Parrotwood

extra covers EP 2

2011-12-19T01:08:00.001-08:00

in the night i go sailing preorder

2011-11-17T11:36:00.001-08:00

$15, plus shipping to your location (which is included already in the drop down menu. please be sure to select the correct region for your location). i am excited for you to see/read this book. and Canada did not get screwed this time, i included a Canadian option. if you would like to order multiple copies or also order Lotte Kestner or Sergius Gregory cds, please email lottekestner@gmail.com for a personal invoice.

boats

2011-09-15T03:54:00.000-07:00

this
i fear
is my last chance
my elbows on the table
and i don't touch you
with my lips or hands
but like a fleet of boats
poised
in one direction
my heart is full of words
and movements
sharply
drawing the bow right back.
i think that urgency
is a beautiful language.
and nobody wants you more.

a.w.

outtakes

2011-09-05T11:49:00.001-07:00

trespassers william songs - anna-lynne solo versions by lotte kestner

lyre

2011-09-04T18:07:00.000-07:00

i want you to know
i am not bouncing sound off walls
echoes in chambers
or lyrebird calls
a parrot collecting
the sounds of the earth
and reflecting them all.
instead i am trying to start
a fire without a match
and no one taught me how to do that.
that i am thrown from ships
tired and trying not to slip down
in unnamed seas
but i still know where you're at.
what i want to say is
that i am somewhere in the depths
that when i tell you things
they are coming from my depths
that my voice is pure
and that it might be best
to mark my words.
because i am no kind of poet
and no kind of bird
i won't say i love you
because my love deserves
to hear sentences
that no one else has ever heard.

a.w.

parts of snow

2011-08-25T09:00:00.000-07:00

the night goes dark
while i listen to that one wave
that keeps heaving
on the same pile of stones
like a long sweet heartbeat
i picture you turning your lights off
and sighing in the blackness
you don't picture me,
that is the difference.
i am trying to marry two words
craft some sentence
trap the right notes in ether
to some extent
in every moment,
to woo you, love
to swivel your chair half way around.
i remember each thing you have given me
do you want me to list them
i want it to be impossible
for you to be able to chart what i've done
beyond a steady watch ticking
the feathers in your pillow
love should be an avalanche
and all of its parts of snow.
do you want me to tell you,
or is it enough to just know.

a.w.

grenades

2011-08-20T10:57:00.000-07:00

i have been here long enough
to know how to weigh sentences
as they fall from the mouth
like invisible powder.
some things we say with our eyes down
or our cheeks warm
some things we whisper
like a secret we were supposed to guard
some things we shout down a hallway
or up a staircase
over cables
and lightning bolts.
no one collects them
or translates them
and i have been speaking long enough
to know that they all weigh
just the same
whatever the color
or sweetness
they had on our tongue.
i have found myself dropping grenades like
"i was starting to love you"
but the grenade never goes off
it doesn't even tick
just falls like the same powder
that fell from my lips
when i woke up and said
"i wonder if it's warm outside."

a.w.

book no. 2

2011-08-19T23:17:00.000-07:00

many years ago, about 10, i put out a poetry and songbook collection called split infinitive. in the next few weeks i will finish editing a second. it will be in three parts, three stages of my life from the past decade. mostly poetry, with some journal excerpts snuck in. since i've been struck down by tendinitis these past few months and haven't been able to touch my instruments or much else, this seems like the ideal time to focus on words all by themselves.

the little mermaid

2011-08-06T16:24:00.000-07:00

“But if you take away my voice,” said the little mermaid, “what is left for me?”

in the night i go sailing

2011-08-03T04:16:00.001-07:00

my night is a restless
whispering thing
at my ear
like a ghost
tireless in its haunting

if i try to love you
as hard as i hurt
something to rise to the surface
a white preserver
sprung from the black night
will you let me cling

if i scatter more touches
this time, than last time
will you please read into it
you know the touches i mean

i think if you find me sleeping
at last
it will be with your name
like a wreath in my hands

(it is not the things we take with us
to the grave
it is the things we weigh our boat with
to get to sleep)

the night is a push
from the harbor
the sound of calm water
the ache of trying to translate
the new language
of your scent in my hair
even though i can't remember
the last time you touched me

the long wandering of bare feet
the eternal wait for your response
it pulls
like the sleeves of my sweater
that i clasp in my fists
as i warm my palms

are you going to let me keep clasping
let me close my eyes
let me push the boat out
to somewhere that is still enough
that the first thing i feel
when the dream starts
is your arms
because i've waited long enough
already

a.w.

revive

2011-07-30T18:02:00.000-07:00

i write you off
but the ink is invisible,
will always be.
whatever your last word was
it will stay on my skin
and shiver
so i hope it is no word at all
but a touch.
do you hear me
when i curse at you through walls
for never catching
when you could have
when my heart falls.
but i can't wait
for you to hook me again.
breathe me with life
so i can die again.
i'm quite sure that you know
where i'm hiding.
waiting for the touch on my shoulder
has me trembling
and alive again.

a.w.

wax orchards

2011-07-30T16:13:00.000-07:00

i will save a place for this
with the certain words
that my memory likes to pet
the street names
and lake names
and foreign words for avocado
china mountain
wax orchards.
i will cover you with tags
a bit like an autopsy
a bit like a charm bracelet
and the whir of the wind
will flap them
but not shake them.
i have my ways of keeping track.

i know what medications you're on
i will not mix the right moment with the wrong touch
i am like a pharmacist
in that.

if i tell you my favorite flower
and you never hand me one
does that mean you don't love me.
i should not think like that.

a.w.

extra covers ep

2011-07-30T13:29:00.001-07:00

extra covers EP by lotte kestner

like a tire

2011-07-30T09:53:00.000-07:00

somehow i know
there might be nothing
worse to you
than being cared for.
i turn this thought over
on the nights
when i need more air
when you've made me a fish
on the carpet
yet i am the one
wanting to save you
in my fantasy
still.

i was falling in love
but i promise
i stopped,
like the staccato violence
of a baseball in a glove.

if you had wanted sacrifice
instead
i would have slashed myself like a tire

if you had wanted breath
i would have given you my deepest one

in moments of the night
i may find myself grateful
that you didn't want these things,
that each beat of my heart
is another beat you let me keep
another sleep you let me sleep.

because if you were thirsty
after your bad dreams,
some of mine are sweet
and i would have found a way
to siphon them
like a worm into your ear.

i saw pinholes in you,
i wanted you to be the slits
of silver that came out,
that one time your heartbeat sped up,
that is the you i wrap myself around.
drink enough and you will surpass
even my most exalted statements
spool the night out
and you'll break all the encasements
but it's just pinholes and whiskey
and if you wanted to be here
you would be here
where your place is.

i only want the bees and butterflies
who found their own way here,
i never armed myself
with any pins
to put in their pretty wings
because it's not the same thing.

i didn't say anything to trick you.
did you say anything to trick me?
my love, i don't mind.

bookends

2011-07-28T21:32:00.000-07:00

the song i would write you now
is different
because my hands have broken down
but not just that
it's that all of me
is humming in lower sounds

there were days
when you were too lovely to write about
and my hands instead
were the ones trying to tell you
what was in me
trying to get out

but the rest of the time
i was diligent with my homework
trying to be a healer and a singer and a poet
anything that you think
we dropped behind us
i went back and got it

anything you haven't figured out yet
i already knew it
and forgot it

the girl writes the poem
about the first touch and the pet name
about the morning
and the kiss in the rain
and even about the broken glass
and the heart pain

but not about the first day
she forgot to think about you
and everything went on just the same

a.w.

thunder

2011-07-27T02:48:00.000-07:00

last night
the sky made thunder
like sheets of metal
thrown down the street
toward the lake
and if there were a glass of water
beside my bed
i believe it would shake.
and even when the sun was dim
a different green plant
suddenly turned red or purple
unwarned in my own garden.
how dare you
i've been keeping my earthquakes
to myself
and all of the colors i would have turned
instead i held my breath
i watched you
just wrote some words down
and was like a leaking tap
that could've filled the bath
but instead whispered
down the drain.

a.w.

in dreams

2011-07-25T01:46:00.000-07:00

if i could sleep
i would use my dreams
to summon you to me
that fish bowl of the night
that you can't swim from.
that power we think we have
in dreaming of one another,
as though you were sleepwalking
and now you will never know
the things you did
that i have seen...

