i read the other day some verses

"if our young men miscarry in their first enterprises, they lose all heart. if the young merchant fails, men say he is ruined. if the finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed in an office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of boston or new york, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened, and in complaining the rest of his life. a sturdy lad from new hampshire or vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. he walks abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not 'studying a profession,' for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. he has not one chance, but a hundred chances." /ralph waldo emerson, self-reliance
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i've been reading a lot of emerson lately, and i watched into the wild yesterday. as i read self-reliance and other essays from his first series i'm reminded of how often a good block of text can easily substitute for the company of any number of people. to come into contact with thoughts you've had as explained by someone hundreds or thousands of years ago is quite an intimate experience, indeed. however, in emerson's perspective, at least, a life is really not worth living alone with the company of only books and the ideas of people with whom you will never be able to converse or challenge. into the wild parallels that as chris mccandless writes in a book, as his final diary entry, "happiness only real when shared." intellectual fulfillment and deeper universal understanding may come with solitude, but true happiness can really only be experienced in the shared places between common-minded people.
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pur ti miro, from l'incoronazione di poppea, is the first song i remember hearing in my music appreciation class focused on opera a couple years ago. originally it was sung by two castrati, or dudes whose you-know-whats had been you-know-whatted in order to preserve their prepubescent, pure voices. these days, since no male opera singer in his right mind would do that in order to conserve for himself a contralto of that calibur--not to mention, it's been an outdated opera modus operandi for centuries--the song is performed by two women, usually. all the clips on youtube of such performances are weirdly sparse, and at least one of the women is usually outfitted in skintight vinyl. it distracts from the intended mood somewhat, to say the very least.

ANYWAY the original song that i heard was a simple arrangement of a couple strings and a harpsichord with the two men singing this incredibly, and intimately, interwoven melody of love and dedication. each voice flies in accordance with the other like two birds swooping inches from the water as they careen through a brook (or some shit like that). it is supremely romantic--alomst too pretty to listen to in parts, but i listen to it on repeat, anyway, because it really is so beautiful. i could easily say this duet revolutionized the way i listened to and understood music from that point onward.



so, with that, comes animal collective's leaf house. i've always considered it one of my favorite ac songs, and probably my favorite song showcasing avey's and panda's harmonies and how lush they can become when finagled through mixers and multipliers and all sorts of what-nots.

it sounds amazing live. i'll be seeing ac in milwaukee on may 19, which is thirty-five days from today. five weeks is the length of time i spent in spain as a teenager, and they were the best of my life, still. everything else after that has been set against that initial bar of living abroad at fifteen. if five weeks could change my life and inspire me to the degree that living in spain did, i'm sure i can muster up some fireworks to kickstart my life yet again before experiencing ac live. good grief, i get goosebumps just thinking about it. bonnaroo is twenty-three days later. HUZZAH!

the happiness project

"a friend is a person with whom i may be sincere. before him i may think aloud. i am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that i may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another." /ralph waldo emerson



animal collective - grass

we do the dance up on the plains
then i shake your shoulders
you push me down into the grains
who rubs our noses in the night?
we do, we do.


--
charles spearin - the happiness project



Meaning seems to be our hunger but we should still try to taste our food. I wanted to see if I could blur the line between speaking and singing - life and art? - and write music based on these accidental melodies. So I had some musician friends play, as close as they could, these neighbourhood melodies on different instruments (Mrs. Morris on the tenor saxophone, Marisa on the harp, my daughter Ondine on the violin, etc.) and then I arranged them as though they were songs. /charles spearin, co-founder of broken social scene and do, make, say, think