I was just reminded of the first part of this quote – From A History Of The World In 10 1/2 Chapters by Julian Barnes by a comment someone said on Twitter, and when I searched for it, found the second part, which I’d entirely forgotten. I liked this book well enough, when I read it, but this chapter – the half of the title – about love was, by far, the highlight for me.
We Hope You All Enjoy The Show
Seriously, people: This may be the thing that proves that “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” is all manner of awesome. Just check out the bit that starts at 0:54.
Ba, Baba Baaaaaaaa, Not Just Anyone
This was the first version of “Who Loves The Sun” that I knew, the Teenage Fanclub cover from the B-side of “Sparky’s Dream” (I admit, I wouldn’t have remembered that detail if it wasn’t for the video above; I just remembered it was a B-side), and it cemented the song for me: It was sad, kind of beautiful, and very simple. It was a time in my life when that was the kind of thing that I was drawn towards, a simple understated sadness and innocence, the lure of the heartbroken and earnest, and this song fit into everything I thought about myself and my life at the time. It was my song, amongst many other “my song”s.
Months later – maybe even years, now that I come to think about it – I was in the apartment of a friend’s boyfriend, and we were all making small talk and being on best behavior, hanging out for one of the first and only times as the summer sun started to set, and he put on the original version of this song, and I can still remember my surprise around the two minute mark, when something very different happens than what I was used to -
- there was a sense of “What was that?” in both the “That’s not right!” and the “That was amazing!” meanings, and I wanted to tell him to play it again and again until I could make sense of what I’d just heard. It was such a small thing, but felt much bigger. I remember, for days afterwards, feeling as if it was a hint that everything wasn’t exactly what I’d thought it had been all along, like it was some kind of cosmic message that was much bigger than Lou Reed’s imagination.
It’s Like Talking
I have to admit, I love this quote from writer Joan Didion:
Well, I don’t really understand blogging. It seems like writing, except quicker. I mean, I’m not actually looking for that instant feedback… It makes me uncomfortable. It’s an entirely different impulse, I guess. It’s like talking.
It at once touches on what I love and what I dislike about blogging; the immediacy and the instant feedback. Yes, both belong in both categories.
Gotta Get Up, Gotta Get Out, Gotta Get Home Before The Morning Comes
I am, more than a decade late, beginning to realize how much I love Harry Nilsson’s music.
The reason I say that it’s “more than a decade late” is because, more than a decade ago, one of my best friends – someone called Michelle McIntosh – was a massive Nilsson fan, and would repeatedly tell me that I would love his music, and I would repeatedly tell her that I wasn’t interested because all that I’d heard of his was covers of “Without You” and “Everybody’s Talkin’,” two songs that I truly find very, very little to appreciate in any way whatsoever. It didn’t help that Michelle would keep telling me that Nilsson was a massive influence on the Beatles, and the Beatles nerd in me would tell her that, no, that couldn’t be true because he came around in the late ’60s and was big in the ’70s, after they’d split up, so duh.
I ended up eating my words on both how much I’d enjoy his songs and his Beatles influence much more recently; the wonder of Netflix’s Instant Streaming and my boredom with what was on television led me to watch Who Is Harry Nilsson, and within about half an hour, I’d realized three things:
- When he was young, he looked like Elliott Smith (See also: My obsession with Elliott Smith).
- I knew a ridiculous amount of his early stuff via covers by the Monkees, Jellyfish and various other bands that I really, really love.
- I was already smitten with the orchestral, scatty swing of his earliest albums.
It’s only, what, four days later, but I’ve already amassed a ridiculously large collection of his music, and have all-time favorite songs that I didn’t even know existed a week ago. I wish that I could go back to a decade ago – or even just, what, eight years? Seven? My memory is weak for a lot of that time, it all blurs together, thanks to age and everything being new and overwhelming and learning a new country at the time. Before she died, way too young, anyway – and tell Mich that she was right. She would’ve known that she was, anyway. She usually did.
Hello, Fail Whale.
Two surreal discoveries from Twitter this morning. One, the Dalai Lama has a Twitter account (Not that I think he’s actually the one writing the tweets, even though that does make for a wonderful mental image), and two, this is who Twitter thinks is similar to the Dalai Lama:
Hint: Look at the name on the bottom left.