Achtung Baby!

Tiny Photographs of Melancholy

tiny photographs of melancholy

Though the sound of hope has left me
Sam Phillips: Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us

i turn my back on my faith
Love Spit Love: Am I Wrong

In addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate confidant. My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known -- no wonder, then, that I return the love.
Soren Kierkegaard

I don't want to see

Red Trauma

I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top.
John Keats

Love is drowning
In a deep well
All the secrets
And no one to tell
Love is Blindness

[ Oingo Boingo|Can't See (Useless) live ]

Baby don’t rush

riverdance

[ Melody Gardot | Love Me Like A River ]

"Love goes away when your mind goes away and then you're someone else."
Kathy Acker

[ Diana Krall | Cry Me A River ]

I believe in some kind of path

And taken by light in her arms at long and dear last
I may without fail
Suffer the first vision that set fire to the stars.
Dylan Thomas

+ Nick Cave - Into My Arms (live)

[ Ani Difranco - Light of Some Kind (live) ] 

Straight to sunday blues

[ Billie Holiday | Good Morning Heartache ]

Once I stood beside the well of many words

Burnt love

[  Elvis Costello &  Brodsky Quartet: Dead Letter ]

+ Robert Plant & Alison Krauss: Please Read The Letter (Live)

Don't You Break My Heart Again

by 9 0 0 0

[ Are We All Forgotten: Paper Route ]

I can see it in your eyes

[ The Thrill is Gone: Chet Baker ]

It was she who looked away

“We grew still and stared at each other. It seemed incredibly dangerous to look into each other’s eyes, but we were doing it. For how long can you behold another person? Before you have to think of yourself again, like dipping the brush back in for more ink. For a very long time; you didn’t need to get more ink, there was no reason to get anything else, because she was as good as me, she lived on earth like me, she suffered as I did. It was she who looked away and pulled the sheet to her chin.”
No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July [via]

[ Almost Ideal Eyes: Elvis Costello ]

[ Telescope Eyes: (MossEisley version): Eisley ]

I fell in love with you in July

[ Emm Gryner - July (Original Leap Year version) ]

Should I tell you why I feel so down

recycled air by *xxxmr

I was blind until the news of mortality
opened my mind as you would
open a vial of Tylenol noticing
it spells lonely backwards with
only the initial T added
David Lehman

Bernard Butler: Not Alone

losing cathexis

waiting for my tea

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day.  Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel.  None of these will bring disaster.
Elizabeth Bishop

Nina Persson : Losing my religion

"The intense cathexis of longing which is concentrated on the missed or lost object (a cathexis which steadily mounts up because it cannot be appeased) creates the same economic conditions as are created by the cathexis of pain which is concentrated on the injured part of the body" 
Freud, Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety

Married

Congratulations to my favorite couple: Adam and Jessica. They're getting married today!

Nellie McKay - I Wanna Get Married (live)

+ Jeff Buckley: Be your husband (Rare live)
+ Audra McDonald: I Wanna Get Married

heart you're not hiding

Legs of a Rainbow

+ Cat Power - Metal heart ( Live @ Paris)
+ Cat Power - The Greatest (Live @Austin City Limits)
+ Cat Power - Black Session

You took away my smile

[ Fastball | This is Not My Life ]

+ Afghan Whigs| My World Is Empty Without You (live)

There's many times that we've loved

find her mind by ~hitom

[ Afghan Whigs: I Cant Get Enough Of Your Love ]

Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.

Hamlet, Act II, scene ii

Summer love is a scam, But I can't help dreaming of summer romance

1, 2 by 5kablelis16

Michael Leviton : Summer's the Worst
+ "Summer's the Worst" Music Video
+ Puppet Music Hall: Summer's the Worst

I love this song. It never gets old.

