drink away her memory of his spontaneous criticism and continue again tomorrow to dream about her pluralistic universe. Like a time-traveler visiting a world ten thousand years in the past, Bird was terrified of being responsible for any mishap in the world of present time. The feeling had been growing in him slowly since he had learned that his baby was a freak. Now he wanted to drop out of this world for a while, as a man drops out of a poker game when he has a bad run of cards.

In silence Bird and Himiko exchanged magnanimous smiles and drank their whisky purposefully, like beetles sucking sap. The noises from the summer afternoon street sounded to Bird like signals from a vast distance, unheeded signals. Bird shift in his chair and yawned, shedding one tear as meaningless as saliva. He filled his glass again and drank down the whisky in a swallow - to ensure that his descent from the world wold be smooth. . . .

"Bird?"

Bird started, spilling whisky on his lap, and opened his eyes; he could feel himself in the second stage of drunkenness.

"What?"

"That buckskin coat you got from your uncle - whatever happened to it?" Himiko moved her tongue slowly, working at accurate pronunciation. Her face, like a large tomato, was round and very red.

"That's a good question; I used to wear it in my first year at school."

"Bird! You still have it in the winter of your sophomore year -"

Winter - the world splashed into the pool of Bird's whisky-weakened memory.

"That's right - I spread it on the wet ground in that lumberyard the night we made it together. The next morning it was caked with mud and wood shavings. I could never wear it again: the cleaners wouldn't take buckskin coats in those days. I think I rolled it up in a closet and later I must have thrown it away."

As he spoke, Bird remembered that dark knight in the middle of winter and the incident that seemed already in the distant past. It was their sophomore year at college. Bird and Himiko had been drinking together, and they were very drunk. Bird walked Himiko home; he grabbed her in the darkness in the lumberyard behind her boarding house. They faced each other in the cold, shivering, and their caresses were simple until Bird's hand, as though by accident, touched Himiko's vagina. Agitated, Bird pressed Himiko against some lumber that was stacked against a board fence and labored to insert himself in her. Himiko did her best to help but she gave up at last and softly laughed. Though both of them were in a frenzy, the embrace was still in the domain of play. Nonetheless, when he realized he would not be able to insert his penis as long as they were standing, Bird felt humiliated by circumstance, which made him dogged. He spread his buckskin coat on the ground and lay Himiko down on top of it - laughing still. Himiko was a tall girl: her head and her legs below the knee rested on the bare ground. After a while the laughing stopped and Bird supposed she was approaching orgasm. But a little later he inquired, and Himiko replied that she was merely cold. Bird interrupted their lovemaking.

"I was a real savage in those days," Bird said reflectively, like an octogenarian.

"I was a savage, too."

"I wonder why we never tried again somewhere else."

"What happened in the lumberyard seemed so accidental, I had a feeling the next morning that it could never be repeated."

"It was extraordinary, all right. An incident. Almost a rape," Bird said uncomfortably.

"Almost? It was rape," Himiko corrected.

"But was there really no pleasure at all for you? I mean, you were nowhere near coming?" Bird sounded resentful.

"What did you expect - after all, that was my first time."

Bird stared at Himiko in amazement. She wasn't, he knew, a person to tell that variety of lie or joke. He was dumbfounded, and then a sense of ridiculousness a hair's breadth away from fear drove a short laugh past his lips. The laughter infected Himiko, too.

"Life is full of wonder," Bird said, turning a fierce red that wasn't entirely the whisky's fault.

"Bird, don't sound so crushed. The fact that I had never had sex before can only have been significant for me, if it had any meaning at all - it had nothing to do with you."

Bird filled a cup instead of a glass and drank the whisky down in a single breath. He wanted to remember the incident in the lumberyard more accurately. It was true that his penis had been repelled again and again by something hard and stretched like a drawn lip. But he had assumed that the cold had simply shriveled Himiko. Then what about the bloodstains on the bottom of his shirt the next morning? Why hadn't that made him suspect? he wondered: and like a whim, desire seized him. Bird bit his lips closed as if he were fighting pain, and gripped his whisky cup. At the very center of his body a tumor or knotted pain and apprehension was engendered, unmistakably desire itself. Desire that resembled the pain and anxiety that seize a patient behind the ribs in a cardiac attack. What Bird felt now was not that meek desire, hardly a mole on the slack face of daily life, the polar opposite of the African dream that glinted high in the skies of his mind, that was demeaned once or twice a week even while it was eliminated when he dug into his wife, not that homey desire which sank in the mud of lugubrious fatigue by a thousand repetitions of the act, not a ticket you relinquished after one trip around on the toy train. Desire you could satisfy once and never again, perilous desire that made you wonder uneasily when the sating moment came if Death weren't stealing up behind your naked, sweating back. This was desire Bird might have satisfied late one winter night in a lumberyard if he had known for certain that he was raping a virgin.

Bird willed his throbbing, whisky-heated eyes to dart a weasel glance at Himiko. His brain ballooned, pulsing with blood. Cigarette smoke circled the room like a school of trapped sardines: Himiko seemed adrift on a sea of mist. She was watching Bird, her face in a funny, rapt, too simple smile, but her eyes were perceiving nothing. Himiko was lost in a whisky dream and her body seemed softer and rounder all over, particularly her red, fervid face. If only, Bird thought ruefully, I could repeat that winter night rape scene with Himiko. But he knew there wasn't a chance. What if they did make it again sometime, their intercourse would evoke the ravaged sparrow of a penis Bird had glimpsed this morning when he dressed and would evoke his wife's distended genitals sluggishly contracting after the agony of childbirth. Sex for Bird and Himiko would be linked to the dying baby, linked to all of mankind's miseries, to the wretchedness so loathsome that people unafflicted pretended not to see it, an attitude they called humanism. The sublimation of desire? This was scrapping it entirely. Bird gulped his whisky and his tepid insides shuddered. If he wanted to re-create in all its marvelous tension the sexual moment he had ruined that winter night, he would probably have no choice but to strangle the girl to death. The voice flapped out of the nest of desire inside him: Butcher her and fuck the corpse! But Bird knew he would never undertake that kind of adventure in his present state. I'm just feeling wistful and deprived because I learned Himiko was a virgin. Bird was disdainful of his own confusion and he tried to repudiate that part of himself. But the sea urchin of disquiet and black-hot desire would not swim away. If you can't slaughter her and rape the corpse, find something that can evoke a situation just as taut and volatile! But Bird was helpless; he could only stand in wonderment before his ignorance of peril and perversion. Bird drained his cup like a basketball player taking a drink of water after he has been ordered off the court for too many errors: peevishly, with self-disdain and evident distaste. The whisky has lost its bite now, and its bouquet; it wasn't even bitter anymore.

"Bird - do you always gulp your whisky by the glassful? As if it were tea? I can't even drink tea that fast if it's still hot."

"Always, it's always this way, when I drink," Bird mumbled.

"Even when you're with your wife?"

"Why?"

"You couldn't possibly satisfy a woman when you've been drinking that way. What's more important, I doubt that you could bring it off yourself, no matter how hard you tried. You'd end up with a whacky heart like a prostrate distance swimmer - and leave an alcohol slick like a rainbow next to the woman's head!"

"Are you thinking of going to bed with me now?"

"I wouldn't sleep with you when you've had this much to drink; it would be meaningless for both of us."

Bird worked a finger through a hole inside his pocket and explored something warm and soft: a silly, drowsing mouse. And withered, in perfect opposition to the sea urchin flaming in his chest.

"Nothing doing there, is there, Bird!" Confidently, Himiko challenged the slight movement.

"I may not be able to come myself but I can certainly carry on like a Chinese Monkey and boost you over the wall!"

"It's not that simple, you know - for me to have an orgasm. Bird, you don't seem to remember very clearly what happened when we lay on the ground in that lumberyard. There's no reason why you should. But for me, that was an initiation rite. It was a cold, squalid rite, ridiculous and pathetic, too. Since then I've been running a long-distance race and it's been a battle all the way, Bird!"

