bironic: Neil Perry gazing out a window at night (Default)
[personal profile] bironic
I got to hang out for most of the day in a video production studio, and felt no hesitation in asking the guys questions relevant to vidding. And work. But also vidding.

That was a great change of pace. But since the rest of my tasks had to be squeezed in afterwards, I got home almost three hours late. I'm doomed to miss fangirl Fridays forever.

Speaking of vidding, with two free weekends and Veterans Day on the horizon, my fannish goals are to work on either the SGA flashfic or the House WIP from like three years ago that has been late for as many Halloweens, or to work on the SGA vid-in-progress that has a Statement to Make. All gen.

It's been strange and wonderful and a little angsty lately as I slowly open myself up again to a wider variety of interests than I've let myself focus on the last couple of years because of work and school and new career. For example, poetry podcasts at Slate. There is Robert Pinsky -- once upon a time I could do a killer Pinsky impression -- reading an old favorite of mine, "Jubilate Agno," a poem so wonderfully weird that I'm breaking my "no cats on LJ" rule to recommend it to you now if you don't know it. I miss poetry so much.

ETA: And nobody told me that was the wrong link! Fixed now. It had linked to another neat article at Slate, about the Levi's commercials that've been using Whitman poems.

And I read Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, finally. Beautiful and horrific, and messes with your head with its unresolved arguments about storytelling and truth and war and writing. Is what he wrote true? What is "true"? Does it matter? Why? Just don't read before bed, alone, in the dark, like I kept doing. The ghosts feel closer that way. Or actually, maybe that's the perfect way to do it.

Starting to watch movies again, too. TV has lately been good for stuff like New York City Serenade (Sebastian!) (dir. Frank Whaley, RSL's old buddy), Ordinary People, a documentary about Bon Jovi, and an Alien marathon. Now the nearby American Film Institute is having a European film festival, and I think I'll pick up some tickets. Any recommendations from the AFI calendar? (Euro are in blue.) I am thinking some combination of Piggies, Dragon, Parnassus, John Rabe, Infer, Disco, maybe Bluebeard or Ander.

Music, only a little. There aren't many radio stations in the area. At least at this new job you can stream radio, so I've been putting the classical station on quietly in the background. (Once upon a time, I thought of comparing fanfiction to radio, where gen was classical -- people keep thinking they don't think like it, but when they start listening to it, it's hard to go back to the other stuff -- darkfic was the heavy metal/alt rock stations, fluff was easy listening, meta was NPR or talk radio, and the everyday forgettable sort of average stories were the pop stations. And of course a ton of them are love songs.)

Anyway, took a walk down memory lane this week when Richard Shindell rolled into town(ish) on his annual fall tour. Fellow folk singer Antje Duvekot opened. I hadn't heard of her, nor had I heard of last year's opener, Caroline Herring, but from now on I'm trusting his taste because I enjoyed them both and loved at least one song from each ("Sex Bandaid" from Antje, which I sadly can't find on YouTube, and "Paper Gown" by Caroline).

Richard's show was maybe my least favorite of the times I've seen him, front-loaded on the new album and heavy with the more repetitive, blander stuff. Blander to me, anyway; those songs always get requested when he takes requests. He forgot lyrics more than usual, too. Still, he's always a pleasure to listen to. He did do "Mavis," and a punchy minor-chord rendition of the usually bluegrass "Waiting for the Storm" made the whole show worth it. If he'd recorded it that way, the song would be in my top ten. I wish I could find a recording of that version.

I know I've pushed his stuff on you before, but here is some more. Or rather, here is a lot of it again. hxxp://www.megaupload.com/?d=W082KLK6 (change the x's)

"Waist Deep in the Big Muddy"
"There Goes Mavis"
"Transit"
"You Stay Here"
"Waiting for the Storm"
"The Courier"
"Are You Happy Now"
"Fenario"
"The Island," for [livejournal.com profile] deelaundry (who got dragged along invited to the show)

ETA: Oh, Dee, duh, I was going to include "Fishing," one of the great extended metaphors of modern folk. Says me.

Wow, this post took much longer to write than it should have.

Date: Nov. 7th, 2009 02:40 am (UTC)
bell: rory gilmore running in the snow in a fancy dress (OTF)
From: [personal profile] bell
!!!!!!!!!!! Richard Shindell! *downloads* (I knew him before you, but have heard/gotten more through you, and it's all been good.)

By the way, this happened a few weeks ago, but I think you were traveling at the time and didn't see the post-- I got your postcard! Thank you! ♥ I can't remember the occasion/reason you'd have sent it, but it was a lovely surprise to come home to.

Date: Nov. 7th, 2009 02:46 am (UTC)
ext_2047: (Default)
From: [identity profile] bironic.livejournal.com
Oh, good! It was no particular occasion, other than I was somewhere touristy and picked up a few postcards.

If there are particular RS songs you'd like to hear, lemme know and I'll see if they're on the CDs I have. I don't have any of the joint projects with Dar or Lucy, but if there are solo styles of his you like, I can think about what else of his is like them.

Date: Nov. 7th, 2009 01:09 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kassrachel.livejournal.com
I miss poetry too. For reasons that don't bear exploration at this juncture I recently came back in to a huge stack of poetry books and journals which I had lent to a local organization, and thumbing through them made me a little bit sad because it's been so long since that's been the dominant note in my life. Granted, I love what I"m doing/learning now, too -- but sometimes I miss having the mental and emotional space to really immerse in poetry.

(Soon I will miss having the mental and emotional space to immerse in anything other than babycare, I suspect. So it goes.)

Date: Nov. 7th, 2009 02:15 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] purridot.livejournal.com
I always enjoy these posts of yours... I feel my horizon widening as I do. In a way I feel like you these days -- branching out down different paths of interests than I have for the past few years. I am engaging more with art these days... I don't know if you ever feel this way, but because my job right now is all words, all the time, when I'm "off the clock, I don't want to look at words!

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