Dear Calvin St. Calvin

Speed Pipe Smoking

2010-06-22T18:51:00.000-06:00

2010-05-20T12:57:00.001-06:00

True Hip-Hop Stories: Homeless Emcee from D-Nice on Vimeo.

Thoughts on Rap Music & One Mike Eagle

2010-05-17T14:40:00.005-06:00

Lately, my heart for rap is reawakening. Isn't that good news? I mean, for a rapper... you would think... (...inappropriate use of ellipses are a pet peeve of everyone's...). I went to an Abstract Rude show on saturday. Real. And it was a beautiful thing. A thing of beauty, friends. And I have been posting on ugsmag. What's happening to me. I have seen some great rap video's lately and I have even bought some rap music. I payed for it, people. Crazy. I am going to show you these video's below, BUT FIRST, let me tell you that One Mike Eagle just changed the way I thought I thought (HATE, FEELINGS OF HATE) about never finding good rappers that challenge me while sounding good while intellectually and spiritually stimulating my WHOLE BODY. This man is a real rapper, friends. There are plenty of real rappers but this man is something realer that reality. He doesn't exist here. He must float around or something. Or perhaps microphones float around whenever he enters a room. I can't be certain. His is the first video I post below. Watch all of these though. And buy One Mike Eagle's album, Unapologetic Art Rap.

Take "Incredibright" from Alpha Pup on Vimeo.

The Deadly Intro from Unkommon Kolor on Vimeo.

Yo La Tengo - Beanbag Chair

2010-03-02T23:43:00.002-07:00

This song and this group need no explanation.

I have spent my life trying to understand
Just how my life lets aware who I am
But it leaves a bitter taste
And feels like such a waste
I am so totally vague
Betray the dark line, see if I care
I loved you when I was young
But no more
So burn down the fireman's fair

Memory plays its tricks on me
In my mind's eye, I claim to see
I'm losing every race I run
Making misery out of fun
So bulldoze the new road they're driving
Slash the beanbag chair
You held me for so very long
But no more
So burn down the fireman's fair

How many type of things do we think we need?
But that doesn't make them true
I'm a little afraid I'm falling far and free
I'll leave that up to you
That's up to you

So won't you find me totally vague
A drain has died, see if I care
I loved you when I was young
But no more
So burn down the fireman's fair
Fireman's fair
Burn down the fireman's fair
Fireman's fair
Burn down the fireman's fair

Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros

2010-02-11T10:24:00.002-07:00

Gorge yourself on this gorgeous tune. Alex Ebert is responsible for this motley crew of tatterdemalions. Sharpe is Ebert’s alter-ego, a messianic figure who comes to Earth to save mankind, but keeps getting distracted by falling in love.

