#nora guthrie

[bandcampsnoop]

4/7/23.

We first posted about the label Efficient Space (Melbourne, Australia) last fall. The label seems to specialize in reissues and they've done just that with this gem from Tresa Leigh (she appeared on last year's excellent Ghost Riders compilation). Leigh was a Georgia teenager back in the 1970s who was determined to record.

These four songs clearly show a talent beyond her years. Listen to that voice and melodies. These are songs that would fit nicely alongside the work of Weyes Blood and Lana Del Rey.

The Bandcamp write-up compares Tresa Leigh to three artists I'd never heard of: Nora Guthrie (daughter of Woody...sister of Arlo), Bonnie Dobson and Patti Whipp.

[mywifeleftme]

279: V/A // Sky Girl

Sky Girl Various Artists 2013/2016 (reissue), Not on label/Efficient Space (Bandcamp)

Funny little compilation here, assembled from various ‘60s to ‘90s private and art presses by two French DJs. Of course, clearance issues come for us all—the original independently-released 2013 CD version had a rather different track list than this 2016 vinyl reissue on the Australian Efficient Space label. Still, in either formulation Sky Girl has a wonderful melancholy sweetness, mapping an emotional Venn diagram between C86 indie, Vashti Bunyan, Arthur Russell, bedroom R&B, gawky synth pop, and beyond. Being largely* from the private press realm, the originals of these recordings are nearly all painfully pricey: Warfield Spillers’ “Daddy’s Little Girl” single crosses the soul ballad with Beat Happening lo-fi and will cost you $800; an original of the Rising Storm LP that contains “Frozen Laughter,” an impossibly delicate psychedelic idyll, will run you a cool six grand or so. Unlike a lot of comps that focus on this market, this isn’t really weirdo stuff. These people are for the most part fairly talented and seemingly sane people who are trying their best to make good music that will make the listener feel something. Some of them probably could’ve gotten a bite at the record industry apple with a little more luck, but a lot of the songs the compilers have selected have a private vibe that seems endemic to their nature, like overhearing something intended for a lover or a diary. Collectors pay a premium for that sense, like some Japanese novel about lovers who never meet but distantly pine in a waft of mutual déjà vu (this I guess is the plot of Le double vie de Véronique also, and “Ana Ng”).

I would’ve loved if the compilation’s liners had offered more of the stories of these recordings, though it’s admittedly fun to Do My Own Research sometimes. (And the reissue cover is lamentably drab.) The 2016 version of the comp is readily available on streaming platforms for those who wish to sample—I especially recommend prolific indie cassette artist Linda Smith’s “I So Liked Spring,” Australian minimal wave obscurity Karen Marks’ “Cold Café,” and the robotic puberty-angst groover “Feeling Sheepish” by Some of My Best Friends Are Canadians. But Sky Girl really is more than the sum of its parts, as any good mixtape should be.

279/365

* The CD version did open with a track by the Haruomi Hosono-affiliated duo Testpattern that was well-distributed, in Japan at least.

[intellectures]

Sanfter Poet und rebellischer Vollblutmusiker

Lew Hohmanns Film über den Liedermacher Hans-Eckardt Wenzel lebt von den offenen Gesprächen mit dem Sänger, der Kraft seiner Texte, dem Zauber seiner Konzerte und einer bewegten Biografie. Wer Wenzel noch nicht kennt, kann ihm hier endlich begegnen. Continue reading Untitled

[1264doghouse]

Woody Guthrie, Nora Belle, Charley, and George, at their home in Okemah, OK, May 16, 1926.

[hellraiseher]

Hello Imogen! I hope you're doing great!

So I reread your Halloween book for probably about four times. The amount of details and love you put into it is fascinating. Truly remarkable. If that's your first time writing something so lengthy I'm truly impressed! It would have been interesting to hear about your influences and inspirations!

The character of Laurie is very complex and exquisite. She is rigid, stubborn, sometimes sassy, yet delicate and vulnerable.

