and I would have stayed in your bed for the rest of my life just to prove I was right

[raven]

Something about today - the humidity, a sort of soft closeness to the air - has meant I've been very aware of the scent of things: flowers, rain, and pizza. All different, all diffused. It's warm, and thick, and I am feeling distinctly lethargic, and urrrgh, work is not happening.

So, in lieu of content - seriously, my life is uninteresting right now; it mostly features work, more work, the occasional forage for food and/or books, and doing (all) the G2 crossword(s) with luminometrice - I am going to inflict my current playlist on you all instead.

Vienna Teng - Recessional
who are you, taking coffee no sugar? / who are you, echoing street signs?

I love this. I love it so much, I have listened to it a hundred times in ten days.

Vienna Teng - Love Turns 40
don't go, she says when he's sleeping / she says it to herself

The lyrics of this one, I think, make it for me. Actually, I don't think there's a single song by her without this lovely, sparse, astonishing lyricism.

Liz Phair - Divorce Song
and it's true I stole your lighter and it's also true I lost the map / but when you said I wasn't worth talking to I had to take your word on that

Angry Lesbian Feminist Music^TM.

The Indelicates - Our Daughters Will Never Be Free
we said it's okay on the day we said nothing

Via jacinthsong, this is the version I described as "plinky-plonky-disturbing" and she described as a three-minute song about the failures of third wave feminism. Listen to it.

Indigo Girls - Starkville
I remember one occasion when you were drinking / you asked me to the coast

This is soft and a little strange, a little haunting. I (still) love the Indigo Girls, oh, yes. It dawned on me a few days ago, while I was trying to explain to someone why I love them so much, that it's partly the mood they evoke - so many of their songs are associated in my headwith specific times, specific people, times when I was stressed out and times I was stumbling towards change and times I was dizzily falling in love - and partly because they are that good, that subtle, and that occasionally downright strange. And I do love how they sing about, well, everything. Have a song about the importance of political history -

Indigo Girls - Become You
it took a long time to become the thing I am to you

- and one about reincarnation -

Indigo Girls - Galileo
at least I know there'll be no nuclear annihilation in my lifetime

and one about, and I swear I am not making this up, and possibly I wish I were, but. Have a song about putting down that degree in philosophy and stepping out into the real world.

Indigo Girls - Closer To Fine
the less I seek my soul for some definitives / the closer I am to fine

And, finally. Before I attempt to go to bed, while I can still pretend it's not tomorow yet, a poem. I got this from musesfool for National Poetry Month, and I've been waiting for a slow lazy Sunday to repost it, because it's lovely and it stayed with me.

when you have forgotten Sunday: the love story

—And when you have forgotten the bright bedclothes on a Wednesday and a Saturday,
And most especially when you have forgotten Sunday—
When you have forgotten Sunday halves in bed,
Or me sitting on the front-room radiator in the limping afternoon
Looking off down the long street
To nowhere,
Hugged by my plain old wrapper of no-expectation
And nothing-I-have-to-do and I'm-happy-why?
And if-Monday-never-had-to-come—
When you have forgotten that, I say,
And how you swore, if somebody beeped the bell,
And how my heart played hopscotch if the telephone rang;
And how we finally went in to Sunday dinner,
That is to say, went across the front room floor to the ink-spotted table in the southwest corner
To Sunday dinner, which was always chicken and noodles
Or chicken and rice
And salad and rye bread and tea
And chocolate chip cookies—
I say, when you have forgotten that,
When you have forgotten my little presentiment
That the war would be over before they got to you;
And how we finally undressed and whipped out the light and flowed into bed,
And lay loose-limbed for a moment in the week-end
Bright bedclothes,
Then gently folded into each other—
When you have, I say, forgotten all that,
Then you may tell,
Then I may believe
You have forgotten me well.

-Gwendolyn Brooks

Comments

[minttown1.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the music.

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

Yay, thank you! I was just starting to get tired of endlessly replaying my current iTunes work music.

(PS, I listened to "Closer to Fine" with a friend at the end of my last day of classes, and just about totally lost it at "I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind / Got my paper and I was free." ACTUALLY THAT IS A DEEPLY AMBIVALENT MOMENT, INDIGO GIRLS.

...and then I did indeed end up in a bar at 3:00 a.m. ohgod.)

[nevermindirah.livejournal.com]

That Liz Phair song is fantastic. Thanks for sharing these!

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

You're very welcome, dear.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

But did you go in there seeking clarity? Did you, Leigh, did you?

(ye gods, it is almost 3am here right now. Am I in a bar? Am I buggery.)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

You're very welcome!

[tau_sigma]

That poem is lovely; thanks for sharing that.

Also, music from Iona ftw. I have no real words tonight, but I always enjoy listening to music you put up, so I am looking forward to this.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Oh, you're very welcome! Am v. glad you approve. Did you like any of it in particular?

[tau_sigma]

Our Daughters Will Never Be Free - I see what you mean about 'plinky-plonky-disturbing'; I started off thinking just that it was beautiful, and then you listen to the words and it is disturbing, but still rather pretty to listen to. And Love Turns 40 and Divorce Song and oh, the others are great too, but those three in particular have stuck in my head rather. The whole lot are part of my current, on-repeat playlist of songs to work or nap to. :)

[anna_luna]

Downloaded all the music, thank you very much!

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

You're welcome! :)