Pixie

Pixie. It was my nickname as a baby, toddler and preschooler. I still get called it - on rare occasions - by my parents. Pixies, piskies, fairies and faeries have enchanted me for as long as I can remember. I'm bored by the Disney-fied fairies of today...give me pixies with a touch of menace, a splash of mischievousness, and a smidgeon of allure. Shakespeare's Queen Mab? Perfect...

She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes

In shape no bigger than an agate stone

On the forefinger of an alderman,

Drawn with a team of little atomies

Over men's noses as they lie asleep;

Her wagon spokes made of long spinners' legs,

The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;

Her traces, of the smallest spider web;

Her collars, of the moonshine's wat'ry beams;

Her whip, of cricket's bone; the lash, of film;

Her wagoner, a small grey-coated gnat,

Not half so big as a round little worm

Pricked from the lazy finger of a maid;

Her chariot is an empty hazelnut,

Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,

Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.

And in this state she gallops night by night

Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;

O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on curtsies straight;

O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees;

O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream,

Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,

Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are.

I've had many a pixie crop...

I have a pixie lamp...

I have pixie earrings...and I plan to get a pixie tattoo in the next year or so.

To me, pixies encapsulate the things I enjoy most in life: music, words, aesthetics and freedom.

Comets and uber-Anne

Lately, I am unable to stop listening to "A Comet Appears" by The Shins. Have a listen and work see how it makes you feel. I find it a very intense listen. The sparse instrumentation, the hollow timbre of James Mercer's voice, the warmth of the lonely guitar and the echo of birdcall...each of these combine to create a piece of music that speaks to me of what it means to be human. 


Lyrically, the song is masterful. Don't we all struggle under the weight of trying to be uber-people while simultaneously trying to suppress the sense of being "barely a vapor"? Who hasn't ever wanted to metaphorically carve their aging face off and start afresh? The chorus delivers the harsh self-assessment that I think we all reach at one point or another as we get older: the worst part (and we know it) is having to face up to the truth of ourselves and stop blaming others for our own shortfalls and choices. The knife-edge delivery of "every post you can hitch your faith on, / is a pie in the sky, / chock-full of lies" is made sharper by "there is a numbness, / in your heart and its growing." 


Painful and lonely as this song seems, behind these soulful, biting, penetrating-right-into-your-heart lyrics lurks more than a glimmer of hope. The irony? We enter and exit the world alone; we are not alone in our recognition of our solitude. Binary opposites.


A Comet Appears


One hand on this wily comet,
Take a drink just to give me some weight,
Some uber-man I'd make,
I'm barely a vapor

They shone a chlorine light on,
A host of individual sins,
Let's carve my aging face off,
Fetch us a knife,
Start with my eyes,
Down so the lines,
Form a grimacing smile,

Close your eyes to corral a virtue,
Is this fooling anyone else?
Never worked so long and hard,
To cement a failure,

We can blow on our thumbs and posture,
But the lonely is such delicate things,
The wind from a wasp could blow them,
Into the sea,
With stones on their feet,
Lost to the light and the loving we need,

Still to come,
The worst part and you know it,
There is a numbness,
In your heart and it's growing,

With burnt sage and a forest of bygones,
I click my heels,
Get the devils in line,
A list of things I could lay the blame on,
Might give me a way out,

But with each turn,
It's this front and center,
Like a dart stuck square in your eye,
Every post you can hitch your faith on,
Is a pie in the sky,
Chock full of lies,
A tool we devise,
To make sinking stones fly,

And still to come,
The worst part and you know it,
There is a numbness,
In your heart and it's growing. 

Sweetest songs and saddest thought

It strikes me that a big part of being human is learning to live with yearning. The constant search for personal and cultural meaning can be traced through history - from the pyramids, the poetry and tragedies of classical Greece and Rome, the development of religions, Shakespeare, the Enlightenment, through to the twentieth and twenty-first century obsessions with consumerism and instant satisfaction. Why can't we just 'live in the moment' and enjoy what we have, when we have it, without yearning for something else?

I've always loved the way that Percy Bysshe Shelley beautifully and succinctly writes about this in 'To a Skylark':

We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Robert Smith - no stranger to the darker elements of life - draws on this idea in the stunning 'To Wish Impossible Things'. This is one of my favourite Cure songs...the viola part (on the album 'Wish') is haunting and lyrical. This live version truly is a sweet song that tells of saddest thought. Enjoy.

To Wish Impossible Things...live

In the beginning...

...There was Morrissey and Johnny Marr.

Along with Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce, they created music that I've carried with me for twenty years. This song is my favourite. The swirling, howling guitars; the angsty, Romantic with a capital R vocals; the driving, angry bass - all held together by Joyce's taut drumming and enhanced by the echo chamber whistling. It was my anthem as a geeky, gawky bookish teen: "Please shut your mouth, how can you say I go about things the wrong way?". I still love it today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3pVP9YJwXg&feature=related