Our Lady of the Lakes: Feb 25, 2008

Monday, February 25, 2008

That other playlist, the unofficial "breakup mix"

Lailah reminded me that I forgot to post the mix we can, for short-hand purposes, call the "break-up mix". I didn't make it with that in mind, but I made it while I was feeling, and being, mopey and reclusive, and the more I listened to it while I was mopey and reclusive the more I realized that it was all about loss, alienation, people disappointing you in deep and existential ways, and seeking reserves of inner strength on solitary journeys. Huh.

Well, here's the list. As I mentioned to Liles, my external hard drive AND my laptop are acting up, and I can't access my music for the time being, sadly. So you'll have to wait for the tracks themselves until I sort out my computer woes, if you're interested in them.

I'll say some more about the artists when I can actually provide, but one thing I have to mention now is that tracks 2 and 5 are from an album of Kurt Weill songs sung by various artists that Dani turned me onto. Yeah. (Those of you who heard my mix I made in my cottage in Austin several years ago may see no small irony in its title, "September Songs.")

(new extended version added above to replace this old post!)

Happy Monday to y'all.

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I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, to discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and to be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.
-- Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862) (Walden or Life in the Woods)

Listener up there! Here, you! What have you to confide to me?
Look in my face, while I snuff the sidle of evening;
Talk honestly—no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.

Do I contradict myself?
Very well, then, I contradict myself;
(I am large—I contain multitudes.)

I concentrate toward them that are nigh—I wait on the door-slab.

Who has done his day’s work? Who will soonest be through with his supper?
Who wishes to walk with me?

Will you speak before I am gone? Will you prove already too late?

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me—he complains of my gab and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed—I too am untranslatable;
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me;
It flings my likeness after the rest, and true as any, on the shadow’d wilds;
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air—I shake my white locks at the runaway sun;
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeathe myself to the dirt, to grow from the grass I love;
If you want me again, look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am, or what I mean;
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged;
Missing me one place, search another;
I stop somewhere, waiting for you.

--Walt Whitman, Song of Myself