but in my day
and in my sleep
i don't get to do the things i want to
except in those last fleeting moments
one two three
when my eyes start to see
things that aren't there
but my heart still feels
full of real-life.
blur my worlds together
and bring you to me.
i wish i was better at this.
i could make it last longer.

i think the fiercer
i encircle you in my sleep
the gentler i touch you
in the daylight.
the more i pull away
the more you will know
that you have me.
every night
as i drift off
like a good-bye
on a platform
and i can't say anything grand
if i don't know where you're going
because i am careful with my heart
but i am not careful
enough.

one two three
is all it takes
to wake up with my heart
beating like a race horse
that ran all night long
while i was sleeping.

it is written
like a fortune.
constant as a pulse,
crushed as my pillow,
and as sweet as sleep.

a.w.

torches

2011-07-23T20:48:00.000-07:00

i miss being
in the front
of each others' minds
knowing we privately smile
at the same time
the draught in this house
puts all the candles out
faster than i could ever light them

it's the same with kisses
and escalators
if you wait too long
it will never be the right time

the light's changed
we never took the polaroid
we never accidentally fell asleep
on the sofa
i never found out
what you would call me
when you open your eyes in the morning
i had guesses

but even i
have no interest in torches
that have fallen into the water

a.w.

blood poem

2011-07-18T20:23:00.000-07:00

bend the space
for me
i don't want to be
opposite corners of the fitted sheet
don't make me have to memorize
your colors
don't want to be the one
taking minutes
because the point of being with you
is being with you.
i thought i told you
how i need your blood
how just mine pumping
doesn't push enough
and just like everything
with you is,
one drop is enough,
is all i want.
the promise i make
is to only take
what i need to keep breathing
i am someone to be lost at sea with
all of the rations are yours
except for that one drop
my love.

a.w.

purple juice

2011-07-17T13:00:00.000-07:00

i have come to learn
that you don't know how to take me.
if you were picking blackberries
you would have the purple juice
all over your fingers
that heartbreaking moment
as a child
when you tear your first leg from a spider
all by accident
with the rim of a cup
that you were trying to save
i'll pretend
pretend that you're heartbroken
by the things you've spilled
the moments you kill
by laughing
out of the corner of your mouth.

i hardly ever fall
but when i do
i expect to be caught.

a.w.

spokes

2011-07-07T12:58:00.001-07:00

there is no such thing as a long night
or a short night
each minute is the distance
of eyelash to eyelash
dandelion spokes
everything in nature is even and steady
like my fingers splayed apart
but some of the minutes hurt
and some of them are saccharine
and some of them i would've looked at so much harder
like you just laughed
and i was listening to the sound
and i didn't count the lines at the corner of your eyes
and let me relive it now
again
for each of the senses
and let me see both sides of your profile
at once.
they won't replay it for me.
but i do.
that is love.
taking one moment
and bringing it back to life
like a vampire.
knowing you touched me
and knowing it must've been the warmest thing in the world
but i was so busy holding my breath
i didn't even get to feel it.

a.w.

stolen

2011-05-25T19:50:00.001-07:00

Covers album out June 1 on Saint-Loup Records.

Stolen:

Falling Snow (Damien Jurado)
Flume (Bon Iver)
Wait For Me (Motopony)
Hur Jag Fick Dig Att Alska Mig (Kent)
Fake Empire (The National)
That Look You Give That Guy (Eels)
Let's Go to Bed (The Cure)
Stolen (The Bleachers)
Earlies (Trash Can Sinatras)
Flirted With You All My Life (Vic Chesnutt)
True Faith (New Order)
Leif Erikson, Type Foundry Mix (Interpol)

Extra Covers EP:

Eyes Without a Face (Billy Idol)
If I Were (Vashti Bunyan)
Halo (Beyonce)
Harmless Sparks (David Bazan)
Black Metallic (Catherine Wheel)

lotte kestner b-sides album

2011-04-28T14:45:00.001-07:00

china mountain b-sides by lotte kestner

stranger

2011-04-24T16:55:00.000-07:00

i can watch you now
like someone who has not touched you,
i can wonder at what color
to call your eyes,
now that the taste of your mouth
has slipped from my remembering
or has melted and changed on its own.
and you could laugh at me
because i spend such moments
imagining what it's like to be part of you
or what we would whisper about.
or would you squint gently
at the curiosity of my new eyes
- to which the shape of your neck
is a new line to trace -
and with the scar of your expression
nudge the past gently across the table
toward me,
some truth that allows your beauty
to scald like the beauty of a stranger
even as it is true
that i have worn your clothes,
and i have seen your shoulders bare.

a.w.

stumble

2011-04-24T16:08:00.000-07:00

the room is speaking your name to me,
so i may not lie, pretending that
i think of your face when it is before me, only,
and i cannot recreate your voice in my mind.
the room will tell me things
that you will never tell me,
for i am no striking light for you
that fills your eyes and leaves a stain
that you can sense wherever you move,
like how i sense you.
i do not mind being foolish
and so vulnerable - i cannot
imagine your love, but then cannot
imagine not seeking it,
the smooth color of your lips
are a summons.

i make sure that you know where i am...
i will leave fragments of my wishes
about your room, and inside your pockets,
that one day you may mistakenly
stumble upon my love for you,
that one day you may mistakenly
stumble upon your love for me.

a.w.

thousands

2011-04-24T16:04:00.000-07:00

you will never be as beautiful
to anyone as you are to me now -
and i tell myself that for that
you should love me,
for in my eyes is half of where you live.

i know how my heart can paint
new colors in a pair of eyes and
new flavors upon your lip and
find your body - just as it always has been -
so gold and smooth and a perfect fit for mine.
i ache too hard and love too hard
but there is nothing so becoming to you
as the way i see you.
and all i can ask is that,
if you will not kiss me,
then please do not smile, for it makes your eyes
too bright, and do not move your face too close,
for it makes my chest tight and weak,
and do not laugh when i explain your beauty
in thousands of words
as if i were a poet pretending.

a.w.

are you alone

2011-04-21T18:27:00.000-07:00

are you still alone?
my heart will turn pale whatever you say,
i who lug the burden of love to bed with me.
do you wake from your sweet dreams
with your lips heavy with kisses
and no one to lay them upon,
do you sometimes feel beautiful
and have no one to tell you
you are right,
that your skin is soft and your eyes
are the color the world ought to be.
and when your dreams are colder
and you wake with a soft moan,
is there no one to rearrange the sheets
and rest their mouth upon your forehead
and whisper your name.
this punishment - that i lie with the darkness,
that i lie with it as though it were you,
wondering if you know that you need not be alone
and that i have thought of you
as the fragments of night scrape
slowly past.
are you still alone?
i know from my love how easy it is to love you
why wouldn't others find you as beautiful
and gently remove from your night
the memory of loneliness, with their fingertips.
...only if they love you like i do,
that their lips upon your mouth
seek your breath to live off of,
that when they are woken from dreams
by an unfamiliar noise, a creak, a clock
they savor that moment like no other,
to memorize your sleeping face,
that when they leave you they begin to ache.
oh i would sooner see you in those
stranger's arms
than for your body to go untouched
and your breath cold

but i cannot doubt, it will never be
that they will love like me.

a.w.

Sadistik - two Identity Theory interviews

2011-04-13T11:31:00.000-07:00

Seattle's best rapper, interviewed while watching American Psycho.

This is the film interview

This is the music interview

Some are Dead and Some are Still Under Cups

2010-12-08T23:28:00.000-08:00

There is a strange thing in my head that happens when I look at my phone. And realize that by punching a button, it most certainly will change everything. I hold that fear and power all the time.

I read something I wrote a long time ago and I am reminded that you hurt me too, sometimes. I guess it doesn’t compare but it makes everything suddenly real and strange. You were actually real, you didn’t just upturn your small features and radiate this beautiful goldenness on me all the time. That’s how I remember it though.

I remember sometimes I got sick in the night and would go into the other room and sit on the small love seat couch that was green and had plaid pillows that you gave away to someone after I moved out. I would have a sore throat and couldn’t lay down because I couldn’t breathe and would hate you just a little because you were sleeping in the other room like I was there.

The first time I got sick was different. Once I had cramps and I just lay there while you went to the store and came back with some expensive pills for me to take. That was at my place, where the mattress was just a blow-up mattress and after a while it started losing air. You could feel the floor through it in places. Except when there were two of us to balance it out, but then we couldn’t sleep in each others’ arms.

