I'm very superstitious.
After almost a year's worth of planning anything only to find my intentions unravelled by events, I venture to predict nothing for next week, just say it'd be nice to cover a fair patch of new musical terrain.
Those coming days in particular will be the latest in the more or less established pattern of one week in every six or so free of world news -- whatever happens on my all-African editorial patch at work or elsewhere.
Doing this remains vital to my peace of soul since bids to switch off empathy I bring to the job when it comes to contact with people exposed to violence or in dire straits don't work and nobody wants me to tune out of that anyway, including me.
Fellow feeling
We sometimes live in the most cynical horrible world, so I loved an entry Cindy's blogged:
"Resignation
"I am hereby officially tendering my resignation as an adult. I have decided I would like to accept the responsibilities of a 6 year-old again."
The rest is so well expressed by the Squip you could check it out at 'Dusting My Brain' for yourselves and equally savour the entry and the classy appearance of her latest site design.
The lovely Lee has also given us what must be a seasonal "if only" kind of post at 'Odessa Street', where she too has done an admirable facelift of late:
"I've been thinking a lot about money and how I need more of it. I have already confided in my closest friends - and now, here, to you, dear Internet - that I believe in my past life I was a noble. I think I had nice, pretty things and was surrounded by luxury."
Not any more. This, she says, has made her "become the person I could never understand: the one for whom every euro counts." So I do wish her and 'The Boy' luck, as she asks; now it's the end of another month, I'm having such a week myself, counting every cent and the days until the next pay cheque comes in.
I'm glad to be doing this, though, in the name of music.
When it comes to empathy, an ordered copy of 'Somebody's Miracle' has arrived.
It largely lives up to its name and could be covered as part of a splendid triptych of recently released third albums, since I'm almost ready also to tell you what I make of Fiona Apple's 'Extraordinary Machine' and even, at long last, 'Supernature.'
From this, you'll gather ahead of time I'm very impressed.
I've read some absurd generalisations about what particular album number in a career it takes for musicians to come fully into their own, since they're never the same, but have long held off on Apple, Liz Phair and Goldfrapp.
These number threes, however, are singularly rich, and take several hearings fully to appreciate.
Where praise is due...
David in Spain, with whom I find myself often like-minded, has done us a favour, with a quick recap in his own write-up (Unpaid Rock Critic) about the story behind Apple's CD.
Known only to "most people" who follow these things and taken in several French music mags as a tale too of a "quest for perfection", what David wrote was worth spelling out. It sits well with my piece about French singers, since some of their reputations are very closely tied in to what goes on surrounding them on the Internet rather than the older media.
I'll be approaching the album with a perspective different from David's, but probably bumped into him because of shared "biases". This reminds me to mention a blogger newly added to the list on the left since Arjan Writes Columns about Music I enjoy keeping an eye on.
There'll soon be enough columnists as opposed to portals to move them to a new section in the roll, but before doing this I'd like to find a few more women, keeping Amy company -- her site's moved, but her archives are where they were.
..there's my own teeny trumpet
It seems I'm occasionally "ahead of the game" -- though what's good is timeless and also plays with time constantly -- because there's a massive media fuss now about K.T. Tunstall, yet it was a while back there was I set an 'Eye to the Telescope'.
Ah, 'Suddenly I See'. Kt's "gold" at The-Raft, but that's no site for my roll -- news of competitiveness and awards has almost no role on a log aimed at taking the "business" out of music. No, if you're a visitor here it's for an empathy with musicians at best and a sympathetic hearing at least.
Blue city lights and Liz's city blues
While on fellow-feeling, apologies to another Cindy who was an unfortunate victim of excess zeal in trimming that roll for a little while; I've reinstated her 'mousemusings'.
She still has more heart than me left to speak out politically but music's very much a part of her and her blog's permanently straddled with a magnificent quote:
"Human beings will be happier -- not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That's my utopia."
~Kurt Vonnegut
A utopia indeed, but what a way also to try to live in the present, especially for we city-dwellers, retaining a hold of what's sacredly "primitive" amid all the plastic. It's misery season, almost, in Paris again.
"I bet it made you laugh
Watching me work so hard to reach you
You never gave a damn
About all of those things I did to please you
All that you wanted
You found someone else
And nothing could drag you
Away from yourself
Do you really know me at all?"
The bitterness isn't sustained throughout 'Everything to Me', one song on a straight and latest of albums where Liz Phair has pulled through the rough phase she was just as direct about on her second album I wrote up a while back, but -this side of the woman brought two reflections to mind on first listening, since I found my fingers had really been firmly crossed for her; she'd had such a bashing from many critics who seemed totally deaf to how tough she was being on herself.
Two years later, 'Somebody's Miracle' is, as I'd hoped for her, an album where she has moved on.
The other effect of that particular song was to get me searching the closed masks of nearly all the strangers' faces around me now sunshine's scarce again and sullen skies have started Parisians sliding back into their shells for the long haul of another winter to come.
You couldn't help but wonder what they were thinking and if some of it might be a little like Liz in those lines. With summer's swift fall into winter changes in the mood of Paris remain so deep, now I've no more grounds for imagining it's just me re-inventing Parisians when the grey days come, perhaps seasonal affective disorder is a city-wide SAD syndrome that gets to most people in the end.
Sad surgery
One Cindy's right to instruct me in her comment on a recent entry:
"Whatever you do, don't stop writing Apple posts. (...) Apple = iPod = iTunes = music."
Having had six pass through my hands since they were invented, but four no longer mine, maybe I am something of an "iPod doctor". The other night, I counted 27 iPods on one 35-minute Métro trip; it's a huge increase since Apple Expo. A sense of urgency that's pressing me to finish fixes for some friends handing me ones they find broken has much to do with making sure they've got music without hassle to keep them going through the SAD season.
Analysis I'm certainly done with since last winter, but I have to accept what I was told before the therapy was over: I'm ultra-permeable to people's "vibes" -- it's the only word if not "harmonics" -- and almost invariably get it right when properly attuned to their feelings though not, thank goodness, their thoughts.
Flights beyond fancies
I don't know who among album artwork names to credit for an irresistible illustration.
 In retrospect, I can only feel that the concerns the very sensual Liz unleashed on us in 2003 about age and appeal must have triggered a resonant foghorn echo deep inside me before the gloom lifted.
Feelings only approached in the language of words seem to have sorted themselves into an utterly inexplicable conviction I simply have to be alert for the unknown music heading my way to be made in the dark and shared in the light in ways I'll never have quite known before.
In most of her songs, today's Liz knows she had no more to get bothered about than I did; yet we did, both of us, such is the way of all flesh when you reflect on it deeply. And we made it public, whether as "dear guitar" or ... "dear Internet." That was a nice touch by Lee, since you never know who's out there, do you?
I shan't pre-empt a proper write-up tonight of 'Somebody's Miracle' or other albums that have yet quite to sink fully into me. I suppose if I tell you I'm turned on by that picture and by the remainder, which are in colour, of the "arty" artwork, of one singer more discreet than she used to be, it's a musical postlude.
Doubtless some will be slightly reassured, others mildly disappointed and everyone else indifferent when I confirm there'll be no more of those photos of non-practising musicians since that phase of me too is past.
At least you'll be happy to read I'm still totally nuts. The clocks change next weekend so we suddenly get the twilight an hour sooner, but never mind when the next early morning meditation could find me conjuring up a picture like this and having the music in my blood tell me, "Yes, it is an omen for you, just keep listening."
I did warn you.
I'm very superstitious.
2:06:41 AM link 
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