Hello readers,

Send me some new otherworldly music suggestions, please!  I'm looking for newer songs within the past two years.  To me, otherworldy music is "the kind of music that suggests dreams, the supernatural, the interdimensional, altered states, and the in-between."  This is a subjective definition, but that's ok.  It doesn't have to be all airy-fairy, either.  What newer song makes you look around to make sure that you're still here (or keep your eyes closed in hopes that you aren't)?

Thanks!

--K

The old man kept a jeweled caterpillar in his shirt pocket, and only took it out for frail girls with haunted eyes and thrift-store sweaters.  My mother saw it when she waitressed at the little Hungarian restaurant on 44th street in the City.  She said it hummed like a cicada in her ears, first left and then right.  The old man finished his coffee, and she followed him as he shuffled out.  He turned towards her with the larva in his hand, and the little creature rose on its many hind legs.  The wet streets lit with its kaleidoscopic colors, and each illuminated raindrop whispered a dream that every child must forget.    Red light, trapeze.  Blue light, marionette.  Green light, curtained stage.  Violet light, top hat man.  Silver light, a checker board floor.  Magenta light,  the mechanical brain encased in flesh.    Golden light, the emptiness of form on your fingertips.

She froze, fixated on the caterpillar, and was still motionless long after he disappeared around the corner.  When she came to hours later, she had written "Junkett Hauser" on her order pad, right under "French fries with brown gravy, Coke."  She never knew if that was the man's name, the place he came from, what the caterpillar liked for breakfast, or what.  Then she was fired for walking out of her job.

"And that was ok, honey," she said years later, "because then I got that job as a go-go dancer --God, I was so embarrassed but I needed the rent money and it was a really swanky club!-- and I met your father there.  Now here you are, playing in my old go-go boots, so wasn't that a good thing to have happened?"

When the old man sat beside me on the park bench twenty years later, I understood something right away.   They had a symbiotic relationship of sleep and wakefulness.  The warmth of his chest lulled the caterpillar  to sleep, and the glow of its lights awakened the old man back into youth.  And as I shivered in the fog, pondering this, I watched the sun set and rise on Golden Gate Park.  One day had passed, a day of my youth that he deftly plucked and nestled next to Mother's in the magenta jewel on the caterpillar's back.

(Inspired by Maelcum's Righteous Dub by the Changelings.  To my disappointment, this song is not available on mp3 and is out of print.  You can hear the song on YouTube and buy the CD used.)

________________

I wish I was a better artist so I could paint the caterpillar I see in my head.  I plan to take drawing lessons in the future, but my Lessons Fund is currently devoted to my new piano teacher.  My long-neglected piano skills are not as pathetic as I imagined and I can hold my own with most seven-year-olds. Do you hear that, kiddos?   Do not challenge me to a piano duel.  I can play "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" with the best of them.

At midday, Becky races through the tree-lined streets, pack swinging and bubblegum snapping.  She's vowed to arrive on time to chem class.   Her skirt swishes at her knees and she smiles at the street bums, singing with the airy pop song playing through her headphones.  A palm-reader once claimed that Becky's life purpose was distributing joy to God's creatures, and her bliss-generating duties are keen:  dazzling smile, soaring soprano, and endless encouraging words.  But watch out, Becky!  A light portal crossed your path!   One sneaker-clad foot sinks into liquid transdimensional light, which feasts first on bone, then on flesh.  Oh dear, that's the end.  Regrettably, these light portals originate from a mean dimension.  They glitter prettily in the sun, but they're greedy things, always manifesting at inopportune times and gobbling up organic molecules, the sweeter the better. Her shoes melt, and her eyes freeze in disbelief and bodily failure.  Her headphones bleat as the metal wires corrode, but the plastic remains whole, synthetic and safe.  The pop song dissolves and abandons its linearity, but Becky's melting brain ruins her cognizance of this metamorphosis. 

I saw it all, Professor!  I, her loyal friend, was helpless to intervene.  It was awful, especially because she'd worked on her term paper all night.  I've been crying all morning!  One of the theoretical physics students thinks he can retreive her with a complicated quantum formula and a particle accelerator.  If he's successful, you don't mind if she drops off her paper late, do you?  We'll just slide it under your office door.  I'll make sure she washes her hands really well so the light doesn't get into your files.

