Folk Singers

"In martial wind, and in clarion rain, we minced into battle, wincing in pain; not meant for walking, backs bound in twine: not angel or devil, but level, in time."

"And in an infinite regress: Tell me, why is the pain of birth lighter borne than the pain of death?"

"Above them, parades mark the passing of days through parks where pale colonnades arch in marble and steel, where all of the Twenty Thousand attending your foot fall (and the Cause that they died for) are lost in the idling birdcalls, and the records they left are cryptic at best, lost in obsolescence"

"In December of that year, the word came down that she was here. The days grew shorter. I was sure, if she came 'round, I’d hold my ground. I'd endure. But they'd alluded to a change that came to pass, and Spring, deranged, weeping grass and sleepless, broke herself upon my windowglass. And I could barely breathe, for seeing all the splintered light that leaked her fissures, fleeing, launched in flight: unstaunched daylight, brightly bleeding, bleached the night with dawn, deleting, in that high sun, after our good run, when the spirit bends beneath knowing it must end."

"What’s redacted will repeat, and you cannot learn that you burn when you touch the heat, so we touch the heat, and we cut facsimiles of love and death (just separate holes in sheets where you cannot breathe, and you cannot see)."

"In the folds and the branches, somewhere, out there, I was only just born into open air. Now hush, little babe. You don’t want to be down in the trenches, remembering with me, where you will not mark my leaving, and you will not hear my parting song. Nor is there cause for grieving. Nor is there cause for carrying on."

"It does not suffice for you to say I am a sweet girl, or to say you hate to see me sad because of you. It does not suffice, to merely lie beside each other, as those who love each other do."

"The tap of hangers, swaying in the closet — unburdened hooks and empty drawers — and everywhere I tried to love you is yours again, and only yours."

"As the day is long, so the well runs dry, and we came to see Time is taller than Space is wide. And we bade goodbye to the Great Divide: found unlimited simulacreage to colonize!"

"But inasmuch as that light is loaned, insofar as we’ve borrowed bones, must every debt now be repaid in star-spotted, sickle-winged night raids"

"And, for the sake of that pit of snakes, for whom did you allay your shyness, and spend all your mercy, and madness, and grace, in a day, beneath the bending cypress?"

"Hung from the underbelly of the Earth While the stars skid away below Gormless and brakeless; gravel-loose Falling silent as gavels in the snow."

"It is too short — the day we are born, we commence with our dying."

"In this life, who did you love, beneath the drifting ashes, beneath the sheeting banks of air that barrenly bore our rations?"

"Driven through by her own sword, summer died last night, alone."

"Coats of bouclé, jacquard and cashmere; cartouche and tweed, all silver shot — and everything that could remind you of how easy I was not."

"I may have changed, it's hard to gauge Time won't account for how I've aged Would that I could tie your lying tongue Who says that leaving keeps you young."

"All we saw was that Time is taller than Space is wide. That's why we got bound to a round desert island, 'neath the sky where our sailors have gone. Have they drowned, in those windy highlands? Highlands away, my John."

"And if you come and see me, you will upset the order. You cannot come and see me, for I set myself apart. But when you come and see me, in California, you cross the border of my heart."

"A feather of a hawk was bound Bound around my neck A poultice made of fig The eager little vultures pecked"

"Wolf-spider, crouch in your funnel nest. If I knew you, once, now I know you less. In the sinking sand, where we've come to rest, have I had a hand in your loneliness?"

"held her there, kicking and mewling, upended, unspooling, unsung and blue; told her "wherever you go, little runaway bunny, I will find you." And then she ran, as they're liable to do."

"We broke our hearts, in the war between St. George and the dragon, but both, in equal part, are welcome to come along. I'm inviting everyone."

"But it can make you feel over, and old (Lord, you know it's a shame), when I only want for you to pull over, and hold me, till I can't remember my own name."

"With the loneliness of you mighty men, with your mighty kiss that might never, never end, while, so far away, in the seat of the West, burns the fount of the heat of that loneliness."

"This is the song for Baby Birch. I will never know you. And at the back of what we've done, there is that knowledge of you."

"Have you come, then, to rescue me?" He laughed and said, "from what, 'Colleen'?" You dried and dressed most willingly. You corseted, and caught the dread disease by which one comes to know such peace."

"We are blessed and sustained by what is not said"

"lists of sins and solemn vows don't make you any friends."

"By the time you read this I will be so far away Daddy longlegs, how in the world Am I to be expected to stay?"

"And, when the bulbs do flash, as bright as morning, the crowd keeps on gathering like an electric storm."

"Shopping bugs me, for metaphorical reasons I'm sure, because in life as in shopping, you go in looking for one thing. There's one thing you really need, right? But then there's “Blue Light Specials”, you know, and you just get confused, you get distracted, that's all. It's human. You wind up with this armload of shiny junk. You know, and then you're checking out—I mean, checking out—and suddenly you remember, “Huh… there was that one thing I came in for. Oh no, I forgot—I just have this junk—oh no!” “Too late, you're in the express line!”"

"There were definitely lyrics and they were very meaningful. I think."

