The Lake of One's Being

20 November 2006

And when folk music breaks - when the lakesurface of song is interrupted by whirrs and skips and lonely echoes, - there's something there that's just between real and ghost.

(The lingering parts of life (i.e. the slippery parts) all seem to live in that inbetween place. Memory & longing & eros & home.)

Two songs as demonstrations, both exquisite:

[listen] Samamidon - "Falsehearted Chicken"

Samamidon is the collaboration of Sam Amidon, banjo-wrangler and sing-songer, and Doveman aka Thomas Bartlett, wurlitzer-drum-guitarer. Their record - due in February on Plug Research - is pretty fucking special. It's called But This Chicken Proved False Hearted. And of course this song is called "Falsehearted Chicken". Let's dismiss the obvious question of poultry: let's focus on the falseheartedness. Or perhaps the question of heartedness. A hundred and fifty years ago, Appalachian musicians discovered a particular quality of the banjo when accompanied by certain voices. Namely, it can capture nearly the entirety of the human experience. Within the past fifty years, composers have discovered a particular quality of ambient sounds and knockknockknocking. Namely, it can capture everything else. Here Amidon and Bartlett put the two together: it becomes a song of presence and absence, want and wish. Of promise, ok?, and you can hear how much the promise means.

It's beautiful.

(You can't buy it yet but you can listen to several more mp3s here.)

...

[from http://www.saidthegramophone.com/]

For all the times that I've had tears fall in the middle of the night listening to songs like these,
and the stirring in the heart I sometimes feel.
I often feel so inadequate in explaining why it could be so.
The passage above could not have put it in a more brilliant way.

12:12 PM;

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