2010-01-27 - 1:44 p.m.

I can't help it that the guys from Spoon have got me. Take the rhythm tracks--just the drums and bass--from their new song The Mystery Zone. I know it's old hat to talk about songs being soundtracks, but if I could, I'd like to walk down the street to that song, that rhythm. Add in the nervous guitar and the swelling strings and that's all I'd need. It's true that one of the reasons I like music is that the stuff I really like makes me feel at ease in my own skin. Isn't that a lot of what it's all about? Feeling at ease--feeling good--in one's skin? It smooths out your walk. It coats your noontime meeting in chocolate. Transformation, I guess.

Also, I'd never read any J.M. Coetzee before. But now I have and, whoo! Ruthless writing. Writing that doesn't even breathe, just lives on what it can get through its eyeballs and eardrums. Straight-ahead and honest and very strong, like espresso.

Watched a few episodes of The Sopranos earlier this week. What is it about certain things, certain effects? Things have power. Those little cups of coffee, for example, in those tough guys' big hands. All that makeup on the women. It's stylized, I know, but these things, they have power. Stuff touched by people, infused with heart, with rage, whatever.

More and more, I see, it's all about the beating heart, all about what's on the inside. Things are alive or they aren't but if it's anything real it's got one or the other of those two things coursing through. There is, it turns out, much at stake, always.

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