Hole in my pocket
Sam Phillips has a chanteusey take on things that is both world-wearier than Nico's and poppier than Dar Williams's. I also like the fact that she, once a gospel singer named "Leslie Phillips", denounced her previous Christian record label as "a right-wing propaganda machine." Which I always thought Amy Grant would do, but she has yet to. Sam Phillips, for those among you who prefer your chanteuses to show up in the strangest places, was the sultry German villainess paired with Jeremy Irons in 1995's "Die Hard: With a Vengeance".
Upcoming interviews:
Wednesday, 8/17: Borders @ Columbus Circle.
Thursday, 8/18: Project Sunshine.
TBA: Legal Outreach.
One variety of job I could not brook is one in which I'd have to be on the street of this city all the time. Such as a mattress mover, say, or a political canvasser, or gyro vendor. Maybe a gyro vendor. Point is, I finally begin to see what the Rev. D Douglas Eldridge meant when he said that New York is like a ride into which you need to keep putting change. Sort of like one of those rides outside of suburban supermarkets, horsies and rocketships, which thrill their little riders for, although I've never timed it, maybe a minute. Sort of like a pay phone, if you druther. And only while in the street can I feel the city rifle me for whatever I've got. In Jonathan Lethem's superb-if-at-first-standoffish opus "The Fortress of Solitude," this process of affectionate heisting is termed "yoking." As in, "C'mere, you got a dollar I can see?", and then you're in a headlock. Is this phenomenon something only new full-time transplants to this place experience? Does it fade? I'm alright as long as I'm on my way to or from somewhere specific. But running errands up and down the island's West Side as I did today, that takes it out of a body.
Wrote a prose poem about the strip malls and speed traps of Provo, Utah. I also find myself fascinated with lightning these days. William Grimes has a wry observation on Philip Dray's just-out "Stealing God's Thunder,"about Ben Franklin:
"The clergy turned a disapproving eye on Franklin's great invention, the lightning rod. Who was he to disturb the instruments of divine wrath? Even Jean-Antoine Nollet, one of France's foremost lightning researchers, warned that it was 'as impious to ward off Heaven's lightnings as for a child to ward off the chastening rod of its father.' Franklin was amused. 'Surely the Thunder of Heaven is no more supernatural than the Rain, Hail or Sunshine of Heaven, against the Inconvenience of which we guard by Roofs & Shades without Scruple,' he wrote to a friend."
Which, again, is just the kind of sober understanding I flip for. Of course, Who are all my lightning poems ultimately about? As though I could help it.
Upcoming interviews:
Wednesday, 8/17: Borders @ Columbus Circle.
Thursday, 8/18: Project Sunshine.
TBA: Legal Outreach.
One variety of job I could not brook is one in which I'd have to be on the street of this city all the time. Such as a mattress mover, say, or a political canvasser, or gyro vendor. Maybe a gyro vendor. Point is, I finally begin to see what the Rev. D Douglas Eldridge meant when he said that New York is like a ride into which you need to keep putting change. Sort of like one of those rides outside of suburban supermarkets, horsies and rocketships, which thrill their little riders for, although I've never timed it, maybe a minute. Sort of like a pay phone, if you druther. And only while in the street can I feel the city rifle me for whatever I've got. In Jonathan Lethem's superb-if-at-first-standoffish opus "The Fortress of Solitude," this process of affectionate heisting is termed "yoking." As in, "C'mere, you got a dollar I can see?", and then you're in a headlock. Is this phenomenon something only new full-time transplants to this place experience? Does it fade? I'm alright as long as I'm on my way to or from somewhere specific. But running errands up and down the island's West Side as I did today, that takes it out of a body.
Wrote a prose poem about the strip malls and speed traps of Provo, Utah. I also find myself fascinated with lightning these days. William Grimes has a wry observation on Philip Dray's just-out "Stealing God's Thunder,"about Ben Franklin:
"The clergy turned a disapproving eye on Franklin's great invention, the lightning rod. Who was he to disturb the instruments of divine wrath? Even Jean-Antoine Nollet, one of France's foremost lightning researchers, warned that it was 'as impious to ward off Heaven's lightnings as for a child to ward off the chastening rod of its father.' Franklin was amused. 'Surely the Thunder of Heaven is no more supernatural than the Rain, Hail or Sunshine of Heaven, against the Inconvenience of which we guard by Roofs & Shades without Scruple,' he wrote to a friend."
Which, again, is just the kind of sober understanding I flip for. Of course, Who are all my lightning poems ultimately about? As though I could help it.
posted by Wil at
1:26 PM
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