"But people like to say, Oh, it's in the blood. But art comes from nowhere. It comes from a vague, scary place. It's scary because you don't know when it's coming or if it will ever come again. It's this Other."

"We played a gig in the Swiss Alps at a snowboarding convention. Red Bull-this energy sports-fuel drink-sponsored the whole thing. It has some ingredient believed to be bull-testicle extract. We went way off our tour route, had to take two planes and missed a night's sleep. We got up there and there's no snow-it's all mud. You couldn't walk. You'd step and then be up to your knee in mud. So you had several thousand disgruntled snowboarders tanked up to the max on bull-testicle extract. Of course, for some reason, these strapping brutes were made to wait out in the mid and the rain before coming into the tent for the show. When we get up to play, I see this forty-foot gap between us and the audience-they still managed to nail us with empty cans of Red Bull. After a few songs, I wasn't really playing my guitar, I was using it to bay cans back into the crowd of disgruntled sports enthusiasts. It felt like we were A Flock of Seagulls opening for Napalm Death."

"I remember being really shocked after Mellow Gold came out and going on tour, and all these kids were there. It totally disturbed me. Who are all these young people? I'd been playing Mississippi John Hurt covers in coffee shops to a bunch of thirty-, forty-, fifty-year olds. Then all of a sudden there were these teenagers."

"Oh, the tragedy and the anguish. You just gotta Rage Against the Appliance, man. The toast is burning and you just gotta rip it out and free it before it fills the house with smoke. Rage Against the Toaster."

"I try not to obsess about recording. I'm definitely the one who will leave all the mistakes-to have that balance between what's undone and done. I try to move on to the next thing. I have friends who have been working on the same song for five, six years. They just won't let the songs go."

"There are so many elements flying in so many different directions that you really have to go with what feels like instinctively. The nature of the universe is fairly whimsical and nonsensical. In the most somber, beatific peacefulness there's complete chaos and maniacal laughter. I think music that doesn't reflect that is boring."

"I think it would be great to have a mall that looked like stores but you weren't selling things. You were just going to hang out or do things. Or if somebody bought a mall and turned it into a house that people could kind of come to and you could build rooms, and it's all orange furniture. Or you could just build environments. Reclaim a mall just in the name of aesthetics or to make something beautiful or something that has no real purpose. Wouldn't that be amazing?"

"I recently saw The Last American Virgin, one of those early-'80s coming-of-age movies. And the actors, they look like kids you grew up with! Today's teen movies, I didn't know anybody who looked like that. The standards now are so unbelievably high."

"My mother was mistrustful of the education system, so it was all right with her if we didn't go to school. She was taking us to Truffaut films, and I was busy getting through a Knut Hamsun book or something, so she felt satisfied we weren't wasting our lives watching The Brady Bunch. Because of where we lived, I would've had to go to Belmont High, so the year I was supposed to start high school I tried to get into the High School for the Performing Arts, which had just opened. I sent them a tape of me playing blues guitar and some short stories I'd written, but they didn't want me."

"About a year ago, I started seeing these ads in the paper for 'Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation'. First it was a little ad. The next week, it was twice as big. And after a month, it was a full page-it just took over. Something in that triggered a bunch of associations and projections. Like, what kind of activities do you have to engage in to get to the point where you need to bring a laser into the equation?"

"I have a fear of heights, so falling off something very tall. But I've conquered a good amount of my fears. I guess most people would have the fear of getting up in front of a large audience of people and making a fool of themselves. I've gotten over that."

"One of the reasons I'm a musician is because music isn't divisive. It's a medium where you don't have to abide by divisions. The whole idea is anarchy and the best music just doesn't give a fuck. And too much music is just so conservative these days. So I really don't want to be careful about anything. And there's so much music that's trying to be offensive these days, trying to be aggressive and abrasive. But it's just cheap and manipulative. So if I can offend someone in a good way and challenge their belief system, then I think that's positive. I mean, I wonder what their problem with it is? I don't have a problem. Wanda Coleman doesn't have a problem with me singing like that."

"I'm not good at the protocols of dating. [laughs] I'm not really experienced in that. My girlfriend is my second or third girlfriend. I think in the past none of us really knew when we were "dating"-we were just hanging out and doing things. I didn't go to high school so I missed the prom."

"I never really had them. I always get the eccentric kids who dress funny and sit and write poetry for three months in their bedrooms... ...I was going to see tons of shows when I was a teenager, so if I was a girl, would that have made me a groupie? If I wanted to shake Thurston Moore's hand or something?"

"I don't need to cry so much. I think whatever you let loose with crying, I let loose with singing. I tend to be the one who wants... I'm trying to say this without sounding too touchy-feely. I'm usually the one who's better at comforting the person who's crying, you know?"

"You'd have to be a total idiot to say, 'I'm the slacker-generation guy. This is my generation.' I'd be laughed out of the room in an instant. I didn't even connect ['Loser'] at all to that kind of message until they were playing it on the radio and I heard it, and they said "This is the slacker anthem," and I thought, 'Oh shit, that sucks.' It's not some anguished transcendental 'cry of a generation.' It's just sitting in someone's living room eating pizza and Doritos."

"Our whole culture in this country now is so conformist. I don't even meet that many freaks any more."