All wrapped in bones of setting sun

In which I free-associate.

Realized this morning (courtesy of Sirens Rising) that the first thing I ever heard PJ Harvey perform, actually, was Marc Blitzstein's "Nickel Under Your Foot" in Cradle Will Rock, which I saw with my mother at the Lexington Flick in 1999. That's a little surreal.

Remarks by greygirlbeast have gotten me listening to the Decemberists again. I have dgr8bob to thank for introducing me to their second album Castaways and Cutouts last summer, along with the Mountain Goats' Tallahassee and We Shall All Be Healed, all of which were sort of my soundtrack for several months. July, July, July, it never seemed so, it never seemed so strange . . .

Although I failed to publicize sufficiently the Vestal Review reading at the Boston Public Library yesterday afternoon—i.e., totally forgot to let anybody who might be in the Boston area know until about half an hour beforehand—captainbutler nevertheless startled the daylights out of me by showing up. This was cool. So I got to meet Mark Budman and Sue O'Neill, read "Theagenes Remembers," and may even have kept myself from sounding like a total idiot to Alex Irvine, who turns out to live relatively near my grandparents' old house in Portland, ME. And the evening was spent performing Broadway in West Hartford, and a great deal of fun was had by all.

Going off now to listen to the Boston Lyric Opera production of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin. WGBH webcast, I love you.

[edited 2005-04-10 15:55] . . . except I don't, because their webcast went spla shortly after the opera started and gave me a string quartet instead. Still hasn't gotten back to Onegin, either. I mean, it's a very nice string quartet, but I'd much rather be hearing the Letter Song—or Frank Kelley as Triquet, which I must confess was the primary attraction to this opera in the first place. So much for my afternoon plans . . .