How one Sunday became heaven and D Major all at once

My hands are two travelers, they've crossed oceans and lands,
Yet they are too small on the continent of your skin.
Wandering, wandering, I could spend my life
Traveling the length of your body each night.

Oh, oh, Jupiter.
Oh, oh, be still, my little heart.
Oh, oh, love is a flame, neither timid nor tame.

Take these stars from my crown.
Let the years fall down.
Lay me out in firelight.
Let my skin feel the night.
Fasten me to your side,
And say it will be soon.
You make me so crazy, baby,
Could swallow the moon.

-Jewel Kilcher

Where I go post-concert

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile

-E. E. Cummings

The Coast

We are standing in the early morning sunlight
In the harbor church of Saint Cecilia
To praise a soul's returning to the earth,
To the Rose of Jericho and the Bougainvillea.

This is a lonely life.
Sorrows everywhere you turn.
And that's worth something when you think about it.
That's worth some money.

To prove that I love you,
Because I believe in you,
Summer skies, stars are falling all along the injured coast.

If I have weaknesses,
Don't let them blind me now,
Summer skies, stars are falling all along the injured coast.

Leaving the shadow
Of the valley behind me now
All along the injured coast.

This is the only life.

-Paul Simon

Let It Be or: How I Learned to Stop Watching, Start Feeling, and Love This Film

The brilliance of Julie Taymor...

A Quiet Place

What do we need to make us friends again?

We're not so very far apart.

What makes this emptiness?

Tell me when these silences began.

Long ago, you were all strength and life and joy to me.

All magic. All music. All of life to me.

You were my charm and all delight to me;

My heart and mind; you were my love, the sun at night to me.

And what has happened to dull the mystery?

And where is our garden with a quiet place?

Why can't we try to find the way again to peace and life?

Can't we find the way back to the garden where we began?

-Leonard Bernstein, "Trouble in Tahiti"

What C major sounds like today

Good days, bad days, I've had a few of those.
Same old story - I know how this song goes.
At least I did, but now I'm not so sure.
Nothing's in its place; nothing's certain anymore.

Birds fly, trees sway - why can't I be like that?
Happy knowing what I am, in fact, and leaving be?
But truth has been obscured.
I am only human, and I'm always wanting more.

And the world is a place, and I pray it's on my side,
But I'd find greater comfort if I just lay down and died.
I don't know what's become of the boy who once knew sunshine.
What's become of the boy who knew sorrow but was strong?

-Nerina Pallot, "Mr King"

Nerina Pallot

Why this is not the number one song on Earth is entirely beyond me.

Where my heart was...

Why I do what I do

In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Not for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.

-Dylan Thomas

Books I love and why I love them

What does it say that I am a full-time, professional musician, and my first blog entry regards (what I consider) great works of fiction I've read over the past nine months?  Literary fiend that I am, here are some of those books - in no particular order - about which I feel strongly enough to recommend.  I'll get to music eventually, I promise...

"What is the What" by Dave Eggers - life-changing; you must read this book
"The Road" by Cormac McCarthy - the most beautiful poetry-cum-prose to heartbreaking end I've ever read
"What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" by Raymond Carver - darker, more abstract, and better than I thought
"The Crying of Lot 49" by Thomas Pynchon - prosaic virtuosity
"A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole - bombastysterical!
"The History of Love" by Nicole Krauss - inventive, intricate, intimate
"A Death in the Family" by James Agee - hauntingly nostalgic
"Seven Types of Ambiguity" by Elliot Perlman - enormous, but worth sticking with
"Deception" by Philip Roth - is this fiction the characters have created for themselves based on fact?