There were crickets in that house. At first I would obediently squash them or put a cup over them and take them outside. But then there were too many of them and I would leave several crickets under cups around the bedroom and deal with them later. Once I tried spraying bathroom cleaner on one like Raid, but it just made things worse. The cricket started jumping really high and I felt cruel. I remember sometimes if you watched long enough you could see a cricket come in under the door from the kitchen, and it had all this personality like it was from a Kafka story. Until we fixed the weather stripping and then I didn’t have to shake my sheets out for crickets anymore.

You cooked for me there for the first time. Not like me making you spaghetti in my first apartment, just spaghetti all the time, listening to a U2 single on repeat. The time you spilled hot water on your jeans and by the time you got them off there was a big burn on your leg. You made me chicken and pasta and vegetables I had never tasted before. I had never had food like that. I tried to make it once then when you weren’t there and it was watery and inedible. But recently I made something with some of those ingredients and that smell of you cooking came to me, the smell of capers and olives and bay leaves simmering together. It had been years.

You were the kind of boyfriend that people would tell me you were cute, or even beautiful, a lot of the time. Somehow they knew they could say that. Maybe I should have been bothered, but you were all mine. A stranger told me in a bathroom of a restaurant once that you were beautiful, and I said “yes he is,” and I came out and told you. I took so many pictures of you. I’m sure you knew I thought you were exquisite. After we broke up, we were sitting over slices of pizza that I had paid for and I told you you looked like a model. Then I saw you blush. Then it was different. Then I was someone distanced from you, that you weren’t going to spend the rest of your life with.

I bought you the most expensive blended coffee drink in the store, and then gave you my started Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf punch card, like that would make up for ruining both of our lives.

We went to see a movie, like two small ghosts sitting next to each other. Feeling strange that we didn’t feel more strange next to each other I guess, there were still so many of those old threads knitting us close. But there was something wrong with the seats in the theater, and the movie was so long. Our necks were angled uncomfortably; we tried changing seats but it was the same thing. But we both cried at the movie.

When we were together I remember I had to run to work from the art theater where we had seen Virgin Suicides because we had decided to go to the movies even though we knew it wouldn’t finish in time. Because going to the movies with you was so fun for some reason. Like I always knew you were having the exact same experience as I was. I don’t know how many blocks I ran.

We went walking on Melrose after we broke up. I was wearing this perfect jacket that you had lent me because I just had a t-shirt on. Every time I go to buy a jacket that’s the one I have in my head that I want but I never find anything like it. We were both different from the people we had been, but only in the superficial ways. Like I actually looked through the electronica section in the used cd store, which I never would have done before. And you started talking about an artist I had never heard of whose postcards you had up in your new apartment.

We sat up on the roof of your apartment building and you told me stories that were hysterically funny but I could only laugh a little because I kept thinking that this is the person whose heart I broke, who is so funny and whose perfect jacket I’m wearing, and who doesn’t have any of the same brands in his bathroom now that he doesn’t share things with me. And doesn’t have any food in the fridge. And who has incense burning and is telling me about all these concerts he’s gone to of bands I had only vaguely heard of, some of which I didn’t like, but I didn’t tell you.

I remember we got into fights when we were together, but they were always theoretical, impersonal fights. Like I had a problem with the end of the movie Seven, both times we saw it. And some philosophical arguments that I can’t even remember now because they had nothing to do with us. Other than that, we never fought. I know after we got back from our cross-country drive I couldn’t believe we never fought. And we made love in all the hotels even though we’d been dating for years. And you let me sleep a lot of the time while you drove. We were small enough that I could lay down curled up with my head by your waist in the front seat of the U-haul. We were driving furniture to our first apartment together. Beautiful cherry wood furniture from your grandmother that got sold for a hundred dollars or something after we broke up.

We hit a bird with the U-haul. This lovely red bird. It flew right into the windshield.

When we lived upstairs in the attic-shaped room in R’s house, there was no door so there was a thick rope that we would tie around the banisters downstairs when we wanted to take off our clothes. I would have to get up early in the mornings to finish my college essays and i would sit indian style on the floor typing while you slept. We kept Red Bulls under the bed.

I said that I wanted a blue and white striped couch someday, so you bought blue and white striped sheets for the bed even though the pillows and bedspread that you already had were green and busy and didn’t match at all. Like some promise of a blue and white striped future that was never purchased.

For some reason you always asked me for help on your homework assignments even though you knew so much more about all of the philosophers and in general knew more about everything than I did. We would sit at Elysee over a piece of cake that I had bought and speculate about all of these great things that I only knew little fragments about. My head would start aching in this wonderful way. I would read you everything I had highlighted in my Campbell book and you always understood everything I said.

I went across the street to Penny Lane and bought you a bunch of cds, cds that I already had but so that you could keep them in your walkman and listen while you did your homework, since I didn’t like music playing when I was reading. But then I started buying you more cds that I already had and you started getting sad and scared that it was because we were going to break up.

When I would drive you to school we would sing all of the songs in the cd changer. We would sing the two different parts to Hard-headed Woman that overlapped. You would walk to my work on my dinner break even though we lived together and saw each other all the time. Sometimes we would eat slices of pizza on the floor behind the register if the store was really busy and I couldn’t leave. Yours always pepperoni with something, mine always tomato with something. The night I had to stay late while the store got vacuumed, you stayed and read magazines with me, our feet swinging from the countertop we sat on.

You said after we broke up that you spent a fortune at a cd store trying to buy everything I’d had. All of a sudden most of the cds you loved had just disappeared with me. And that you bought the eye cream that I used because you had gotten used to it being in the medicine cabinet. I remember when I got locked in the bathroom somehow, the bolt got stuck, until you managed to get me out and then we stuck some tissue in the door jam so it wouldn’t happen again. And when we got locked out of the apartment with all the bars on the windows and somehow you still found a way in. Like you found a way in when we were locked out of the San Diego house and you removed the window screen because we had a hot pizza and a movie rental and didn’t want to wait for Jenny or Brian to get home. Although you were this sensitive person in this fragile body, I still always felt safe around you. You were smart and sensible and didn't get angry.

I used to think that love was writing poems for someone, or finding a perfect phrase that would absolutely convince someone in that moment that they were truly beautiful. Enough that they would keep believing it. Or wordlessly holding someone for hours. Focusing on all of the subtle changes in the ways that you slowly touch each other. Now when I think of what love is it is a very particular memory. There was a coffee shop that I used to sing at that would give me this delicious meal for free when I played. I guess that after a while the policy changed but you didn’t tell me, and would pay the waiter while I was singing so I never knew. And I kept getting my free meals. When I was moving out you told me this, and it was like the middle of my heart was gently tugged out.

The only thing you asked for back when I left was your grandmother’s necklace that I had worn every moment for four years. Now when I see it in photographs around my neck I can’t imagine what it was like to wear it. I remember I kept playing with it when I was recording the first album in the studio. I wondered if I listened close enough if I could hear the sound of the gold heart pulling along the length of the chain. The back of the heart had a couple of grooves in it, imperfections. It would remind me of stories of men who were saved by some medallion that had shielded their chest when they were shot. These little battle wounds. After a few years the clasp kind of weakened so the heart didn’t close all the way. I had never put anything inside where photos could go. Maybe if I had it wouldn’t have been so easy for you to ask for it back.

We shared clothes and we shared furniture and we shared soap bars and everything. When I moved my things out of the apartment I think I unhinged something. Separating things that didn’t really belong to just one or the other of us. Splitting up collections. I left you the fridge and the bookshelves and even the piano that you had gotten for me. I left you a lot of the good movies that were mine. Separating the dirty laundry and taking my items was the worst part. For some reason I threw all of my bras into the dumpster. While I was packing up my things I was making you a tape of some songs that I couldn’t imagine you living without after I took my cds away. Like the one song that we recorded together for my audio assignment my senior year. The “love theme." If we were ever in a small argument I would play that tape and you’d know I was sorry. We would dance together. There is a fear in the deep of my bones that there will be no tape players sometime soon and I will never hear that song again.

And that is only the beginning of my punishment.

Anna-Lynne Williams, 2004.

unquestioned

2010-12-05T12:06:00.001-08:00

at the gate -
and i could've melted my hand to your face,
could've made my words into puffs of air,
could've revealed your new beauty to you.

we slow... we part...
my breath in my heart

and i will ask you to come with me
later

i fumble for you in the day
and you fumble for me in the night
and like how every dream is right
unquestioned
(that is just what we dreamed)
that is who you are for me.

