The new album from cellist Danny Norbury is titled
Light In August. I can only imagine it is named after the novel by William Faulkner, but the similarity seems to go only title-deep (while I have not read Faulkner's, I don't feel that this album is meant to reflect the subject matter of the novel). A warm, yet heart-breakingly beautiful album of cello pieces accompanied by sparse piano swells up out of the silence besetting it and dies away in the twilight with such ease that it seems next to breathing for Norbury. I think of a backlit spiderweb on a hot, but comfortable afternoon in August, a breeze hassles its superior strength, which is betrayed by the frailty of its appearance. The silken strands will stretch and sway, but only a vigorous effort will force it to surrender and give way. The sharply reverberating piano that begins "I Turn Off the Last Light and Close the Door" has the same tensilary strength for vibration and duration as the spider's web. As it creates a whirling wheat field underfoot, you drift into the title piece. "Light In August" is a wordless eulogy (much like the entire album as a lament) of Norbury's cello layered over itself until a one-man chamber orchestra is bidding adieux to the way life used to be. "This Night Is For You And For Me" follows up nicely with a slow lovers' dance that spirals downwards into invisible arms. And "All The Stars Are Out Tonight", Norbury's web wraps in intricate patterns around your heart, stretching itself in tachycardic rhythm until they both break into the infinite.
I have only had one proper, all-the-way-through listen to this record, but already recognize its godly quality, its knowledge of the most esoteric simplicities of life and well-crafted love of beautiful sound.
Don't think about it too long or doubt my true knowledge,
just get it.
Oh, and by the way, the words "there, that should make life better" better roll outta your mouth whenever you pass this music on to a friend.
Why must I be a sucker for late period, shadow-of-himself Robin Williams films? What used to be a revolutionary comic talent is now just a horrific, stuck-in-2nd-gear shtick of recycled cocaine twitches.
The new album from cellist Danny Norbury is titled Light In August. I can only imagine it is named after the novel by William Faulkner, but the similarity seems to go only title-deep (while I have not read Faulkner's, I don't feel that this album is meant to reflect the subject matter of the novel). A warm, yet heart-breakingly beautiful album of cello pieces accompanied by sparse piano swells up out of the silence besetting it and dies away in the twilight with such ease that it seems next to breathing for Norbury. I think of a backlit spiderweb on a hot, but comfortable afternoon in August, a breeze hassles its superior strength, which is betrayed by the frailty of its appearance. The silken strands will stretch and sway, but only a vigorous effort will force it to surrender and give way. The sharply reverberating piano that begins "I Turn Off the Last Light and Close the Door" has the same tensilary strength for vibration and duration as the spider's web. As it creates a whirling wheat field underfoot, you drift into the title piece. "Light In August" is a wordless eulogy (much like the entire album as a lament) of Norbury's cello layered over itself until a one-man chamber orchestra is bidding adieux to the way life used to be. "This Night Is For You And For Me" follows up nicely with a slow lovers' dance that spirals downwards into invisible arms. And "All The Stars Are Out Tonight", Norbury's web wraps in intricate patterns around your heart, stretching itself in tachycardic rhythm until they both break into the infinite.
Was just watching some of Dodgers versus Angels on ESPN and apparently there was a fan on the field. I don't think it was a streaker, but HOW THE FUCK WOULD I KNOW, BECAUSE THEY REFUSE TO AIR ANY FOOTAGE OF PEOPLE RUNNING ON FIELD?!?!? How fucking dumb is that? So, we can just pretend that the world and life is clean and wholesome and blemish-free by simply not acknowledging anything other than the family-friendly, wholesome, whitebread bullshit??? Fuck that.
Back in April, I bitched and moaned about Jason Motte, a closer for the St. Louis Cardinals on my fantasy at the time. Motte's tenure lasted about 72 hours on Team Mondesi as he proved competent only at giving Tony La Russa small heart attacks and me a temporary case of Tourettes that my neighbors quickly grew tired of. Closers with this level of confidence seem to be hopping on and off the fuckin bullpen merry-go-round this season. While I don't have Fernando Rodney (pictured) on my team, witnessing him empty his own brand of adult diaper on the pitching mound against the Cardinals tonight was equally frustrating and astonishing. Rodney had 3 wild pitches and about a half dozen others that only missed that distinction because his catcher, Gerald Laird, was adept enough to catch such shitty pitches. It started to make me miss the days of the shut-down, no-questions-asked closers (or pitchers, in general, for that matter). Sure, Heath Bell is the shit this season and Jonathan "Crazy Eyes" Papelbon is consistent, but it seems like bullpens just lack a little balls this season. Well, as John always says, maybe there will be a little "regression to the mean".
