take my life and let it be;

would you believe that this song by Vampire Weekend called "Hold You Now":

...led me to this hymn called "Take my life and let it be" (originally written by Frances Havergal)?

the sample VW used for the chorus was from the movie The Thin Red Line, and it was in a different language. a few clicks and searches later, and there ya go, found the original English hymn...ergo, new favorite!

when this pandemic ordeal is over, it's my humble goal to watch the Vampire Weekend live. i love the scope of their creative genius, how they can take samples from other people and make songs out of them that are uniquely theirs. something i'd like to incorporate in my own work.

they're poppy, catchy, accessible to the masses but somehow, at the same time, esoteric and sublime.

perfect balance!

Comments

on being an unknown author...

...just remember that the famous reclusive writer j.d. salinger would've envied your anonymity. that thomas pynchon (of V. , The Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity's Rainbow) is probably still in hiding to protect his. the appeal of self-glorification by way of discussing the minutiae of your daily life that is prevalent in our culture remains a mystery for many authors whose only desire is to write without their own lives being eviscerated. in the words of salinger again: "I'm tired of being collared in elevators, stopped on the street, and of interlopers on my private property. I've made my position clear for 30 years. I want to be left alone, absolutely. Why can't my life be my own?" see, we make a grave mistake when we obsessively (key word!) identify with the owners of the content we consume and think we are One with Them and wish we could call them up after consuming their work. for one thing, in religious circles, that's called idolatry punishable ...

the importance of being fun;

writing this from the mindset of defeat -- to begin this epic blog adventure, i had drafted this whole spiel about beginnings and endings months ago, about how i fail greatly at the latter (ending things) and succeed with flying colors at the former (beginning things), and there’s something about endurance and also, something deep. alas, that original blog post draft is now enslaved by weebly, because i have forgotten the password to weebly, and that account is tied to an email address that i can no longer get into because the password to that email was saved on my phone notes and my phone is defunct, so i can’t access said password, which means i can’t access the email, which means i can’t do a Forgot password with weebly... so scratch that. i’m writing this from the mindset of defeat, thinking, how does one dig one’s self out of the pit of utter defeat that one has dug for one’s self that begun with finding out that the last agent she has querie...

free

it's uncomfortable how quickly the heart can plunge into self-doubt at the mere presence of greatness. even trying to write out the thoughts in my head at the moment has me questioning the intention behind every word, and i cannot stand how self-limiting self-doubt is. being afraid of being judged and once judged being afraid of never being good enough and in turn we curl back into our carapace (hello, new word i just learned today), CTRL-T to a new tab to double-check every word used was used correctly just in case somebody actually comes across this little corner of the internet and judges you for the incorrect use of carapace and it interrupts the very stream-of-consciousness style you're trying to achieve by simply writing out the contents of your consciousness without thinking about it, no editing, kerouac-style, and achieving nothing but self-deception because you know deep down inside that none of this is off the cuff and everything was somehow, subconsciously, premedit...

prose & praise

Search This Blog