ayayay!

Been listening to a stream of The National's new album High Violet which will be out in May. I'm having goosebumps! Another tight-ass shit from this great band.

Excerpts from New York Time's article:

“Alligator” and “Boxer” did what excellent rock ’n’ roll albums did in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s: transcended the sum of their singles to offer something larger. In the National’s case, it was a powerful, probing feeling for the inner lives of average people out in the American heartland. So good was the music that with it came the promise of what might follow, the heady potential that the National would soon take things one step further, go ahead and make the great Middle American novel as music, an album for our time.

Since Matt excels at writing about sensitive people whose lives slump within that chapfallen key, the result is songs that are rich with mood, slow-cooked all the way down.

…the truth is that all five live for the measure-by-measure rigor of building, tearing down and rebuilding four-minute songs.

That feeling of risk shows up in the songs. The National’s sensibility captures the in-between feeling of being adrift in the mainstream with only a medium-size American heart to keep you from sinking. As Matt writes in the song “Slow Show,” “Looking for somewhere to stand and stay/I leaned on the wall and the wall leaned away.” It’s one of several songs that engage with the growing recognition that life out in the middle isn’t as stable as you were brought up to believe.

Read full article and listen to album stream here. Waaah. Concert! Concert! Concert!

it's lonely being tired all the time. kayod lang. someday soon, if it's not that, i hope it's this:

call me mellow
photo from here

woke up early today and this vid greeted me on my wall, c/o the little brother. cuteness. good vibes summer everyone!

Mistakes made: denial, internal skirmishes, negativity, loss

Lessons learned: truth, acceptance, positivity, abundance

"Being in the flow refers to a state of being where present actions and attitudes are in perfect sync with our visualizations and goals for the future. Its a state of coincidence and synchronicity brought on by creative and affirmative visualization." -- Martin Prihoda

words: time to use less of the inessential
*photo from here*

Passion is the overpowering, inescapable fate of all artists, who must learn at great costs and pain not to control it — for control is impossible — but to ride it so that it will not destroy them. This mysterious, dangerous struggle is at the center of all art that hopes to penetrate the surface of its medium, and it was this process that Henry James, the sanest of writers, described with ardent candor in The Middle Years:

"We work in the dark — we do what we can — we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art."

-- from "Connect the Prose and the Passion" by Dana Goia. Read whole essay here.

yes, i know. i'm old-fashioned.





i loved she and him's first album, now second one's out. it's a sweet-sour-salty happy little cd.

vol. 1 playlist here
vol. 2 playlist here

"The artist fashions himself in that ceaseless oscillation from himself and others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community from which he cannot tear himself. That is why true artists scorn nothing. They force themselves to understand instead of judging."

- Albert Camus

thought dyptich

*photo 1, photo 2*

I wanna hurry home to you
put on a slow, dumb show for you
and crack you up
so you can put a blue ribbon on my brain
god I’m very, very frightening
I’ll overdo it.

-- "Slow Show" The National

restless but steady. raw but solemn. chillax pero stirring. i've got no words, really. haaaaay. that's it. i'm saving up for any concert within cebupac/PAL flight radius.

floor-to-ceiling bookshelves
time to hustle!
*photo from here*

Margaret Moth, R.I.P.

part two
part three

When you think about it, isn’t that really the main reason people make art — to make these kinds of connections? I mean, yeah, you’ll hear many an artist in various fields say “I write for myself” or “I paint for myself” or “I make music for myself,” but they’re usually not just tossing their work into the garage once they’re finished with it. What they mean is, they’re not entertainers, figuring out what the audience wants and then supplying it. “Writing for yourself” means you’re capturing something you want to share — and releasing it means you’re hoping it strikes a chord with someone. Reporters used to ask the “Mystery Science Theater 3000” crew about all the obscure references — why include so many jokes that almost no one’s going to get? Their answer: the right people will get it.

- From "Letter to a Young Artist (Plus a Joke)" by Adam Cadre