"The Whale Song"

"The Whale Song" has been my song of the day since about early July. I don't really want to say anything about it. Except it's good and I like it.

"Grey Ice Water"

Here's what Elizabeth Bishop says about gray ice water in her poem "At the Fishhouses"


Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
the clear gray icy water . . . Back, behind us,
the dignified tall firs begin.
Bluish, associating with their shadows,
a million Christmas trees stand
waiting for Christmas. The water seems suspended
above the rounded gray and blue-gray stones.
I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same,
slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones,
icily free above the stones,
above the stones and then the world.
If you should dip your hand in,
your wrist would ache immediately,
your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn
as if the water were a transmutation of fire
that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame.
If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,
then briny, then surely burn your tongue.
It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:
dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.

"Neverending Math Equation"

When I was six, eight, ten years old (depending on who's telling the story), Mom said to Dad, "Aren't you worried about Jackson? All he does is play Atari and eat Twinkies." Dad thought about it for a moment and said, "Yeah, but he's really good at it."

A few decades from now, maybe the story will go: Mom said, "Aren't you worried about Jackson? All he does is drink coffee and type type type." The rest, I suppose, remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, maybe this song is a better birthday song. Posted post-birthday, "And the plants and the animals they're all linked, and the plants and the animals eat each other."

"People as Places as People"

Seems an appropriate birthday song. Thinking about all "the people you loved but you didn't quite know." It's a good day for that sort of thing. I've heard a lot about Isaac Brock's being cynical, and I've heard a lot about this album being soft, and I don't know how to reconcile all that, except to say I think this song is very tender and tough, and, ultimately, a pleasure to listen to.

Today's Bonus: the link is for a playlist such that we may enjoy Modest Mouse for many minutes by simply clicking on the above title. Oh technology, like a modestly angelic mouse, what joy!

"The Whale Song"

If "King Rat" is decadent in its texture, "The Whale Song" is almost barren. (Both songs from "Nobody's First and You're Next.") Look at it. One line. What do I know about music? Very little, but it seems like the song is a series of instruments playing the same eight or ten notes in mostly the same order -- I could be all the way wrong about this -- but the thing is, it's a song that gets in my head and rides with me everywhere I go all day long. And I wish I were a scout so I could find a way out, but the way, so everyone could find a way out.

"The Loop"

Now, I know what you're saying, "This band doesn't look like any Modest Mouse I've ever heard of."

Well, it's true. "The Loop" is by Mimicking Birds, a band that opens for Modest Mouse and has their first album through Glacial Pace (http://www.glacialpace.com/). So the connection's there, see.

Their music is haunting -- give it a listen.

"Spitting Venom"

A great song about the way we argue, right? Eight and a half minutes of a speaker asking a listener to just let it drop. "Well, we carried all the groceries in while hauling out the trash, and if this doesn't make us motionless, I do not know what can."

"King Rat"

Two days in a row? So early in the blog? Yes, it's true. "King Rat" gets inside you grey ice water and won't get out. "We swam like rats on fire right down to the resevoir" just like we always do. Also traci wanted me to add that decadent isn't necessarily a bad thing, which set me back a pace, because I'd never known it to be anything but good. "You know you know you know" . . . I've said it before . . . this song's got it all.

"King Rat"

Maybe we all know the feeling: "We took all that we could carry, but we tried to carry more." traci says the texture in this song is decadent, by which I think she means there's a lot going on here. Yes, I'm on board. Also, I just like to look at things and say "Deep water, deep water, senseless denial." When I say it to Desi, she tilts her head clear to the side betraying her canine confusion. The cat ignores me. The plumbing seems to get it, through. As for the song, the cello, the horns, the stuff Isaac mumbles between verses -- it's all working for me.

"Convenient Parking"

Normally I wait until later in the day to decide what the song of the day has been, but since traci and I both woke up humming it, since we both whistled it during our morning walk, since we both sang it in the shower, it seems the natural choice. Seems like a good travelling song: "Off to other cities built to store and sell these rocks." If you've never listened to this particular album, welcome to the _Lonesome Crowded West_.