I just love how carefully you designed her femininity. How you didn't shy away from it, but embrace it. The small things in her room displaying her girlhood, her relationship with her sexuality, her friendship with Annie and Lynda, how she perceive her beauty and just how she wanted to know if Michael finds her beautiful or not!

And that scene when she killed him... lives in my mind rent free to this day. Obsessed just how you merge and conjoin violence and sex and love. How the things that are so obscene and debaucherous can truly show their devotion to each other. So animalistic and carnal and sensual an-

The way you portray erotica and their intimacy are incredible. It filled with so much of that youthful curiosity and shyness, yet so sensual and sexy. Love Laurie's exploration of Michael's body, the contrast between his emotionless persona and very much real man's body is striking. How she herself having that realization during her close proximity to him. How she explores his humanity and pushes it even further and further, until she gets every piece of him. Laurie is a greedy girl.

And I want to emphasize just how I appreciate the fetishism in your work. Specifically the mask fetishism. I know it's bad manners to compare, but so far, your depiction of it has been the most validating and visible to me. Not only in Halloween fandom. The way you let Laurie acknowledge his plastic features, their unique shapes, how they changed after her passionate touches. How she sees and understands his every emotion, every mannerism. Searching for hints of the glimmering eye in those black pits of his. Hungry to take every clue that his mask will allow.

The scene when she cuts the hole where his mouth is. So perverted and so dear to my heart. Wanting his tongue and mouth, yet not wanting to part with his real face. The vision of a man desperately shoving his tongue, through plastic imitation of a mouth, to taste her, is very erotic.

Most of the times when I read stories with mask kink, it just, like, never or rarely mentioned, or the focus goes to what underneath the mask, which is quite disappointing... So I definitely want to compliment you on that!

The man that unleashed upon her such trauma and horror is the one that, in a way, freed her. He will always embrace and welcome her ugliness and rage. Because it mirrors his own.

His overall insanity over her, the surrender to her feminine force. She is his goddess of love and passion. She tempers his masculine and bestow the power of immortality and killing victories. He begs to serve and wants to love her to death.

Speaking of song references, I adore your Playlist for s1 of The Devil You Know ( haven't thoughtfully listened to the second one yet! Not in the right mood, my apologies!). The song choices and their lyrics definitely reflect the depth of your work. The collection of songs are very unique and some of them are definitely now in my listening drafts. Nora Guthrie, Dusty Springfield, Joyce Heath, The Shangri-Las, Jessie Ware to name a few. Filled with that girlish and feminine perspective, the lyrics and delivery are so touching. It's so refreshing to hear that type of style.

(Love how Laurie calls him tiger. Could be wrong, but something tells me it's Lana's influence...)

Also your blog is very thought-provoking and aesthetically pleasing to me! You're very intriguing and interesting young lady!

hello tsotsou!!! thank you so much for this gift of an ask, everything you've said will feed me well into 2024 🤍

i have tried to properly structure a response to all the aspects you've touched on, i'm prone to tangential infodumping when given enough incentive and if the platform allows. even trying to condense in my notes app was a challenge... but since most chapters clock out at around 17k-20k words, i don't think a modest 2k essay will overstay its welcome 🤭

my major inspiration/influences feature:

angela carter (namely the bloody chamber)

david lynch (namely twin peaks)

obvious but clive barker (also obvious namely: the hellbound heart/hellraiser. extending from this, i would say candyman but mainly the bernard rose adaptation)

emily bronte's wuthering heights, alongside charlotte bronte's jane eyre. while i think their works are ubiquitous and unspoken/spoken touchstones within a LOT of gothic romance/female-led horror fiction, i feel the formative influence their novels had on me is so potent that they can't go unmentioned.

helene cixous' essay the love of the wolf.

park chan-wook (namely thirst and stoker)

margaret atwood's power politics and the robber bridegroom

eiichi yamamoto's belladonna of sadness (our third eyes are looking directly at each other)

music!! which will undoubtedly be referenced now and then throughout subsequent paragraphs... i don't think there is a single instance where i can't link a certain scene i've written back to some kind of song or soundtrack!

anything that visually, thematically, conceptually or even emotionally to me if i decide, channels the death and the maiden trope.