I think I could leave your world, If she was the better girl.

by yyellowbird

[ Tori Amos: Honey (04-15-05 Chicago) ]

New York will still be there in the morning

[ The Dresden Dolls: Boston ]

all the cities in the world
and so very little time and
so many different girls...
all you have to do is find them
there's a wealth of opportunity
you make your plans accordingly

+ Photos:  Boston Transit 2 & night life 

Away Message: Gone to Boston.

tell me that you love me more

1234 by ~duhitsmia + Feist - 1234 Acoustic Live

+ Olga Nunes - A Dream Of Gardens. Lyrics by Neil Gaiman
+ Rachel Haught- The Stars
+ Santogold Standard |  Santogold's performance at The FADER 51 video
+ Voxtrot @ Webster Hall ( I suggest you click on "Ghost")
+ Lightspeed Champion concert teaser
+ Radiohead: The Best Of DVD is out. What's your favorite video? Its either "Just" or "Street Spirit (Fade Out) " for me.
+ Coldplay performing "Viva La Vida" at the MTV Movie Awards
+ "nerdgirls of the world unite 1"
+ Ok, you want to dance for a minute of two: Crystal Castles, David Guetta + Chris Willis "Love is Gone", The Ting Tings.
+ Laura Marling - Cross Your Fingers/ Crawled Out Of The Sea
+ Mason Jennings @ Daytrotter
+ galacticasitrep: Skippity Bee Bop
+ Introducing Qore
+ PRACTICE SPACE - Lightspeed Champion

1998. Memory is my Enemy

Items that were on the floor of my apartment in May 1998.

"She said, "The art of longing's over and it's never coming back."
Leonard Cohen: Death of a Ladies' Man

I found one thing in you to praise and on this pebble I built my fortress of love.
-Death of a Lady's Man, Leonard Cohen

I know I am a fool, hoping dirt and glory are both a kind of luminous paint; the humiliations and exaltations that light us up. I see like a bug, everything too large, the pressure of infinity hammering at my head. But how else to live, vertical that I am, pressed down and pressing up simultaneously? I cannot assume you will understand me. It is just as likely that as I invent what I want to say, you will invent what you want to hear. Some story we must have. Stray words on crumpled paper. A weak signal into the outer space of each other.

The probability of separate worlds meeting is very small. The lure of it is immense. We send starships. We fall in love.”
-Gut Symmetries, Jeanette Winterson

Songs that remind me of this precise time period, important to me for my own reasons: Pulp - Like a Friend , Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: I Let Love In ( live, from the "best of" bonus disc ), Tori Amos: Spark , Tori Amos: Siren.

I broke my promise not to suffer, and now
I have to start all over again to earn my solitude
-Death of a Lady's Man, Leonard Cohen

This has been Hardcore for a decade

PULP: "This Is Hardcore", released on March 31, 1998 in the U.S.
(yep, I'm a few months behind on this one)

"the sound of loneliness turned up to ten"
(Pulp - The Fear Live)

+ Pulp - This Is Hardcore (Live at Jools Holland '98)
+ Playing God - Pulp: This is Hardcore
+ EW Review: Cocker's voice variously recalls the playboy decadence of Bryan Ferry, the croaky deadpan of Leonard Cohen, or the high-strung edge of vintage David Bowie.
+ Wiki: "Like Different Class, the album is included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die."

[ This Is Hardcore (end of the line mix) ]

"Is it a kind of weakness
to miss someone so much? 

Everyone's gone for the summer again

Rachael Yamagata - Loose Ends [via] Below is one of the songs from Loose Ends as performed on a radio appearance from 2005.

[  Rachael Yamagata: Parade (live) ]

+ Miss Yamagata also makes an appearance on Robin Danar's album "Altered States". From a review: Rachel Yamagata brilliantly carrying the Stones’ underrated 1967 gem "2000 Light Years From Home" firmly into the 21st century

My Sweetheart, the Drunk

Jeff Buckley, "Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk", Released May 26, 1998.

[ "I Know We Could Be So Happy Baby (If We Wanted to Be)" ]

+ "Morning Theft" (live)
+ "The sky is a landfill" (live)
+ "Everybody Here Wants You" video
+ Salon: Sketches review
+ Morning Edition, May 29, 2007: Ten Years Gone, Jeff Buckley's Voice Lingers
+ "I Shall Be Released" Dylan cover

"I think I'm getting the fear."

