Press Play On Tape – (complete)

Three cheers for nerd jokes.

I’m ripping CDs at the same time so this is going to be slightly sporadic.

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So that you may be lazy, let’s see if this embeds.

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Nope.

Trying the old embed code.

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As previously mentioned, there’s a bit of pride about the place on the subject of Opendiary being antiquated. You may have missed that, it’s currently under permissions.

Listen to the lyrics, or if her voice isn’t for you, look them up, it’s important.

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I of-course purchased Joanna Newsom’s Ys, so I don’t have to put up with a low fidelity rip of it. You should too, and if you’re here reading, then you should be the kind of person who buys music. That’s not up for discussion, you should know precisely why that’s important.

I agree, this place is one of many on which I leap atop my high horse, and yea is it high, you have no idea.

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You of-course may have had to wait until the song is finished before hitting F5, that’s fine, make sure you listen to it. Or you could just open a new tab – technology, it’s an amazing thing.

Amongst other things, I grew up with U2’s 1991 album Achtung Baby which features some of the best lyrics ever written. Saying nothing of the band or indeed their flamboyant lead singer’s current form, Achtung Baby is written in half and full abstracts, multi-layered symbolism and wonderful form. Joanna Newsom is to me essentially the highest form of this kind of thing. There is a power in her lyrics that simply does not exist in other music, well, in other music I’ve heard. No doubt there are plenty of good lyricists about the place, of which Joanna Newsom is one. Luckily for you and I, someone decided they could share her music with a stack of people and make money from it, for which we do not begrudge her or they, because here I am, blessed that she exists, and that she wrote this song for me.
One day, and that day may be today, she may write this song for you. Listen carefully, then listen again. If you’re here reading, then do as I ask and listen. Stop. I don’t care if you don’t read the rest of this SOC piece, that’s fine, right now I believe it’s more important for you to listen.

This is as good a place to pause as any.

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It is becoming a habit of mine to write only when I can’t sleep. I can’t think of anything better to do than write at these times. It’s certainly better than eating with no purpose. Here I meet a curious compulsion, in that I enjoy writing, I enjoy it so much that I may induce sleeplessness. So much so I may have done so in the past, it’s hard to tell, but there may be something of homoeopathic compulsions in me, inducing symptoms to provoke conditions, conditions in which I get good things done. There’s more to that, one day you may read about it, or, woe to you if you’re subject to one of my long, late-night discussions, hear me speak about it.

Certainly that’s not likely for the current audience.

I’ve ripped one CD and I’m distracted by listening to Joanna. These are the best distractions.

Take note – be distracted more. Be distracted by sounds and songs and people, these are the most precious treasures in life. And laneways, streets, objects of simple yet deeply representative beauty. Whatever task you have at hand can wait. Delay it, intentionally. Be late. Be five minutes late, just five minutes. Perhaps not for your job interview, but for anything else, be late and have a story, and if you cannot tell it to your pending company, tell it to yourself. If you do not write it down, say it silently in your mind, verbally or in abstracts, over and over again, and then forget it.

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As you may have suspected, I am listening to Sawdust and Diamonds on repeat.

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Ah god damn. Curse people who submit poor data to universal databases, in this instance, to automatically label CDs. Nevertheless I’m glad to be interrupted by an exercise in typing.

Back in a moment.

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I think I’m done.
I’d like to listen to music now.
Whatever I came here to say will now remain unsaid until such time as it intrudes again into my sleep and forces itself from my fingers. That is what we are doing, we writers, vomiting forth the things that make no sense, in all its meaningless glory.