originally i was going to detail why each feature had such an impact... but then this answer would be equally, if not just as long, as my chapters... and this reply is already a whole dissertation. if you (or anyone reading this) wants to know any specifics though i am more than happy to answer!

moving on!! to the most important topic: laurie laurie laurie!!

with her i feel like i was able to take advantage of what was already provided in the source material. teenage girls' bedrooms in contemporary horror are especially evocative of a decade and genre-specific youth, revealing so much about their interior lives in set-design that script may not allow ... (whoever pinned up that james ensor poster, thank you for my life etc.) but i think what i found the most endearing about her was how she's capable of being incredibly confident (babysitting tommy, answering a philosophical literary analysis question in class even after being distracted, girlchat with annie and lynda) but also painfully shy whenever BOYS are brought up - to such a degree that she relies on annie to call out michael stalking her.

however, as hesitant and dismissive as she is with annie's teasing about pursuing her crush on ben tramer, she is clearly a romantic - what with the lyrics of the song she sings. people use this as s diagnostic reason for michael stalking her, but it also reveals so much about her!! when she thinks she's alone, when she's just walking to school in the town she knows so well, she is fantasizing about Not Being Alone but Alone with Someone Else.

relevant digression but there is an interview with howard ashman, who wrote the songs for disney's the little mermaid and beauty and the beast, in which he pinpoints how the introductory songs that these heroines in musicals sing describe an ideal life. and i always interpreted laurie's introduction aligning with this paradigm. except while the likes of ariel and belle describe the desire to transcend their current provincial or inhibiting circumstances, wishing for a freedom they can only dream of comprehending, laurie sings of a lover she can only dream of comprehending, a companion who is peerless in mutual devotion - 'i wish i had you all alone, just the two of us' (although the attraction to rejection of societal expectation and norms is tied up in this, too). her fate also exists within the same constellation as the older, more brutal iterations of those fairy tales (hence angela carter influence). it's why chapter 6 of tdyk directly acknowledges snow white, sleeping beauty and references cinderella. the fairy tale heroine being the grandmother of the final girl.

she longs for fairy tale romance !! yet as soon as she's presented with the opportunity to pursue anything romantic - annie threatening to ring ben - laurie immediately shoots annie down. i don't think this is just her voiced insecurity from the lack of male attention she receives but that she also has more traditional and exacting standards of wanting to be courted.. but she would never say this because she is a Liberated Woman like her friends who is supremely self-sufficient and mature in all other aspects of her life!!

as much as she may consciously enforce this commonality with her friends, maybe she has less in common with them than she thinks. her distinction from them is obvious in her wardrobe design. her femininity is noticeable compared to annie and lynda's, her floral skirt and tights contrasting with their bell bottoms. she is comfortable in this femininity. her gait and mannerisms while she's walking to and from school have this graceful stride, almost floating... which makes her outfit change to a more masculine michael-coded blue palette so inchresting. when she changes after repeatedly seeing michael throughout the day, especially after seeing him watching her through the more invasive framing of her bedroom window, there's this awkwardness to her: when she hurries to annie's car struggling to carry the ridiculously large pumpkin, when she tries to smoke weed and just coughs and chokes, her fidgeting and twirling her hair. of course, this is understandably the anxious aftermath from being stalked but i do think there's a general discomfort displayed in this 'new skin' she's trying to assume.

it's why i wrote her as being envious of michael's masculinity - chapter 6, again - which he embodies to a patriarchal degree without any effort at all. in the next chapter there's more overt insight into this but on a more attraction-level-basis; an attraction to masculinity that laurie is able to consciously register and accept. now, she is much less concerned with being inaccessible to him by trying to adopt his infallibilty because he has increasingly made himself accessible to her... which brings us to...

