Kirsten Mortensen's blog

Just struck me –  big reason John was such a heartbreaker . . .

Adam Levine (Maroon 5) covering Bill Wither’s Lovely Day. Kids these days!

lol

But seriously, how do you take a song so sweet it threatens to teeter any second into schmaltz and render it as honest . . . it’s got to be his voice, he has so much control and stops himself from overdoing. Right? Dunno. But it works for me . . . otoh maybe I’m just a goof :-)

This one needs no adornment.

I’m majorly out of the hip music loop any more. But Snow Patrol sure puts together some awfully gorgeous songs. This one just makes me ache its so lovely. (Unfortunately their official video had embedding “disabled by request.” This is a tribute vid that I also favorited because the sound quality is good, unlike the amateur footage of the song in concert that’s all over youtube . . .)

And when the worrying starts to hurt
And the world feels like bricks of dirt
Just close your eyes until
You can imagine this place
Yeah, our secret space as well

(Shut your eyes. . .)

Shut your eyes and sing to me

Nothing original to say here. Lennon-McCartney was magic. But I LOVE this song — it’s a pop gem. So it popped into my head this afternoon & bless youtube I’ve been able to listen to it over & over 87,000 times since. Bliss. Let me roll it to ya.

Oh, man!

Technorati Tags: Feist video

Is this not a fantastic video for a fantastic song?

One, two, three, four,
Tell me that you love me more.
Sleepless, long nights.
That’s what my youth was for.

Oh, teenage hopes are alive at your door,
Left you with nothing,
But they want some more.

Oh, oh, oh,
You’re changing your heart.
Oh, oh, oh,
You know who you are.

And now as I compose this post I’m being told — I’m on Skype — that it was done into an Ipod ad.

lol

Means I’m probably the last person to discover it, oh well! Won’t be the first time I’ve been last, hooray!

One, two, three, four, five, six, nine, or ten,
Money can’t buy you back the love that you had then . . .

Technorati Tags: 1234 Feist

some will a strut and some will fret
see this an hour on this stage
others will not but they’ll sweat
in their hopelessness in their rage
we’re all the same
the men of anger
and the women of the page

they published your diary
and that’s how i got to know you
key to the room of your own and a mind without end
and here’s a young girl
on a kind of a telephone line through time
the voice at the other end comes like a long lost friend

so i know i’m alright
my life will come my life will go
still i feel it’s alright
i just got a letter to my soul
when my whole life is on the tip of my tongue
empty pages for the no longer young
the apathy of time laughs in my face
you say
each life has its place

From Virginia Woolf, by the Indigo Girls. Unfortunately no video on YouTube. As if they never did anything but Closer to Fine. And Galileo.

This version of the lyrics is from the rites of passage CD liner notes, only with line breaks.

the place where you hold me
is dark in a pocket of truth
the moon has swallowed the sun and the light of the earth
and so it was for you
when the river eclipsed your life
but sent your soul like a message in a bottle to me
and it was my rebirth

so we know we’re alright
life will come and life will go
still we know it’s alright
someone’ll get a message to your soul

The song stunned me when I first heard it because it so perfectly captured how I felt when I discovered Woolf’s diaries. (Her novels otoh — I should probably reread them now. I read them in college because one was supposed to, and didn’t really warm to them. Perhaps I was too young.)

I wonder if she came to realize, at the end, that her gifts could not substitute for a belief in deservedness . . . nor earn it.

Technorati Tags: Indigo Girls, Virginia Woolf

Talking to a friend a couple of weeks ago about pop music. It was after I’d cited a Little Feat song in this post and he’d looked at a YouTube clip of Fat Man in the Bathtub.

He remarked on Lowell George’s genius in lengthening the musical line.

And I got to thinking, lengthening the musical line had implications for the lyrical line, too.

I’d picked up a couple of Dave Matthews CDs some time ago, after my ex left (he was the one with the music collection) but hadn’t listened to them much — I was aware of the songs peripherally, enough to hum along, but hadn’t paid that close attention to them. Then idly, one day, I played Under the Table and Dreaming and found myself for the first time paying real attention to it.

Matthews has been criticized for writing songs that are too monotone, something I’d found a bit off-putting too. But suddenly I was what’s going on: these pieces are actually poetry — set to music — set to jam band music.

If you transcribe the lyrics to a song like The Best of What’s Around, you can see it, as long as you don’t artifically try to insert line breaks:

Hey my friend, it seems your eyes are troubled — care to share your time with me?
Would you say you’re feeling low? And so

A good idea would be to get it off your mind.

See you and me have a better time than most can dream — have it better than the best, so we can pull on through.
Whatever tears at us, whatever holds us down — and if nothing can be done we’ll make the best of what’s around.

Turns out not where but who you’re with that really matters — that really matters.
And hurts — not much when you’re around.

And if you hold on tight to what you think is your thing, you may find you’re missing all the rest.

Well she ran up into the light surprised; her arms are open, her mind’s eye is seeing things from a better side than most can dream, on a clearer road — I feel —
Oh — you could say “she’s safe.” Whatever tears at her. Whatever holds her down — and if nothing can be done she’ll make the best of what’s around.

Turns out not where but what you think that really matters.

See you and me have a better time than most can dream — have it better than the best, so we can pull on through.
Whatever tears at us, whatever holds us down — and if nothing can be done we’ll make the best of what’s around.

Turns out not where but who you’re with that really matters — that really matters.
It hurts — not much when you’re around.

What’s amazing is that lines like this can be made to come across as so pop.

Technorati Tags: music, lyrics

It’s been such a peculiar fall. Cool, yet no bite, and so much rain that the turning of the leaves has been listless and tentative.

Then last night our first serious frost.

And this morning, even without a breath of wind to nudge them leaves were falling everwhere, as if the trees were themselves now raining. The leaves rustling as they hit the ground like hundreds of rustling footsteps.

I took the photo beneath a ginkgo finally gone to sleep.

Technorati Tags: autumn, Rochester, New York