Lennon and Nilsson • Raphael • Rosalia • My Preferred Shaving Cream
Synth and drum machine songs rarely have heart. Yet, with a constrained palette, Tirzah is expansive and expressive. It’s minimalist, but holds a room. I’d like a hundred more songs like this one. I’ve poked around her catalogue but haven’t found anything similar.
They call it the lost weekend, but it was really 18 months of debauchery and squandered talent. Cocaine, alcohol, and a complete lack of wellness culture defined the moment. Nilsson lined up a murderer’s row of talent for Pussy Cats (which originally had an even cringier title) and then promptly ruptured his vocal chords. Billie Holiday had similarly tattered vocals on Lady in Satin, but that album remains endearingly ragged. Sadly, Pussy Cats just feels like wasted opportunity.
Don’t Forget Me is a song that is largely … forgotten. Preserved by cult appreciation and association with John Lennon, this song is peak late-era Nilsson. Like the breaking of ocean waves, giant blue chords (and a playful sense of dread) characterize the song. When we’re older / and full of cancer. It’s a love song, but self-aware of love’s own expiration date. Cus nothing lasts forever / but I will always love you. As a meta interpretation, I wonder if Nilsson might actually be singing about his career, audience approval, and the steep downward trajectory of both. Bittersweet as Italian aperitivo, Neko Case does the original well in this cover.
People seem to like the new Rosalia record. Her performance at the British Music Awards caught my attention. I originally saw a clip in passing, but something stayed with me and I revisited the original in its entirety. It’s a wildly paced combination of neo-Opera, Bjork, and ecstatically choreographed techno. Listen with caution — the remix is pure heart-jacking amphetamine. Hard to imagine that any performance this year will surpass the originality and intensity of this one.
Fast-passing hours in NYC and Washington, DC. I’ve been traveling through these American cities for work. Maybe it’s the Spring weather, but from a completely ambient, anecdotal perspective, both cities felt fresh, uptempo.
In DC, I spent time at Planet Word, a museum about language. Experientially, it exceeded expectations, with a strong layout, interesting insights, and a good gift shop. A museum dedicated to human language is a weird concept. Language is the code we all operate within, but there’s something about the concept that doesn’t quite lend itself to physical galleries. Signs, symbols, semiotics, abstraction, meaning — not exactly traditional material for an attraction. Most museums lean into beauty or knowledge. Thematically, language is both challenging and bold. Nonetheless, I enjoyed it, and I left thinking about how much context influences our understanding of language.
In NYC, I attended meetings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and enjoyed a brief tour of the galleries. I saw the Raphael retrospective and then visited the Vermeer and Bosch galleries (both of which were effectively empty). The Metropolitan is a colossus. Malcolm Gladwell has famously criticized the vast centralization of resources, comparing museums to a Dragon’s Lair. Fair, but I think he’s missing something. The centralization allows you to peer down at humanity from a hot air balloon. You can see the patterns and the disruptions, the peaks and the ridges between crests.
Modern American shaving cream is humdrum. On a whim, I purchased a metal tin of Geo F. Trumper’s classic shaving cream. I’m not going to say this has been a seismic event in my life, but it’s converts a throwaway ritual into a more pleasant, mindful one.
I'm writing this entry from a hotel lobby in the Upper West Side. My goal is brevity — writing that I can shoehorn into the early hours, before others awaken, and that can be read in a few moments, in between other important matters.