(Inspired by No. 6 Von Karman Street  by A Sunny Day in Glasgow --click the song title to listen)

***

As I wrote this, I couldn't help but think of the "lovely things" style blogs that I enjoy perusing at times (some favorites include Daydream Lily and That Unreliable Girl).  They contain many photos of beautiful young girls in feminine clothing doing romantic things like twirling in a meadow or draping themselves artistically across old furniture.  Lovely imagery!  And then my morbid side emerges and I imagine an unfortunate future for the beautiful girl, like the furniture sprouting teeth and devouring her, or the tranquil meadow turning into a howling abyss from which the Old Ones emerge (she's snack number one of 6.5 billion).

My attempt to recreate the latter scene is below. Fortunately, I have yet to be eaten by the plush Chthulu.

 

I've given up on making excuses for my brain.  I just let it entertain me. 

As for the band that inspired the song, I admit to looking them up because of Dr. LadySounds review in Scary Go Round.  The "guitars that go FWONNNNG WROOONK BROOOONNG" line is probably what encouraged me.  It's like someone took an old-school shoegazer song and applied the literary cut-up technique to it.  Love it.

 

 

On Sunday he comes to your door with a dead bat and a marigolds in an old violin case.  You groan inwardly (hasn't he found a haunting place yet?), but you can't just leave him on the steps, can you?  Smiling tightly, you invite him in, arrange the flowers, and pour the tea.  He sits in your most uncomfortable chair, legs primly crossed and fiddling with the bat. 

You wait for him to speak.   His creepy ringed eyes stare silently instead, his fluttering hands releasing tiny otherworldly vortices into your living room.  God, you hope they don't get into your hair. 

The marigolds wilt. 

"How's your mother?"  you ask dispassionately, while thinking nice flowers, asshole.

"Dead," he whispers, empty tones lying hollowly in his words.

You know he'll devour any platitudes of sympathy, so you don't bother.  He keeps staring, flicking his invisible cigarette ash into your ficus, until he finally asks for a little ectoplasm.  "Just enough for my left ear," he murmurs.  "I'll pay you back, I promise."

Right.  You drain your elbow and he snatches it.  Then he bows and glides away, leaving the bat moldering on your coffee table. 

Advice:  when next he knocks, hide between dimensions until he goes away.

___________________________________

Inspired by The Cure - Other Voices (Listen)

(Hilarious photo manipulation by ...?)

On a windy autumn night of my childhood, I dreamed that a tall young man opened a door in a tree for me.  A dim blue light enveloped the stairs that led down the tree trunk.  Uncertain but unwilling to turn away, I stepped inside.  The cool air smelled of earth and rain, and my feet balanced on steps of thick roots.  I held my hands over my eyes and peeked through my fingers, counting the steps as I descended. 

One step. 
"He loves me." 
Two steps. 
"He loves me not." 
Three steps. 
"God's Heaven." 
Four steps. 
"The Devil's Grave." 
Five steps. 
"I'm awake." 
Six steps. 
"I'm a dream."

And below was a wide tiled room with a rumpled bed and a window.  Outside, the afternoon sun fell on the deserted highway, grass thrusting through cracked concrete.  A red fox paused to cock its head at me before padding away, momentarily interested and summarily disappointed at the swirl of nonsense consciousness in the window.  That is, me.

The young man watched from the bed as I climbed out the window to my Yellow Brick Road, gray concrete under cartoon shoes. 

***

When I was seventeen, I found a book by Harlan Ellison and Jacek Yerka in a used bookstore.  Inside, I saw the tree, the blue light, and the stairs, and then I knew that I had dreamed someone else's dream again.

(Inspired by "Daniel" by Bat for Lashes; Image from Lawoflaws.com)

You really should listen to this one - it's beautiful.

One flower in my hand for a genie, and another in my hair for an angel.  I've woken up in the wrong world again, this time in the place where the residents float, shine and beam.  But my feet touch the ground here, so I am unnoticed and fading fast under the glass skyscrapers and cirrus clouds.  Fading!  Let me write a primer:  When fading, be sure to place all objects safely on the ground.  This includes your little embroidered lipstick case, the mirrored one where you thought you lived.  That was your reflection, honey.  Your flowers will fade with you.

Unseen, I stretch out on the virgin green grass and look up the elegant robes of the angelic cosmopolitans who move above me.  I blow dandelion spores into the heavens and into their luminescent underpants.  This is the grace of a fool, and it's all mine. 

