'In Bed With Flowers' by Amy Stretch-Parker

 Absolutely love this song.

Sinnerman

I confess I have sinned, for I have not heard for so long now some of the greatest music ever recorded:

Best Words

I laboured for many years under the idea that I needed other people to make me happy. I realised one day that only I could make myself happy by accepting that I didn't need others to make me better or 'more' than what I was - I have and always will be what I am. My happiness is my own, and through that I can choose to accept the joy and happiness that others might bring to me.

Posted as a comment at www.facebook.com/TheBestWords, Feb 13, 2013

Beauty has Depth, Haydn doesn't.

"I am listening to the second movement of Haydn's London Symphony for the tenth or so time preparing for a paper, and for the first time it has struck me how incredibly beautiful the piece is." - Alex DuBose

I seriously question how beautiful a piece of music is if it takes 10 listens to recognise it as that – even with the distraction of study, to not be somehow enthralled by a sound on first listen. There are definitely songs I haven't 'discovered' until later on down the listening-track when the more immediate songs have worn out their welcome. In fact, Welcome to Sky Valley by Kyuss is an album of such songs; heck, even the Graffin songs from Bad Religion's Stranger than Fiction. But I remember waking up from a nap once in the middle of the second movement from Górecki's 3rd Symphony after having left the radio on, and I was held motionless by the beauty of the work. 'Andante Festivo' by Sibelius is another such example that upon hearing on first listening I was mesmerised.

Now, I'm not saying a piece of music can't hold it's secrets secret until such a time when my willing ears are willing to listen and appreciate, but there is a magical beauty about being stunned into silence on first listening, something that no other music can match, and that does raise that piece of music to a loftier height. And I will stand by this even when other ears tell me that the Graffin songs on Stranger than Fiction were the songs that held them in awe long before the Gurewitz songs. It is not that the music works need to be the same for each individual, only that the various works appear to strike a demanding presence upon first listen.

So is the second movement from Haydn's London Symphony as beautiful as other works that I have raised to loftier heights? I want to argue 'no'. Most definitely not. What if another listener had been stunned into silence upon first listen by this work? I would argue that they have not valued the examples of greater works such as the second movement (what is it with second movements?) of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21, as a common (and somewhat cliché) example. It is not just that this is my opinion, but the fact that Haydn never reaches the emotional depths, nor the fecundity of compositional imagination that Mozart extends his abilities to. In Haydn, stateliness seems to always compromise the emotional grace, therefore diluting true depth, and true beauty to last the ages. The need to explore every aspect of his craft always seems lost on Haydn. Even if it was his craft that inspired Mozart to greater depths, it is that craft that gives us the example of lesser beauty in which we strive to raise ourselves above – that, in my opinion, is what Mozart did.

So, no, I don't see how the second movement to Haydn's London Symphony could even be viewed as 'beautiful', especially after a tenth listen of that mediocre composition.

My view is that a work of beauty captures the heart immediately, that the senses are antagonised in a way they have not been experienced before, or in a way that only harks back to a similar experience, but reshapes and recasts that experience in a completely new mould.

“How do you like my hair?”
        “It’s great” I replied. I had always liked Catherine’s hair. I thought she knew that.
        She looked at me expectantly, but I didn’t know what the expectation was related to.
        One hand rose to her hip. “That’s it?”
        “It’s…”
        Her agitation grew into the stiffening of her body, the sudden downturn of her forehead; lips no longer digging dimples into her cheeks…
        I clawed my fingers into the corners of my jacket and strained slightly as though that was going to get a better insight into what I was looking for.
        The tension between us began to strike warning blows against the hairs on my neck. My mouth was like a pair of clumsy feet stumbling up a staircase as it looked for some words to consolidate my girlfriend’s own ideas about her hair.
        But it was too late. Catherine threw her bag down on the counter with tremendous force, knocking the flowers in the vase onto the floor.
        “Good thing those are plastic” I quipped.
        “Fuck! You! Bastard!”

