up where the clouds meet the snow

I used to blog on livejournal, and it was not so public as this one, so I always would post more personal things. I also had a habit of posting lyrics to songs I really loved at the time. Well, I'm going to do that again because I have a couple of songs on my mind. When it comes to music I am more inclined to love and listen to the lyrics, and I feel that with pop music especially the lyrics are often the most important part, and the music serves to support them. This isn't always true, but I tend to like those songs better. The problem, as a result, is that lyrics posted in a blog apart from their music sound really dumb. Nevertheless, I like to thing that pop songs are the popular poetry of our time. During World War One everyone loved reading poetry and everyone else fancied themselves a poet. Hundreds of poems were published every week in newspapers and journals and people would memorize them and recite them. Pop music is like that for us now, so much more accessible than it was before. (I mean literally accessible, not in the sense that it was too hard to understand ten years ago, but the sheer volume of music that everyone is capable of listening to throughout their day is remarkable.)

I usually only listen to two or three songs throughout the week, just as if I had picked out my few favorite poems to read from the newspaper for the week, committed them to memory and shared them with all my friends. So this is me sharing a few of my favorite songs to you, my invisible friends out there in Internet void.

I discovered Martha Wainwright this week. She's not the best thing I ever heard, but I love her voice as an alternative to Feist or St. Vincent, someone who seems a little more low key to me. Her songs are interesting, and I'm loving her lyrics. This song is called Far Away.


And here are the lyrics:

Far away
In some lovely way I hear your call
Whatever happened to them all?
Whatever happened to us all?

I know that we've never met before
But that was then, and now I need you more
Is someone here keeping the score?
Is there only dying at your door?
Taking me down off this cross
Lay me down, down, down in the dust
Whoa, love, take my hand across the crowd
I have been digging underground
What'er remains is yet to be found
I have no children
I have no husband
I have no reason
To be alive
Oh, give me one

Green grass blades are all on fire
I own the crack that's in the wind
From your window I see bars & the birds
They sing & they sing & they sing & they sing
And the dogs
They bark & they bark & they bark & they bark & they bark

Whatever happened to them all?
Whatever happened to us all?

Annie had two young baby boys
And Jimi went crazy, crazy, crazy late last fall

The other song is "Capturing Moods" by Rilo Kiley. It's not new to me, but it's one that keeps popping in my head in the weirdest times and I feel compelled to listen to it. Yesterday I was having a bad day, and the song had been in my head all morning, and as I was walking home it came up on shuffle on my ipod. I took it as a sign, then the sun came out and I felt so much better. My favorite line is "There's life and work up where the clouds meet the snow". At that moment I looked up to the mountains and the clouds were there, meeting the snow. It made me smile.

Moods don't command you if you don't know what you're going through
There's love for you up where the population grows
There are friendly people in cities too, just ask them where they are going to
There's life and work up where the clouds meet the snow
And i don't mind waiting
I'm always one step ahead of you if you don't know what you're going through
There's laughs and fun up where the conversation flows

I don't mind waiting if it takes a long, long time
I don't mind braving the coldest winters of our time
I don't mind racing through our goodbyes

This is your last line of defense
You can sell your baseball cards just to pay your rent, yeah

I don't mind waiting if it takes a long, long time
I don't mind wasting the best years of our lives
I don't mind racing through our goodbyes

So there you have it, two of the four or five songs I've been listening to all week.