THE KILL !!! i knew from the first chapter that Something Like That would go down, and it wouldn't be difficult considering DBD's Whole Deal to configure a plausible cresting point. that, and i wanted it to clearly be laurie's choice (deranged, albeit). and i wanted her agency to be integral. there is clearly a difference between attacking out of self-defense and attacking as a form of outlet. just as there's a difference between being groped and making sure michael is doing the groping right. from michael's perspective, much like how he doesn't just want to watch her but be watched by her, he doesn't just want the infatuation reciprocated but ALSO for her to reach the realisation the two of them are not so different after all. this reciprocation of attention and ego is so very key to me. if each boundary between them is a wall then michael isn't so much as demolishing through them kool-aid man style (anymore) but is the sledgehammer laurie is using... and this inevitably involves a convergence of languages they are each fluent in !! laurie in romance and michael in violence... except laurie is learning his very effectively!! vice versa! vice, indeed..

and on that note, greedy laurie, indeed!! not just biting but devouring the hand that feeds (literally in next chapter. somewhat. 🤐) did laurie effectively exercise girlpower by taking advantage of michael's sexual ignorance, essentially granting him with a sexuality?? probably not !! but where michael has (previously) been sexually ignorant, laurie has (previously) been sexually ignored. their navigation of this new mysterious world (and each other) has to consider this lack of experiental knowledge, resulting in this youthful curiosity as you phrased it (💓) but also that visceral physical communion and emotional/spiritual completion that comes with Two Becoming One... it is not enough to self-recognise through the other but to demolish the self and become the other!!

in terms of their sexual intimacy, from a writing perspective i trace a lot influence back to depeche mode's discography, especially their track in your room. a lot of their songs have an not-so-implicit eroticism in which the narrator (engendered as masculine with dave gahan's baritone vocals) embraces the subjugation in devotion, unashamedly worshipping his partner. this also relates to your point on michael easily and essentially deifying laurie. in your room is the pinnacle sex song (to me), just soooooooooooo heady and theatrical. the lumbering rhythm of the bass, the ghostly backing vocals, those synths that just build and build! and the lyrics !! how the narrator only finds true liberation in this clasutrophobic physicality - through this communion and only by completely possessing his partner, the lines 'i'm hanging on your words / living on your breath / feeling with your skin' parasitically merging subject and object, can his and her obsession be reconciled with.

i'm surprised michael's mask isn't fetishized more! but it just makes common sense to me that laurie's attraction to him would include the mask and this involves her gazing and touching and sometimes changing it... in chapter 4 i compare him to a hellenistic sculpture because it was a period of sculpture that valued expression. however, it's also paradoxical in the material being so rigid - the face is immobile but the action is hyperbolic. this comparison immediately mythologizes him but laurie has indellibly left her mark with his neck scar, thus creating a keyhole she can peer through when she wants to glimpse any of his humanity-inhumanity. and then of course the mouth she carves for him turns the keyhole into a door (into another door into another door)... and much more !!!!!!

if we are going to get even more Laurie Freak Strode... when considering michael doesn't have any eyes for show, the mask gives the sense that he can gaze at her without needing to blink - his voyuerism is eternal and omnipresent. there can be a 'guardian angel (demon)' value in this, and when laurie knows that the only person he wants to look at - and the only person he cares to acknowledge as a woman with thoughts and feelings - is her... while that should be horrifying, she eventually can't deny the pride that instills. because of this, instead of the fear that the mask would ordinarily evoke in others, there's an emotional inversion that laurie would experience as attraction and arousal. it turns out that laurie likes being watched equally as much as michael likes to watch.. everybody wins! (apart from anyone else who impedes on michael's view of her)

michael 'freeing' her, despite all previous crimes and abuses, is definitely apt!! it's safe to say that, at this point, any animosity or abuse laurie encounters (and has to tolerate) is in trials from other killers. if there are any destructive or abusive interactions with michael, she is often the instigator... which michael doesn't mind at all. he is more than happy to witness and enable any extremity of her emotional state!! if laurie is charging into the Coping Mechanism Store and picking the worst ones that are kept behind the adults only curtain, then he is carrying her shopping for her...

