You and me and these shadows keep on changing

[sovay]

So this afternoon I went back to the Boston Passport Agency and picked up my new passport. It looks more like a book of tourist's postcards than an official document: red and blue-tinted woodcut-style images of Mount Rushmore and steamboats and transcontinental railways, with quotations from George Washington and other American dignitaries—I appreciate the inclusion of Anna Julia Cooper and Martin Luther King, Jr., but who let in Teddy Roosevelt and LBJ?—at the top of every page. It feels very defensive. I find myself wondering whether the requisite exit/entry stamps will even be visible among all the patriotic assertion. And I'm stuck with it for the next ten years, unless I suddenly change citizenships before then. At least it'll get me out of the country.

Because it is November and the sun is sinking fast: a mix of the distant, the lost, and the not quite safely gone.

PJ Harvey & John Parish, "Black Hearted Love"

I think I saw you in the shadows
I move in closer beneath your windows
Who would suspect me of this rapture?

The Verlaines, "Heavy 33"

I'm striving to coax or wrench you, I can't even reach you
You're starving for something—I got nothing to feed you

O Positive, "With You"

I could love you
It's a suicide to choose

Laura Veirs, "Wide-Eyed, Legless"

Will we evermore kiss on the boardwalks' fading rail
In the light of the waves and the comet's waning tail?
I don't think so

Priscilla Herdman, "Island Clay"

Old voices echo from this house now dark and grey
And cold as island clay

Samantha Crain & The Midnight Shivers, "Devils in Boston"

Mama always said Devil'll meet you at the railroad tracks
I ain't seen nothing but the subway here in Boston

Ben Knox Miller & Justin Vernon, "Wait for Me"

Ain't no compass, brother, there ain't no map
Just a telephone wire and the railroad track
Keep on walking and you don't look back
Till you get to the bottomland

Bill Laswell & Coil, "Kála"

And your bones will burn like tinder
Your hair will burn like hay

The Secret History, "Our Lady of Stalingrad"

Sitting on a milk crate, waiting for someone to smother
I thought of Magdalene and I thought of my mother
When he comes, I'll think of you

Sam Phillips, "Edge of the World"

I don't remember last night, but they took my picture
There was a car in the ocean off of Suicide Bridge
The heart collector had his hands on me

Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling, "Episode 2: Dance of the Dead"

I've had this headache six days straight
And I know it's you knocking around in there

Bellowhead, "Cold Blows the Wind"

What makes you sit by my grave and weep?
I can't take my repose

My Favorite, "You Belong With Us"

Everything we do tonight is wrong, wrong, wrong
And you belong with us
You belong with us
Where are you?

Comments

[clarionj.livejournal.com]

Thank you, thank you for posting these songs. I needed something new to listen to, and there is much much here!!!

I don't like the sound/look of this passport thing at all. I'm beginning to feel hopeless about this country ;(

[sovay]

Thank you, thank you for posting these songs. I needed something new to listen to, and there is much much here!!!

You're very welcome. Enjoy!

I don't like the sound/look of this passport thing at all.

It was a level of advertisement I didn't think had any place in official documentation. Money, you can put whatever you like on; I still keep in my wallet, for example, the now-obsolete French five-franc bill with Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and le Petit Prince. But the sole point of a passport is to certify the bearer's identity and their responsibility in crossing international borders: that they're a safe kind of person to let in. With all its retro-myths and flag-shaking, this new passport design, I think, does not exactly inspire that confidence.