Six impossible things before breakfast

Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."

"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."  

- Lewis Carroll from Alice in Wonderland

Mr Clive James - A man in search of a home.

It may not come to this, but if I should
Fail to survive this year of feebleness
Which irks me so and may have killed for good
Whatever gift I had for quick success -
For I could talk an hour alone on stage
And mostly make it up along the way,
But now when I compose a single page
Of double-spaced it takes me half the day -
If I, that is, should finally succumb
To these infirmities I'm slow to learn
The names of lest my brain be rendered numb
With boredom even as I toss and turn,
Then send my ashes home, where they can fall
In their own sweet time from the harbour wall.

Here we go riff

Alright bitches, try not to bop your head to this one.

Kate Rusby - My Young Man

That northern accent. And that brass...

The search to be human

'Whether we're rich or poor, male or female, a nineteenth century Swiss jeweller like Isaac Golay in his oversized frock coat, or a twentieth century american clergyman like me with a penchant for writing books, or a young squirt celebrating his twenty-first birthday in the twenty-first century like you, our stories are all stories of searching. We search for a good self to be, and for good work to do. We search to become human in a world that tempts us always to be less than human or looks to us to be more. We search to love and to be loved. And in a world where it is often hard to believe in much of anything, we search to believe in something holy and beautiful and life-transcending that will give meaning and purpose to the lives we live.'

'Letter to Benjamin' - from The Longing for Home, Frederick Buechner.

Lisa Mitchell - Just yummy wah ha woo hoo da da da da...

Hidden Orchestra - Night Walks on Vinyl

So this mix by Edinburgh jazz/electro/dj/god knows/fusion guys Hidden Orchestra is changing my life.

Go music Go!

 

Coldplay & Jon Hopkins - Escape/Light Through The Vines

All Coldplay did was add lyics to this already beautiful track by Jon Hopkins. I'd like to say they ruined it. But I think this Coldplay's dreamy melancholic mantra gives it an extra layer of depth. 'And, in the end, we lie awake, and dream of making escape.' Yum

Eric Whitacre - Sleep

If ever there were a reason to buy some good quality headphones, this surely is it. The harmonies in this piece are at times a little too rutteresque for my liking. But those basses are killing it, and the discord in the alto and trebles makes me catch my breath.

Jon Hopkins - Abandon Window

Nina Simone - He Was Too Good To Me

Mew - Silas the magic car

A couple of people have recently asked me where I get my music from.

Nowadays, it's relatively easy to hear new music. Music sites such as pandora and spotify make it possible to get unsolicited exposure to an eclectic mix of unknown artists with very little brain work. Type in an artist you like and you get fifty or so other artists that sound the same or similar. Chances are the playlist will throw up one you've never heard of that you'll love.

But, like people who prefer to bake their own bread, or grow their own lettuce, I feel there's something rewarding in putting in a bit of extra work to build up your music library. The truth is this: nothing quite beats that feeling of actively searching amongst the millions of tracks out there and finding a gem. Like searching among the millions of hearts and finding one that connects with your own, finding music that speaks to you can provide comfort that's unspeakable in its mysterious power to make things seem ok.

I listen to a lot of overseas radio and podcasts. Guy Garvey's Finest Hour usually gives me at least one new song a week that I can play on repeat 24/7 until it wears my ears out. French radio station TSF jazz is a station you can play for any dinner party. NPR in the states is also amazing.

I've recently been put in touch with another GREAT podcast. It's called 'freunde von freunden mix tapes' and it is an hour of different music put together by different Djs around the world, and published by german lifestyle magazine freunde von freunden (or FvF for the very hip).

I can't recommend it enough - it swings from Jazz to rock, to alternative pop, to soundscape and all whilst hopscotching over musical borders, introducing unknown bands and composers from Germany, Sweden, Russia, America and Asia.

Today, I was sitting in my back living room, making some coffee, and the below song by Mew came on. It sat in the room like an old friend, instantly comfortable and hauntingly comforting.

Of course, it's Danish.

Take a listen.

Noel Pearson's exceptional speech at Gough Whitlam's Memorial Service

Radiohead - Pyramid Song

Why we try

What’s lost is nothing to what’s found. And all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup.

Only Nina...

Alt J - Hunger on the Pine

This is yummy.

I have no idea what the film clip is about. The beginning is quite beautiful. The ending is confusing. But the guy can take an arrow to the throat.

A Case of You - Joni Mitchell

Telling the truth - Buechner

Poor, bare, forked animal in his cassock, his preaching robe, or his business suit, with his heart in his mouth, if not yet his foot.

What can he say? What word can he speak with power enough to empower them!

But let him take heart. He is called not to be an actor or a magician in the pulpit. He is called to be himself!

He is called to tell the truth as he has experienced it. He is called to be human. (And that is calling enough for any of us.)

If he does not make real to them the human experience of what it's like to cry into the storm and receive no answer, to be sick at heart and find no healing, then he becomes the only one there who seems not to have had that experience, because most surely, under their bonnets and shawls and jackets, under their afros and pony tails, all the others there have had it, whether they talk about it or not.

As much as anything else it is their experience of the absence of God (meaning) that has brought them there, that has brought them there in search of God's (meaning's) presence.

And if the preacher does not speak of that, and to that, then he becomes like the captain of a ship, who's the only one aboard the ship who either does not know that the waves are twenty feet high and the decks awash, or will not face up to it so that anything else he tries to say by way of hope and comfort and empowering becomes suspect on the basis of that one crucial ignorance or disingenuous-ness or cowardice or reluctance to speak in love any truths but the ones that people love to hear.

Please give this man a million dollars so he can keep doing what he does...