on a more sincere note, i've always kept the challenge of laurie trying to maintain her agency at the forefront of tdyk. she has very little within the confining context of the fog but then, by stark and overwhelming contrast, she can do whatever the hell she wants to (and with) michael. this strengthens her dependency on him and, in turn, makes the tenuous relationship she has with her team more frail. this major conflict is obviously apparent throughout tdyk but is especially so in the next chapter, laurie balancing her infatuation with him - the addictive affirmation of Being Seen and Being Known and Being Loved (to devastating degrees and effects) vs The Team conforming to a desensitisation and resignation to each other's routine deaths which is necessary for their survival. she is trying to balance on a thread-bare tightrope and it's only a matter of time and missteps until it snaps.....

i am glad you liked act one's playlist!! and of course no pressure to listen/like act two's! finding the right song with the right lyrics and atmosphere can really make a scene / chapter for me, and it's an ideal way to visualise how a certain scene will play out.

her nickname of 'tiger' mainly stemmed from the playful aspect of acknowledging and declawing his predatory status while he is pawing all over her.. but miss lana's influence can never be overstated !!!!!! NFR is a frequent album i put on while writing, how can it not be with those opening lyrics ....

and i'm glad you enjoy my little blog!! 💗i love the curation of yours, too, and adore your art of course!!!! (another inspiration). how you capture their likeness is so masterful and the depravity in their intimacy makes me lose my mind!! the size difference in their proportions 🥰 if it were safe to do so i would print out your galleria and liquefy it to directly inject into my veins ..

[uptonil]

i was tagged by @thechameleons (thank you jodie!!!) to put my music on shuffle and make a poem using the first line of every song that comes up. i actually had to skip a couple instrumentals but i don't think that's against the rules, no?

I'm lost, yes I'm lost

dont want to listen to my telephone ring

working night and day I try to get ahead

evening moon

what they do? they smilin' in your face

this is our fork in the road

i need my conscience to keep watch over me

no I'm not myself today

your smile is nothing to live for

somewhere beneath the stars.

(sleeping rough - prefab sprout, sour suite - the guess who, over the hillside - the blue nile, home before dark - nora guthrie, back stabbers - the o'jays, I'll be around - the spinners, american dreaming - dead can dance, caruso - gavin friday, machine - the horrors, interstellar love - thundercat)

tagging @derkoenigfeurio so he can do his first tagging game!

[folk-enjoyer]

Woody Guthrie: Songs and Art • Words and Wisdom by Nora Guthrie and Robert Santelli

an assortment of Woody Guthrie quotes, signatures, and poetry

[singeratlarge]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Polly Bergen, Ingmar Bergman, my sister Jennie Blair, Bebe Buell, Bob Casale, John A. Chapman, Gerald Ford, Lee Friedlander, Rosie Grier, Maulana Karenga, Angélique Kidjo, Gustav Klimt, Jamie Johnson, Paul McCartney’s 1986 “Press” single, Tommy Mottola, Peta Murgatroyd, singer-songwriter Bret Putnam, Adam Quinn, Phil Reeder, Del Reeves, Dan Reynolds (Imagine Dragons), Dale Robertson, Jerry Rubin, Dirty Dave Rudabaugh, Matthew Seligman, Stan Shaw, Harry Dean Stanton, Rubberlegs Williams, and the social activist and iconic figure in American folk music, Woody Guthrie. The legendary singer-songwriter gave us The Dust Bowl Ballads and “This Land is Your Land.” He was a major influence on Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Sixto Rodriguez, Pete Seeger, and many others. He also fathered a musical family with son Arlo and grandchildren Gabe and Nora.

Woody gave us the song, “This Land is Your Land”—a land for all people. He taught people how to view America and social issues through the lens of a song, saying, "I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that." 

Here’s my take of Woody’s autobiographical song “Oklahoma Hills,” co-written with his cousin Jack Guthrie (a cowboy star who went #1 with this in 1945). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aYTpJETVcQ Meanwhile, HB Woody, and thank you for creating “the machine that kills fascists.” 

#woodyguthrie #birthday #arloguthrie #johnnycash #bobdylan #sixtorodriguez #peteseeger #americana #machine #fascists #johnnyjblair #jackguthrie

[jaspersboy]

The Kansas City Star reported Nora Guthrie, daughter of singer Woody Guthrie, wrote an email asking Hawley to stop using the song to promote his "This Land is Our Land Act," which would prevent U.S. farmland from being owned by anyone associated with the Chinese Communist Party.

