by Erin Mullens
I draw maps on the wall. Maps to nowhere.
Little burned charcoal sticks I pick up
From the remains of the fireplace, scrawling
On the edges of the stone floor underneath
My bed. I slip my body under there, so tiny
And pretend I don’t even exist in the world.
I am not here I am not a person I am not real
And I draw a little map to find a way to another world.
I’ll open a portal under my bed. I’ll escape.
— Tallest Man On Earth – Every Little Heart
… I’m going to see the world through every little heart I know …
What’s your song of the week?
P.S.: There are five more songs we noticed and appreciated so far this year on our 2023 Highlights playlist. Check it out on YouTube or SoundCloud.
I’ve concluded that bittersweetness is not, as we tend to think, just a momentary feeling or event. It’s also a quiet force, a way of being, a storied tradition—as dramatically overlooked as it is brimming with human potential. It’s an authentic and elevating response to the problem of being alive in a deeply flawed yet stubbornly beautiful world. Most of all, bittersweetness shows us how to respond to pain: by acknowledging it, and attempting to turn it into art, the way the musicians do, or healing, or innovation, or anything else that nourishes the soul.
– Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole
For the first prompt of 2023, we’re starting easy.
How do you picture a day well spent? A day when things feel just right and you’re accompanied by this feeling of being right where you belong? Who do you spend it with? What are you doing? What sounds, tastes and scenes are there that will make you remember it forever? What are you most proud of or grateful for at the end of a day? What was your perfect day when you were a child and how has it changed since? What kind of days do you wish for today?
Tell us everything about the good, the sweet and the ordinary days of your lives and those you still plan to create, or just something the phrase itself might inspire for you. (Yes, we might even accept your interpretation of the Lou Reed’s song with all its bitter-sweetness…)
Read More »by Shamik Banerjee
Soon we will, escape my love!
We shall run beneath the cloud and moon,
then few steps of the dale above,
is waiting our new afternoon.
Read More »#anniversaryoftheweek
— Janis Joplin, Get It While You Can
On this day in the year 1971, three months after her death, Janis Joplin’s album (fourth overall) Pearl was released.
What’s your favorite song on this album?
“It’s easy to do sex, but it’s not easy to do love in whatever form. And if you can’t love, you can’t live, no matter how smart you are: things end up being jangly, hollow, and ultimately worthless. The idea that you just go through life, leaving behind wives and mistresses and abandoned children, and doing great art – for me, that can’t be a way to live. Social responsibility starts with the people who are around you, and you can’t endlessly be discarding things. […] The male push is to actually just discard the planet: all the boys are going off into space. But you know, love is also about cleaning up your mess, staying where you are, working through the issues; it’s not simply romantic love at all.”
– Jeanette Winterson in an interview for the Guardian (Claire Armitstead, 25.07.2021)
by Ruchi Acharya
Lavender never dies just remember
The frozen black coffee
still lies on the table
for I was waiting for you to say first forever.
by Jasna Dimitrijević (translated from Serbian by John K. Cox)
The rain woke me up. It intervened in my dream, and at first I didn’t know where in the world I was. Then I was swimming in the vastness of the Pacific Ocean. I know it was the Pacific, because I recognized it from shows on TV. I swam through turquoise and crystal. That’s what they say in the travel pieces, turquoise and crystal. From my hips hang decorative beads attached to my bathing suit. I remember it from photographs. My first bathing suit, a kid’s one. The clouds burst as I fix the knot in my hair. Heavy drops plop onto my scalp and my outstretched hands. They grow thicker and heavier until water covers the entire world. It envelops me like an endless hug, an impenetrable womb. I kick my legs around so that I can swim vertically, and at that point I wake up. That was a shame. I would like to learn how to swim. But I was certain, at least, that the ocean wasn’t the answer.
Read More »— Fatoumata Diawara – Nsera feat. Damon Albarn
Destination. Amazing song and a visually stunning video.
What’s your song of the week?
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