(Inspired by Untitled by Interpol - click song title to listen)

(OWM has comments now - have at it)

At the corner of 17th Avenue and Broadway, a young man built an oasis into his condominium.  The tall corner window stretches floor to ceiling and a red snapping turtle swims lazily, turning to watch puzzled passersby.  I peek through the window and see wide fountains and housebound pools.  Succulent plants stretch over stones gathered from creeks, bookcases, and a long-abandoned guitar.  Life explodes in there, its momentum propelling it under the door frame and through the cracks in the caulking.  It strikes neighbors and pedestrians with the urge to stand still and quietly overflow.  Girls walk by, on cell phones and amphetamines.  They stumble in their animated conversations, never sure what has shaken them. 

(Inspired by A Shoreline Dream - Peel You Open)

I see every star of the galaxy from underneath the glass dome.  The Abandoned Planet rises above this sea of stars, its swirling blues and greens mixing with the pulsing red lights of the dance floor.   We've come here to pray to it, each movement of our dance an individual devotion, each ringing note a supplication.  There are no gods anymore and we know it.  We have only the machinery beneath our feet and the Earth above our heads.  We sing to the wild things there and the bodies of water we can only imagine.  We have lakes here, even rivers and streams, but they're contained.  They can't grow, and their evolution is orchestrated like ours.

I will dance for the long-tailed foxes tonight and ask for transcendence.  My sister writhes in place, and I know she prays to the snakes, our progenitors.  Maybe the acrobats on the wires pray to the apes, who were said to be the legendary propagators of the Dead Ones. 

I stare past them to the Planet.  I'm fiercely certain that the creatures hear our music and raise their heads, the light of their eyes traveling across time and space to reach my own.  I feel a surge of bliss rising from my belly through the top of my head;  I've been seen, and our songs heard.  I don't know by whom or to what effect, but they've heard.  I laugh.  I'm joy, burning brighter than the closest star!  I spin until the stars blur, and think of how our parents and grandparents may have been content to wither here in their artificial youth, but we won't be contained any more. 

"We want to pick the fruit from the tree," I shout,  "and see the sun rise from the sea.  Our prayer has been heard!"

Those around me smile, and continue their dances. 

(Inspired by Thievery Corporation - The Shining Path)

 ***

Someone told me that my entries here have continuity.  How accidental of me!  I suppose I'll have to see if this interesting development continues.

Inich crouched against the towering red monoliths and gazed into the empty enclosure pockmarked with millennia of use.  He'd heard once that the Dead Ones sang and danced in this enclosure.  Shortly after their arrival, his father had said that this collected and incomprehensible energy of "music" had called Inich's people to this planet.  They knew it could be harnessed, but had not been able to touch it yet.

In the presence of three tribal elders, Inich had replied that the world could be arranged precisely and eaten with the heart, allowing anyone to touch the strange energy.

"So illogical!" The tribal elders' words may have been admiring or depreciating.  To them, the bones and manuscripts of the Dead Ones were trifles in comparison to this world's rich natural wonders.  Whoever they had been, they lost their inheritance and were now inconsequential.  When Inich wandered into their ruins of stone piles and metal beams, he occasionally found artifacts, but they rarely made sense.  He brought home certain stones and metal shards, arranging them on the floor precisely.  His family watched his pursuits nervously, but with fascination.  Inich frequently arranged things - words, clothing, food - in inexplicable ways that pleased him, rather than in the most efficient manner.  That's when his father had spoken to the tribal elders, who seemed uncomfortable with the topic.  However, they explained that children manifested such behavior occasionally.  As long as they always displayed efficiency in public , no harm came from infrequent indulgence.  "But efficiency comes first," they cautioned, "not vague personal preference that cannot be justified."

Inich understood.  His people had created a grand society capable of feats that lesser societies called "magic, and to uphold it, he must follow its rules.  He could do that.  But he came to the Red Rocks when he needed to explore or destroy his own rules.  At the Red Rocks, he felt for vibrations stored in objects, walls, and earth. 

Inich was fairly skilled at vibrational interpretation.  It was no magical act, just basic science of the mind.  But the ancient texts indicated that vibrational interpretation was different than "music."  Music, he understood, drew up the heart into the mind and out through the mouth or the fingers.  It could produce tears with no discernible cause, and lift moods from low to high.  He had tried repeatedly, in solitude, to mix vibrations and produce mood alteration, but all he could do was create frustration at his own failure.    He took this as a small success.  After all, frustration was a mood.

Everyone knew that places held vibrations and the rocks held ages worth of music.  The healers could put their finger tips to an object and know who had it last, and which ailments that person suffered.  Easy.  Simple vibrational interpretation, something that every child could do at least a little.  Surely he could do the same here, dredging up the ancient songs and rhythms!  He pressed his palms and forehead against the rough red rock, but no song came.  He concentrated as the sun slowly crossed the sky, but he was not a gifted healer.  Such skills traveled through generations, and his mother had been a mathematician. 

