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Pony: Rundown
11.5.2007
No matter what time we put G to sleep, he gets up at 6am. Early, but manageable. 5am, however, is not acceptable. Damn you, daylight savings time! Damn you all the people in the news talking about the extra hour of sleep! Damn you sleep books taunting me with your professional and contradictory advice.
Mind you, I got to sleep in today, thanks to Kiff. I have had a cold for a month that might be many colds piled onto one another, or it might be just that finally G is sleeping through the night and my body said: "Ok, immune system, we can relax now, we are no longer responsible for a full 24 hours of sustaining another life."
I am one of those people who, when they get sick, always talks about it.
Speaking of talking about it, I found myself listening to a national call-in show yesterday when was making dinner. I usually run to the stereo to turn it off when call-in shows come on, but I was not on my toes (did I mention I am sick?).
Hearing the public opine on a national issue is embarassing in a mortifying kind of way. Bluster and malapropisms abound as callers struggle to sound authoritative and right. I guess people feel the need to be all debate-y and sound all smart and expert-y when maybe they just need to speak from their hearts and check their egos with the call-screener.
The idea of expertise is so strange in western culture. On one hand, voters tend to put their trust in people who seem more like an accessible layperson than a someone with demonstrable experience and integrity, but then they put all their faith in that government to have the expertise with which to make life and death decisions.
In the art world, we are so afraid to talk about things we love because we have built this weird language with esoteric reference points which can only be approached and articulated by an "expert".
On one hand, I can understand the barriers we build around art, if only as a protection from gauche, literal-minded critics about who (in the worst scenarios) want to ban books with morally ambiguous narrators or protest against sexual content (while condodoning violent conent blablabla).
But on the other hand, I wish we were more in the habit of talking about art from the heart. A painting that makes you feel off-balance in a good way. A song that makes you feel like you could shit-kick the world. A book that you know was good but was so sad that you could not shake the mood for days and you wonder if it was worth it to walk around with that story inside you.
I am 34 years old, and I am still shy to talk about music, because I'm not an audiophile and fear that I don't have all the lingo. But here goes: I wanted to tell you about my latest favourite song.
The song is "Teardrop" and it is off Jose Gonzalez's laest album, "In Our Nature". "Teardrop" is so familiar - is it an old Cream song? But then you realise it's a cover that Massive Attack track that Elizabeth Fraser (from the Cocteau Twins) sang on (note: the video has a creepy singing fetus).
This album - that song in particular - perfectuly scores auttumn: dreamy-quiet, stripped-down and thoughtful.
The last I got this auttumn feeling from an album was with The Kingsbury Manx, a band that the NC-ers in the house will no doubt have heard of. If you like this albumn, give Jose a listen. Not that I'm an expert in anything but my own taste.
