Summer Drive In, Out, Up, Down, Away

New music tonight because it is a celebratory paradigm shift day in which I present the last paper of my semester and now I am thinking about summer full on. Driving cars to mountainous, treed, watery places, packed up tight with camping, and there are the tunes on the way that will end up defining the summer played on the way somewhere, and on the way home sunburned, dirty, smelly, flexed up, scratched, bruised and grinning.

And right now is this sigh of in-between time to just listen to music. That's all I need, really, to feel sane again, and quickly.

Last summer these artists were: Mumford and Sons, the Avett Brothers, Florence and the Machine, and the Fleet Foxes. Over and over and over. Let's find this summer's soundtrack...

Tonight I'm trying out these guys:

1. Andrew Bird's Noble Beast. I think "Masterswarm" and also half the songs on this album are pretty damn near perfect hand-undulating-out-the-window-whilst-driving-on-a-sunny-highway song. You can practically see the orange-y, 70's film lens flare flicking off this tune. I really enjoy this album.

2. Monogold's The Softest Glow is a really sweet, upbeat album. J'adore the melodious and ethereal track two, Spirit of Something.

3. Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros' Up From Below: These California canyon hippy kids are alright. The happy shouty whistle-y people singing upbeat songs (like Janglin' and the ubiquitous "Home" whose first line and subsequent female parts I sing constantly, and which my parrot LOVES cuz of all the whistlin'), remind of recent Swedish big-group joy bands like 'I'm From Barcelona" just as much as they sound like they were recorded 30-40 years ago. Whatever floats your boat, man.

4. And OMG speaking of I'm From Barcelona, yes indeed - they have a new album: Forever Today. The first track, "Charlie Parker", is just pure JOY, and I'm not entirely sure what they're saying but it sounds like "Sing to me now, Bert!" so I, of course, think of Sesame Street and what could be happier making than that?

5. Florence, oh bless her + the Machine, they've got the Lungs: the B-sides to add to that last summer-making album of hers that made my last summer. There are some remixes, and also some new songs that are grand like "Swimming" and "Heavy in Your Arms" and then the beautiful and fragile favorite of mine, "Falling" as well as the hilarious then tragic "Bird Song". Oh, you'd like some harp + rap, you say, you're welcome:


Happy Summer Happy Music Happy Driving in your Car to Good Places to Spend the Summer Nights in the Wilds of Wherever.

Le Printemps: En Images

Oh mon sacre sweet Elijah bleu, it's Here!

This is good god gone, hip hip hooray!:

This grossness was merely 2 weeks ago.

Oui, mon froggies, the snow is nearly absent like some body cast I've been wearing for 7 months and now my limbs can move freely. Only in this metaphor - my limbs are my mind and moving them 'round is waking up to discover I'm not under an extra blanket of leaden ennui. Spring is called spring for exactly the obvious reasons - the bouncy, jumping, boingy reasons.

In the cul de sac out front the pile of snow in the middle is nearly gone to water...then damp...then evaporation... then merely a dream (a bad bad dream) of snow piled six feet high. (Yes, I live on a cul de sac and the parents who live next to us actually put out orange safety cones when the kids ride their bikes. Sweet things like that.)

I says to my sister, I says, "It was once as tall as a grown man that snow pile there." 'Twas indeed.

So, that's gone but before it was I invited some ladyfriends over to can. I seriously CANNED things. Except they were in jars. Rebecca, Brandy, Zoe and I put beets, cucumbers and carrots into flaming hot glass jars expecting like some vegetarian hope chest they'd keep until such time as we were ready six weeks or more down the line to set the table with pickles. With delicious pickles. Rebecca and I turned into canning junkies, "What else can we seal up in brine?!?" salivated we, digging through the cupboards, refrigerator, running to the store, sending the man to the market for more champagne and vegetables - "yes, more bubbly and also - get three heads of cauliflower, three bunches of asparagus, ten pounds of carrots, and for the love of god hurry man!"

Yes, we CAN!

Me gusta, zanahorias. (These are the reason I'm now looking for gallon-sized jars, delicioso! And heck yeah, I chingada made em, as my grandma wouldn't say. (She'd say, "Ay, Sarah, you know we have grocery stores where you can buy these things?!")

So, we carry on past canning and the last of the winter snow and lest anyone think it's all Little House on the Prairie up here, I got a pedicure:

She had no idea I was filming her.

Jim and I had a little getaway to Homer where I found an amazing house on an ocean bluff to rent for the weekend. It was beautiful in March and in July on the deck, with friends, after fishing and beaching, it's going to be even awesomer.