For a month – an entire month – I contemplated what had happened and why. Don’t get me wrong, I knew that she had had a haircut, and I knew that she was very proud of it; I just didn’t know what the difference was, and there was, at least at that time, no way for me to be able to tell. Even after scrawling through all her facebook photos, so many of which were action shots with flowing hair out behind her or hidden behind the faces of friends or relatives, I couldn’t see it. Neither could I see all our fancy couple poses. Where were those I suddenly wondered? In an attempt to be anti-facebook (to an extent), I basically deprived our relationship of memorial pics, and certainly, I deprived myself a way to see the past through the present’s changed perspective.
        It suddenly occurred to me, though, as I was writing an article about crowd participation at local gigs, why what had been so utterly boring in my life had also been so utterly boring in Catherine’s life: how women wore their hair.
        There had been a massive resurgence in long flowing hair like it was the 60s and 70s all over again. While a few girls adopted their emo eyeliner and black or punked-up psychedelic fashions, the majority of these girls breaking out of their teens were sporting flower braids in their hair, loose fitting light tops that covered either tight jeans or casual shorts. The biggest standout in my memory of going to see Kora for the Rhythm & Vines warmup gig at the Soundshell in Gisborne (apart from Kora themselves who busted out fatter beats than are generally represented on their albums), was the distraction of so many girls leaning towards some kind of hippy crossover. I didn’t understand it at the time – I was only slightly aware of it (I mean, I saw it, and noticed it, but at that time it didn’t seem so odd). The hippy ‘look’ was something that my parents were a part of and only very briefly reared it’s head through my formative years during the 90s when grunge had its moment in the sun. Here were masses of young girls looking like they were seeking some kind of individualistic statement, yet I had seen something very similar – and for many years – whenever I woke in the morning, whenever I came home, whenever my girlfriend came home. Catherine had represented this throwback fashion before I had even noticed it in others; I guess, to the point where I had begun to take what attracted me to her in the first place for utter and complete granted that eventuated in our combined boredom.
        When she came home that day, I still saw the same woman that I loved on previous days: her hair still framing her face, her clothes still fitting her like rags but exuding their own beauty and warmth. What I didn’t see was the natural wave that had always flittered across her shoulders in frail wisps, straightened and snipped at the ends to sit just above her shoulders; the frame no longer one length but a series of finely crafted steps that made their way from her eyebrows down to the base of her cheeks. And the contextual colour that had gone from a natural brown to a brunette with dark red highlights.
        I wonder (now!) how I had managed to miss all that.
        Never has the statement “When you stop looking, you find what you wanted all along” rung more true. I had been looking for something, didn’t know what it was; gave up and discovered it right there when I realised that the love of my life had gone against the grain of what she was slowly getting swallowed by: Her own individualistic statement being consumed and propagated by those around her.
        For me, as a man not interested in fashion (at least not up close), I wasn’t looking for changes. And if I saw changes, I saw them from a distance, from after a passage of time and in retrospect; when the long wavy hair of a hippy cloned youth stood out as a stark contrast against the tightly clipped highlighted and defined hair of my girlfriend’s.


      - 28-29th December, 2012
        12:26 p.m, Gisborne

I called this song 'Coattails' but it's not really a suitable title. I think.

I got a critique from my father about my new song suggesting if I had put these words here, and not made this part be so long before this part came in then it would be easier to listen to and it would be what you expected. He went on to state that my music is highbrow, or deep. The song he was listening to was pretty damn straightforward, I just had no intention of creating a typical chorus with it, and only having the chorus hook in it once. Maybe that's just a bad habit I picked up from Led Zeppelin, in that they're focus was to make the verses the hook, so naturally that has bled over into everything that I've written.
So be it.


 

Chameleon

I said "I don't fit in here" and mentioned that I can't wait to leave. You looked at me with those gloriously dull ember-burnt eyes and told me that you're like one of those lizards "an Iguana, no - a chameleon" and that you fit in wherever you go. But what I didn't tell you, is that I don't fit in anywhere: everywhere I go, I feel like I stand apart, separated and unbelonging.
        You told me you'd miss your friends. I smiled. I knew that I would miss no one, but I would always remember you and wonder what could have been if things, life, or the world, could have been different; if I hadn't kept my distance in an attempt at protecting myself, if you had been brave enough to throw down the gauntlet and issue the challenge.
        If only. If only your hair wasn't a frame that belies the loneliness behind those autumnal eyes, I would not be struck with a gaze struggling to look away. And I would surely be a stronger man without cursed fear determining the length of every stare.
        But if only is a story, and our lives will part ways - a sunset on the horizon, a twinkling night overhead.
        I may forget others but I'll remember you. Remember me too.