“You make me so happy it turns back to sad…” – TS

What do you do when suddenly there’s too much beauty in the world?

Too much to handle, to wrap your head around, to process? Like — who would ever want to retreat back to the numbness, the darkness, when the alternative is too much?

“I feel like I might sink and drown and die.”

So I listened to this new TS song — oh, about ten times yesterday — and then last night, after flipping on the tube (can’t really call it that anymore, since there’s no tubes) to pacify his lonesome whinging (yes, TV is definitely male), I found the Vevo streaming channel. And, naturally, first hit was her. And, naturally, first video was for the new song I’d just been obsessing over all day. (Ding!) And then — it’s probably just a placeholder turned out by some video graphics company while the studio is spending a hundred million dollars on the real one — what do I find? Typography; good typography. Floating, merging, animated, unspooling, with little drawings like I make with my Apple Pencil these days; all layered to within a tiny fuck of David Carson himself, spelling out all the words I’d been memorizing since seven that morning.

TS + movable type. Mind blown.

Seriously, go look it up. It’s Gorgeous.

“You should think about the consequence of your magnetic field bein’ a little too strong.”

So the duet I want to hear now is TS with The Postal Service (aka. the guy from DC4C and that other guy, who’s name I can’t recall, who sent him the music tracks to sing over). Of the three released tracks on reputation — yes, we bought all of them last weekend, Pixel and I — I hear tons of sounds that I first heard on that ‘District Sleeps Alone Tonight’ (oh — actually, it’s called Give Up) album.

Also on that album are several male/female duos; I also forget who the other singer is, and she’s great, but not — to my vastly biased view — as great as TS.

All of which you care, and should care, not a damn red cent. But hey, it’s my blog. And don’t forget Rule #2. [Or is it Rule #3 now? Ah, who the fuck cares?]

“You should take it as a compliment that I’m talking to everyone here but you.”

Speaking of wish fulfillment, the other day I was imagining yet another thing that I’d like to come true — see? As predicted, now that one good thing has finally happened, I’m getting greedy. So I decided to take a shot at praying. No, not that kind of praying; I think that version is practically worthless. More like a supplication to an entire pantheon of gods — like some good old, my-ancestors-are-Irish-and-Vikings-style pagan shit.

So, OK. But which pantheon? Time to confess that I know virtually nothing about the Irish or the Celts. Vikings/Scandanavians/Norse are certainly in the running, despite being hideously co-opted by those wretched superhero movies of late. (Back in my day, you could make a Loki reference and nobody but the other Deities & Demigods nerds would get it. Now even people in yoga class picture some dude in tights with random horns on his head.) All that modern Thor! crap aside, Odin remains one of the more inscrutable heads of pantheon I know of. So remote and capricious and driven by all-too-human passions; Ravens representing Thought and Memory, if I recall; which is freaking crazy, for a culture that never developed writing, and preyed on those that did. The All Father is like some dark angel who somehow leapt from our collective unconscious to gain control over the spheres that ensnare us. Way more interesting than an old bearded white dude who either smites your enemies and stains the fields with the blood of their children or listens to your repeated requests for a pony for Xmas (or, improbably, both at once).

The Romans are tempting, given their singular place in our civics, our planets, our elements. But I’ve always been more partial to the Greeks. Both for their ‘pride of place’ status (preceding and influencing Rome), and because there’s something about those names that just really does it for me: Zeus, Hera, Ares, Hermes, Hades. (A son named Jacob Ares might have been a good counterweight to a daughter named Maggie Pixel. Yet another middle name to be mortified about come junior high, but — hopefully — cherished as an adult.)

Anyways, so I self-consciously and ridiculously offered up some wishes to the heavens — some mix of a dolmen and the Bifrost Bridge and Olympus. (Thought about making a sacrifice, but setting things on fire in a downtown Starbucks still, even in my weird state of mind, seems like a bad idea.) Pleaded with Hera or Aphrodite or Cerberus or whomever, and waited a few minutes.

Nothing happened.

“…Unless you wanna come along? Ding!”

Oh, that ding! Whomever fitted that in deserves the million dollars it’ll probably earn over it’s span across the Long Tail, as an up front bonus.

I dunno, man… I can’t promise I won’t listen to it 20 more times today. The count is already at one, and I suspect I’m heading back there right after this goes up. And I might have five more run throughs of that video in me, too. Oh boy.

“There’s nothing I hate more than what I can’t have.”