2010-01-14T17:14:00.002-07:00

Loyal and irked readers, I have heard your cry in the desert. I have returned. I promised (in the very first post!) that this would surely become more and more neglected. I apologize. I truly did not expect that anyone read these artful musings. I bring to your attention today the poetry of Rolf Jacobsen, brought to my attention by my well-read literary compatriot, Obed Velasquez. Jacobsen is a Norwegian fellow who was born in Oslo in 1907. At the time the city was actually called Kristiania, which betrays his age. As an aside, because this is interesting, Oslo was built in the eleventh century by the Norwegian King Harald III and destroyed by a fire in 1624 and rebuilt by Danish-Norwegian king Christian IV as the city "Christiania" alternatively spelt with the K for a short time. The city reclaimed it's original name, Oslo, in 1925 when tender young Rolf Jacobsen was turning 18 and realizing how much poetry there is in the world. The passage of time plays no small role in the poetry of Jacobsen as he is often centered on the modernization of the world and how little penchant the whole process has preserved for Nature and such. This considered, it would not be unfair to call Jacobsen a romantic poet though his poetry does not read like the romantics whatsoever. But at it's rudiment sits the same fertile soil of angst and knitted brow at the sight of smoke stacks and urbanization and hurried feet. That said, Jacobsen is hailed as Norway's first Modernist poet and a primary figure in Scandinavian Poetry on a whole. For all the college drop outs out there, Rolf studied extensively at the University of Norway but never did graduate. And now he is revered and read world round, so you still have a chance, stick it to the man! I'm just kidding and not kidding, you know the tone - it's my signature. Rolf was married in 1940, and fathered himself two children so it appears he had that part of nature down-pat too. But world war II was a bad time for Rolf, and really, who was it a good time for? He was persuaded or coerced, or maybe the sources are just too kind and he just volunteered out of fear or sadism or cowardice, to join the Norway Nationalist Socialist Party after having been occupied by Hitler's forces. Rolf Jacobsen was basically a Nazi. When Germany was defeated, poor Rolf was in the clink for three and a half years, doing hard labour. Sad. This is truly so sad. I would like to now point out that Dostoevsky was put in Siberia for ten years as well. And how about Bruno Schultz, another victim of Nazi rule, murdered on the street corner by an SS Officer. Truly depressing, the way these things work out. When he got out he settled in Hamar, north of Oslo, and took to journalism and book-selling. And this too, the dear brother became a Catholic. As some may have inferred from this blog, I adore Catholic poets. This transpired in 1950. It must have been a catalyst because it had been several years sicne he had written but 1951 marked Rolf Jacobsen's returned to his pre-war past time: Poetry. The rest of this story speaks for itself in the lasting minimalism and eloquence of Jacobsen's work.

The Silence Afterwards

Try to be done now
with deliberately provocative actions and sales statistics,
brunches and gas ovens,
be done with fashion shows and horoscopes,
military parades, architectural contests, and the rows of triple traffic lights.
Come through all that and be through
with getting ready for parties and eight possibilities
of winning on the numbers,
cost of living indexes and stock market analyses,
because it is too late,
it is way too late,
get through with and come home
to the silence afterwards
that meets you like warm blood hitting your forehead
and like thunder on the way
and the sound of great clocks striking
that make the eardrums quiver,
because words don't exist any longer,
there are no more words,
from now on all talk will take place
with the voices stones and trees have.

The silence that lives in the grass
on the underside of every blade
and in the blue spaces between the stones.
The silence
that follows shots and birdsong.
The silence
that pulls a blanket over the dead body
and waits in the stairs until everyone is gone.
The silence
that lies like a small bird between your hands,
the only friend you have.

Skylab

We've come so far, thought the astronaut
as he swam around the capsule in his third week
and by accident kicked a god in the eye
--so far
that there's no difference anymore between up and down,
north and south, heavy and light.
And how, then, can we know righteousness.

So far.
And weightless, in a sealed room
we chase the sunrises at high speed
and sicken with longing for a green stalk
or the heft of something in our hands. Lifting a stone.

One night he saw that the Earth was like an open eye
that looked at him as gravely as the eye of a child
awakened in the middle of the night.

Rolf Jacobsen died on February 20th, 1994. I was seven years old. He looked like my Grandpa Houle.

Múm

2009-10-06T00:29:00.002-06:00

I haven't done an electronica post in a while so why not drop some good old Múm on this seldom perused and somewhat delinquent (or senile or delusional) attic of the internet where I talk to myself. Múm has for five years been my favorite band which is to say my favorite project that is the unified work of several minds rather than one... for the solitary mind crafting music the going gets a lot rougher for the coveted 'favorite' status. I just dug up a video by Múm that I hadn't seen before. It's for their song "The Island of Children's Children" from the album Summer Make Good. If you haven't enjoyed Múm before, start at the beginning of their impressive discography and work your way through. Their first record was the staggering Finally We Are No One, released in 1999. It is fair to say that it changed my life. And no post about Múm would be complete without mentioning the beautiful fact that(white people pay attention, i know you'll love this) they are from Iceland, home of natural majesty, the world's sixth largest gnp per capita, and many of the greatest bands known to ethereal music.

