There is love, and there is what love loves.

Pieter Bruegel-The Wedding Feast (Dutch 1568) 

I don't do it often, perhaps owing to my shark-like propensity to keep moving, but I plan to re-post an old entry this Wednesday.  The review of the latest Fennesz record, Black Sea, I ran is so scattershot, and the record itself so full of fantastic sounds and ideas, that I figured it deserved a more diligent analysis.  My pal, Bill, bought it at Paul's, and my first impressions formed the original review.  I feel confident in the basic opinion, but going back I see the writing itself jumps around way too much to constitute a significant statement.  I'll have something else once Paul gets it back in and I spin it a time or two more.

That the ambulatory sensation and the stirring of the world might not fail me as I systematically forget so sadly much of what has come before.

Prevailing conditions this morning lead me back to something Lyndon Johnson  once said of the presidency, that it was like "being a jackass in a hailstorm...nothing to do but stand there and take it".  Of course he was referring to the thanks-for-nothing he got for tinkering around with the precarious fulcrum of American civil rights, whereas I am negotiating a mere hangover from Molly & Pete's lovely wedding party.  Mind you there's no law dictating an analogy must have balance of magnitude, just commonality.  Established.

I awoke to find that my hideous "test" cake (I baked them a wedding cake) had been--rather barbarically, snacked upon in the night by a dog who shall remain nameless, an erstwhile suspicion I found born out in her morning business.  The empirical evidence leading up to that moment suggested it could've only been one of the three of us;  Dan and I were pretty trashed --enough to remain prime suspects until the convicting stool appeared.  Couldn't say what her opinion of it was, but of my own devices I enjoyed it.  The basic recipe was taken from Emeril Lagasse's Food Network files--a truly reliable resource, that FN site, which has helped me over on a number of blank occasions (and, no, by the way, no shame in using Emeril--the guy's recipes are surprisingly unhistrionic and tasty).  I augmented the flavoring with an orange reduction and bourbon, and opted for a three double-layer logistic instead of the prescribed four single-layer version.  The results were, I suspect, denser than had I used the blueprint faithfully.  But in the stodge of winter I felt the substance of my idea was better suited.  Knowing the citric application would moisten,  and thereby additionally beef the texture I figured why not, as the great Lil Wayne says, go balls out.  

My head is split in two right now, and were it not for another fine Fennesz recording, his cascading elegy, Live in Japan, which so tearfully captures all the poignant light and melodic jumpcut of his Endless Summer, I'd surely be on the floor, still apologizing to Pete's amazing step-dad (in absentia) for spilling my beer on his pants.  Christ, the diplomacy with which he shook that one off!

I like to play it up like it was a disaster, at the center of which I was playing the fool, and in moments perhaps it was, and perhaps I was.  Such narcissism.  But as memory serves it was just a tranquil and happy night on the Planet.  I must admit I felt horribly separated from so many people I love.  But there was who they needed to be there.  And they were there.  The consolation was enormous.   

On a final note I should tie on that the epic "atomic" burger at Tessaro's I had Thursday evening went down easy--even if I couldn't quite finish it.  But I'm reminded of the hostess who said prosaically, "someone should be along shortly".  As if saying so finally connected me to the available universe.  And by thanking her as I took my seat I was thanking her for everything.