"Did I make you frigid?"

"If you mean the ordinary orgasm, I discovered that for myself right away. I had help from some of the guys in my class, almost before the mud under my nails from the lumberyard had dried. But ever since then I've been chasing a better orgasm, and then one better still - like climbing a flight of stairs!"

"And that's all you've done since you graduated from college?"

"Since before I graduated. I can see now that's been my real work since I was a student."

"You must be plenty sick of it."

"No, that's not true, Bird. One of these days I'll prove it to you - unless you want your only sexual memory of me to be that incident in the lumberyard, Bird?"

"And I'll teach you what I've picked up during my own long-distance race," Bird said. "Let's stop pecking at each other with our beaks like a pair of frustrated chicks; let's go to bed!"

"You've had too much to drink, Bird."

"You think a penis is the only organ that has anything to do with sex? I'd say that's pretty crude for an explorer in search of the supreme orgasm."

"Would you use fingers, then? Or lips? Or many some organ too freaky to believe, like an appendix? Sorry, that's not for me; it's too much like masturbation."

"You're certainly frank," Bird winced.

"Besides, Bird, you're not really looking for anything sexual today. You look to me as if sex would disgust you. Let's say we did go to bed together, you'd have all you could do to crumple between my legs and vomit. Your disgust would overwhelm you, and you'd smear my belly with brown whisky and yellow bile. You would, Bird! That happened to me once and it was awful."

"I guess we do learn from experience sometimes; your observations are correct," Bird said dejectedly.

"There's no hurry," Himiko consoled.

"No. No hurry. Seems like a hell of a long time since I was in a situation where I had to hurry. I was always in a hurry when I was a kid. I wonder why."

"Maybe because one has so little time as a child. I mean, you grow up so fast."

"I grew up fast, all right. And now I'm old enough to be a father. Only I wasn't adequately prepared as a father so I couldn't come up with a proper child. You think I'll ever become the father of a normal child? I have no confidence."

"No one is confident about that kind of thing, Bird. When your next baby has turned out to be perfectly healthy then you'll know for certain that you're a normal father. And you'll feel confident in retrospect."

"You've really become wise about life." Bird was heartened. "Himiko, I'd like to ask you - " The sleep anemone was engulfing him in waves and Bird knew he wouldn't be able to resist for more than a minute. He peered at the empty glass wavering in his field of vision and shook his head, wondering whether to have another drink; finally he conceded that his body could not accept another drop of whisky. The glass slipped through his fingers, struck his lap, and rolled onto the floor.

"Himiko, I'd like to ask you one more thing," Bird said, trying a little weight on his legs to see if he could stand, " - what kind of world after death do you go to when you die as an infant?"

"If there is such a world, it must be very simple, Bird. But can't you believe in my pluralistic universe? Your baby will live to the ripe old age of ninety in his final universe!"

"Ah yes," Bird said. "Well. I'm going to sleep. Himiko! Is it night yet? Would you take a peek through the curtains, please."

"It's the middle of the day, Bird. If you want to sleep, you can use my bed; I'll be going out as soon as it's dark."

"You'd abandon a pitiful friend for a red sports car?"

"When a pitiful friend is drunk, the best thing to do is to leave him alone. Otherwise we might both regret it later."

"Absolutely right! You have a hold on all the best of mankind's wisdom. So you drive around in that MG all night? Until dawn?"

"Sometimes, Bird. I have rounds to make - like a sandman looking for children who can't sleep!"

When Bird finally hoisted himself out of the rattan chair, limp and heavy as another man's body, he wrapped an arm around Himiko's sturdy shoulders and headed for the bedroom. A funny dwarf was dancing around inside the fiery sun that was his head, scattering powdered light like the fairy he had seen in Peter Pan. Bird laughed, tickled by the hallucination. As he collapsed on the bed, he managed one grateful exclamation: "Himiko! You're like a king great-aunt!"

Bird slept. Across the twilight square in his dream a scaly man moved with dark, sad eyes and a terrifying gash of a salamander mouth: but soon he was enfolded in the eddying, reddish-black dusk. The sound of a sports car pulling away; deep, comprehensive sleep.

Twice during the night Bird woke up, and neither time was Himiko there. He was awakened by restrained but persistent voices calling from outside the window: "Himiko! Himiko!"

In the first voice there was still an adolescent ring. The next time Bird opened his eyes, he heard the voice of a middle-aged man. He got out of bed, lifted the curtains where they met just as Himiko had done to look at him, and peered down at the night visitor. In the pale moonlight Bird saw a small gentleman in a linen tuxedo that looked too tight, as though it had shrunk; his round, eggish head lifted to the window, the little man was calling Himiko's name with a clouded expression that seemed to be a compound of embarrassment and mild self-disgust. Bird dropped the curtains and went into the next room to get the whisky bottle. In one swallow he drank what remained, burrowed back into his girlfriend's bed, and instantly fell asleep.
_

kenzaburō ōe. a personal matter. 1969. chapter 4.

TOP FIVE BLACK CAB SESSIONS

grizzly bear
beach house
fleet foxes
man man
brian wilson

runner-up: peter and the wolf

.the dmc.

MAYDAY! MAYDAY! MAYDAY!

{dark manatees collective radio presents...}
----------------------------------------------------------------------- TRUE JEWELS
-- a fifteen-track mixtape of saytown superheroes, 2006-present...

LISTEN HERE!


side a /// INTERNATIONAL DUST MITE THREAT

dj rasta mike - sit back and listen
morris orchids - ink
aether - makeshift sanctuary
megafauna - m.s.g.
cartographers - grandfather clock
marcus rubio & the gospel choir of pillows - (do) the military syndrome!
aether - dajame dormir


side b /// WORDS TO CONTEMPLATE

we leave at midnight - law of club and fang
blowing trees - california skies
the blend? - eating me alive
aether - variance
(unknown artist) - that northern shore
his astroturban - the words we choose
s.a. jazz workshop - my contemplation
mojoe - true jewels

AUDIO_EMBED ARCHIVES: "JOY SPRING"

another found art-object for all good manatees to adore: http://tiny.cc/70jmz

and track-list: madlib - rebirth cycle (super soul)

johnson & jonson - the only way

dj shadow - shakiyla [poor righteous teachers]

scarface - high note

madlib - anthenagin'(?)

corey christiansen, jimmy bruno, vic juris - all blues [miles davis]

the heartless bastards - the mountain

shakey jake harris - three times seven

japanese motos - interlude

little joy - with strangers

hope sandoval - bavarian fruit bread

vetiver - down from above

foreign exchange with muhsinah - daykeeper

paleo - in the morning linda dies

yo la tengo - madeline

moodyman - misled

metric - gimme sympathy (acoustic version)

fol chen - you and your sister in jericho

aether - variance

charles bukowski - when all the animals lay down

warne marsh - joy spring

SXSW: PLAN OF ATTACK

many of our dear comrades-in-arms will play a city-wide music festival on land in austin, texas soon. with a preference for daytime free shows (and free alcohol), here's our tentative schedule...

first, the word is, if you stand in line 10am monday at waterloo records, you can get free tickets to hear the decemberists play the i.f.c. party 10pm tuesday at pangea.

wednesday the 18th, the only daytime act we truly want to see (so far) is the evangelicals, 2:20pm at the red eyed fly. it's free, with free bloody marys and free beer. doors open by at least 12:30. in the evening, if we can get tickets (and afford them), m.ward, the department of eagles, and st. vincent play central presbyterian church.

if we can't, it's okay, because on thursday, the department of eagles open at waterloo records. starts at 2pm, but we'll probably get there much earlier to war for position. a couple acts later, howard gelb (of giant sand) plays. that's all free, as is the cold war kids and m. ward playing auditorium shores on lady bird lake starting at 6.

