Brian's Blog

"Tell us, oh, but then what shall we sing? When we gather together? When our souls come untethered? To catch our breath?" Mandolinist and songwriter Chris Thile asks these questions at the tip top of his 2021 record, "Laysongs"- his fervent attempt at apostasy, a record which in turn seethes and groans at and for the Divine, while professing to live apart from it. And I don't know if he ever answers this question, though this record is the best attempt I've found (but " Spanish Toast " by Alanna Boudreaux is also superb).  The word Religion allegedly comes from the same root as the Latin word for asphalt- the root literally  meaning "sticky", "adherent". And what does that asphalt accomplish except for to pave a smooth path for Man to progress? We are religious when we stick to something. And we are justified in sticking to something when we believe in it (And in a larger sense, when that belief is justified). Any man worth his ...

  Is my greatest desire merely my own self-preservation and gratification? To rephrase this question, can I desire for something greater? Furthermore, how great can my desires become- what is the upper limit of desire? Caroline Polachek struck something in me with her album a few years back called "Desire, I Want to Turn Into You". The album is very sensual, and also very tasteful in its sensuality, yet nobody could accuse it of being reserved. The cover features the singer crawling on all fours through a train car with an expression of deep yearning and mystique on her face. She could be on her daily commute, yet she looks far past the camera and her hands find a fringe of sand upon which a red dotted line leads past the frame, like a treasure map, an imaginative whiff of adventure nestled within the everyday. It's a perfect image of the reconciliation between our longing for the divine and our temporal confines within the mundane. Isn't that the best we can do this ...