Guthrie said politicians have long used "This Land Is Your Land" to promote their campaigns and the U.S.

"In this particular case, the co-opting or parodying of the lyric by those not aligned with Woody's lyrics – i.e. misrepresentation by autocrats, racists, white nationalists, anti-labor, insurrectionists, etc. – is not condoned," Guthrie wrote. "We do not consider Josh Hawley in any way a representative of Woody's values therefore we would never endorse or approve of his reference to Woody's lyrics."

"It is more of a vision of democracy," Guthrie said of the song. "The song simply reiterates the concept, 'By the people, for the people.'"

The paper pointed out that Guthrie has no legal avenue to prevent Hawley from using the lyrics.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

All the books I reviewed in 2022 (Part III: Nonfiction part 1)

I. Electrify by Saul Griffith

The MacArthur prizewinning engineer offers a detailed, optimistic and urgent roadmap for a climate-respecting energy transition that we can actually accomplish in 10–15 years. The US’s energy budget has been wildly overstated. About half of the energy that the US consumes is actually the energy we need to dig, process, transport, store and use fossil fuels.

Renewables have these costs, too, but nothing near the costs of using fossil fuels. An all-electric nation is about twice as efficient as a fossil fuel nation. That means that the problem of electrifying America is only half as hard as we’ve been told it was. A just energy transition isn’t a transition to ecology austerity — you can have better, cheaper versions of the stuff you love.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/09/practical-visionary/#popular-engineering

II. The Right to Repair by Aaron Perzanowski

In a series of short, punchy chapters, Perzanowski lays out the ancient, noble and necessary case for repair — a practice as old as the first resharpened stone axe — and proceeds to dissect each of the idiotic pretenses used to block it. From IP law to trade law, from consumer protection to consumer safety, from cybersecurity to unfair competition, Perzanowski demolishes the corporate argument for filling our planet up with immortal garbage in the name of consumerism.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/29/planned-obsolescence/#r2r

III. Woody Guthrie, Songs and Art * Words and Wisdom by Nora Guthrie and Robert Santelli

332 pages of reproductions of Guthrie’s art, songs and journals, as well as essays by notables who were influenced by Guthrie, as well as two of his kids: Arlo and Nora Guthrie. Guthrie’s journals and essays chart the development of a full-fledged philosophy of art and aesthetics.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/06/this-land-is-your-land/#this-machine-kills-fascists

IV. The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow

The most important book I read in 2022. Its core argument: that the shape of societies — hierarchical or non, authoritarian or free — is not foreordained by our technology or living arrangements. We are free to choose who we want to be: equal or unequal, coercive or free, warlike or peaceful. A dizzying, thorough, beautifully told series of histories of ancient civilizations, many of which have only come into focus thanks to recent advances in archaeological technology. They show that every conceivable variation on centralization, coercion, hierarchy, violence, agriculture and urbanism has existed, in multiple places, for hundreds or thousands of years at a time.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/08/three-freedoms/#anti-fatalism

V. How to Take Over the World by Ryan North

A popular science book that tours a wide-ranging set of technological ideas by means of explaining how to realize the supervillain plots so beloved of Marvel comics. It’s full of extremely funny, extremely informative riffs that make for an engrossing frame for very deep dives into knowledge that are esoteric, interdisciplinary, and damned interesting.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/16/they-laughed-at-me-in-vienna/#ill-show-them-all

VI. The High Sierra by Kim Stanley Robinson

A unique and profound piece of western literature. The key is in that subtitle: “A Love Story.” It’s a memoir, of how Robinson came to be a Sierra person, starting with a reckless adventure in the mountains while tripping on LSD, wildly unprepared but young and vigorous and lucky. It’s a story about the physical being of the Sierra. The Sierra is revealed as the source of Robinson’s novelistic pastoralism — the vividness of the Martian hills, of space station interiors, of Antarctica. All of those descriptions are thinly veiled Sierras, like a set of stock characters in a novelist’s ensemble cast who are stand-ins for the people in his life.