Best Albums of 2010

2010-12-03T17:09:00.000-08:00

This year it wasn't hard to come up with 10. I loved more albums than are on this list. Most of my favorites came out right at the beginning of the year and I never got tired of them. I'd like to make some more lists, like the songs of the year and the albums of the decade. But for now here are my top 10 of 2010, in order.

The first three definitely dominated my listening this year. It's also notable that my list is full of female singers this year, often there are one or none in my top 10.

1. Damien Jurado - Saint Bartlett

2. Kent - En Plats i Solen

3. Beach House - Teen Dream

4. The National - High Violet

5. Eels - End Times

6. Sarah Jaffe - Suburban Nature

7. Charlotte Gainsbourg - Irm

8. John Grant - Queen of Denmark

9. Breathe Owl Breathe - Magic Central

10. CocoRosie - Grey Oceans

a.w.

Check out music from Lotte Kestner

2010-11-17T16:56:00.001-08:00

I.

2010-09-13T23:38:00.000-07:00

there is a permanence that makes my heart ache, in the way that bodies fall asleep together. slightly solemn and safe, this unending closeness, familiar skins. falling into one another. wisps of time, warmth of bodies. the sweetest of the things we give, and we do it with distant dreaming heads. but the embrace sustained even after the mind is unaware, somewhere else.

a.w.

10-03-04

2010-09-13T23:17:00.000-07:00

the roof is so strange. the menus say “the roof” at the top though apparently we are at “the standard”. S is comfortably cat-like with her feet up on the long orange sofa she has smilingly found for us, relieved that we can all be together, and away from the people who she says would wish us dead if we were in their space, their misplaced hostility and their unfounded cool. R has somehow acquired a cuban cigarillo and the smoke plumes uneven and ghost-like from his lips. strange artifacts on the table - M's unsightly ‘birthday hat’ with a disturbing balloon. some of us drinking martinis, some drinking red bulls. J has bought me a red bull and i drink it over ice in a glass and it looks and feels like i am drinking something exotic all the way up here. taxi driver is being projected onto the building across the way – it is huge and luminous and below it is a gym where i can see bodies bobbing up and down on treadmills. the pool is warm and the water comes right up to the top and i want to get in and i think of garden state. i want all of these people up here to disappear and the bobbing treadmill runners to evaporate so i can get into the pool in my underwear and stare up at all of the buildings that rise like science fiction movies into a sky that is full of light though it is night. it is difficult, in a space so full of insistently thumping music, and the humming unity of so many human voices, to imagine it suddenly quiet, empty, peaceful. it is an impossibly soothing exercise struggling to imagine this.

a.w.

handwriting

2010-09-13T22:42:00.000-07:00

sweetly
rushing to the eyes
your handwriting
here and there on a page
we were scribbling
back and forth in a classroom,
or you were writing
on a napkin,
and a drawing.
and i wish
that i could find something
everyday
that i forgot about
in the pages of a book
or a pocket
i wish
that every day
would bring you suddenly here
in the memory of a moment
when you were.

a.w.

Best Albums of 2009

2010-01-25T14:52:00.000-08:00

I end every year by making a list of my favorite albums. Some years there are as many as 30 albums that I couldn't live without, but this year there were really only 10 for me. To be honest, the David Bazan and Fever Ray releases really monopolized a lot of my time. But there are some beautiful songs on all of the following ten, and I think a few of them are growers that I'll enjoy even more next year...

1. David Bazan - Curse Your Branches

2. Fever Ray - Fever Ray

3. The Antlers - Hospice

4. Robert Gomez - Pine Sticks & Phosphorus

5. Wilco - Wilco (The Album)

6. Kings of Convenience - Declaration of Dependence

7. Klum - We Carelessly Turned Amazingly Into Nothing

8. Devendra Banhart - What Will We Be

9. Bill Callahan - Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle

10. Andrew Bird - Noble Beast

palm

2009-11-29T10:19:00.000-08:00

you said we made
a strange shadow
when we would lie together;
those were early evening
hours when
i would pretend to read your palm,
but i would just tell you
that you should love me

a.w.

white hair

2009-11-29T01:20:00.000-08:00

you appear moved that i am
giving you something,
all of my poetry, all of my heart,
i have drained it from this body
and encased it in a box.
i had meant to save it
for when my hair went white,
when you had forgotten why
you'd loved me in the first place.
i had meant to save it
but you leave too soon
and when my hair has gone white
you will have forgotten my name.

a.w.

like you

2009-11-25T22:45:00.001-08:00

do i know where i am without you
where do the eyes go that would have
knowingly met yours
when there is something silent to mention
i am only tracing the outline
of the dark design on the table
because my hands don’t know where to go
now
do i stop hearing the quiet songs in the background
that we would have hummed or whispered over
do i stop waiting to see a pair of shoes like yours
someone who smells like you that i follow pitifully
for a moment
until i decide that it is not a close enough match
i am only writing words down because
you are not here to tell
that the night is long and even the good dreams
are never as sweet as a single, slight memory
that comes and goes
like you

new method

2009-11-20T20:37:00.000-08:00

i want to love you right.
not in the way that i would want,
but in the way that you want.
i want to look at the way you sit
and understand what part aches
the things that make you laugh
the hardest
the comments that make you squint
i want to see.
i keep loving
the only way i know how,
seducing myself into the idea of love
but not you.
there is something i am not hearing
in these many words i have
to sort through.

i want you to lean in close
and say “how did you know”

2004

piano hammers

2009-09-23T13:46:00.000-07:00

other people would,
would swim to that side you’re on
begin ideas of two bodies together
with first gestures
of eyelids and hands.
my body suggests it to me
but not to you.
other people reveal first
the shoulder as the jacket slips
the neck as the hair is held back,
tell all with the step
of the body forward
in the circle of your space
wordlessly offered up.
but my movements are of silence,
though my thoughts are
quick piano hammers
that have rhythms for your presence,
letting the air weigh what you have said
for what it is made of,
and a new weight that i carry
of what my body tells me
but does not tell you.

a.w.
photo by Dark

full silence

2009-09-23T13:44:00.000-07:00

it cannot be
quite so sweet
as it seems to me
when you hold my face in your hands
and look
and kiss,
place your thin arms
right around me
from behind
and tap against my stomach
the time of the music playing.
and just when
everything melts
upon your beautiful face
and i feel i will rip apart
if i do not press
the word love
against your cheek,
that is when you take my hand
to your lips
and remind me
of the full silence.

erased

2009-09-23T13:42:00.000-07:00

i said something about your eyes
but it was not enough.
some beauty, some explosive,
your face gives and your eyes give more.
you, you in the dark or the light
in my arms or far.
the unrhyming different
sound that you are,
and when you are studious
at something else, and turned,
somehow you still give
and the stoop of your back
and the curl of your hair
and all that i would make mine
but for a word from you;
you do not mean to suggest adjectives
with your yes,
you do not mean this heat in my
shoulder blades.
you mean for me to wait,
and quietly,
as the beautiful line of your body
before a blank wall
makes that wall glow
and makes my ache
a gentle fixture right here
glad with the thought of it
being erased or not erased.

a.w.
photo by Dark

ashes

2009-09-23T13:41:00.000-07:00

your doorway
and light through open windows
wordless music
a soft floor
and the back of your hair,
the side of your face,
a rain of letters at your hands
and i feel you before i feel the arms,
letting go of packages
and it is the subtlety of stopping time
shutting off everything else
no one else, nowhere else
if you let me touch you
and lay words all over the bed.
and this feeling is warm and always
but beside you it flickers higher
leaving white ashes on our sleeping faces
and sunlight in the window.

a.w.
photo by Dark

bright fish

2009-09-03T18:29:00.000-07:00

the sweetness of the only sip
you can’t remember
the one your mind and mouth
let go of
tell me that you don’t mind
that you can only reach for
the low branches.
which loves
are the long sighs
as you lie listless
and obvious,
and which are the bright fish
that you fight for
and never catch.
you remind me that everything moves
always
like i hope
that while my body seems the same
forever,
and my thoughts,
they are whirring
secretly
beyond me.

a.w.

