I'll never forget any of it

Jónsi is screaming and stretching his veins in his neck.
It sorta hurts to thinks about how long he is resonating that note,
crooning an angelic pierce like hungry humans
some hungry for attention -

Some have that fervid pump in them
that you can see in their chest from forever away,
becoming a song that reaches for forever away,
ripened into something more familiar and homey
and calming -
but always an acquired taste,
like an ice cold goose flesh bath
that will probably take a certain bruise away
always sucks getting into at first
but once you're good you're good.

Uncomfortable couches that all remind me of staying up
three hours too late on CPA school nights-
waiting for Carson Daly the tool to come on
and have terrible talk show guests that I watch
only because Sigur Ros comes on last
but worth it more than enough
since I still remember it
more memorable than most things I've seen in life.

It happened when I was in 8th grade maybe a Freshman and I'll never forget it
but really I'll never forget any of it,
really it's all historic.

Favorite Live Moments

Includes:
1) Angels and Airwaves - The Adventure
2) Jeff Buckley - Grace
3) Ryan Adams - Blue Sky Blues
4) Devendra Banhart - Freely
5) M Ward - Fuel for Fire
6) Grizzly Bear - Shift
7) Beirut - Nantes
8) The everybodyfields - Dream
9) Bob Dylan - Just Like a Woman
10) Conor Oberst - Cape Canaveral
11) Mark Kozelek - Katy Song
12) Thom Yorke - Videotape
13) Jeff Tweedy - Sunken Treasure
14) Andrew Bird - Sectionate City (or Section 8 City)
15) Sigur Ros - Vaka (Untitled #1)
16) Priscilla Ahn - Dream

Our skin

Our skin is marked like the trunk of a tree.
Each wrinkle is a year, some less visible.
Those less visible are the years more forgotten.
The skin ages with sags, folding strangely,
but deems us more human and delicate.

Autumn falls down and winter ices over
each season bringing its song to fruition.
We will all die someday,
some of us will just have more
noteworthy tunes stuck in our heads.

Journey

Here's a song I wrote, just some guitar riffs built over each other on garageband.

I mixed some "Alice" by Pogo in there for the "chorus" lines.



Song lyrics:

How do I know
this isn't lust?
Beach turns me on
oh pretty well.

I want to know what is
leading me straight.

I just suppose
I'm to love it.
Okay, done, right
so I'm happy.

There is no final place
so I'll keep running.

"too did"

I was a class-clown in middle school. For example, I wore zip-ties and vests (that were too small for me) and grew my hair out way past the dress code's limits. I thought I was pretty freaking cool. This personality of mine carried well into high school, where I then became jaded by the world's darkness and decided to become mysterious and introverted. (Not to be too dramatic or anything.)

Middle school carries a plethora of golden story-telling opportunities for me.

I remember this one time…

I was in 8th grade. At the time of this story, I was in Bridget Puckett’s English class. She was probably in her late 20's. Red hair. Angelic face. We all thought she was quite the attractive one. I mean...really, she makes the pickup line, "Did it hurt when you fell from Heaven?", less cheesy and more realistic, because I probably would have asked her that, being legitimately curious whether or not she fell from Heaven.

I was in her class with my good friends, Austin Manuel and Bob Hooper and John DeWitt and Tony Beuerlein. We always sat next to each other.

Our class was seriously envied by guys in other classes. Everyone wanted to be in the same English class that all the "clever" class-clowns were in. Every time we would take bathroom breaks, we would pass by Mrs. Dincauze's class and we would make eye contact with my friend, Tarek Merritt. He would then ask Mrs Dincauze if he could use the restroom. We would then all go into the bathroom and have a huge mosh pit, people taking turns to jump off of the counters (where normal people would wash their hands) into the arms of fellow class-mates.

One day in Mrs. Puckett's class, we are reading some ancient Greek Mythology. We are doing the whole ‘popcorn reading’ thing where people take turns reading paragraphs from the book. This is paraphrased, but I’m reading something like, “Leopold squanders the Trojans with his warriors who surpass all enchantment, but his predecessor, Homer, too did this.”

When I read “too did”, I just started smirking and completely stopped reading the next sentence. No one else was laughing or knew what was going on at all. I looked over at John DeWitt and he then knew what I thought was funny. Then it was like dominoes among my fellow class-clown friends…Austin and Bob then started laughing. And then my friend, Tony, starts laughing. But of course, all the girls in the class have already matured and can’t dumb themselves down to the poo-poo/pee-pee minds of us boys.

Mrs. Puckett then puts her hands (always gently and never raises her voice…what an angel) down on my desk, and asks me, “Will, why are you smirking. Can you not finish reading your paragraph?”

I then look at her with puppy eyes (always calming the teacher down and making them feel sympathetic for me), “Mrs. Puckett, I’m sorry, it’s just that ‘too did’ sounds an awful lot like ‘tooted’”.

Mrs. Puckett just stares at me for a few seconds and says, “Unreal. Continue reading please.”

But to this day, I think she laughed a little to herself on the inside.

I Wanna Be Broken

I've been thinking a lot lately about brokenness. My brother, Ben, and I have been reading David Dark's new book, The Sacredness of Questioning Everything. It's really really well-written, probably my favorite book he's written so far. Check out his other books, The Gospel According To America and Everyday Apocalypse. In the book, he talks about this song by Leonard Cohen, called "Anthem". He talks about how the song really hit home for him...how the lines, "There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in", really changed his perception of what it is to broken.

So I wrote a poem in my journal the other night...basically just out of frustration..I just want to be broken.

The song I use: "Happiness" by Riceboy Sleeps, which is a side project from Jonsi (lead singer of Sigur Ros) and his boyfriend, Alex Somers. The album is due in July.



I'm not really sure
what churns and burns me
but to whatever does
I pray you come
and come fast.

"There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in."
- Leonard Cohen once said that.

But what about the corners
hidden
from those who shatter their pieces.

A jug of wine kept deep down in its' cellar
where no drunk passes
where no one can shatter it.

We are all pretty obsessed
with our cellars.
We don't want
anyone to crack us.

Well I wanna be broken.
Break me please.
I badly wanna break.
I wanna shatter.
Everything is perfect,
but nothing ever moves me.
I wanna be broken
so I can feel.

Sam Quinn and Japan Ten

I don't know who of you are fans of the band, The Everybodyfields. They're one of my favorites. If you are a fan, then I'm sure you know by now that Jill Andrews and Sam Quinn are working on separate projects right now. Jill is working on solo stuff and Sam is working on stuff with his trio, Japan Ten.

The Everybodyfields have grown a lot on me in the past few years. Not only do Sam and Jill live in Knoxville, and not only have I gotten a chance to meet Sam at Barley's and talk to him for a little bit (*sigh*, blushed cheeks...i wasn't really that star-struck, except I was), but Sam Quinn's crooning voice just hits really close to home for me.


I love the 1st song they sing a whole lot...without the lyrics and all, it just sounds really melodic to me. I also really like the lyrics in the 2nd song a whole lot:
"Because I did it one time doesn't mean a damn thing to me now.
Every day I'll get it right in the middle of the night.
I'm calling out, 'Who's that in your way now?' "


Here is their song, "Hello":

Sam Quinn + Japan Ten: "Hello" @ Ramseur Records HQ from Ramseur Records on Vimeo.

*BANG!*