It’s a story about the problems of the Sierras. The colonialism. The genocide. The place-names honoring the monsters of history, butted up against names commemorating heroes and lovers of the place, some settler colonialists, some First Nations. The ecocide, going back to the drowning of the Hetch Hetchy basin, not just to create a reservoir but to demoralize the advocates for nature and wilderness, scatter them so powerful men could continue to seize and destroy wild places.

It’s a story about living with the Sierras. Robinson recounts the history of the summer settlements — the places where First Nations people would come, year after year, for centuries, for fellowship and interchange and ritual. He tells the tale of the Sierra Club, the men — and especially the women — who loved the Sierras and whom the Sierra loved back.

Robinson made me fall in love with a place I’ve never been, and miss it even though I’ve never known it.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/25/the-wild-places/#sierra-people

VII. Ways of Being by James Bridle

A big, lyrical, strange and inspiring book about the “more than human world” — a world that encompasses the worldview of animals, ecosystems, and software. “Inanimate” objects — a homebrew self-driving car and a recommendation algorithm — both have distinct worldviews (umwelts). Our own umwelt and desires impact these inanimate objects, too; we are inextricably tangled up with them. Their actions result from our actions, and our actions result from theirs.

The whole world — from microscopic organisms that are neither animals nor plants to birds to primates, to plants and the fungi that interpenetrate and coexist with their root cells — is part of this phenomenon. Indeed, the interconnectedness of everything is so profound and so undeniable that any close examination of any phenomenon, being, or object leads to the inescapable conclusion that it can’t be understood as a separate, standalone thing, separate from everything else.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/07/more-than-human/#umwelt

Next up: more nonfiction!

https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/post/702452399863889921/all-the-books-i-reviewed-in-2022-part-iv

Image: Matthew Petroff https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:George-peabody-library.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[Image ID: Interior of the George Peabody Library in Baltimore.

[soundandvicios]

#music gems

Back in 2016 this compilation led me to some true gems.

[archivist-crow]

Billy Bragg & Wilco - Mermaid Avenue (1998)

Twenty-six years ago today, on June 23, 1998, Mermaid Avenue, the album by Billy Bragg and Wilco with lyrics by Woody Guthrie was released. As the story goes, in 1995, Nora Guthrie, Woody’s daughter and then-executor of the Guthrie estate, contacted Billy Bragg to see if he would be interested in composing music for a box of lyrics for songs her father had left unfinished. Bragg in turn contacted Wilco, and the stage was set. It’s an inspired grouping, but, as so often happens in experiments like this, it could have easily ended up being simply a good idea on paper. Fortunately for everyone, it was every bit as good as advertised. Charming, lyrical, and with something timeless about it, Mermaid Avenue would go on to become both Bragg and Wilco’s biggest success to date.

In an intriguing what-if, the same box of Guthrie’s lyrics had been offered to Bob Dylan approximately forty years earlier by Guthrie’s widow, Margie. Dylan made the trip to collect the box but Margie wasn’t there, and Dylan left empty handed.

[just-a-ghost-in-the-world]

GoFundme for Si Kahn's upcoming birthday CD!

Funded ~$14,000/$65,000 as of 05/24

Quote from site:

"The Si Kahn Living Legacy

The goal of the Si Kahn Living Legacy is to build awareness of, support for, and public access to the amazingly large body of Si Kahn’s creative work that no one except Si has ever seen, and ultimately to keep it alive and easily accessible after he’s gone. Si has been recognized as one of the most important songwriters in social justice work, connecting his cultural work and social activism like so many before him including Pete Seeger (with whom he worked) and Woody Guthrie.

Nora Guthrie and others started the Woody Guthrie Archives long after Woody’s passing. As Si turns the corner to his 80th birthday, it’s a perfect time to think ahead, to gather, catalogue, and make available those of his songs, stories, book manuscripts, and poems that have never before been seen or heard by others. The time to do this is now, while Si is healthy, still creating, and can be a friendly resource to the Living Legacy’s growth and development.