now, the only official listing we can find for one andrew bird esquire is stubb's at 11pm, but we imagine that will be pricey and packed as fuck. that's rubbish. he has to be playing some parties somewhere and they just don't want them to blow up too quickly. so we'll keep our lobeless ears to the ground.

on friday, vetiver, followed by the heartless bastards, 2pm at waterloo records. gotta see that, and if we somehow miss m.ward the entire week, he's playing the noon-to-5 village voice media show at la zona rosa - probably closing. for monies, we could hear beach house, peter bjorn and john, and grizzly bear at cedar street courtyard; we shall see.

saturday, we have to see the blue scholars and common market close a noon-to-6 free-event at the palm door, but if we miss them there, we'll have to catch them at the do512 compound; they go on there at 9p.m. (looks like doors around 2pm; free entrance, free lone star). at auditorium shores, beach house and explosions in the sky play for free at 6pm. and there's always waterloo park, where we could sun-burn our tender hide again waiting on vetiver, akron/family, king khan, and the black lips, starting at high noon. last year they had stand-up comics as well.

if you can't attend, we're sorry, and offer you this free music as recompense...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1VHKORLKys
http://www.subpop.com/asse..ts/audio/5247.mp3
http://mog.com/music/Giant.._Sand/Chore_Of_Enchantment../Bottom_Line_Man
http://pitchfork.tv/dont-l..ook-down/department-of-eag..les-part-1-of-2/in-ear-par..k
http://blogg.svt.se/psl/20..09/02/13/musik-med-peter-b..jorn-and-john/
http://www.npr.org/templat..es/story/story.php?storyId..=18611276
http://video.google.com/vi..deoplay?docid=-63604091980..03350585
http://www.youtube.com/wat..ch?v=MzudkoWbgIU
http://www.youtube.com/wat..ch?v=yGOe5dj_-gE
http://cdn.stereogum.com/m..p3/Beach%20House%20-%20Gil..a.mp3
http://www.youtube.com/wat..ch?v=5c5MnsnWDes
http://www.dailymotion.com../video/x2e0z4_cold-war-kid..s-hang-me-up-to-dry-new_mu..sic
http://www.youtube.com/wat..ch?v=ToEPFDIzhNA
http://www.kcrw.com/music/..programs/mb/mb090216andrew.._bird
http://www.prefixmag.com/m..edia/grizzly-bear/deep-blu..e-sea-live-in-brooklyn-vid..eo/26523/


update: some possible last minute changes: since we've seen vetiver and the heartless bastards before, we may cut over to the flamingo cantina to hear loney dear at around 2pm and jason lytle (of grandaddy fame) at around 4. this will largely depend on how good waterloo records was as a venue on the previous day (thursday).

OR...

there's a new development in andrew bird-watch: k.e.x.p. says he's playing their gig at 1:30pm friday, waay down on south congress at some television station, to be immediately followed by peter bjorn and john...

http://blog.kexp.org/blog/2009/03/12/kexp-announces-live-broadcast-from-me-television-studios-during-sxsw/
we'd have to get there around 10 or before to feel at all comfortable about getting a good spot in line - a big roll of the dice, possibly sacrificing other safer bets for naught.

andy cabic/erika wennerstrom, emil svanängen/jason lytle, andrew bird/pb&j ...decisions, decisions.

14 ON 14

(14) the french kicks - swimming.
-- a favorite rock band of ours, but they've yet to buckle down and make a masterpiece. then again, perhaps that's what we like about them: they don't burn themselves out; their music sounds effortless; their beauty is subtle. 'all our weekends' was probably our favorite song this year. we include their daytrotter session and a videotaped session they did for bright young things:
http://www.daytrotter.com/article/1336/french-kicks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Exr6y954bXE

(13) hauschka - ferndorf.
-- this music will make your brain grow. just an exquisite piano-centric record filled with gorgeous compositions. john cage never made the prepared piano sound as good as volker bertelmann does here. this site lets you preview all the songs on the album: http://fat-cat.co.uk/fatcat/release.php?id=268 - give 'blue bicycle', 'rode null', and 'schones madchen' a go, or allow this animated music video to heighten your alpha waves: http://pitchfork.tv/videos/hauschka-eltern

(12) the clips - matterhorn.
-- it's their debut and they already outdid bands like islands, tapes 'n tapes and coldplay this year. they remind us a bit of low flying owls, but since they're much superior song-writers - technically-proficient jammers and judicious harnessers of noise, we get the good feeling that these guys will be around much longer. we've dubbed their sound "'kid a' garage rock" due to their penchant for thommy yorke's piano-lines ('wire', 'darko', and 'abalone') and nigel godrich's atmospherics ('eyesuck'). mark our words: their next outing could conquer rock. you can listen to their whole album on their website: http://www.theclips.ca/

(11) vetiver - thing of the past.
-- okay, this album gets a little hokey at times: it's all covers of old-timey music, some of which failed to make the leap from vinyl to compact disc. but goddamn if they're aren't some great songs here; even the lamer cuts are well-done. in truth, this is probably only on our list because of one magic morning i spent listening to it on headphones, but judge for yourselves:
http://rcrdlbl.com/artists/Vetiver/download/Hook__Ladder
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqKCk9hk-xM

(10) vampire weekend - vampire weekend.
-- sure, they were over-hyped, but at least one of their songs had a peculiar way of making its way onto practically every mix c.d. we'd make this year: first it was 'walcott', then 'one (blake's got a new face)', then 'oxford comma', and finally, 'campus'. so they're not the next arcade fire - so what? they write pleasant, feel-good pop, and that's good enough for us. here's a live take they did with strings:
http://pitchfork.tv/special-presentation/vampire-weekend/part-4
and their wes anderson-esque, one-take extravaganza:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_i1xk07o4g

(9) evangelicals - the evening descends.
-- now this is a balls-out rock album, a band swinging for the fences: high-energy, multi-instrumental, loud, with great progressions, great solos, great melodies, and wonderful oddness. you'll see what we mean:
http://www.scjag.com/mp3/do/skeletonman.mp3
or check out their horror film spoof debut video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ydrfGYaO8Q

(8) fleet foxes - fleet foxes (and sun giant e.p.).
-- new folk revived by old gospel. robin pecknold is probably the most captivating new singer in popular music today. this record is fraught with flaws (as they've since admitted), but the raw power of the vocals trumps everything else. exhibit a:
http://vimeo.com/808568
exhibit b:
http://www.blackcabsessions.com/sessions.php?id=1213894850
exhibit c:
http://www.blogotheque.net/Fleet-Foxes

(7) jake one - white van music.
-- more albums like this will save hiphop: the underground working with heavy hitters without beef. here's brother ali, breaking it down: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IHn0RuCQtw
and here's an instrumental that showcases jake one's mastery of his craft:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=divApaxAt2Q

(6) department of eagles - in ear park.
-- best three-song opening of the year: 'in ear park', 'no one does it like you', and 'phantom other'. after that, the album hits a lull, and can be trying at parts. not every song has to jam out, daniel, especially not the otherwise beautiful 'floating on the lehigh'. still, this is the school of rock music we belong to, whether we like it or not; we've probably listened to the songs we do like on this album more than any other album all year. so here's their boring-ass take away show which we loved:
http://www.blogotheque.net/article.php3?id_article=3604
their performance on don't look down:
http://pitchfork.tv/dont-look-down/department-of-eagles-part-1-of-2
and daniel rossen and fred nicolaus by their lonesome:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2HYd7tA3rs

(5) shearwater - rook.
http://vimeo.com/412102

(4) beach house - devotion.
http://pitchfork.com/tv/#/episode/2568-beach-house/1/

(3) immortal technique - the 3rd world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxSHQmnEc5A

(2) portishead - third.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PXZjAieC3c

(1) the walkmen - you & me.
http://pitchfork.com/tv/#/episode/2571-the-walkmen/1/

room in brooklyn

It was in the summer, there was no school. His parents had gone someplace for the weekend and I was spending the weekend at his house, which was near Coney Island, in Brooklyn. We lived in Brooklyn too, in those days, but in a better neighborhood than Joey's. I think we had been lying around the beach, swimming a little and watching the near-naked girls pass, whistling at them and laughing. I am sure that if any of the girls we whistled at that day had shown any signs of responding, the ocean would not have been deep enough to drown our shame and terror. But the girls, no doubt, had some intimation of this, possibly from the way we whistled, and they ignored us. As the sun was setting we started up the boardwalk towards his house, with our wet bathing trunks on under our trousers.