photo taken by dark

a week of concerts in denton, tx

2009-09-03T16:12:00.001-07:00

read my article here

snowshoes & hunters

2009-08-30T16:04:00.000-07:00

speaking of Denton, TX, i interviewed Midlake for identity theory a few months back. their new album is almost finished, and i still listen to their last release (the trials of van occupanther) pretty much all the time.

http://www.identitytheory.com/audio/alw_midlake.php

day one: mixing Ormonde in Texas

2009-08-29T13:17:00.001-07:00

somebody's been sleeping in my bed.

bitten

2009-08-08T22:44:00.001-07:00

You are scratching your arms, your back, in your sleep. When you wake yourself before five in the morning you are paranoid, angry, tired all at once. I hear you in the bathroom, water running, feet making vinyl sounds against the cold floor. You turn on the lamp and speak in the same loud whisper that you would use if there were an intruder; if this was not the whole house right here, this one room that we are in. You want to take the sheets off of the bed, find what has bitten you. Beneath your white shirt there is an asymmetrical white welt on your back, one on your arm. You say it is all over you. You say it is strange because you were dreaming that there were things crawling all over you, and here you were scratching your actual skin. You lie on top of the sheets, you let me turn out the light. There is a fly buzzing around our heads, taking turns at each of our ears.
There is something in this that is like glimpsing a scene from your childhood.
We are both up for an hour, every now and then one of us moves quickly as though shaking something off of our skin. But we awake six hours later, there have been no more bites, your hives have disappeared, and I wonder if we fell asleep at exactly the same time.
I love you more because of all of this.

dim.

2009-06-21T00:17:00.000-07:00

beautiful things
that dim
the only way that things can become
like arms dropping to one’s sides
after an embrace,
cold settled wax
and worn blankets
and birds that have sung themselves
to sleep.

cat, comma

2009-06-07T23:15:00.000-07:00

cat, comma

you have been a comma.
what i thought you were
you were not,
still four small windows
someone else’s black cat is lonely
i alone in a darkness
that allows me to see the book shelves.
before i was a lover
having conversations on our elbows
they grew pink and i showed us.
later i will be important
and read from my works
or sing them
and you are the comma
between those things
but something else
i thought you were.

2006.
(photo taken by Dark)

fixed.

2009-05-22T11:31:00.001-07:00

fixed.

the light weight of my thoughts
shuddering bubbles
are too thin to be held
too fragile to press
too much movement to anchor,
my weighed heart
and weightless words
waiting to beat together
like approaching lights
overlapped.
saying sweet dreams. all right.
beautiful. safe.
while my chest keeps me awake
all night
like little fluttering hands.
whispering sorry
when i want you to say the same.
we are close or distant
depending on where i lie
because you are fixed
like with pins
to one space on the bed.

2005.

more past poetry: goldsleep

2009-05-10T19:12:00.000-07:00

goldsleep.

emptying your shoes one by one
after walking on the sand;
at the doorstep, before you touch carpet.
we say nothing
where the pauses are not even pauses anymore
yet this morning i was doing a study
of your hair against your forehead
but i was not speaking.
in the morning your eyes
have collected gold sleep;
in the evening we have the same pink eyes
from the same pollen.
then you were a boy in blankets,
then you were two small ears
on either side of your thoughts
and two eyes
that promised openness
this white wet open in your face
then you were all muscles of the same color
moving in the dark.
now you are a vulture.

2006.

more past poetry: idly

2009-05-09T23:25:00.000-07:00

idly you touch me
some people speak too loudly
my place is peaceful,
i do not have an ice maker
that gasps in the night from snoring.
i do not like your simplicity
unmoved by the film, unmoved by me
that makes me into:
excitable, untrusting, exaggerative.
you do not like me like that either.

2006.

ear. oceanbottom. argentina.

2009-04-29T18:32:00.000-07:00

ear

i can see through your ear
warm pink like something young
needing a blanket
the lamp behind you a warm monster

it is the one part of you that glows.

oceanbottom

at the bottom of the ocean
my heart is a blue flower
camouflaged.

argentina

right now i am liking the sound
of the word argentina
in a plane that seems lower than others
but still too high
to really gather
that i am looking at the earth

past poetry

2009-04-22T02:29:00.001-07:00

heavy text book seattle rain today
push me out on the balcony
where droplets splash in
from sideways
melt with me
until the rain has made our clothes cling
an effort to peel them off
that we will take pleasure in...

rubbing our hands together
to warm them

the season of occasional snow
bigger coats
christmas concerts (tonight i will attend one)
the big stadium downtown
has replaced its blue lights with red and green
the season
when you and i make hot cider in the kitchen
and finally get to touch...

2008.

blogging about Sergius Gregory

2009-04-15T18:27:00.000-07:00

i've been acting as music editor of a website called identity theory for the past 15 months, conducting interviews with musicians (and sometimes authors, about music). we have just started up a music blog as well, and i will be posting on it regularly. my first piece is about sergius gregory, whose music i adore.

you can view the blog here

marfa in pictures

2009-03-15T23:18:00.001-07:00

see mystery lights

2009-02-11T11:53:00.000-08:00

i am spending all this february in marfa, TX, which has a population of about 2,000, and is an hour from the mexican border. renting a small adobe house on texas street a few blocks from the town square (which consists of a court house, post office, hotel, book store, laundromat/cafe, a well-stocked market, & a small cluster of restaurants including the mobile "food shark"). the library pretty much just has dvds...

the intention is to fly back to seattle with a completed record, a collaboration with robert gomez, who is engineering and performing most of the instruments, and singing some deep, dark harmonies. we sometimes spend 2 solid hours editing song lyrics until we are no longer lukewarm about them. everything is lean and approved by us both. we have converted most of the family room into a writing- and recording-friendly environment complete with innumerable guitars, robert's big apple monitor, a moog, and speakers on impressive mounts. and some toys, and instruments that robert has built.

the first song was born from a brief piece robert came up with on his ipod, and grew from there. the second started off with a 2-part verse i had written before coming to texas, and we finished the rest of the sections and words. the third is all marfa-new, and we have decided that it sounds 1970's meets 2070's. inspired by whiskey and charlotte gainsbourg and the open fire ban in marfa.

a few miles out from the center of town is a viewing platform that faces out over the flat land to where the marfa lights appear on clear nights. the lights are a semi-supernatural occurrence that has not yet been explained. lights in the distance which once were thought to be campfires, levitate and turn in circles. we went out on our second night here and weren't sure if we saw them or not, as they were described to be multi-colored and all we saw were white lights. but they were blinking and darting around in spacecraft-fashion, and we watched them for a half hour. and we'll soon return to see if we can find them turning green and red as rumored.

Hide in Me All You Want

2009-01-07T18:52:00.001-08:00

after being snowed in, in Seattle, for a week, i escaped to Southern California for a few weeks around the New Year. got to play music with Joe, Brock, and Aaron of Klum in their rehearsal space in Rosemead. Joe and i had already come up with a few song ideas years ago when he was visiting Seattle and we finally gave them lyrics and shot a few videos of us performing them in his family room with a few instruments. most likely this will become a full-fledged project and we'll be doing some proper recordings as well. right now it's just Lotte Kestner & Joe Fraley.

you can watch the first performance, All the Dark You Need There, on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6qgzZ1GsE4&feature=related

music for planes (anomie belle tour journal)