Daniel Johnston

2009-09-29T19:55:00.006-06:00

Daniel Johnston is prolific. There are a lot of Daniel Johnston albums I find no merit in but some of them have become my favorites. I especially recommend Songs of Shame and The What of Whom. This song comes from his 1981 tape, recorded in his bedroom, Songs of Shame. Daniel Johnston is a very interesting character. He is manic depressive, obsessed with the devil, and a song writing genius. There is no way I could summarize him in a blog post. Look into him if you find this music suits you as well as it suits myself. There is an excellent and somewhat recent documentary on him called The Devil and Daniel Johnston that may be easily procured from the library or any fine independent record store. This album, Songs of Shame, has no relation to the Woods album I mentioned in my a recent post although their having referenced Daniel Johnston in their album title is highly probable. I'm not sure.

WOODS

2009-09-08T16:20:00.002-06:00

I'm getting a guitar because of this song. Definitely pick up this album, Songs of Shame, by the most marvelous Woods or Woods Family Creeps.

Gregory and Trisha Orr

2009-07-21T11:18:00.004-06:00

What a marvel!

I was digging through a bookshop in Sackville and came across a book of poetry called Burning The Empty Nests. I cracked it open and the first poem I read went like this:

Making Beasts

When I was about ten

I glued together an old

white turtle skull,

a woodchuck's skull,

and a red squirrel's tail

to make my first

mythical beast.

What has been created

is never lost. It crawls

up through my thoughts now

on the feet I never gave it.

Needless to say, I bought this book. And the poems, each and every one, changes the way I read poems. Their perspective and approach are so bright. The book doesn't say anything about Gregory Orr, it's author, so I did some research. He is considered by many to be a master of short, lyric free verse. Much of his early work is concerned with seminal events from his childhood, including a hunting accident when he was twelve in which he accidentally shot and killed his younger brother, followed shortly by his mother's unexpected death, and his father's later addiction to amphetamines.He teaches at the University of Virginia, where he founded the MFA Program in Writing in 1975, and served from 1978 to 2003 as Poetry Editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review. He lives with his wife, the painter Trisha Orr, and their two daughters in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Naturally, this lead me to research Trisha Orr. As it turned out, she is a talent unto herself. Seeing as this blog is for poetry, music, and painting, this marriage of talents hits on two cylinders. Here are a few of Trisha Orr's paintings and a few more of Gregory Orr's poems from Burning The Empty Nests. He has nine other collections that I will eagerly hunt out for myself.

When We Are Lost

Darkness surrounds the dead tree. Gathering around it,

we set a torch to the trunk.

High in the branches sits an old man

made of wax. He wears a garland of wounds;

each one glows like a white leaf with its own light.

Flames rise toward him, and as they touch his feet

he explodes, scattering insects made of black glass.

A moth lands on the toe of my boot.

Picking it up, I discover a map on its wings.

The Wooden Dancer

She wears a necklace of light.

Each bead is a deserted room

you enter: bare light bulb, a white

glove on a table. You walk to the window

and stare out at the snowfields.

A flock of sparrows is eating your footprints.

A Stone's Poem of Pain

In the dark hollow between your lungs, an apple

is growing; a white apple the size of her breasts,

but no one can see it. Only you

feel it pressing out against your ribs,

but the pain is distant, hovers over you

like your mother's hand about to strike.

In A Jar

2009-06-22T19:21:00.002-06:00

Dinosaur Jr. - In A Jar

off of their second album, You're Living All Over Me, released in 1987.

I'll be grazing by your window
Please come pat me on the head
I just want to find out what you're nice to me for
When I look up, don't think I don't know
about all the scabs you dread
It's hard to stomach the gore
I know you don't have the patience
To peel them off no more
In a jar where you believe
All I could do was lick your hand
In a jar the scars are plain to see
I hope somehow you'll know I understand
I'll be grazing by your window
Please come pat me on the head
I just want to find out what you're nice to me for
Then you smile and decide to take me in
'Cause I look you by your bed
But I can feel it just a little more
I'll watch you fall apart, babe you know it
You know I'm young and stuff, babe don't blow it
Just unscrew the top, yeah
Pick me up now just can't stop
In a jar where you believe
All I could do was lick your hand
In a jar where scars are plain to see
I hope somehow you'll know I understand
Scabs collect beneath your bureau
From the knife wounds you got

Andy Goldsworthy

2009-06-09T17:10:00.002-06:00

Andy Goldsworthy has captured my heart. If the Earth was God's garment, Mr. Goldsworthy would be His fashionable assistant, His humble and serene fashionista.

important note: He only implements nature in his work:

Mighty Mos

2009-06-09T17:09:00.000-06:00

Viking Moses

2009-06-02T11:40:00.003-06:00

Still My Home by Viking Moses.