And I think it began in the shower. I know that I felt something - as we were horsing around in that small, steamy room, stinging each other with wet towels - which I had not felt before, which mysteriously, and yet aimlessly, included him. I remember in myself a heavy reluctance to get dressed: I blamed it on the heat. But we did get dressed, sort of, and we ate cold things out of his icebox and drank a lot of beer. We must have gone to the movies. I can't think of any other reason for our going out and I remember walking down the dark, tropical Brooklyn streets with heat coming up from the pavements and banging from the walls of houses with enough force to kill a man, with all the world's grownups, it seemed, sitting shrill and disheveled on the stoops and all the world's children on the sidewalks or in the gutters or hanging from fire escapes, with my arm around Joey's shoulder. I was proud, I think, because his head came just below my ear. We were walking along and Joey was making dirty wisecracks and we were laughing. Odd to remember, for the first time in so long, how good I felt that night, how fond of Joey.

When we came back along those streets it was quiet; we were quiet too. We were very quiet in the apartment and sleepily got undressed in Joey's bedroom and went to bed. I fell asleep - for quite a while, I think. But I woke up to find the light on and Joey examining the pillow with great, ferocious care.

"What's the matter?"
"I think a bedbug bit me."
"You slob. You got bedbugs?"
"I think one bit me."
"You ever have a bedbug bite you before?"
"No."
"Well, go back to sleep. You're dreaming."

He looked at me with his mouth open and his dark eyes very big. It was as though he had just discovered that I was an expert on bedbugs. I laughed and grabbed his head as I had done God knows how many times before, when I was playing with him or when he had annoyed me. But this time when I touched him something happened in him and in me which made this touch different from any touch either of us had ever known. And he did not resist, as he usually did, but lay where I had pulled him, against my chest. And I realized that my heart was beating in an awful way and that Joey was trembling against me and the light in the room was very bright and hot. I started to move and to make some kind of joke but Joey mumbled something and I put my head down to hear. Joey raised his head as I lowered mine and we kissed, as it were, by accident. Then, for the first time in my life, I was really aware of another person's body, of another person's smell. We had our arms around each other. It was like holding in my hand some rare, exhausted, nearly doomed bird which I had miraculously happened to find. I was very frightened; I am sure he was frightened too, and we shut our eyes. To remember it so clearly, so painfully tonight tells me that I have never for an instant truly forgotten it. I feel in myself now a faint, a dreadful stirring of what so overwhelmingly stirred in me then, great thirsty heat, and trembling, and tenderness so painful I thought my heart would burst. But out of this astounding, intolerable pain came joy; we gave each other joy that night. It seemed, then, that a lifetime would not be long enough for me to act with Joey the act of love.

But that lifetime was short, was bounded by that night - it ended in the morning. I awoke while Joey was still sleeping, curled like a baby on his side, toward me. He looked like a baby, his mouth half open, his cheek flushed, his curly hair darkening the pillow and half hiding his damp round forehead and his long eye-lashes glinting slightly in the summer sun. We were both naked and the sheet we had used as a cover was tangled around our feet. Joey's body was brown, was sweaty, the most beautiful creation I had ever seen till then. I would have touched him to wake him up but something stopped me. I was suddenly afraid. Perhaps it was because he looked so innocent lying there, with such perfect trust; perhaps it was because he was so much smaller than me; my own body suddenly seemed gross and crushing and the desire which was rising in me seemed monstrous. But, above all, I was suddenly afraid. It was borne in on me: But Joey is a boy. I saw suddenly the power in his thighs, in his arms, and in his loosely curled firsts. The power and the promise and the mystery of that body made me suddenly afraid. That body suddenly seemed the black opening of a cavern in which I would be tortured till madness came, in which I would lose my manhood. Precisely, I wanted to know that mystery and feel that power and have that promise fulfilled through me. The sweat on my back grew cold. I was ashamed. The very bed, in its sweet disorder, testified to vileness. I wondered what Joey's mother would say when she saw the sheets. Then I thought of my father, who had no one in the world but me, my mother having died when I was little. A cavern opened in my mind, black, full of rumor, suggestion, of half-heard, half-forgotten, half-understood stories, full of dirty words. I thought I saw my future in that cavern. I was afraid. I could have cried, cried for shame and terror, cried for not understanding how this could have happened to me, how this could have happened in me. And I made my decision. I got out of bed and took a shower and was dressed and had breakfast ready when Joey woke up.

I did not tell him my decision; that would have broken my will. I did not wait to have breakfast with him but only drank some coffee and made an excuse to go home. I knew the excuse did not fool Joey; but he did not know how to protest or insist; he did not know that this was all he needed to have done. Then I, who had seen him that summer nearly every day till then, no longer went to see him. He did not come to see me. I would have been very happy to see him if he had, but the manner of my leave-taking had begun a constriction, which neither of us knew how to arrest. When I finally did see him, more or less by accident, near the end of the summer, I made up a long and totally untrue story about a girl I was going with and when school began again I picked up with a rougher, older crowd and was very nasty to Joey. And the sadder this made him, the nastier I became. He moved away at last, out of the neighborhood, away from our school, and I never saw him again.
_

james baldwin. giovanni's room. 1956. pages 6-10.

BEST MUSIC VIDEOS (SO FAR) FOR 2008

it's our conviction that watching these will make you a better sapient creature. only you've gotta watch them all in order, in one sitting, and you have to watch them in full screen mode [in high quality (if available on youtube) or in detached video mode (on mtvu)]. don't forget to maximize volume level as needed. mission orders relayed. over and out.

http://stereogum.com/archives/new-andrew-bird-feat-dianogah-video-lull_010551.html
http://www.mtvu.com/video/?id=1586214&vid=228022
http://www.spinner.com/2008/05/23/beach-house-gila-video-of-the-day/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRJ2YvRv3N4
http://www.wearethemasses.com/musicvideos/dodos_fools.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Octz-Rls1tI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoCtonftiXA
http://pitchfork.tv/videos/the-walkmen-in-the-new-year
http://www.spike.com/video/rip-portishead/2983205
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir-oBeMltLY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_i1xk07o4g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-22kD13rZE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AkCRcwhFQQ
http://www.prefixmag.com/media/okkervil-river/lost-coastlines-acoustic-live-in-norway-video/20615/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFPMPLELTZU
http://court13.com/TimeToPretend_480.mov