Benicio Del Toro & Johnny Depp, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"
Release Date: May 22nd 1998

Johnny Depp Soliloquy
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug-collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.

+ The Rum Diary film is being made.
+ The only way to really own it: The Criterion Collection
+ Fear and Loathing in World 1-1
+ Also, Unreal came out on this same day.

I do not believe in time

"I confess I do not believe in time.
I like to fold my magic carpet,
after use, in such a way
as to superimpose
one part of the pattern
upon another."
V. Nabokov

[ Ibrahim Ferrer - As Time Goes By (in Spanish) ]

+ I just like the title: Nabokov before Proust: The Paradox of Anticipatory Memory
+ Photo by Joannès Ceyrat

Come on break me in two

[ James: Oh My Heart ]

I never wanna see you a sad girl

+ The "Skins" cast: "Wild World"

Keep On Going
Karl Krolow

I go around some street corners
and have an idea in my head clear as a picture
of time between March and October.
I like the cut-out
I'm moving around in,
slowly, toward change,
dying of something, while I
just keep on going, at least for the moment -
how do you write about
still being alive
among objects that are all used up
and possessions that shine,
lists without specifics, so to speak?
Some things just wait for me
to stop defending myself.
In the air
shining insects.

+ Manic Street Preachers, “So Why So Sad (Avalanches Remix)”
why so sad You live and you love
+ SKINS, series 1 trailer

VV & Hotel cover the VU

'Sup Magazine Issue 18: 10 Questions with The Kills and Interviews with Santogold, Lightspeed Champion, Tigercity [via]

+ The Kills - Live on The Current: being a broadcast in which they cover VU's "Venus in Furs".
+ The Kills - Last Day of Magic Video
+ The Kills live at Antone's SXSW '08

I thought you were Special ten years ago

Version 2.0  by Garbage, Released on May 12, 1998 in the U.S. This is my favorite Garbage album.

"Special" (brothers in rhythym) remix

+ "You Look So Fine" (live) - Epic!
+ "Push it" (live)
+ "Medication" (live)

How long can I guy go on dreaming

Text: Charles Bukowski

[ Maude Maggart - Deep In A Dream/I Had The Craziest Dream ]

Talking only makes me feel more alone

Adorote by *complejo

Teddy Thompson: I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone

“Talking only makes me feel more alone,”
you said once in the car outside the clinic.
Two years later, you spoke the same sentence
word for word one night after friends had gone.
Within a month, you’d erased yourself    . . .
Erased? “To absent oneself,” I found scribbled on
a wrapper a year later    . . .
   Now sunlight and tree
shadow rush over the windshield of  the car:
I’m talking with my new wife — then gone, absented.
“Sometimes I feel almost too much joy,”
you wrote from the balcony of  your cheap
hotel in Paris. “What are you thinking?” she asks.
Light shutters across us. Wherever you are
in me I’m there, though it’s not what you wanted.
Infidelity by Philip White

The Supremes: Love Is Here And Now You're Gone (2000 Box Set Version)

Ten Years at the Choirgirl Hotel

Tori Amos: "FROM THE CHOIRGIRL HOTEL"
Released in the US on May 5, 1998.

Fact: This was the Tori tour I attended to the most. 3 shows: Austin, Dallas and Kansas City.

Some live performances...
+SPARK
+BLACK DOVE (JANUARY)
+Cruel
+RASPBERRY SWIRL
+Jackie's Strength
+IEEE
+Hotel
+Playboy Mommy
+Pandora's Aquarium
A live mp3...
+Liquid Diamonds

my mother, she doesn't bother

Marilyn Minter

[ Priscilla Ahn - Rain ]

Your smile is just a careless yawn

[ Joni Mitchell: You've Changed ]

Summation: It was like LCD Soundsystem's "All My Friends"

A definite highlight of my trip was attending an appearance by Amy Poehler and Fred Armisen at the SoHo Apple Store store. So best! Here's the podcast of it:

Songs that remind me of this trip...

