“That thankfully our founders were wise enough to say we have this position and it’s constitutional — vice president will be able to be not only the position flexible.”

~ Sarah Palin

“I think God’s will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that.”

~ Sarah Palin

“Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.”

~ from: Funny Metaphors used in High School Essays

I just finished a great book. So great, I feel like reading it again right away. It’s a combination of Umberto Eco’s “Name of the Rose”, Wilkie Collins’ “Women in White” and a fifties mystery/adventure/horror movie filmed in Barcelona, Spain.

Maybe I loved it more because I was just in Barcelona, but I don’t think so. “The Shadow of the Wind” by Carlos Ruiz Zafon is a complete and immensely satisfying entertainment. It’s exciting, magical, complex and thought provoking. In many ways the book is about reading and the power of the writer’s art. Here’s a quote I love from near the end of the book:

“Bea says that the art of reading is slowly dying, that it’s an intimate ritual, that a book is a mirror that offers us only what we already carry inside us, that when we read, we do it with all our heart and mind, and great readers are becoming more scarce by the day.”

Connor’s new album was reviewed on the Synthesis Magazine blog the other day:

Synthesis Band You’ve Never Heard Of Band of The Day: Connor McGuire
Author: spencer

8 Feb

Connor McGuire

I sifted through a few submissions today and declined about four or five groups based mostly on their lyrical content, or lack thereof, rather. As a songwriter, the difference between hiding behind poorly-constructed metaphors and creating phrases that strike from the bone and come right from the heart is like night and day. There’s poetry in the day to day and honest simplicity will always trump complicated purple prose. That’s why Connor McGuire is our Band You’ve Never Heard of Band of the Day.

British Columbia singer/songwriter Connor McGuire’s songs take a road traveled by the likes of Mason Jennings and Jason Collett , built around acoustic instruments, peppered with non-obtrusive arrangements of mandolins, strings, horns, organs and electric guitar. His lyrical couplets follow ideas to their full conclusion (see “The End of the Line”), blending axioms and blunt moments into a seamless earnestness. You can purchase his album Different After Dawn here.

It’s my Dad’s birthday today. He would have been 88. Here’s the first two paragraphs of the life story that he wrote longhand (and which my Mom painstakingly transcribed):

I was born on January 3, 1920, in a dirt-floored cabin, on a homestead in northern Alberta near Mellowdale … a town that I don’t believe exists now. It was seventy miles above Edmonton. But try as I may, I can’t remember that day. I have to go on what my Mother told me.

The only memory I have of this time is riding in a horse-drawn sleigh with “sleigh bells ringing”, all bundled up under a heavy fur, and seeing lights from a window of a house down a snowy hill to the left. It was dark … blue dark. The house had heavy snow on the roof, and icicles, and it was still snowing, and I could hear music. The fur we were under was a buffalo hide, my Dad told me years later. He never remembered that particular time, but said it was probably Eligh DeGuire’s place. I recall, vaguely, being placed on a bed with other little sleeping kids and complaining bitterly. I also remember crying because the music was so beautiful, and my Mother sang so beautifully.

Ok, here’s the latest plan. Think Springsteen’s “Nebraska” record, only with drums, or at least a groove of some kind. Maybe some occasional strings. Not traditional strings but rough strings. Gravelly strings. Like the ones I used on the demo of Cold Water. Just simple songs framed frugally.

This may be yet another promising but overly gaudy float in an annoyingly unrewarding parade of potentially do-able creative blueprints that has been taunting me all year. This one sounds good to me – but I’m in a positive frame of mind. It’s Christmas. (continue reading this post …)

MERRY CHRISTMAS!! and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!