It of course takes funding to build and maintain a major project like this. Your contributions are tax-deductible, as the project is managed by and part of the 501(c)3 non-profit Generations: Music for Justice (EIN 87-1647310).

Let’s do this together, recognizing the importance of Si’s work not just as a writer and activist, but as a humane, generous, deeply kind person who’s spent his entire life trying to make this tired world a kinder, gentler, more just place for all of us."

-Cathy Fink, Marcy Marxer, John McCutcheon

https://gofund.me/c8106f85

[hmgn3]

24-February 散財記録

05(mon) ・Ásgeir / Where Is My Mind? (2016, used 7inch) ・The Hive Dwellers & Selector Dub Narcotic / Lynch the Swan (2011, used 7inch) ・White Rainbow & Selector Dub Narcotic / The Making of Thriller (2011, used 7inch) ・Μάνος Λοΐζος / Τραγούδια Του Δρόμου (1974, used LP) 07(wed) ・Quanah Parker / The Gathering (2012, used 12inch) ・The Leon Sash Trio / I Remember Newport (1968, used LP) 08(thu) ・ccctyyy / Reappearance (2021, used 12inch) ・Edhels / Oriental Christmas (1985, used LP) 10(sat) ・Kulku / Fahren (2022, used LP) ・Avishai Cohen / Arvoles (2019, used LP) ・DJ SAK / Captain-i.r.GIRG-the vagabond ~genesis beyond decadence~ (2001, used 2x10inch) ・Tom Waits / Foreign Affairs (1977, used LP) ・Stanciu Simion / Flute De Pan En Jazz (1970, used LP) ・Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse All-Stars / Sunday Jazz A La Lighthouse, Vol. 1 (1953, used LP) 11(sun) ・Ot To, Not To / It Loved To Happen (2019, used LP) ・Martial Solal Et Son Grand Orchestre Jouent André Hodeir / Martial Solal Et Son Grand Orchestre Jouent André Hodeir ( 1984, used LP) ・Albert Lévy / Le Pianocinema (1979, used LP) ・Forrest Westbrook / This Is Their Time, Oh Yes (1970, used LP) ・Martial Solal Trio / Martial Solal Trio (1954, used 10inch) 17(sat) ・Wally Whyton / 50 All-Time Children's Favourites (1971, used LP) 21(wed) ・Snakefinger / Kill the Great Raven/What Wilbur? (1979, used 7inch) 23(fri) ・sekifu / 矢川 (2024, CD) 24(sat) ・Nora Guthrie / Emily's Illness (1967, 7inch) 26(mon) ・Seamus Cater & Kai Fagaschinski / Secrets (2011, LP) ・Beryl Booker Trio with Don Byas / Don Byas & Le Beryl Booker Trio à Paris (1954, used 10inch) 28(wed) ・The Aaron Bell Trio / After The Party's Over (1958, used LP)

[expendablemudge]

WOODY GUTHRIE: SONGS AND ART ⋅ WORDS AND WISDOM is a great #Booksgiving gift for your #musician and/or #Leftist and/or #history buff, says my 4.5* #BookRecommendation:

[casapazzo]

[Nora Guthrie's] teenage son at the time, Cole, was a Dropkick Murphys fan and had posters on his wall. Nora said, “What’s this band all about?” He said, “Dropkick Murphys and I think that Grandpa would have appreciated these guys. They sing about a lot of the similar subjects and whatnot.”

Nowadays, you can’t hold his real lyrics. You do it on the computer, but at the time, I got to go to the archives in New York City, and go into a special temperature-controlled, pressure-treated room, and put on these special white gloves, and hold the actual pieces of paper he wrote the songs on. I turned the page, and there’s this song with barely any lyrics: I’m shipping up to Boston to find my wooden leg. Immediately, obviously, Boston caught my eye, but I went, “Holy crap, that fits perfectly into that song we have.” Nora’s quote was, “My father has thousands of pages of deep artistic lyrics, and you take the one song I think he wrote when he was shit-faced”