+ LCD Soundsystem - "All My Friends" (live)
+ Santogold - I’m A Lady
+ Pulp - Common People (Live)
+ PRINCE - KISS music video
+ The Strokes - Reptilia (Live)
+ Like A Virgin - live
+ M.I.A - Paper Planes (live)
+ Franz Ferdinand -  Take me out  (live)

What New York used to be

//The Kills: What New York used to be

Dawn in New York has
  four columns of mire
  and a hurricane of black pigeons
  splashing in the putrid waters.

Dawn in New York groans
  on enormous fire escapes
  searching between the angles
  for spikenards of drafted anguish.

Dawn arrives and no one receives it in his mouth
  because morning and hope are impossible there:
  sometimes the furious swarming coins
  penetrate like drills and devour abandoned children.

Those that go out early know in their bones
  there will be no paradise or loves that bloom and die:
  they know they will be mired in numbers and laws,
  in mindless games, in fruitless labors.

The light is buried under chains and noises
  in an impudent challenge to rootless science.
  And crowds stagger sleeplessly through the boroughs
  as if they had just escaped a shipwreck of blood.
"A Poet in New York" by Federico Garcia Lorca

//The Magnetic Fields: The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side

Away for a few days. You know where.

[ She's The New York City Skyline ]

Rion

One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes--I can't even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there's a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life.
Frank O'Hara

[ The Damnwells: She's The New York City Skyline ]

+ Preview of THE NEW YORK FOUR

discipline

Reader, I am anxious about
your discipline
are you constant as me?
Otherwise, burn this book
Go to the movies
if you aren’t doubled up with laughing.
Leonard Cohen

[ Spain: It's So True ]

So for the time being, I'm being patient

+ Elvis Costello and the Imposters "I Know" @ The Architectural Dance Society
+ Fiona Apple: Green Chimneys intern

love...it won't last kissin' time

alice lemarin

[ U2: Dirty Day (Bitter Kiss) ]

my phone rings but it's not you

kren

+ Lightspeed Champion - Everyone I Know Is Listening To Crunk
Sometimes in the cold night my phone rings but it's not you

+ Kathleen Edwards - Buffalo
It's like a ticking clock every time that you phone

Seems that I'm always Thinkin' of you

+ She & Him: You Really Got A Hold On Me
+ The Cardigans: Hold Me

everything revolves around you you you you

[ Sarah Slean - Weight (DNA Groove Mix) ]

Blah, Blah, Fucking Blah. But I also have to live with myself.

Naveen Andrews / GQ Magazine

[ the twilight singers -  live with me ]

+ Twilight Singers - Live With Me/Where Did You Sleep Last Night (live)

I love to see you naked over there

[ Leonard Cohen - Take This Longing ]

I sought in my heart to give you
the ivory letters that say "siempre",

"siempre", "siempre" : garden of my agony,
your body elusive always

Gacela of Unforseen Love, Federico García Lorca

Here is a song for the only one You're still looking for

+ Great Northern - Our Bleeding Hearts

Great Northern @ Antone's, 3/26/08
According to the lead female singer, this was possibly their 12th time performing in Austin. I had to wonder if she was goofing around later on when she mispronounced the venue's name 3 times. The truth is that the crowd didn't seem to be in the mood for their precisely presented layered ( although sometimes the jams were a little too long ) indie pop music. The band worked hard, and Rachel Stolte's vocals are way better live that on the record, but it takes a lot to overcome an incredulous audience with a bad vibe. For those who wanted to appreciate it, their sound made the place seem bigger, darker and moody.
+ Great Northern live 11/03/07

And I hate you as much as I miss you

+ Emmy The Great - My Party Is Better Than Yours

This is the only song I had to send her. The epilogue to her existence.