2008-12-09T17:29:00.000-08:00

the midwest part of the anomie belle tour turned out to be freezing and fun. we all bought new winter clothes but i don't think we were quite prepared; apparently living in seattle isn't much preparation for the wind chill, and for car windows that freeze over on the inside. i'd never been to minnesota, illinois, or iowa before, so was glad to see them, though i was seeing them all from under a big hood.
for the first 2 nights, anthon, toby, and i were hosted by toby's musician friend henry in chicago. lots of drinking in bars and down in the warm basement where we slept, lots of conversations about gear and 3am dinners. we performed at the empty bottle, where we were joined by our bandmate aileen who had traveled separately. aileen's husband dean brought several family members and colleagues so there was a really good vibe in the club of supportively noisy onlookers.
the next day we drove to des moines, arriving very early so we set up camp at a place called java joe's next door to the venue (vaudeville mews). they had a vegetarian menu, internet, beer, and malts... all the things we might need. the vaudeville mews show was an anniversary party and it turned out that everyone in des moines gets ridiculously drunk so we had another rowdy and happy audience. when we started playing a radiohead cover, one of the guys who worked at the club ran to the front of the stage and started singing the lyrics so loudly that i couldn't hear myself saying 'yesterday i woke up sucking a lemon.'
we spent the next 2 days in minneapolis, which wasn't snowing as much but was the coldest of the 3 cities. on the first afternoon we performed live on the air on Radio K - did 4 songs and toby had a brief interview. we then found a motel that we could stay at for 2 nights and took a band nap. we woke up in the evening to get pizza and then go to a comedy club where we enjoyed being the audience for a change. more heavy sleeping. the next day, we split up at the Mall of America and went shopping for boots and tights. aileen and i went on one of the roller coasters inside the mall which actually had us screaming quite a bit. in a few hours we only got through one floor of the mall, then we were off to our last show of the tour at the 400 bar. after sound checking with amazingly powerful monitors (nice) we had a delicious vegetarian meal at an anarchist cafe called Hard Times which i recommend. back at the club, there were 5 bands on the bill, mostly electronic artists with minimal set-ups. we got pretty amped up during the band before our set and aileen, toby, and i danced in the back of the club by the merch table for a good half hour. by the time we went on stage we were in a great mood and despite the quiet sunday night thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.
anthon drove us all the way back to chicago after the show (after we stopped for twinkies at a convenience store, which sounded like a good idea at the time). none of us slept much, perhaps out of guilt, because anthon didn't get to go to bed til 8 in the morning. slept like babies at toby's sister's house in chicago before going to the airport for a non-stop flight home. we didn't want to sleep because we'd just slept all morning so i stayed up with my ipod and a notebook, wrote some strange things, changed some lotte song lyrics that i've been working on. danced in my seat. braided lots of little braids into my hair.

i don't keep most of my music collection on my ipod, and many of the songs on my ipod are too mellow for getting amped up on a plane, so to stay happy and awake, i turned to these songs for assistance:

radiohead - reckoner
radiohead - all i need
radiohead - weird fishes
thom yorke - the eraser
thom yorke - black swan
manuok - warship
robert gomez - hunting song
robert gomez - on this day
gorillaz - feel good inc.
sigur ros - glisoli (the dave fridmann mix)
boards of canada - chromakey dreamcoat
death cab for cutie - soul meets body
le loup - outside of this car, the end of the world!
the church - under the milky way tonight
broken social scene - lover's spit (beehives version)

i love my anomie belle bandmates. and none of us caught colds. it was a good tour.

Interview

2008-11-14T18:17:00.001-08:00

I have been interviewed on the website Roots & Resonance. Just posted today.

My friend Sarah conducted the interview and you can read it here:

http://www.rootsandresonance.com/viewinterview.php?id=158

We talk about my songwriting process, upcoming collaborations, being inspired by novels and places, and other things...

anna-lynne
xo

splinters

2008-09-26T18:18:00.000-07:00

splinters

for all of the splinters i have
collector
for the way they all look in the light
like something quiet living under a membrane
for the way you forget them
in taking my hand
or the way that you play with them
when later you find them
for all of the uneven moments of skin
like visible freckles and invisible bites
that you or i pretend later
to notice for the first time

because there is a point
when there is nothing more to notice
and if you wrong me
it will be in the way that i knew you would
and i forgive you for the same reason,
that i know you and where this comes from

these drawn blinds are for the darkness
which would veil one you do not know
there is something sweet
in you turning from me like that
when you undress
and something sad
like you thought i wasn’t looking before

07-02-06
a. williams

Goethe and Lotte Kestner

2008-07-02T10:02:00.000-07:00

Goethe and Lotte Kestner, as recorded by HJALMAR H. BOYESEN, PH.D.

After having practiced law in a leisurely fashion in Frankfort, Goethe removed, at his father’s recommendation, to Wetzlar, where he was admitted as a practitioner at the Imperial Chamber of Justice. This removal took place in May, 1774. Among the first acquaintances which he made in this city were a young jurist named Kestner and his fiancée, Charlotte Buff. Kestner and Goethe became good friends, in spite of differences of temperament and character, and their friendship soon came to include Lotte. Kestner, who was a plain, practical man and the soul of honor, could see no danger in the daily association of his betrothed with a handsome and brilliant young poet, who confided to her his hopes and ambitions, romped with her small brothers and sisters, and captivated the entire family by the reckless grace and charm of his manners. Kestner did not suspect that there were depths in Lotte’s nature which he had never sounded, regions of sentiment and fancy which he could never hope to explore. For Lotte, though she had a strong sense of duty, had by no means as well-regulated and business-like a heart as her practical lover. Thus the strange thing came to pass: Lotte fell in love with Goethe, and Goethe with Lotte. They made no confession of their secret even to each other, but they revelled in each other’s company, undisturbed by Kestner’s presence. At last, however, a crisis occurred. Goethe began to see that he was treading on dangerous ground. One evening as he was lounging at Lotte’s feet, playing with the flounces on her dress, and the talk had taken a serious turn, he remarked, referring to a brief journey which he was about to undertake, that he hoped they would meet “jenseits” (beyond), meaning beyond the mountains which he was going to cross. Lotte misunderstood the allusion, and, quite forgetting Kestner’s presence, answered, fervently, that she could well be reconciled to losing him in this world, if she could only be sure of being united to him in the hereafter. It was a sudden flash which revealed to Goethe the fact that Lotte loved him. He was Kestner’s friend, was trusted by him, and could not act dishonorably. So he took his leave, packed his trunks that very night, and wrote three despairing letters to Kestner and Lotte—in which he avowed his love for the latter, and gave this as the reason of his departure. He made it appear, probably in order to shield Lotte, that his love was hopeless and that her happiness was dearer to him than his own. That this is the true version of the Wetzlar affair is made plain, beyond dispute, by the documents published by Herman Grimm, in his “Lectures on Goethe.”

may in seattle

2008-05-05T19:24:00.000-07:00

may in seattle is hard to surpass. just a few weeks ago everything was covered in snow, and now it's a perfect 60 degrees most evenings at 7 when the sun rises over the deck of my apartment and i read "the razor's edge". i am always amused and impressed and also appalled by maugham's understanding of women in his dozen or so novels. he seems to be able to see right into a woman, see all of the bad parts, and then write about her from the distant perspective of a man.

one downside to where i'm living right now is that they are building a metro system underground (that part is good, but i probably won't still be living in seattle when it's all finished), which means that many of the long-standing parts of town are being torn up to do the construction. a few blocks away from where i live, more than a dozen businesses are having to relocate. which includes the record store, used book store, piroshky bakery, and one of the best coffee shops. some of them are already gone, and some are soon to be gone. i am trying to visit them all before they disappear. the jack-in-the-box is the only thing that won't be missed.

it has been a relief to me and has also been inspiring to have completed the album i was working on since october 2006. 11 songs ended up on the album, and there were many more that were intended for it and ended up as b-sides. i have finally picked up the guitar again to compose, but then i don't really want any acoustic guitar on the next album. but it feels different holding a guitar than it does working on the computer, and very different things result.

now that the sun is going down, the sky looks very much like the cover of the book i'm reading.

Butterscotch; Pomona

2008-04-24T00:10:00.000-07:00

an old entry from my journal (from 10-09-04)

i met m-’s girlfriend while we listened to some mildly annoying female singer outside of an organic store that is also a photo gallery in downtown pomona. she was so short that i felt like i was somehow cruel for wearing my shoes with the wide soles. even though i saw the two of them arm in arm, i still can’t picture them together. she was much younger, and had a big brown sweater on, and when m- went to tuck the tag in for her, she snapped at him that she liked it sticking out. when he smoked a cigarette, she stepped away from him and wrinkled her nose. when i set my empty lemonade bottle on the ground, she picked it up and held it for the remainder of the evening; she wanted to take it home to recycle it. she starts on a dramatic list of things that we will all apparently be saying if we do not help her save the world. “oh, i’m swimming in garbage. oh, the sun is so hot. oh, i can’t breathe.....”

having had enough of the girlfriend and the singer, i slowly walk to where the galleries are concentrated. the first saturday of the month turns out to be the primary night for art exhibits in pomona. first i walk through a furniture store that is all salvaged and reupholstered vintage pieces that look slightly worn but very expensive. i wonder if this is the place that s- was talking about, that his neighbor owns. i walk through a photo exhibit with bright images of flowers that do not move me, but i am moved by what the photographer has written about his wife. he has named this collection after her and explains that any money made this evening will pay off some of her college loans from medical school. he says that she catches light and is beautiful like a flower.