And just for kicks:

Henri Rousseau

2009-05-17T20:09:00.004-06:00

Please Click on each Image in order to see the entire Painting.
A Carnival Evening
1886
Oil on canvas
46 x 35 1/8" (106.9 x 89.3 cm)

Henri Rousseau
Eclaireurs attaqués par un tigre
1904
120,5 x 162 cm

The Tallest Man On Earth

2009-05-13T22:31:00.004-06:00

This Swedish gentleman is my newest favorite. He is the type of musician you hear and you want to hide from everyone because you know he is the real deal and real deals are often fragile. They can be spoiled by too much attention. Take Bob Dylan as the most obvious example... and The Tallest Man On Earth is the most similar artist I have ever heard to the greatly revered Bob Dylan.

This is The Tallest Man On Earth covering my favorite song on earth:

and this is him doing one of his own jams off of his debut full length: Shallow Graves, which you should purchase as soon as you possibly can.

Praise God for Kristian Matsson of Dalarna, Sweden: the Tallest Man On Earth.

Gavin Bunner

2009-05-10T02:01:00.001-06:00

Easy To Be Around

2009-05-07T10:00:00.001-06:00

Diane Cluck - Easy To Be Around

i was in the coal mine picking up diamonds
that the miners had left behind, behind, behind
and i admired their cold shine
simple & bright
and i pocketed many in the cavernous night
clear, when held up to the light

you belong to no one
you are easy to be around
cause you belong to no one
you are easy to be around
cause you belong to no one
you are easy to be around

and i scattered them on the ground...

in the wake of your eyes it decays
you despise any weight
and because and because
and because you give it up
you are easy to be around
i like to walk beside you
y're so easy to be around
it's like i'm not even walking beside you
we are rolling along the ground
one shadow made of mercury
we were two till we melted down
now y're easy to be around

y're easy to be around...

i was in the coal mine picking up diamonds
so heavy i had to leave them all behind
coming up from the mineshaft
sparkling bright
see me laughing having nothing in an infinite night
clear, and dangling in the light

same as what you came with
makes you easy to be around
cause the door remains the same width
y're so easy to be around
both forgetting what our name is
in a dance as the sun goes down

you are easy to be around
y're easy to be around
y're easy to be around
y're easy to be around

Amy Cutler

2009-05-06T08:39:00.005-06:00

If someone could craft masterful children's stories based on the goulache illustrations of Amy Cutler, children everywhere would weep with joy, genuflecting at the feet of such authors. Regardless, a picture is worth a thousand words:

2009-04-29T18:56:00.002-06:00

Pier Giorgio Di Cicco is by all measures my favorite living poet. His poetry is custom tailored to everything I seek to read, know, and feel for my well-being. An italian born Canadian who lives in Toronto now serving as a priest; he is called Priest George I have read. I wish to meet him before he leaves for Heaven.

he fell into my arms and said

(excerpt)

1he fell into my arms and said

2"sometimes god takes what we love most. he knows best".

3i agree.

4so I made up something as i buried his grandchildren.

5i said, "god wants us to love him unconditionally";

6to get too tired to be angry; to love him

7the way my friend zorab goes into the niagara gorge

8to look for messages in bottles. he hates god, but finds hope.

9you get thankful for anything

10he doesn't take: breath, sight,

11memory, until they're taken. then you're thankful

12for death.

13such gratitude, taking everything for

14granted, your ski-doos, your anger, sorrow;

15even fear; you fork

16over every feeling to him.

17today i am thankful for anything,

18even the cold glance of

19those who do not love me. it's an experience.

