nevertheless, a wonderful song.

“Now let your pleasure be your guide / I crown and mitre you over yourself.”

- Vergil, to Dante, at the end of the Purgatorio

“Do what you feel now! / Electric Eel now! “

- MGMT, “Electric Feel”

Proof.

This is exactly what I was talking about.

“Hey, Mona Lisa, come home / You know you can’t roam with Caesar.”

- Kanye West

Currently $2.99/lb at Harris Teeter, OR: why is this lyric stuck in my head?

Bing Cherry, Nectarine, and Peach / There is plenty of Vitamin C in each.

I don’t think there’s much of a difference.

Cosconi, qui longa putas epigrammata nostra,
utilis unguendis axibus esse potes….
non sunt longa quibus nihil est quod demere possis,
sed tu, Consoni, disticha longa facis.

Cosconianus, who thinks my rhymes are too long,
you’re worthless…
if you can’t take anything away from it, it’s not too long –
but you, Cosconianus, make couplets too long.
- Kanye West.

does he write his own rhymes?
well sort of, I think ‘em,
that mean I forgot better shit than you ever thought of.
- Marcus Valerius Martialis

marvin gaye

I first learned that there was music in the world apart from what was on Top 40 radio, The Classical Station radio, and children’s story-tapes, in 2001, right after the September 11th attacks.

I was explaining how good of a song “What’s Going On” (Artists Against AIDS version) was to my father, using it as part of my “but modern music is also politically aware!” arguement.

Enter Marvin Gaye.

a conversation i actually heard today in Graham Memorial

Lady: “I’ve been DJ-ing a lot more, lately – you see, we just started this club.”

Guy: “Yeah?”

Lady: “Yeah, when they started it, they wanted to have, well, actual, real, hipsters – not these fake ones.”

Guy: “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

Politics III

listening to Aaron Copeland’s Lincoln Portrait, as performed by the UNC Symphony, last night, was struck by a feeling of American liberty-loving patriotism usually only felt when: watching Ken Burns’ The Civil War, reading Milton’s Areopagitica, or hiking in the Appalachians.

People I’d like to hear performing it:

- James Earl Jones (Mufasa/Darth Vader, as Lincoln? Yes!)

- Paul Newman

- Barack Obama (naturally)

- Dr. Miller

morbidity.

I’m reading Infinite Jest because David Foster Wallace died,

and have been listening to Pink Floyd for the morning, because Richard Wright died.

I don’t know if they’d be pleased about that or not.

Abigail Washburn & the Sparrow Quartet

Played Carolina Performing Arts’ opening concert (the word ‘Gala,’ they use sometimes) tonight.

Their concert was great (that is, the second half of it, all that I saw, was), to the point where I had to call my Dad to let him know.

Listening to their album makes me want to: swim in the lakes in James’ Asheville, go running, contemplatively spin on a front porch somewhere, go to China, bike across America-circa-1850, be a sea captain.

aka: highly recommended.