THREE SUMMERTIME MIXES

copernicus crater
_

john coltrane - like someone in love [jimmy van heusen]
adam green - when the pretty face
heliocentrics - flight 583
amon tobin - ever falling
elbow - one day like this
black spade - she's the one (20's love song)
man man - doo right
the kooks - mr. maker
masta ace - good ol' love
max roach - tender warriors
mark ronson with kasabian - l.s.f.
patrizia and jimmy - trust your child, pt.1
elliott smith - figure 8 [bob dorough]
air - left bank
klimek - ice storm
laura veirs - lake swimming
the white rabbits - untitled (daytrotter session)
the ruby suns - oh mojave
goldfrapp - eat yourself
cut copy - eternity one night only
guillemots - falling out of reach
roy hargrove with common - freestyle
kelley stoltz - put my troubles to sleep
fleet foxes - sun giant
_

amaranthine haze
_

brad mehldau - wonderwall [oasis]
the black keys - work me [junior kimbrough]
grandaddy - where i'm anymore
nina simone - you'll never walk alone [rodgers and hammerstein]
fleet foxes - innocent son
the dodos - red and purple
spiritualized - yeah yeah
islands - to a bond
bon iver - for emma
charles mingus - hobo ho
clinic - the witch (made to measure)
man man - whalebones
animal collective - cuckoo cuckoo
radiohead - 4 minute warning
shearwater - sing little birdie
immortal technique - open your eyes
immortal technique with diabolic and raskass - the payback
_

yawntown
_

dosh - kit and pearle
emc - leak it out
fleet foxes - he doesn't know why
the french kicks - all our weekends
eliot lipp - the area
portishead - the rip
vetiver - hurry on sundown [hawkwind]
bun b with mya - good II me
cold bleak heat - pound cake
future sound of london - lifeforms (path 1)
times new viking - teen drama
shearwater - all the pretty horses [traditional]
erykah badu - me
vampire weekend - one (blake's got a new face)
death cab for cutie - you can do better than me
q and not u - everybody ruins
wolf parade - fine young cannibals
m83 - midnight souls still remain
_

cross-fade appropriately.

the bioavailable five

"Brainerd between Commonwealth and Cambridge St. is a sine wave of lung-busting hills through neighborhoods Tiny Ewell had described as Depressed Residential, unending rows of crammed-together triple-decker houses with those tiny sad architectural differences that seem to highlight the essential sameness, with sagging porches and psoriatic paint-jobs or aluminum siding gone carbuncular from violent temperature-swings, yard-litter and dishes and patchy grass and fenced pets and children's toys lying around in discarded attitudes and eclectic food-smells and wildly different-patterned curtains or blinds in a house's different windows due to these old houses are carved up inside into apartments for like alienated B.U. students or Canadian and Concavity-displaced families or even more alienated B.C. students, or probably it looks like the bulk of the lease-holders are Green-and-Bonkesque younger blue-collar hard-partying types that have posters of the Fiends In Human Shape or Choosy Mothers or Snout or the Bioavailable Five [241] in the bathroom and black lights in the bedroom and oil-change stains in the driveway and that throw their supper dishes into the yard and buy new dishes at Caldor instead of washing their dishes and that still, in their twenties, ingest Substances nightly and use party as a verb and put their sound-systems' speakers in their apartments' windows facing out and crank the volume out of sheer high-spirit obnoxiousness because they still have their girlfriends to pound beers with and do shotguns of dope into the mouth of and do lines of Bing off various parts of the naked body of, and still find pounding beers and doing bongs and lines fun and get to have fun on a nightly after-work basis, cranking the tunes out into the neighborhood air."

footnote 241 : "Popular corporate-hard-rock bands, though it shows where Bruce Green's psychic decline really started that, except for TBA5, these bands were all truly big two or three years past, and are now slightly passe, with Choosy Mothers having split up entirely by now to explore individual creative directions."
_

david foster wallace. infinite jest. 1996. page 582.

there will be snacks

_


_



_



_


_

animal collective is right...

"you don't have to go to college."   

_

cognitive neuroscience with v.s. ramachandran - what studying patients with brain disorders (phantom limbs, synesthesia, autism) reveals about being uniquely human: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4684607596399338611

international relations theory with andrew bacevich - why a longtime conservative and west point graduate opposes the american commitment to global military supremacy: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1260516895818511114

combinatorial mathematics with stephen wolfram - how complex systems like the universe can originate from simple computations that're fundamentally undecidable: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eC14GonZnU

2 + 2 = 5

here are two relatively new technologies we want to see combined... first (spacial) -- photosynth software,

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/129.

second (temporal) -- the kronos projector,

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2801608242770748903.

...that way we can navigate through composites of images/videos while altering their time - just like in the movie, minority report:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn2sLUJ-eLk.


sure someone has already thought of this... anyone want to buy us one?

FAVORITE TWENTY-FIVE HIP-HOP TRACKS OF 2007

25. Return of the Mac - Prodigy
24. Come Get It (Tekstrumentals) - Hi-Tek
23. Take Me Away - Lifesavas
22. Letter from the Government - Brother Ali
21. Gotta Eat - Lupe Fiasco
20. Movie Finale - Madlib
19. 2 Brothers from the Gutter - Pecee P with Diamond D
18. We Get Higher - Stat Quo
17. Life is 2009 - UGK with Too $hort
16. Come and Go - 50 Cent
15. Can't Win For Losing - Little Brother
14. Welcome to the Terrordome - Pharoahe Monch
13. None Shall Pass - Aesop Rock
12. 9mm - Bone Thugs-N-Harmony
11. Gun Blast - Bone Thugs-N-Harmony
10. Supa GFK - Ghostface Killah
9. Windmill - Wu-Tang Clan
8. Drivin' Me Wild - Common with Lily Allen
7. Surviving the Times - Nas
6. The Coolest - Lupe Fiasco
5. Soon the New Day - Talib Kweli
4. Gravy - UGK
3. Stagnant Waters - Dalek
2. Can't Tell Me Nothing - Kanye West
1. Dreams - Little Brother
___


and some music videos to go with...










_

on 'doing something'

What follows is part III of Anton Chekhov's short story, 'The House with the Mezzanine: An Artist's Story', written in 1896. Chekhov was a medical doctor in Russia for most of his life, then he began a career as a freelance writer around 1886, establishing himself as the founder of modern drama. The story tells of a 'perpetually idle' landscape painter who discusses the building of a 'medical relief center' with a busybody social worker..... Question is, who do you agree more with -- the artist or the reformer?
_________________________________________________________

III

'The prince is staying at Maloziomovo, and he asks to be remembered to you,' said Lida to her mother. She had just come in, and was taking off her gloves. 'He gave me a great deal of interesting news ... He promised to raise the question of a medical relief centre at Maloziomovo again at the provincial assembly, but he says there is very little hope of it.' And turning to me, she said: 'Excuse me, I always forget that this cannot be interesting to you.'

I felt irritated. 'Why not interesting to me?' I said, shrugging my shoulders. 'You do not care to know my opinion, but I assure you the question has great interest for me.'

'Yes?'

'Yes. In my opinion a medical relief centre at Maloziomovo is quite unnecessary.'

My irritation infected her; she looked at me, screwing up her eyes, and asked: 'What is necessary? Landscapes?'

'Nor are landscapes. Nothing is.'

She finished taking off her gloves, and opened the newspaper, which had just been brought from the post. A minute later she said quietly, evidently restraining herself: 'Last week Anna died in childbirth, and if there had been a medical relief centre near, she would have lived. And I think even landscape painters ought to have some convictions on the subject.'

'I have a very definite conviction on that subject, I assure you,' I answered; and she screened herself with the newspaper, as though unwilling to listen to me. 'To my mind, all these schools, dispensaries, libraries, medical emergency centres, under present conditions, only serve to aggravate the bondage of the people. The peasants are fettered by a great chain, and you do not break the chain, but only add fresh links to it - that's my conviction.'

She raised her eyes to me and smiled ironically, and I went on trying to formulate my leading idea. 'What matters is not that Anna died in childbirth, but that all these Annas, Mayras, Pelageias, toil from early morning till dark, fall ill from work too hard for them, all their lives they tremble for their sick and hungry children, all their lives they are being doctored, and in dread of death and disease, fade and grow old early, and die in filth and stench. Their children begin the same story over again as soon as they grow up, and so it goes on for hundreds of years and billions of men live worse than beasts - in continual terror, for a mere crust of bread. The whole horror of their position lies in their never having time to think of their souls, of their divine image. Cold, hunger, animal terror, a burden of toil, like avalanches of snow, block for them every way to spiritual activity - that is, what distinguishes man from the brutes and what is the only thing which makes life worth living. You go to their help with hospitals and schools, but you don't free them from their fetters; on the contrary, you bind them in closer bonds, as, by introducing new prejudices, you increase the number of their wants, to say nothing of the fact that they've got to pay the council for plasters and books, and so toil harder than ever.'

