Sagat's Wheel

Hello world!  Is not electricity wondrous?  This human brain, these muscles, cells glued together by tension, attraction, spark.  Today, life is inspiration.  It is time to make a donation of blood to help preserve life.  For some reason, here is the sound-track, brought to you by the electronic extension of the human mind and memory, the web:

http://windworld.com/features/gallery/savarts-wheel/

The most annoying instrument in the world should be re-named "Sagat's Wheel".  But then there is this. It looks like it might be something one could make for themselves:

http://windworld.com/features/gallery/musical-siren-built-by-bart-hopkin/

Let us know here at the hop how the construction of yours goes.

Alasdair Roberts

Zmz is going to see his minstrel-hero play tonight.  It seemed like a good idea to take the trickle of time available to me before the event to gather thoughts and consider feelings.  Perhaps afterward I can use the data comparatively to determine whether I am feeling disappointed, elated, inspired, et cetera.  I have been aware of the musical contrivances of Alasdair Roberts since very late last century.  The Appendix Out group stuff, and especially "Tangled Hair" and "The Grey Havens" from Daylight Saving, came to me in a troubled time. I rediscovered these slow, fragile, and beautiful songs some time after a number of intense personal relationships had withered. The music was a balm that worked healing magic, especially when heard lying on a bed under a window with the midday summer sun pouring in. The Night is Advancing and Farewell Sorrow, when I finally found them, worked on me in like manner, but of an evening: these were faerie tunes from the distant gloaming of my ancestors.  They caused me to happily swoon and retreat from the over-hyped modern world.  Roberts sang with passion and earnestness of things close to my own heart though far from my present reality, the history of a people severed by the sea.  So, this will be a special opportunity and a chance at refreshing the Gaelic psyche within the space-cadet.  I hope it goes well.

For a wee bit more information, and some music, feel free to check his artist page at Drag City Records:
http://www.dragcity.com/artists/alasdair-roberts

The album Spoils is particularly wonderful, and the newest, A Wonder Working Stone, well, we'll just have to find out now, won't we?

This is a skinny little post, in hopes that the apophthegm "you are what you eat" might nicely adjust to "you are what you write".  Zmz just recently found out that old worries about high blood-pressure were well and good, but distracted from the real concern: very high cholesterol from eating all this rich Earth-food.  He immediately re-joined the Order of the Carrot (you can too):

http://www.theorderofthecarrot.com

His colons, as you can see, are still functioning very well, thank-you-very-much.  He has quite taken to a little spinning disc with sound pictures etched in, which can be found on the electric web here:

http://yellowjacketavenger.bandcamp.com

Zmz still thinks of music as having a physical aspect, like one of those saucers journeying to new worlds simply by spinning, or Mr. Young's silver seed, or Mr. Morrison's Crystal Ship.  The Achilles heel is Achilles' shield in this scenario. The former becomes the latter and vice versa when the latter fails to protect the former. The idea spins round and round like the many-pictured protective disc from the old Greek poem which, for all its beauty still could not act as proof against death.  When we go, we may bite the dust, but the dust devours us soon afterward leaving us very skinny, indeed.

See you in the future, dry bones!

Just a little worm-hole journey away, but time is relatively fleeting. Never enough time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qL5SXTJ3e_A

Here is the original by Sun Ra, via YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ugv_q8vQYq4

more space pop.

Just a quick link this time, friends and foes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZOSum8M8kM



Off to sleep among the stars now.

Last night I had a dream,
A garden party with Radish Moran,
In which I wore your dress.
At the end of the night
People were jumping from the stratosphere
And floating down to us from above,
But you were unimpressed,
I failed to win your love.

It's time for another cartoon:

Harry hasn't any job, but he has an interview lined up. He's afraid, what with the recent cut-backs by the incumbent governing bodies, that there will be no safety-net to catch him if he just says "fuck this" and decides to become a full-blown street-person for a while. He has caught a number of powerful waves of lethargy on numerous friends's couches over the recent months and saved up a bit of dosh for a closet-sized space in a cramped rooming house. Harry hopes to be able to start fresh, salt some cash away month by month, and become a regular, upstanding member of society.

Well, sort of. When he's being honest with himself, the only time he takes this sort of initiative is when he's this close to going under. For some reason the idea of desolation on all sides, with just happy Harry in the midst of it all, balancing there like a busker before the gaping jaws of the public, is more in line with his idea of living than being gainfully employed and plucked from the tree of bachelorhood too soon by the out-stretched hands of someone's biological clock.

Only a few minutes before he's out the door and selling himself to the manager of the pet-store chain at the corner of Ogden and Fitzwillard. He's pretty sure that's where he's going. Christ, better double-check on that, Harry m'lad. Good God, the next bus is in five! Harry squeezes a dab of toothpaste onto his tongue, grabs his hat and heads out the door.