but there is an undercurrent of resentment as he explains that he had to sell a lot of his art supplies to help pay for her tuition. how did he slip that in?

the first gallery i step into is called “e” i think, and the front pieces are all these huge single-colored textural pieces that i am not sure about. but deeper inside there are two paintings that i stop before. they look like they are of the same woman, but her expressions are drastically different in each. around the corner is punch and the couple standing in front of it filling their own cups seem to begrudge me wanting some for myself. there is a bowl of candy and i grab two butterscotch ones. like the butterscotch from the post office by r-’s house. and i have one and it is a good familiar taste.

i stop in front of a painting of a skeleton in profile that takes up the right half of the canvas, the left half is all black. this one is my favorite. the skeleton is not ominous like a dead body, but simple like a science book diagram. and an abstract painting of birds flying, but their bodies are fragmented and one looks like its head has come off of its body and it is called “breaking up”.

the next gallery is warm and full of smiling latinos who are offering red or white wine but i don’t have any. most of the pieces blend in with one another, but i stop before a few. i notice though with maybe some annoyance with myself that the ones i like seem to be the ones that all of the other young white people are stopping in front of. am i so predictable.... one is black and white and looks a bit like escher. it is the only black and white in a room that otherwise looks like a bright pinata. there is a nude woman from the side who is kneeling upon a chair, but her head is not there; instead there is a large box with a black bird’s head painted on it that is much simpler than her lovingly shaded body. only beneath her chair, the ground is like a black and white checkerboard. to her left is a window, and looking through it is a vivid likeness of frida, and beneath her are the words “maestra” on the window ledge, like an epitaph.

another one i like is all swirling red and black and it is a man who looks like he is burning to death and staring upward with light radiating out of his head and his heart high in his chest and visible and bursting.

another i like is of a woman with a pregnant stomach who is sitting in a throne of some sort, with her bare feet resting on a colorful rug and she is outside; to her right is blue cascading water. but it is the look on her face, that maternal beauty that is more common in paintings than in life. like love makes us wise.

on my way back to m- and his girlfriend, and the musician in her black and white pashmina, i stop into a glassblower’s store. there is a beautiful woman with a torch right there in front of the window and there are hemp necklaces hanging from a display that feel and sound good when you touch the glass ornaments. she says she is making a ladybug. there is some punk rock teenage girl who keeps saying “cool”. i stroke the cat that is lying against the wall and is introduced as bijou. it reminds me of the cat i had, its markings are similar, wide bull’s eye circles on its sides.

i spend the whole evening walking around smiling and sucking on butterscotch, and i bought handmade soap at the organic store. by the time i walk back to my car, it is just getting late enough for me to feel scared for a moment in the row of cars but then i am safe and driving home and glad that i went.

Lyrics for the China Mountain B-Sides

2008-04-22T14:01:00.000-07:00

(photo by Erin Shafkind)

Some of these lyrics are more cryptic than the proper album lyrics, as a few of the songs were entirely ad-libbed, lyrically. for "never one" there are strings of words and sentence fragments in the verses, but they didn't really make sense so i have not included those. everything else is included, other than the 4 cover songs (interpol, the 6ths, split enz, and cat stevens). see the myspace page to find out about purchasing a CDR of the b-sides.

www.myspace.com/annalynnew

China Mountain B-Sides Lyrics

nurse.

i am left nursing things
(he held your bags for you)
things that don’t nurse back
(remember)
alone nothing sings
nothing answers
(i don’t think you remember)
when will we....
daylight
daylight.
i am left nursing things
things that don’t nurse back.

never one.

(nondescript words in verse)
oh i think i need you...
never one to forget
i was never one to forget
does it look like rain.

lives & dies.

what kind of love’s like something you’re born with
that lives and dies with you
(in the morning we’ll make-believe)
but still startles every time
like cold water over you.
oh i could live and die with you
i know it’s too much
i want to live and die with you
i know it’s too much.
what kind of love’s like something beside you
that lives and dies
your bread and water.
don’t look at me
i couldn’t take much more.
oh i could live and die with you
i know it’s too much
i want to live and die with you
i know it’s too much.
don’t look at me
don’t look at me.
(to live and die with you, i know it’s.....)

apples.

a knife and your love
apples you carved into small browning doves
a knife and your love
apples you carved into small browning doves
i’m ready for
however long i’m doomed to miss you for
i said “leave it alone”
and let you get lost in the air,
if i’d known.
i knew it would be me
i’ve felt life without you before
i’ve practiced how it feels
saying “i had him, but not anymore.”
must’ve been good
we put up with so much bad just to have it
must’ve been good
we put up with so much bad just to have it
i’m ready for
remembering all of these things on my own
i always knew
being alone would feel like being with you.
i knew it would be me
i’ve felt life without you before
you’d not have done for me
the mourning and everything
that i’m good for.
why’d it fool me
why’d it take my lover, my lover
why’d it fall
and why’d it break
my lover, my lover.

the moon is high.

i have your name written
under my palm
touches everything i touch
(i’m tired...)
i have your hand
watching over my skin
and when i’m asleep...
i’m over what you’re not in
it’s so old.
the sun is bright
but i’m inside
the moon is high
but i’m inside.
i have your name written
under my palm
touches everything i touch
i have your ink
pulsing under my skin
and into the night...

the same quiet.

it’s the shape of your face
not the words you choose
i think that i cried
but i lied to you
said “i need you right here
to see what i love”
but when you disappear
it’s still sharp enough.
sand you do not stand in
in your right mind
face out to the rain
wait for bright lights
eyes closed but your hands out
and spun round
it all ends with the same quiet
and comedown.
when my eyes turned all watery blue
it wasn’t the moment
we’d stepped into
my heart is as fixed as the walls around
this up is up always
never comes down.
sand you do not stand in
in your right mind
face out to the rain
wait for bright lights
eyes closed but your hands out
and spun round
it all ends with the same quiet
and flight down.

bee.

gentleness
is not how i have loved a thing
i’m sharp and sure.
if you need someone
who’s able to stand in ruins
saying “it’s all right”
someone you’ll never get cut on...
i am more like a knife.
it’s not my fault
i want to light it brighter
than the others might.
if you want love you can feel
you know it’s going to ache some times
anything else isn’t worth
living days
sleeping nights.

bring you.

oh i waited
but time did not bring you to me
when you know what the piece is that you need...
what i spoke
was just words i wrote down first
was i careful
or did i just show you my worst
i’ve done that before.

"China Mountain"

2008-04-21T20:30:00.000-07:00

The album is completed and available for order for $12 (plus $2 shipping in the US, $4 shipping international)

link to purchase:
http://trespasserswilliam.com/media.htm

great modern works

2008-01-21T21:41:00.000-08:00

a couple of my acquaintances graduated from a writing program with their MFAs in the past few months, and over the last week they have been at my house putting together their top 100 books of the past century list. this all started when one of them noted that top book lists tend to favor old classics. so the parameters for this new list were that it be a novel (no journals, collections, novellas, or autobiographies), and that the book was first published between 1905 and 2005. each person (of 4 graduates) would submit 25 titles. my head has been making my own list, in the meantime.

here it is, in order:

remembrance of things past - marcel proust
of human bondage - w somerset maugham
lolita - vladimir nabokov
the magus - john fowles
perfume - patrick suskind
le grand meaulnes - alain-fournier
iceland - jim krusoe
the horned man - james lasdun
blindness - jose saramago
wind-up bird chronicle - haruki murakami
revolutionary road - richard yates
1984 - george orwell
christmas holiday - w somerset maugham
the maimed - hermann ungar
the favorite game - leonard cohen
never let me go - kazuo ishiguro
hardboiled wonderland and the end of the world - haruki murakami
nausea - jean paul sartre
the unbearable lightness of being - milan kundera
number 9 dream - david mitchell
the bell jar - sylvia plath
the rachel papers - martin amis
the trial - franz kafka
endless love - scott spencer
jernigan - david gates

had i been allowed to include books newer than 2005, and older than 1905, these 5 would've been included near the top:

the sorrows of young werther - johann wolfgang von goethe
crime and punishment - fyodor dostoevsky
open curtain - brian evenson
samedi the deafness - jesse ball
remainder - tom mccarthy

Fowles

2008-01-17T22:49:00.000-08:00

I have just stumbled upon two of the great excitements of life simultaneously.