'I am not going to argue with you,' said Lida, putting down the paper. 'I've heard all that before. I will only say one thing: one cannot sit with one's hands in one's lap. It's true that we are not saving humanity, and perhaps we make a great many mistakes; but we do what we can, and we are right. The highest and holiest tasks for a civilized person is to serve his neighbours, and we try to serve them as best we can. You don't like it, but one can't please everyone.'

'That's true, Lida,' said her mother - 'that's true.'

In Lida's presence she was always a little timid, and looked at her nervously as she talked, afraid of saying something superfluous or inopportune. And she never contradicted her, but always assented. 'That's true, Lida - that's true.'

'Teaching the peasants to read and write, books of wretched precepts and rhymes, and medical relief centres, cannot diminish either ignorance or the death rate, just as the light from your windows cannot light up this huge garden,' said I. 'You give nothing. By meddling in these people's lives you only create new wants in them, and new demands on their labour.'

'Oh, my God! But one must do something!' said Lida, with vexation, and from her tone one could see that she thought my argument worthless and despised them.

'The people must be freed from hard physical labour,' said I. 'We must lighten their yoke, let them have time to breathe, not to spend all their lives at the stove, at the wash-tub, and in the fields, but to have time also to think of their souls, of God - to develop their spiritual capacities. The highest vocation of man is spiritual activity - the perpetual search for truth and the meaning of life. Make rough animal labour unnecessary for them, let them feel themselves free, and then you will see what mockery these dispensaries and books are. Once a man recognizes his true vocation, he can only be satisfied by religion, science, and art, and not by these trifles.'

'Free them from labour?' laughed Lida. 'But is that possible?'

'Yes. Take upon yourself a share of their labour. If all of us, townspeople and country people, all without exception, would agree to divide between us the labour which mankind spends on the satisfaction of their physical needs, each of us would perhaps need to work only for two or three hours a day. Imagine that we all, rich and poor, work only for three hours a day, and the rest of our time is free. Imagine further that in order to depend even less upon our bodies and to labour less, we invent machines to replace our work, we try to cut down our needs to the minimum. We would train ourselves and our children not to fear hunger and cold, and we shouldn't be continually trembling for their health like Anna, Mavra, and Pelageia. Imagine that we don't doctor ourselves, don't keep dispensaries, tobacco factories, distilleries - what a lot of free time we would have over, after all! All of us together would devote our leisure to science and art. Just as the peasants sometimes work communally, mending the roads, so all of us, as a community, would search for truth and the meaning of life, and I am convinced that the truth would be discovered quickly; man would escape from this continual, agonising, oppressive dread of death, and even from death itself.'

'You contradict yourself, though,' said Lida. 'You talk about science, and are yourself opposed to literacy.'

'Literacy when a man has nothing to read but the signs on public houses and sometimes books which he cannot understand - that we have had ever since the times or Rurik; Gogol's Petrushka has been reading for a long time, yet as the village was in the days of Rurik, so it has remained. What is needed is not literacy, but freedom to develop spiritual capacities on a wide scale. What is wanted is not schools, but universities.'

'You are opposed to medicine, too?'

'Yes. It would be necessary only for the study of diseases as natural phenomena, and not for the cure of them. If one must cure, it should not be diseases, but the causes of them. Remove the principal cause - physical labour, and then there will be no disease. I don't believe in science that cures disease,' I went on excitedly. 'When science and art are real, they aim not at temporary, private ends, but at the eternal and the universal - they seek for truth and the meaning of life, they seek for God, for the soul, and when they are tied down to the needs and evils of the day, to dispensaries and libraries, they only complicate and hamper life. We have plenty of doctors, chemists, lawyers, plenty of people can read and write, but we are quite without biologists, mathematicians, philosophers, poets. The whole of our intelligence, the whole of our spiritual energy, is spent on satisfying temporary, passing needs ... Scientists, writers, artists, are hard at work; thanks to them, the conveniences of life are multiplied from day to day. Our physical demands increase, yet truth is still a long way off, and man still remains the most rapacious and dirty animal; everything tends to degeneration of the majority of mankind, and the loss for ever of all fitness for life. In such conditions an artist's work has no meaning, and the more talented he is, the stranger and the more unintelligible his position, as when one looks into it, it is evident that he is working for the amusement of a rapacious and unclean animal, and is supporting the existing order. And I don't want to work and I shan't... Nothing is any use; let the earth sink to perdition!'

'Misius, leave the room!' said Lida to her sister, apparently thinking my words harmful to such a young girl.

Zhenia looked mournfully at her mother and sister, and left the room. 'These are charming things people say when they want to justify their indifference,' said Lida. 'It is easier to disapprove of schools and hospitals than to teach or heal.'

'That's true, Lida - that's true,' the mother assented.

'You threaten to give up working,' said Lida. 'You evidently set a high value on your work. Let us give up arguing; we shall never agree, since I put the most imperfect dispensary or library of which you have just spoken so contemptuously on a higher level than any landscape.'

And turning at once to her mother, she began speaking in quite a different tone: 'The prince is very much changed, and much thinner than when he was with us last. He is being sent to Vichy.' She was telling her mother about the prince in order to avoid talking to me. Her face glowed, and to hide her emotion she bent low over the table as though she were short-sighted, and made a show of reading the newspaper. My presence was disagreeable to her. I said good-bye and went home.

_________________________________________________________

NINE STORIES

what we've been listening to around the strait of gibraltar...

1 : Air Jel

1. no solution - jel.
2. silent spring - massive attack.
3. le vent nous portera - noir desir.
4. did you see the words - animal collective.
5. harrowdown hill - thom yorke.
6. smash - avishai cohen.
7. manitoba - tapes 'n tapes.
8. dear mr. supercomputer - sufjan stevens.
9. displaced - hanne hukkelberg.
10. theme - moondog.
11. can we go back - hi-tek.
12. goin' back to the bridge - asie payton.
13. slowly - amon tobin.
14. me & you & him - palaxy tracks.
15. django - vince guaraldi.
16. little wing - jimi hendrix.
17. strange apparition - beck.
18. lady madonna - the beatles.
19. bad penny blues - humphrey lyttelton.
20. movie theme - beck.
21. alpha beta gaga - air.
22. enough of nothing - cody chesnutt.
_

2 : Cakewalk

1. grinnin' in your face - son house.
2. everybody daylight - brightblack morning light.
3. got to let go - band of bees.
4. prank calls - kelley stoltz.
5. runnin' - the heartless bastards.
6. why? - andrew bird.
7. you know i'm no good - amy winehouse.
8. hate it or love it - the game with 50 cent.
9. move on up - curtis mayfield.
10. gronlandic edit - of montreal.
11. and one (on one) - lilys.
12. man in a shed - nick drake.
13. color bars - elliott smith.
14. scary - bjork.
15. take five - tito puente.
16. irene - rose melberg.
17. lifesaver - emiliana torrini.
18. chant du menestrel - clara rockmore.
19. venice beach dub - stuph.
20. cakewalk into town - taj mahal.
_

3 : Extraneity

1. oliver nelson's stolen moments - telefon tel aviv.
2. atlas - battles.
3. new disaster - elliott smith.
4. i see who you are - bjork.
5. from brighton beach to santa monica - the clientele.
6. norwegian wood (this bird has flown) - the beatles.
7. trouble - bikeride.
8. race in - battles.
9. the chills - peter bjorn and john.
10. mozzarella swastikas - adam green.
11. ocean of noise - arcade fire.
12. dejeuner de soleil - julliette greco.
13. this time - dj shadow.
14. tonto - battles.
15. clam, crab, cocke, cowrie - joanna newsom.
16. the confession - andrew bird.
17. bottom line man - giant sand.
18. thirteen - elliott smith.
19. droplet - apples in stereo.
20. indie rock & roll - the killers.
_

