The Weight of Air

  The sweet guitar melody drifted lazily up through the eaves to reach our ears on our third floor balcony in our hostel in Naples, Italy. We were practicing card tricks and cheats, laughing and drinking ouzo while waiting for Maria. She had gone shopping in the market, looking for some gifts for friends and picking up some bread for us. Up on the balcony we sat with our shoes off, letting our blistered feet rest. We had hiked all afternoon. It had been and continued to be a near perfect day. I sipped my ouzo and complimented Darryl on his Sleeve-slip trick.

   Over the Cathedral I saw a hawk circling. Mid-circle he fell out of the air into a dive, swiftly plucking a pigeon from a rooftop who had been cooing. Surprisingly then the hawk rose once more pigeon in toe and released it. The pigeon did a series of flips which the hawk duplicated, then they each swooped out of the somersaults in opposite directions. It was amazing. It was an impromptu acrobatics show. I turned back to our table,"Did anyone else see that just now?"

    "See what?" asked Darryl

          "My flawless Ace-Queen swap?" pondered Roy

                    "Did you fall out of your chair? If so, sadly we missed it", said Sarah ever so sardonically

                             "Me sauntering up the avenue?", Maria asked from the doorway, a bag of fresh bread and pastries in her arms.

   "Maria!", we all cried, excited to see her at last

"No to all of those, well except Maria, I spied you coming up the block looking quite fine. The other thing I spied was a hawk doing an acrobatics show with a pigeon above the cathedral. It was amazing."

  "Sure Daniel, sure. I think hunger and imagination got the best of you again.",  Maria said handing me a chunk of bread

   

Almost, Not Quite

  In my time as a blogger and music lover I have viewed countless music videos. A dizzying amount to be sure. I have seen ones that I love and ones that I hate. There are videos that simply are so original and breath-taking that they are a wonder to behold aside from even the music that the video was made to accompany. There are also the dismal videos that don't seem to make any sense or are just plain weird or not enjoyable. But, there are also the ones that fall between the two markers, they are music videos that are almost, but not quite awesome, or also almost but not quite horrible. These valiant vids lie in limbo, and from this limbo I will show you a few of the videos that I think could be a bit better or worse.

  In this first installment of this segment, let's take a look at one of the latest videos from Metric for their song "Youth Without Youth". I think its a pretty good song, but the problem with the video is that it doesn't seem to know what it wants. The song is a bit dark and a bit edgy with heavy guitar and dark synths sailing throughout the song. The video on the other hand seems to have an odd gimmick of stacking things, contrasts of black and white and light tones, and a highly anti-climatic use of slow motion. Its artsy, sure, but to what end?

Metric
Youth Without Youth

Package Up Your Melancholy

Package up your melancholy

into a box

seal it tight,

walk it to

the nearest shoreline

be it big or small,

and leave that box of sadness

 for some other fool to find

And I know

sometimes it takes all your 

strength, just to survive,

just to stay alive

But now its time to let go

its time to begin anew

let your flowers bloom

let your strength grow

I'll be by your side