“If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

‘The only proof he needed
for the existence of God
was music.'”

~ Kurt Vonnegut

An old friend with a big music box for a heart emailed me today asking what I’ve been listening to lately, “what are you latest top 10”, he said…  But after double-checking my ears, I’m sad to say I didn’t find much (other than faithful echoes of the past). I’ve been a winter machine for months now, almost tune-starved – if it weren’t for the occasional goodies coming from her, and him, her too (oh, definitely her)… They’ve kept me from starving.

And now that I’m pulling out my spring clothes, ironing polka-dot dresses and coming out of hibernation, I’d like to retake all my musicology lessons, because “all deep things are song” and there’s always something (nothing) new under the sun, that makes you wow.

I’ll be updating my music box periodically… or whenever the moon changes colors or the birds are too tired, or it rains fish or it shines radioactive dream material over our sleepy heads. And it’s not time sensitive. It’s all past and present and future in one. I don’t wear a watch.

……………

1. I don’t know what to say about Hindi Zahra except that she’s magical and I’m still under the spell (and I wish I had written this song and been the one in this video).

2. If you want to walk out the door looking vintage, lovely & even slightly happy, get dressed to this song.

3. The only thing that could bring me out of the 7-layer dream induced by this song and Benjamin F. Leftwich’s voice, is the unmatched creepiness of the video. (Snakes?!)

4. But wake up, love. Let’s have five hundred days of summer. (Incredibly huggable man alert.)

5. I love Joshua Radin’s music. It simple and sad and contained and hopeful. And I’ve been listening to this song for at least ever and a half. But it still won’t turn water into wine.

6. If breath could be put into words (or music), it’d have to be something by the Cinematic Orchestra. This one makes me want to

live deep and suck out all the marrow of life. To put to rout all that is not life, and not, when I come to die, discover that I have not lived. (Thoreau)

~ Click here for absolute bliss.

7. I met Aaron Beaumont (the sickest Pianoman I know & other things) almost a decade ago, in a Spanish orange field. He still makes me smile. And even more when paired up with his partner in crime, Emma Fitzpatrick into the loveliest retro-pop duo of the moment. Ladies & gents, meet the Mots Nouveaux.

8. Wickedest I’ve seen of them to date.

9. It’s been about 20.000 years since this first came out. I get back to it once a year, put it on my running playlist and the rest is mystery (or history). Maybe I’m still Ice Aged somewhere inside and nothing really changes. Or maybe this is that type of chameleonic, timeless music with many sets of skin, fluent in bittersweet heart language.

10. You’re gonna’ have to click here for Number 10 because it deserves a post all by itself. Or did you think I was easy?

“All deep things are Song. It seems somehow the very central essence of us, Song; as if all the rest were but wrappages and hulls! The primal element of us; of us, and of all things.”

~ Thomas Carlyle

And now, I say, let’s welcome strawberries with our unbreakable teeth.

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