Magdalena O!

(january 2007)

MP3: XIU XIU / I LUV THE VALLEY OH

From May 30, 2005: XIU XIU does things to me physically & mentally that I was totally unprepared for. It makes me want to pick at my skin & tear little pieces one by one until I reach the inside & blood gets all over my fingertips in that LSD kind of way but more hurtful. It makes me touch my face and lips to make sure I’m ok while waiting for the bus.

President Roslin, who is dying of cancer sits with a dying woman, Emily, who is at the last stages of her own terminal cancer in the hospital quarters.

“Those are the gods you believe in? Capricious? Vindictive?”
“They are not to be taken literally. They are metaphors.”
“I don’t need metaphors, I need answers.”

I believe in metaphor, thus I believe in God. I don’t need answers or reassurance, because they’re in me already.

I don’t think I was ever truly an atheist. The anagram of my name spells A Mad Angel.

MP3: Frog Pocket – Celebrimbor Tur-Anion (Planet Mu)

I want to go to there.

I want to explore what it means to be me (how cliché is that?), what it means to be allowed to experience everything. Sitting in front of my laptop playing Solitaire isn’t getting me anywhere, but it’s what I do. I’m stressed out. Solitaire. Finished a part of an application. Solitaire. Being told what to do at work while someone else makes the decisions isn’t working me out. It’s wearing me out. Being in the same city since I was a preteen isn’t conducive to risk. But I’ve never been a risk taker, so what do I do? I have these projects lining up in front of me, but I cower. I take them on, on, on but not with all of me. Never with all of me. Where is the exploration in a desk? I don’t want to be no armchair archeologist. I think I’m starting to grow old because I think about my mortality in a different way. In a way that things are changing, moving so fast that all I have time to do is go through the motions. Sometimes I feel because J is such a dreamer, I have to be the one to induce practicality in our lives. He is the one living out his dreams as an artist. I can’t let myself.

MP3: Neon Heights, 16 Again, A View from the Heights

This song is from my favorite downtempo house album of all time, A View from the Heights. My ex introduced me to them. I don’t even recall how and when. I wish I remember the story of how he came across them. I  found a copy of the album in some small shop on a corner in downtown Paris. I also bought Cassius’ 1999 and Feeling for You for 5 euros each. This was 2002 and the euro was just taking over, all the prices were still in franks too. This lovely blonde woman worked there. She kept talking to me and I pretended to know more French than I truly did. She found it pleasant that such a young girl was backpacking and still had the will to buy vinyl to carry around so she gave me some French house record. I felt so cool. I didn’t feel so cool when I was sweating buckets in June carrying heaps of records from the different cities I visited, but at that age, the struggle feels less. Always.

Summer project:

Maybe I won’t be as ambitious as the guys who built these in Queens, NYE but I’d love to have some sort of proper bass propping me through my rides around the city. What about dismounting it every time I lock my bike up though? It wouldn’t be so feasible to carry speakers around with me. I need a bike guard. Fantasies always get squashed by practicalities. Just imagining Commix’s Underwater Scene blasting and letting everyone know I’m rolling through.

No one could test the ultimate fuck-offness of it all.

Check out the trailer for Made in Queens, a documentary about the friends who rigged bmx bikes to make every ride an ultimate dance party.

MP3: Commix, Underwater Scene, DAT:Music 2 EP 1 (launch the volume upupup)

MP3: Autechre – Corc

The song is like when you look out your window nearing the end of a long flight and see the blue sky, the infinite blue sky piercing its color into your eyes. It is so explicit in how unfettered it is and you can’t stop looking and imagining that the infinite really does lie west of the sun. Where are you in all of this?

One day in 2004, my grandpa and my younger brother were arguing about pretzels and nothing at all, just like a loving grandpa would with his grandson. It was getting out of control and I managed to record some of it.

I haven’t listened to it since he died in 2005, but today skimming through iTunes I put it on and all I can do is laugh especially because after I recorded it I pitched it up, so they both have chipmunk voices. It’s so important to make art to immortalize experience and identity, or at least to have for memory for those around you.

Please please listen to this.

MP3: Pretzels – Tomek & Dziadek

“Henry’s definition of human is the one who drinks, forgets, is irresponsible, unfaithful, fallible. Mine is the one who is aware of the feelings of other human beings.” – Anais Nin

I aspire to be more like Anais, but instead I always end up like Henry. A long time ago I wrote out this long piece of how loyal I am in my unfaithfullness – maybe that brings them both to me. Not like June though, she’s another abstracted fantasy of someone I wish I could be and someone I wish could be in my life.

MP3: Kyrie Kristmanson, Origin of Stars (new Canadian woman I am in love with thanks to my roommate Stevos)