20my novice master used to say he couldn't be

21hurt anymore. me? i collect every sight and sound i'll

22miss in my final moment.

23today i buried four children. i don't know what the weeping

24was about; i held the

25grandfather's head to my own, like a

26horrified brother faced with an

27unconditional god. it was like holding my own head.

28his brain, his love, his faith, my own -- and

29doing what we do best -- living in spite of him.

30until he opens the screen door and says, come in;

31the day of streets and leaves is over.

32lay your head to rest, and put away

33the likeness of the day.

None Shall Pass

2009-04-24T16:13:00.002-06:00

I wouldn't say it is my all time favorite hip hop song because it is, in my opinion, impossible to know that -- but I would easily put it in the top ten: Aesop Rock's None Shall Pass. This song is flawless -- the lyrics are incredible, the flow is impeccable, and the rhymes are nothing short of impressive. And now, my dear friends and throngs of loyal readers of this informative and timeless blog, a talented DJ named Tor, has done us the favor of remixing this song, among others, over Sufjan Steven's classic album, Illinoise. The Remix album is aptly titled Illinoize. This one is instant vintage.

Escape from the Poppy Field

2009-04-23T17:51:00.002-06:00

CHARLES SANTORE - Escape from the Poppy Field from L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of OZ, Random House, 1991.

The Seven Ages

2009-04-17T15:10:00.002-06:00

Here is a poem by the well-accomplished poet, Louise Glück. It is called The Seven Ages and it is the title poem of her eleventh book. It is the cold distant eye of nostalgia on a life full of living. In a way, this whole brief beginning of eternity is only a dream from which we wake when we die. It is useless to try and consume a world we will leave so swiftly. "This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind." - King Solomon

THE SEVEN AGES

In my first dream the world appeared
in the salt, the bitter, the forbidden, the sweet
In my second dream I descended

I was human, I couldn't just see a thing
beast that I am

I had to touch, to contain it

I hid in the groves,
I worked in the fields until the fields were bare --

time
that will never come again --
the dry wheat bound, caskets
of figs and olives

I even loved a few times in my disgusting human way

and like everyone I called that accomplishment
erotic freedom,
absurd as it seems

The wheat gathered and stored, the last
fruit dried: time

that is hoarded, that is never used,
does it also end?

In my first dream the world appeared
the sweet, the forbidden
but there was no garden, only
raw elements

I was human:
I had to beg to descend

the salt, the bitter, the demanding, the preemptive

And like everyone, I took, I was taken
I dreamed

I was betrayed:

Earth was given to me in a dream
In a dream I possessed it

- Louise Glück

Lesende

2009-04-15T16:35:00.004-06:00

Gerhard Richter was born in Dresden in 1932. In 1994 he painted Lesende (Reading) which I had the privilege of viewing in the San Francisco MOMA. At first, second, and third glance, you would swear this piece is out of place on a floor full of paintings. Lesende resembles a handsome photograph of a twenty-something woman, surely a muse by the strange and subtle beauty she carries, reading a newspaper. The Reader is in fact Richter's wife as I later learned. It shocked me to learn it is a painting. This is a painting so realistic, so finely done that I couldn't help but stare until all else drifted out of my mind. Many of the paintings I enjoyed that day were evocative and impressive but this piece seemed impossible. The talent necessary to create this painting is staggering.
The image itself settles in with a spirit of certainty. There are moments when I look around at a room or at a person and all things freeze still and even in the very moment I am aware that my mind is attaching this glimpse to an entire chapter of my life. This painting proves that such a fleeting, rare, and ethereal awareness can be captured by a painting.

You Swan, Go On

2009-04-14T15:54:00.005-06:00

The latest song to earn the instant vintage mantel in my heart is a very short acoustic jam called You Swan, Go On by Phil Elvrum's (or Elverum) Mount Eerie. On the actual recording, appearing on the newest Mount Eerie release, Lost Wisdom, has accompaniment from his co-worker, Julie Doiron (of Erik's Trip, Phil's favorite group I read somewhere). This song exemplifies brevity. That said, I don't want to taint it with my rambling. I have a video of Phil Elvrum performing it live and the lyrics below. Absorb, Enjoy, Dissolve.