I want you the right way

Nicole Patricia Malina

Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh. It is easy to display a wound, the proud scars of combat. 
Leonard Cohen, "The Favorite Game"

> The Afghan Whigs: 66
> Maxwell: Welcome
> Radiohead: Nobody Does It Better
> PJ Harvey: Is This Desire?
> Marvin Gaye: I Want You
> Beck: Kangaroo
Her "Map of Your Desire" playlist.

I'm martyr to a motion not my own

Quintessence II by Clara Palmer

I Knew a Woman
Theodore Roethke

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I'd have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek.)

How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,
She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and stand;
She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin:
I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;
She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
Coming behind her for her pretty sake
(But what prodigious mowing did we make.)

Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:
Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize;
She played it quick, she played it light and loose;
My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;
Her several parts could keep a pure repose,
Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose
(She moved in circles, and those circles moved.)

Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways.)

> Joseph Arthur: Honey and The Moon
> Leonard Cohen: Joan of Arc
> Massive Attack: Live With Me
> Ronettes: Be My Baby
> Prince: I Would Die 4 U
> KD Lang: Crying
> U2: Love is Blindness
> Yoko Kanno & Steve Conte: Words That We Couldn't Say
Her "Map of Your Aching and Longing" playlist.

By Friday life has killed me

[ Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: Hold On To Yourself ]

> Morrissey: I Have Forgiven Jesus
> U2: Wake Up Dead Man
> Morrissey: Dear God Please Help Me
> Genesis: Jesus He Knows Me
> Tori Amos: God
Her "Map of Your Religion" playlist.

Dear John, I'm leaving behind an ipod

That's what she said... by ~Wacia

Dear You,

I'm leaving. Inside your favorite book I have left an Ipod with a mix of songs that remind me of you. All your drama and mystery. Your story-like, or cinematic sense about Love. I based it only on songs, musicians and albums I know you're connected to. Why is it that sometimes you meet someone when it is the right time for you but not the right time for them? And then it becomes the wrong time for both of you. You may then have to find reasons to be disillusioned, piece by piece, in small bites, when you are really being amazed, every time you see them, by leaps and bounds. I also included a few other playlists, these are my maps of you.

> U2 - Original Of The Species
> The Velvet Underground - Femme Fatale
> The Smashing Pumpkins - 1979
> Leonard Cohen - The Future
> John Cale - Dying On The Vine
> Tori Amos - Cloud On My Tongue
> Regina Spektor - Real Love
> Eisley - If You're Wondering
> Fiona Apple - Never Is A Promise
> Teddy Thompson - Tonight Will Be Fine

[ Goodnight Trouble ]

[ Sarah Slean: Goodnight Trouble ]

sxsw 08 /3

Zooey Deschanel is way prettier in person. The number of men and women that were swooning in the 90+ heat was high.

She & Him at SXSW - short clip from AchtungBaby on Vimeo.

Priceless: The faces of the radio personnel when Devonte Hynes said "This song is called Happy Fucking Birthday" at the NPR/World Cafe live broadcast.
+ NPR blog: Lightspeed Champion

+ SXSW Review: Duffy ("Shelby Lynne, your career will be history when Duffy’s “Rockferry” is released in the U.S. in May.")

Duffy - from her first US performance, sxsw from AchtungBaby on Vimeo.

+ R.E.M., SXSW hope big show translates to bright 2008
+ R.E.M. sxsw MP3s
+ South By Southwest Day Two: New Trend Alert!
+ Joseph Arthur Kicks Off SXSW at KUT
+ SXSW Keynote: Lou Reed

sxsw 08 /2

"Here's looking at you, kid."

Lou Reed.

Joseph Arthur - Pale Blue Eyes from AchtungBaby on Vimeo.

+ My Morning Jacket @ SXSW Levi's/Fader Lou Reed Tribute
+ Lou Reed & Moby, Walk on the Wild Side | part 2
+ Over at SXSW, Lou Reed had a Perfect Day moaning about digital music

Joseph Arthur - South by Southwest + Venus in Furs from AchtungBaby on Vimeo.

Tricia Kanne of