Category Archives: Diversions

The stuff that didn’t fit elsewhere.

Music

New music Sunday

I don’t listen to one particular item often enough to have a “What I’m Listening To” sidebar here. But I just bought Hem’s new album, “Funnel Cloud,” on iTunes*, and I’m listening to it right this very minute, so I thought I’d say something about it.

I first heard Hem when they opened for Beth Orton at The Pageant in St. Louis 2002. I’m not generally all that impressed by opening acts, but Hem was so … I don’t know … nostalgic, almost, and sweet. The lead singer, Sally Ellyson, seemed a little nervous and shy when they first took the stage. It was kind of sweet. And then she started singing, and she just had the lovliest voice. It was a great evening all around, what with discovering a new band and having our first encounter with Beatle Bob**.

But after the show, I forgot about Hem for awhile. And time passed and so on and so forth, and one day we were at the store (but I can’t say which store), and there was a copy of “Rabbit Songs,” and so I bought it. Or maybe I downloaded it from iTunes. I really couldn’t say. Regardless, I finally did get a copy of it, and I’ve been enjoying it ever since. Especially “Half Acre,” which I was both pleased and dismayed to hear on a Liberty Mutual ad yesterday. But that’s another story all together. (Not really. My mixed feelings about selling out aren’t all that interesting. Just mixed.)

I feel like this post is going nowhere. I’m sure you do, too. Sorry.

Anyway, then I never bought “Eveningland,” even though Phoebe said it was good, and I didn’t even know about “No Word From Tom” (I just saw it on their Web site, so I still don’t know about it, really. is it any good? hello?). And then today I got my $15 iTunes card and almost bought the new Justin Timberlake (don’t judge me), but then I thought, “Oh, I could buy ‘Eveningland,’ and then I saw that “Funnel Cloud” just came out, so I bought it instead.

And it’s good. There’s still a great sweetness to the music and that little sadness, too, that makes me feel nostalgic for I’m not sure what, exactly, and Sally’s voice is still so pleasant. I highly recommend it.

The end.

. . . . .

*With a $15 gift card I got free with a Target purchase! Hooray for bargains!

**We saw him again in 2003 at the Austin City Limits Festival. Which I would love to go to this weekend, if someone out there would like to send me two tickets. Thank you. I love you.

Reading

"Reunion"

American Life in Poetry: Column 076

By Ted Kooser,
U.S. poet laureate, 2004-2006
I’d guess we’ve all had dreams like the one portrayed in this wistful poem by Tennessee poet Jeff Daniel Marion. And I’d guess that like me, you too have tried to nod off again just to capture a few more moments from the past.

Reunion

Last night in a dream
you came to me. We were young
again and you were smiling,
happy in the way a sparrow in spring
hops from branch to branch.
I took you in my arms
and swung you about, so carefree
was my youth.

What can I say?
That time wears away, draws its lines
on every feature? That we wake
to dark skies whose only answer
is rain, cold as the years
that stretch behind us, blurring
this window far from you.

Reprinted from “Lost & Found,” The Sow’s Ear Press, Abingdon, VA, 1994, by permission of the author. Poem copyright (c) 1994 by Jeff Daniel Marion, whose most recent book is “Ebbing & Flowing Springs: New and Selected Poems and Prose, 1976-2001,” Celtic Cat Publishing, 2002. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.“