At noon, he didn't bother to wipe away his tears but instead let them flow and mingle with the red dust.  Frustration again.  Was it really a small success, or a simple reaction to the stimulus of failure?  Inich was a skilled meditator and daily opened himself to emptiness and pureness of being.  He did not care for wilder states of mind, and so this outpour of grief and frustration seemed both novel and disturbing. He slumped against  the stones and tried to think, as orderly thought leads to calm behavior.  So he thought about the  electrical conductivity of the water that rolled down his cheeks, and recalled that some of the Dead believed water carried other fluid energies.  They claimed that it carried the emotions, song, and visions. 

He felt each tear travel down his face and pool in the hollow of his throat.  And with each tear, he heard something indescribable.  In his clear state of mind, each splash of water sent a shock of what could only be music coursing through his bones.  The vibration he knew, of course, but the notes as they were called, created shivers in his belly and tingled up his spine.  The tingling grew greater and more vivid, sending colors spinning into his vision.  He felt song explode from his throat as he tried to mimic words he'd never known before, and beneath the roaring waves of precisely-arranged sound, he sensed he was trying to express something too deep to quantify, something that the words only minimized.  Arranged just precisely, it communicated.  It immersed.  It filled his being.

And he knew he was dying as his brain and body struggled to process what they were not meant to enjoy, yet he didn't care.  Couldn't care, no more than one of the Dead could shield their eyes from their angels, only disintegrate in bliss.  With each note, the gray dust of his body mingled with the red dust of the monoliths.  

The singer opened his eyes to the stars, fingers strumming his guitar, singing to the first song hunter.

Inspired by the Autumns - Pale Trembles a Gale (remix)
Listen on iTunes (original version)

Behind the compound, I lie in tall grass and focus on the planets hiding behind the sky.  I have a game today.  My surroundings slowly drip into small waves until they are hollow shadows.  I keep my eyes open and witness the many layers peeling back:  a man on a boat, a woman in mountainous jungle, a child knee-deep in snow.   The meadow's clear silence begins to sprout tall buildings, concrete slabs, and the screech of transportation.  The jolt is heavy as I sink into the new scene.   I sit up and inhale the stinking air, wincing at the humans in pursuit of commerce and fantasies.  Their parade is hungry.   I try not to watch them too brazenly;  they don't like my kind.  Our eyes upset them, our gazes shaking lose unnamed fears and regrets.  We view it as healing;  they view it as attack.  

That's why hunting their songs can be a dangerous game.

Now immersed in their world, I tune my ears for distant music, flipping past radio waves and flat recordings, settling instead on the acoustic waves of live performance.  Here's one that rises above the others!  I grab the thread of song and then run from city to city in search of the source.  In this world, I blur as I run.

The guitarist sits in someone's dimly-lit backyard, leaning against the post of an empty, rusted clothesline.  He looks up as I arrive, his voice halting and strumming faltering.

Continue, I tell him. 

The man's fluttering and racing mind stills with his voice.  He shivers.  "Who the hell are you?  You're ... pulling nightmares up from my guts or something."

I look away.  It is an instinctual response between our species. 

The man's hands still strum the guitar, but he seems unable to sing anymore.  

I step closer, realizing I'm standing in an overgrown flower garden.  I crouch to his level.  What makes you sing?

The man's thoughts tumble like dead weeds down a path.  Images form and reform:  a dark-haired woman in a bright dress leaning against the peeling white paint of a dilapidated wooden building.  A full moon over an empty prairie, and discarded bottles glittering.  Calloused fingers and blood blisters, hunger edged with desperation, and a sickly desire that grew to burn brighter than flame.  My breath catches and I tremble under the weight of the emotion.

I stand up and step from the garden.  You sing well. 

I let the worlds snap back into place.  I sit up and inhaling the scent of jasmine and magnolia of home, savoring the weight dropping off.  I walk west to the woods and find an empty space to solidify the song.  A note marries an image here, a tone combines with an emotion there, all stack and curve and stretch into time.  I weave several levels of experience, of meaning, and of comprehension, suitable for dancing between.  This song grows roots in the soil and in space, adding to the forest of song sculptures. 

I stand back and survey my work.  I will send a dream to the man.  When their cities crumble, perhaps they will find their way here and sleep.

Inspired by Mark Lanegan - Riding on the Nightengale

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