Beach house on the bluff

Sunset from the beach house.

Whilst in Homer the man and I visited the winery, the brewery, the art galleries and also the Time Bandit:

Deadliest Catch in da harbah, watwat?!

We had a lovely weekend there, eating sushi and buying art and generally being Alaskan yippies. On the drive home, Jim pulls over near Summit Lake to take a "rest stop" and finds this:

It's a rock that says: "Travis Lee our love is forever 2-11-10"

He knocks on my window, I roll it down, he hands it through. Yes, oh my goodness, it is indeed a love rock and we should it take it with us, right? Do something with it, right? Like mock it publicly - I mean, totally honor the clearly deep commitment that's left this love token to be discovered by anyone taking a pee in the woods on the side of the highway?

It has a return address on the other side.

Howbout instead of sending this back to ya'll, I drop it off somewhere else, snap a photo and send you the picture? See how I've thought this out better than you (probably) teenage lovebirds who paint rocks and leave them on the side of the road in winter in Alaska? See how your rock will probably go places that you might never go? Was that your point? "ROCK ON"? Crazy kids. Let's get back to my photos, 'kay?

So the snow melted and underneath these frozen feet of pretty white blanket lies, literally, loads of shit. It melts away and suddenly there is the half-rotted Halloween jack-o-lantern, September's errant junk mail, and lots and lots and lots of poop. Take our fire pit out back for instance: piles of moose poop. I ask Jim yesterday how we'll ever get it out from atop the rocks..? He likes to play these games with me, he says, "And by 'we' I understand that you mean 'you' as in me." I say, "Exactly, darling." Then whisper add, "we are picking up poop soon, then," eyes sparkling with pronoun trickery and also dreams of s'mores.

Not to brag, but my milkshake brings all the moose to the yard.

And, speaking of bragging, my radio show got an award if we're gonna talk about awesome things that happen in the spring like the Alaska Press Club awards:

So, there you have it, my first first place since I beat that gianter-than-me chick from Petersburg in the 100 freestyle in the biggest swim meet upset since some other swim meet upset that probably happened at the Olympics between the US and Australia.
But, dude, I won that bitch in 1994.

Lastly, my niece remains the number one cutest baby girl child in the entire tiny-human-o-sphere. Even if this BROWN PLAID outfit is allowing her challengers a little bit of leeway, she's still cleaning up.

Cutest little plaid baby you ever did see!
She makes my heart hurt with love, that little Julia Paz!

The Sensuary

Working in the radio biz has provided to me this new and great skill of mixmastering audio. I didn't come awesome at editing, but I do it now because I have to be on the air and not suck and so my learning curve is pretty steep as a result. The green spikes on the computer screen are a visual representing sound - a sensual metonymy. I can see what I hear. Like how I spike off the screen when I clear my throat to speak or when I laugh.

I started this post thinking I'd write about my five most favorite albums of all time because I just downloaded yet another version of "The Boxer" by The National, which has to be my #1 album at this point. Under the "Plays" column in iTunes "Fake Empire" reigns at 140 plays. That's a lot. But I'm not going to write about my top five albums of all time because I'm instead led astray working on mixing mashups for goodest friends who can use a big long 30 minute dance mix based on our 15 year + friendshipsssss and this current Genius-mix-based-on-PJ-Harvey that just brought up a haunting song called (of all things) "Sarah" (...in a fishing boat she thought she saw the shadow of god... Sarrrrraaaahhh.) Ay dios mio.

I'm recalling some dude I met in San Francisco once upon a late night time who made music into colors. At a party at his Bernal Heights apartment he of the giant Mac computer monitor circa 1999 atop a desk at standing height - he demonstrated his work - something neat representing music with moving color. Sound shown. (You see what I'm playing?) We had a long conversation about Piet Mondrian. I think about his work once in awhile, wondering if it's what I hear about now, sometimes, doing neat things with color and music, blurring the senses.

Referring to all things sensual I want to call them all "the sensuary" to encompass all five - but it's not an actual word, isitthen? Shouldn't it be though. One bumping into, crossing over into seeinghearing touchingtasting feelinghearing tastingseeing. Feel it - where are you now, what part feels it, a combination of the senses that move to love, move to something forward, whatever, as long as it's good.

"Sensuary" - hmmm, it sounds like this great store where you can shop for whatever it is you lack in the emotional department. I'd patronize a store like that - when I just can't get excited about something. Yeah, get me a colored t-shirt they sell there - if I'm wearing red - baby is feeling bad today, just like lightning, shoot right through you... buy me a drink but have no comments. That kinda thing.