One of those is to begin to consume a great piece of art. I remember this distinct feeling about 15 minutes into Adaptation, sitting in the theater however many years ago that was. During the montage where Nic Cage is talking about how life came to be and there are these quick colorful cuts and sounds. Or when I was 21 and playing the cd "Slide" by Lisa Germano for the first time. In that first chorus of the first song when the harmonies come in, on "Way Below the Radio." I was supposed to be packing up my things and moving, I had a Uhaul. But I sat in my room and listened to the whole album first. Or to be slightly mundane, the first time i tried this chocolate lava cake at Rain, a sushi restaurant in Seattle. Something about the warm temperature of the sponge cake. The important thing being that there are only certain types of happiness that last long enough that we can process our own happiness. And with a song or film, we have to trust that piece of art enough to know even at the beginning that we will still love it when it is over.

The other is when this piece of work that has made us feel like this is only one of many by the artist. All of a sudden, Nick Drake exists for me and there is not one, but 3 albums (and a collection of rarities). All of a sudden, there is this band called Magnetic Fields and they put out an album with not ten but sixty-nine songs on it with the best lyrics ever. All of a sudden, I am assigned to read a book called "Swann's Way" in a literature course at college, and it is only the first of seven volumes of the greatest book ever.

And I cannot even remember what led me to the book of the present moment, The Magus by John Fowles. I think it might have been when I was looking up information about author Jesse Ball, perhaps he recommended it. However it happened, I was smart enough to order it from the library. I had never heard of Fowles before for some reason, but by the 30th page I already knew it was one of the greatest books ever, at least for me. The Magus being only one of many long novels by Fowles.

It seems fitting to me that the first time I was really aware of this excitement about a piece of art was in the theater watching Adaptation. When as an adult I realized that there are few things better than having someone create something beautiful, and knowing that you are able to process it in the way they had hoped. And that Adaptation is all about hunting for precious orchids. I sound poetic and silly, I know, but I'm excited about the months of Fowles reading that I have ahead of me.

bulletproof

2008-01-07T19:21:00.000-08:00

these soft but bulletproof pieces of clothing
that we started wearing
first as something different
and when i would dance in the kitchen
i would knock my fist firmly over my heart
and you would laugh while reading.

you have built up quietness
so that it is something i do not fear
like i have brought tears into your house
while you would have brought none.

i think that, hands clasped, faces forward
we must appear as two parts in collusion
two faces laughing from a row of chairs
or two sets of diligent silverware.
but to me you are a moon and i am
the shadow making the edge of it
look gray.

outside it is two slight bulletproof bodies
but here inside it is combative whispers
and my words are wet and warm and many
but you can always puncture them
with something that makes more sense,
you can compose the blankest sounding sentences.

i think i wanted to be more a part of you than this
but my shoulders are heavy just thinking
of the tautness and the rubber unbreakableness
of that one ribbon
and i already showed myself to be foolish
and i do not want to elaborate upon that.

we will not love my way, then.

identity theory

2006-07-18T15:27:00.000-07:00

a nice dark piece by heisuke.

and visit www.identitytheory.com. a brief excerpt from one of my tour journals is up in the nonfiction section this month. and trespassers member ross simonini is the music editor and there are tons of great interviews up there with the likes of animal collective, ariel pink, apostle of hustle, gang gang dance, oneida....

SF MOMA

2006-07-12T17:23:00.000-07:00

the SF MOMA is the one place to see drawing restraint 9 and matthew barney's extensive installation exhibit right now. there's a whole floor of huge pieces, small sketches, and a retrospective of the earlier drawing restraints.

i went yesterday. really cool. i had already seen the film a few weeks ago in seattle, which made me a bit nauseous but was exremely interesting.

the things we lost in the fire

2006-07-05T15:05:00.000-07:00

about four years ago i got a nagging feeling that all of my writing was destined to be burned to a crisp one day; my notebooks are always together in one place. so i compiled my favorites of my old poems and song lyrics, a few prose pieces and a story. i have pressed a few batches and i am down to the last few, that i bring around with me to the trespassers shows.
i was thinking of pressing some more, but i think rather that i will be putting together a newer book of just things i've written in the last 3 years.
however, split infinitive is still up on amazon and barnes & noble.
and there was never a fire, though there were four floods.

quotes about music

2006-06-24T19:08:00.001-07:00

i read an article 2 years ago about "rock handsomeness" and i thought it was really strange that anyone would write about this but at the same time found myself scribbling down a few of the sentences. i was reading it more ironically than anything else.
i'm afraid i don't have the name of the writer, just my scribblings.

Word magazine August 2004 p.80
“rock handsomeness is the product of an inner need to transform oneself. it’s a willed act of invention.”

“what we call handsome in a rock star the movie industry would call character actor looks.”

“within a band good looks can radiate from one attractive member to provide an important halo effect for less physically striking colleagues.”

of course there are bands like interpol where everybody looks cool.

i was writing down a lot of quotes from musicians, mostly because i read music magazines more than any other type, and because as a musician i am interested in what the cerebral ones have to say. like bjork, wayne coyne, annie lennox, jeff tweedy.

Mojo July 2004 p. 101

Jeff Tweedy –" almost all music helps. all the stuff that surrounds music is the stuff that can be destructive."

sure to be good

2006-06-17T15:52:00.000-07:00

new lisa germano album. out soon.

new and blue

2006-06-05T17:00:00.000-07:00

today i purchased my first electric guitar. i borrow way too many things from matt. a danelectro baritone. it's not actually new as they don't make these anymore. looking forward to playing it on stage. hoping i don't drop it or something that is bound to happen.

master and everyone

2006-05-31T23:35:00.000-07:00

SIFF is going on right now, which is the seattle independent film festival. i am not sure how many cities this goes on in, but it happens here in the summer. last year i went to see mysterious skin. this year i picked old joy. because it was said to be one of the best and would possibly not pick up distribution and features a lead acting role by will oldham, one of my favorite musicians. who has been in a handfull of other films, but not many that i have seen. though he did have a little cameo in junebug which i watched recently. i think he had one line. but in old joy he dominates and it is a great thing to see.
the movie feels very real. there are only 3 actors in the film really. and a dog who is also very good.
two friends drive to a hot spring to reconnect. that is about it. but it is wonderful.
i already thought will oldham was a great man. now he is also a great actor.

june 15

2006-05-31T23:28:00.000-07:00

our next show.

have you seen buffalo 66

2006-05-30T20:05:00.000-07:00

one of my favorites. any time you hear someone say that it's june...

parrotwood

2006-05-27T16:09:00.000-07:00

it seems that most things to do with computers and gadgets are quite easy, but are not necessarily intuitive. so i am just figuring out how this blog works, and so hopefully there will be links and things on this page in the future.
i will probably use this page to talk about music that i buy, books that i read, films that i finish, places that i visit, tours that i go on, songs that i write, people that i meet. i have previously been using a myspace page which you are welcome to go and visit, which has my top records and songs of last year, some pictures. and my band trespassers william has a very extensive myspace page which includes 4 songs that you can listen to and perhaps download. our website is www.trespasserswilliam.com. and there is another blog on the band website which our multi-instrumentalist ross is generally keeping up to date.

trespassers william has released 3 albums and some singles and a live ep and things like that. i printed up a book of writing a few years ago called split infinitive.

i will try to write at least once a week on this page. if anything happens to be going on with the band at the time, then it will focus on that. if not, then i'll write about other people's art.

not only are we playing on the 11th, we are also playing a little 2 or 3-person short set of covers at a SIFF event in seattle on the 15th.

several years ago i had a dream that i was trying frantically to find one of my best friends from high school, someone i hadn't seen since then. i drove to where his house had been but there was an expensive hotel in its place. i stood at the pool side and yelled his name (tim) and a man from one of the white balconies above finally responded and told me that my friend had moved and called down his address. upon waking up, i still had the address in my head and promptly wrote it down on the closest scrap of paper which was actually one of the white cards from inside a reeses peanut butter cup package. the name of the street was parrotwood.

pictures and sounds

2006-05-27T15:56:00.000-07:00

seattle. june 11
trespassers william is playing a set at the highdive. heisuke, who painted the image above as well as countless beautiful pieces will be featuring his art at this event. he designed the album art for our new record 'having'. his website is www.hypehopewonderland.com.