4 : Satanists

1. wooden - apparat.
2. fit song - cornelius.
3. courtesy laughs - phoenix.
4. no girl in my plan - two lone swordsmen.
5. satan said dance - clap your hands say yeah!
6. tulips - papercuts.
7. climbing up the ladder (parts iii and iv) - trans am.
8. sensuous - cornelius.
9. private honeymoon - benjy ferree.
10. i can love you in a wheelchair, baby - benni hemm hemm.
11. there is an end - the greenhornes.
12. interlude - the funky 16 corners.
13. nobody knows you when you're down and out - nina simone.
14. live with me - massive attack.
15. sleep warm - cornelius.
16. oh! you pretty things - david bowie.
17. walken - wilco.
18. lime tree - bright eyes.
19. dreams of leaving - the clientele.
20. only ones who know - the arctic monkeys.
_

5 : A Door Slightly Ajar

1. julia - taken by trees.
2. hold on - john lennon.
3. i shall be released - bob dylan.
4. care of cell 44 - the zombies.
5. landed - ben folds.
6. either way - wilco.
7. rollin - the high llamas.
8. hope - the submarines.
9. play tough - the apples in stereo.
10. brandy alexander - the walkmen.
11. you are my face - wilco.
12. meditations on speed - lilys.
13. ruby - the silver apples.
14. rock bottom riser - smog.
15. and so i know - stone temple pilots.
16. side with the seeds - wilco.
17. even so - rachael yamagata.
18. the way i feel inside - the zombies.
19. simple twist of fate - bob dylan.
20. bring on the lucie (freda people) - john lennon.
21. the lakes of canda - the innocence mission.
_

6 : Sick with Vampires

1. yellow datsun - neva dinova.
2. fools gold - the stone roses.
3. mahna mahna - cake.
4. welcome to the terrordome - pharoahe monch.
5. uncommon valor: a vietnam story - jedi mind tricks.
6. prisoners of war - organized konfusion.
7. letter from the government - brother ali.
8. us placers - kayne west (remixing radiohead).
9. rapperfection - edan (remixing radiohead).
10. daytona 500 - ghostface (remixing radiohead).
11. down is the new up - radiohead.
12. bring back the funk - paul weller.
13. hate it or love it - the game with 50 cent.
14. incarcerated scarfaces - raekwon.
15. the movement - inspectah deck.
16. if you can't say love - the visionaries.
17. stop fronting - prodigy.
18. fantastic - da backwudz.
19. backstage pass - mobb deep.
20. mahna mahna - the muppets.
21. perhaps vampires is a bit strong, but... - the arctic monkeys.
_

7 : Everyone Is A Pope

1. man born to party dies partying - onion news radio.
2. gate 7 - gui boratto.
3. new house of the pope - frank black.
4. auton - silicon scally.
5. acid bells - efdemin.
6. lujon - henry mancini.
7. bridge - amon tobin.
8. anthem for the earnest - the bad plus.
9. yekermo sew (a man of experience and wisdom) - mulatu astatke.
10. sleep talking - ornette coleman.
11. stately, yes. - efdemin.
12. useless information - apparat.
13. arpeggi (live at the ether festival) - radiohead.
14. pushing back - enduser.
15. candyman - philip glass.
16. bergwein - efdemin.
17. figure 8 (school house rock cover) - elliott smith.
_

8 : Mockingbirds

1. green grass - tom waits.
2. all day breakfast - jel.
3. vodou - schneider tm.
4. soft revolution - stars.
5. little one (quick dance) - bartok.
6. you know i'm no good - ghostface.
7. mr. grieves - t.v. on the radio.
8. trains to brazil - the guillemots.
9. how could i forget - the faint.
10. eyes to form shadows - dalek.
11. granadinas - carlos montoya.
12. hasty boom alert - mu-ziq.
13. possibly maybe - bjork.
14. mutual slump - dj shadow.
15. same ghost every night - wolf parade.
16. mascagini's cavalleria rustica - william orbit.
17. you never know - immortal technique.
18. andvari - sigur ros.
_

9 : We Eat Awkwardness for Breakfast

1. octet - deerhunter.
2. black cat john brown - alamo race track.
3. you may be blue - vetiver.
4. be with - koushik.
5. tarnished - dalek.
6. lovely creature - nick cave.
7. my moon my man - feist.
8. red latern girls - vetiver.
9. kid on my shoulders - the white rabbits.
10. path through the forest - the factory.
11. the garden at night - the clientele.
12. i wanna be your dog - iggy pop.
13. rebel girl - bikini kill.
14. fleur de saison - emilie simon.
15. stoffer - benni hemm hemm.
16. i could stay - loney, dear.
17. i know no pardon - vetiver.
18. lucky to be me - bill evans.

sic semper tyrannis

in this interview with journalist bob woodward, former defense secretary donald rumseld compares the worsening situation in the war zone of irak to the ordinary incidents of crime in any large metropolis. can't imagine why they edited out the profound reasoning which was to follow, can you?
_

MR. WOODWARD: And the number of attacks are going up actually.

SEC. RUMSFELD: That's probably true. It is also probably true that our data's better, and we're categorizing more things as attacks. A random round can be an attack and -- all the way up to killing 50 people some place. So you've got a whole fruit bowl of different things -- a banana and an apple and an orange.

MR. WOODWARD: But somebody said up to 900 attacks within one week last month.

SEC. RUMSFELD: I can't validate that. I'd have to go back and look.

MR. WOODWARD: I mean, that's unexploded IEDs, that's counted as an attack; detonated IEDs, close engagements, standoff attacks and attacks on Iraqi authorities.

SEC. RUMSFELD: What do you suppose how many things of those character occur in countries that aren't at war in a given week?

MR. WOODWARD: I've heard you --

SEC. RUMSFELD: Detroit, Chicago, anywhere. I mean, you look at the number of homicides and rapes and armed robberies and attacks and shootings, and goodness knows -- (inaudible) --

[Passage deleted mutual consent and ground-rule]

_

_

of perfect days for banana fish

Hence gloomy thoughts
No more my soul shall dwell
On joys that were
No more endure to weigh
The shame and anguish of the evil day
Wisely forgetful
O'er the ocean swell
Sublime of Hope I seek the cottag'd dell
Where Virtue calm with careless step may stray
And, dancing to the moon-light roundelay
The Wizard passions weave an holy spell

Thomas Chatterton was an English poet and forger of pseudo-medieval poetry, who served as an icon of unacknowledged genius for the Romantics... On 24 August 1770, he retired for the last time to his attic in Brook Street, carrying with him the arsenic which he drank, after tearing into fragments whatever literary remains were at hand. He was only seventeen years and nine months old...  

::: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Chatterton

Why then write Sonnets or Monodies? Because they give me pleasure when perhaps nothing else could. After the more violent emotions of Sorrow, the mind demands solace and can find it in employment alone; but full of its late sufferings it can endure no employment not connected with those sufferings.