As good as I could possibly imagine my life getting, it did
After I met you
The way you reached inside my chest and pulled out things and sent them off in breaths blew
And as good as it got with all the layers peeling off, and though I writhed
I could not upset you
With your hand down my throat you held on to my heart and pumped blood through

And then "it's time to go" you said, "it's time to go out
You little gray goose
Get out from under my wing" you said "you swan, go on, go out, you're turned loose"

oh so it's over
oh so we died
oh so your hand on my heart pumping blood went limp and oh, I fly
Oh swan inside.

Mary Oliver

2009-04-13T18:02:00.005-06:00

Mary Oliver is a woman whose control of words stuns me into silence. Her poems strike a balance between availability and timelessness that is difficult to find in the convoluted verse of most living poets worth mentioning. A particular poem, Rage, about a man and his daughter whom he has molested, has taken an important place in the library of my mind. It is an unforgettable portrayal of the inner workings of two people forever sullied by an unforgettable treason upon morality. It is a simple reminder when post-modernism tries to separate action from consequence by trying to hoodwink morality with a romanticized preference for 'relativism'.

Rage
- 1986

          You are the dark song
          of the morning;
          serious and slow,
          you shave, you dress,
          you descend the stairs
          in your public clothes
          and drive away, you become
          the wise and powerful one
          who makes all the days
          possible in the world.
          But you were also the red song
          in the night,
          stumbling through the house
          to the child's bed,
          to the damp rose of her body,
          leaving your bitter taste.
          And forever those nights snarl
          the delicate machinery of the days.
          When the child's mother smiles
          you see on her cheekbones
          a truth you will never confess;
          and you see how the child grows--
          timidly, crouching in corners.
          Sometimes in the wide night
          you hear the most mournful cry,
          a ravished and terrible moment.
          In your dreams she's a tree
          that will never come to leaf--
          in your dreams she's a watch
          you dropped on the dark stones
          till no one could gather the fragments--
          in your dreams you have sullied and murdered,
          and dreams do not lie.

Mary Oliver

Love It All

2009-04-11T08:17:00.002-06:00

So much is consumed by such a prosaic maxim: Love It All.

Rejoice, brethren.

Joe Gurba

Promenade

2009-04-10T15:09:00.000-06:00

Since becoming decidedly self-involved, starting a blog seems like a natural development in the life and times of Joe Gurba. I have named the blog thus because I have been giving serious thought to changing my name to Calvin St. Calvin. And since this really is for an audience of one (myself) I figured the title appropriate. I will use this podium to either pontificate shamelessly or engage in biting diatribes concerning individual people, songs, pieces, works, events, or places that light my wick.
All that said, forgive me. Forgive me. Reader, if you are there, forgive me. Forgive me, God. I love the sound of my own voice. So much.

Let the most likely short lived and soon to be neglected 'blog' adventure begin!

Today I was grabbed by the ankle by a particular painting. The author of this piece is Marc Zakharovich Chagall, a Russian Jew from Belarus and naturalized in France. He was prolific and we will leave it at that.

This painting is titled The Promenade. The gentleman is Chagall himself and the woman is Bella, his wife, whom he had married in 1915. The Promenade was painted in 1917-1918. Chagall was overjoyed, jubilant, and his life was built in rejoice. The bright colours are so bold and intelligent. But above all, the image conveys such mystic romanticism evocative of a waking dream, lucid and exuberant.

The Promenade strikes me to the quick. It is in this moment meeting me exactly where my life resides. I am to be married in a few short months and my Bella, Bethany, seems to want to pull me into the very ether of joy. There has been such an undoing between myself and world's worries on her account. I feel as if I am coming unpinned from the turf and given over to a view possessed by stronger colour, stronger senses, and more formidible existance. In a word: floating. The Promenade isn't a painting that will fling someone into this majestic hinterland, no, not by any means. The Promenade is a painting for those of us who have been so fortunate as to taste and see this sort of contentment.

Joe Gurba