::: http://www.erudit.org/revue/ron/2000/v/n17/005900ar.html

click here to continue your quest

TOP FIVE ALBUMS OF 2006

_

5 : Brad Mehldau Trio - House on Hill.

there's no one playing piano today who is in the same building as Mr. Melhdau. both of his hands have well-developed frontal lobes all their own. he's our generation's answer to Art Tatum. but one would suspect with such virtuosity that we'd have to accept some counter-balancing lack of soul, that he'd hit us with so many speedily-delivered notes we'd long for the stripped-down melodies of pop. you only need listen to the final phrases of 'Embers' to hear this isn't so. here we learn to appreciate how Melhdau can distill his polyphonic cacophonies down to an uncluttered theme that was hiding in the background and, once revealed, hangs in the air for long afterward. despite the glorious excess of his improvization, it's his subtlety that most strikes us, how the slightest of shifts can alter the entire edifice of a song. with this method he can spell-bound you (as in 'August Ending'), he can send you meandering through the synaptic latticework of your brain (as in 'House on Hill'), or he can tie you up in knots (as in 'Backyard'). for the jazz-haters out there, listen to what Mehldau does with the addictive beat laid down by Jorge Rossy on 'Bealtine' which also includes an edgy solo from bassist Larry Grenadier that ever-seems on the verge of flying off the handle. one can tell Rossy, Grenadier, and Mehldau have been going at it for a long time by the immediacy of their responsiveness to one another - they exemplify the tight trio. and all these songs, even those that get lost wandering off nowhere, add complex layers upon one another, not for complexity's sake, but to demonstrate that when the journey is the destination, the sky's the limit (...or is it?).


4 : Regina Spektor - Begin to Hope

when it comes to beautiful distinctive female vocalists, Ms. Spektor is rarely mentioned in the same sentence as Bjork or Joanna Newsom, but we began to hope this album would change all that. if you need a demonstration, try for a moment to hit the faultless falsetto of "heart-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-art" in her song 'Fidelity', then ask yourself, who else's voice can be as simultaneously quirky and porcelain? whether she's hollering or whispering, Spetkor knows exactly how you need to be kissed. and in spite of the fact that she's only recently come into her own in the studio (finally), she continues to flaunt a mastery of the piano unrivaled by the contemporaries of her genre (Emily Haines, for example), as the song 'Edit' is guilty of on both counts - clean production featuring a gal who really knows how to play her instrument. Fiona Apple wishes she'd written a song as bluesy and tearful as 'Lady' (or thought to work with a saxophonist as sultry as Ralph Williams). and Ms. Apple could never pull off a lyric as funny as 'summer in the city means... cleavage, cleavage, cleavage', nor infuse the same line with heady nostalgia two minutes later. our favorite, however, remains 'Field Below', which plows as deep into the emotion of our time and place as 'Like a Bridge over Troubled Waters' did for its. gives us chills every time.


3 : Nas - Hiphop is Dead

after seeing Pitchfork rank Clipse's rap-kitsch as 7, we'd have to agree with the title of Mr. Nasir Bin Olu Dara Jones's fantastic contribution to the discussion of the state of hiphop. (but we suppose most people knew Pitchfork lost its mind when it left Gnarls Barkley, Pharrell, the Roots, Jurassic 5, and Hi-Tek outside the club while Clipse got v.i.p. treatment.) even though this is the message we desperately need to hear right now, and Nas shares with us a deep reverence for the history of his craft and his people, it's also a superbly sampled and syncopated ride, as the flow on 'Hope' smacks us awake with its breath-taking display of raw talent (and an excellent vocal accompaniment to boot). whoever takes Nas's point in a solely negativistic way obviously hasn't listened to the inspirational 'Let there be Light'. what's wrong with not aiming for the club? what's wrong with not bragging about pimping and purchasing shiny expensive consumer goods? it's not as if Nas speaks any less highly of illicit drugs (see 'Blunt Ashes'); he simply uses them for creative meditation instead of recreational anesthesia. if you're worried things might get too serious, then listen to this stand-out (our vote for best hiphop track of the year) - 'Can't Forget about You'. and please don't discard this unforgettable album because it samples Nat King Cole (who, we're sure you know, often demeaned womyn by pouring champagne on their tits).


2 : Daedelus - Daedelus Denies the Day's Demise

of all the solid electronica to choose from - from the Knife to Nathan Fake to Eliot Lipp to Tiga (not to mention all the new releases from old heavyweights like Prefuse 73, Cut Chemist, DJ Shadow, and Squarepusher) - this one's exquisite timing and texture sets it apart. from the first to the last, Mr. Alfred Wiesberg Roberts has the uncanny capacity to make our head and skin feel light. needless to say Daedelus is a genius when it comes to incorporating horns, strings, and drums, but what other sounds aren't made listenable here? annoying screams? yep. wind chimes? got 'em. television narrator circa 1955? sure. even noise never sounded so good. we go from skipping along on a sunny afternoon ('At My Heels') to the depths of ominous pits ('Never None the Wiser') and back, from the hiphop-inspired ('Lights Out') to the techno-inspired ('Sawtooth E.K.G.'), from music for dancing ('Sundown') to music for melting into your living room furniture ('Sunrise'), everything flows and fits together seamlessly with a firecracker sense of surprise. plus, the musical heritages in practically every region of the world are represented, from Cuban to African to Brazilian to Indian and so on. still the trip feels like it's over before it begins. it's dense yet effervescent. contemplative yet funky. and no track this year has given us a warmer smile than 'Viva Vida'. it's a dreamy breeze that's not only enough to make you deny the day's demise, but forget what day it is as well.


1 : Thom Yorke - The Eraser

if some big Mr. Fancy Pants (Logan Keese, for instance) was so stupid as to give us authority over some music awards ceremony this year, it'd go something like this... best album art : Stanley Donwood. best producer : Nigel Godrich. best male vocalist : Thom Yorke. best song : Black Swan... yet having said that, this record took a while to grow on us. first we only dug the mathematical precision of Godrich's ambient soundscapes, which go from subliminal to explosive during the last minute or so of every song. so we put off fully listening to the album for a month or so. then randomly 'The Clock' struck our fancy, then 'Black Swan' hooked us, then 'Analyze' and 'Atoms for Peace', or maybe it was the other way around. in any case, by the end of the avalanche, we could even savor every tiny morsel of organized chaos on 'Skipped Divided' and 'Cymbal Rush' without feeling sick, and 'Harrowdown Hill' became our favorite cut: 'i'm coming home, i'm coming home to make it alright, so dry your eyes' is enough to make a manatee wilt (and be sure to listen for the trance-inducing instrumental break at three minutes and twenty-five seconds). it wasn't Mr. Yorke's effortless vocal calisthenics, clinging to high-pitched notes in his non-chalant way which ultimately put this work over the top for us, but its lyrical content. it's an indictment of conformity and greed and all the other evil shit we're forced to passively witness yet seem unable to stop. the personal is political is personal, alluded to best when Yorke tells the story of David Kelly (see below). the real question is, how can we absorb the superficiality of the way we live today and turn it into an authentic cool? this entails having the courage to be terrified, and the self-confidence to be fractured. it means going from a paralyzing cynicism to wit, from a depressing isolation to open rage. it means cultivating a stoicism that keeps some tender core of yourself from being cheapened and poisoned like everything else. it's about holding on to a sense of the sublime amidst seas of pollution, and learning to let something gentle and pure shine forth amidst the grime of unjust and unethical sociopolitical complexes... there are those who say 'fuck it' who are completely ignorant of all that's wrong, and then there are those who can honestly face all that's wrong and still say 'fuck it'. speaking for the Dark Manatees, Thom Yorke is the reason sentient beings like us can continue to live in a world which killed John Lennon.

_

Harrowdown Hill in Oxfordshire is notable for being the place where the body of Dr David Kelly was found in 2003. His evidence had raised questions about Saddam Hussein's possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction — the official justification for the UK government's decision to invade Iraq. In an interview with The Globe and Mail, Yorke said, "The government and the Ministry of Defence... were directly responsible for outing him and that put him in a position of unbearable pressure that he couldn't deal with, and they knew they were doing it and what it would do to him... I've been feeling really uncomfortable about that song lately, because it was a personal tragedy, and Dr Kelly has a family who are still grieving. But I also felt that not to write it would perhaps have been worse." In another interview, Yorke said that "Harrowdown Hill" is "the most angry song I've ever written in my life...".