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scrapofpaper"We had a very balanced group. We had three men and three women. It was such a great group because of the way [Laura Nyro] put it together. I questioned a lot of things at first and then understood them. Things like having to have a female bass player or having to have a certain number of women and a certain number of men. I never thought in those terms for any other project I approached. But I understood for Laura that was a balance, nature; it was correct, it was right. It's the first time I ever saw anybody hire in terms of sexual balance, to make the group completely equal. It was important because her music required human relationships in the players. Every aspect of her songs were her."
--Jimmy Vivino, guitarist and Laura Nyro bandleader
"He caresses every bottle like it's the first one he's had
Saying, 'It ain't love, but it ain't bad' "
--Ani DiFranco, "Served Faithfully"
"And we get a little further from perfection
Each year on the road
I think that's called character
I think that's just the way it goes
But it's better to be dusty
Than polished like some store-window mannequin
Won't you touch me where I'm rusty,
Let me stain your hands?"
--Ani DiFranco, "Imperfectly"
"Unlike the Others"
Unlike the others, I am going to tell it to you straight.
This is what life is about: my bruised wet feet
half-clean from the shower, dripping and semi-swollen
with hot water and cold winter weather.
I am not going to talk to you about the moon,
the many adjectives which work. Tonight
is a broken toenail; the half-translucent white curve
hanging, displaced and solitary, a hook, a crook.
(Lorca, who lived a short life, would tell you
cuando sale la luna and would still say nothing
of the blisters, the bunions, the un-uniform surface,
the cost of living. The peeling limpid skin.)
The way the hair runs mermaid
wet over the shoulder-blades
the water in my armpit, the water in between my toes,
the water behind my knees and sneaking over my pelvis.
I cannot tell you what the moon looks like
from here, from the tiled steam of the
white-and-green bathroom,
smelling like an acre of skin, like raised nipples,
like wet genitals and loose water-softened scabs,
little white rounded mounds I long to peel back for pink.
(There is no such thing, William Carlos Williams,
as a pious wish to whiteness gone over.
There are only young women fresh out of the bath
with their hair wet slung over their shoulders
and their toe knuckle calluses happily peeling.)
--Jaida Jones
"Broadway was itself, always itself, a river of light and life that flowed through the shades and little fires of the city. Lucas felt, as he always did when he walked there, a queasy, subvert exaltation, as if he were a spy sent to another country, a realm of riches. He walked with elaborate nonchalance, hoping to be as invisible to others as they were visible to him.
"On the sidewalk around him, the last of the shoppers were relinquishing the street to the first of the revelers. Ladies in dresses the color of pigeons' breasts, the color of rain, swished along bearing parcels, speaking softly to one another from under their feathered hats. Men in topcoats strode confidently, spreading the bleak perfume of their cigars, flashing their teeth, slapping the stone with their licorice boots.
"Carriages rolled by bearing their mistresses home, and the newsboys called out, 'Women murdered in Five Points, read all about it!' Red curtains billowed in the windows of hotels, under a sky going a deeper red with the night. Somewhere someone played 'Lilith' on a calliope, though it seemed that the street itself emanated music, as if by walking with such certainty, such satisfaction, the people summoned music out of the pavement."
--Michael Cunningham, pgs. 7-8, Specimen Days
"Crazy, Simon thought. They're all crazy. Though of course the passengers on the Mayflower had probably been like this, too: zealots and oddballs and ne'er-do-wells, setting out to colonize a new world because the known world wasn't much interested in their furtive and quirky passions. It had probably always been thus, not only aboard the Mayflower but on the Viking ships; on the Niña, Pinta, and Santa María; on the first convoys sent off to explore Nadia, about which the people of Earth had harbored such extravagant hopes. It was nut jobs. It was hysterics and visionaries and petty criminals. The odes and monuments, the plaques and pageants, came later."
--Michael Cunningham, pg. 320, Specimen Days
"The earth--that is sufficient;
I do not want the constellations any nearer;
I know they are very well where they are;
I know they suffice for those who belong to them."
--Walt Whitman
"The superfluous is the most necessary."
--Voltaire
"To lead the people, walk behind them."
--Lao-Tzu
"Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself."
--George Santayana
"Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's own ignorance."
--Confucius
"Failure is the foundation of success...success the lurking place of failure."
--Lao-Tzu
"There is a society in the deepest solitude."
--Benjamin Disraeli
"You can't say civilization isn't advancing, in every war they kill you in a new way."
--Will Rogers
"Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do."
--Edgar Degas
"When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it happened or not, but I am getting old, and soon I shall remember only the latter."
--Mark Twain
"It's kind of fun to do the impossible."
--Walt Disney
"The Shadow Voice"
My shadow said to me:
what is the matter
Isn't the moon warm
enough for you
why do you need
the blanket of another body
Whose kiss is moss
Around the picnic tables
The bright pink hands held sandwiches
crumbled by distance. Flies crawl
over the sweet instant
You know what is in these blankets
The trees outside are bending with
children shooting guns. Leave
them alone. They are playing
games of their own.
I give water, I give clean crusts
Aren't there enough words
flowing in your veins
to keep you going.
--Margaret Atwood
"His wings are gray and trailing, Azrael, Angel of Death,
And yet the souls that Azrael brings across the dark and cold
Look up beneath those folded wings,
And find them lined with gold"
--Robert Welsh
--Jimmy Vivino, guitarist and Laura Nyro bandleader
"He caresses every bottle like it's the first one he's had
Saying, 'It ain't love, but it ain't bad' "
--Ani DiFranco, "Served Faithfully"
"And we get a little further from perfection
Each year on the road
I think that's called character
I think that's just the way it goes
But it's better to be dusty
Than polished like some store-window mannequin
Won't you touch me where I'm rusty,
Let me stain your hands?"
--Ani DiFranco, "Imperfectly"
"Unlike the Others"
Unlike the others, I am going to tell it to you straight.
This is what life is about: my bruised wet feet
half-clean from the shower, dripping and semi-swollen
with hot water and cold winter weather.
I am not going to talk to you about the moon,
the many adjectives which work. Tonight
is a broken toenail; the half-translucent white curve
hanging, displaced and solitary, a hook, a crook.
(Lorca, who lived a short life, would tell you
cuando sale la luna and would still say nothing
of the blisters, the bunions, the un-uniform surface,
the cost of living. The peeling limpid skin.)
The way the hair runs mermaid
wet over the shoulder-blades
the water in my armpit, the water in between my toes,
the water behind my knees and sneaking over my pelvis.
I cannot tell you what the moon looks like
from here, from the tiled steam of the
white-and-green bathroom,
smelling like an acre of skin, like raised nipples,
like wet genitals and loose water-softened scabs,
little white rounded mounds I long to peel back for pink.
(There is no such thing, William Carlos Williams,
as a pious wish to whiteness gone over.
There are only young women fresh out of the bath
with their hair wet slung over their shoulders
and their toe knuckle calluses happily peeling.)
--Jaida Jones
"Broadway was itself, always itself, a river of light and life that flowed through the shades and little fires of the city. Lucas felt, as he always did when he walked there, a queasy, subvert exaltation, as if he were a spy sent to another country, a realm of riches. He walked with elaborate nonchalance, hoping to be as invisible to others as they were visible to him.
"On the sidewalk around him, the last of the shoppers were relinquishing the street to the first of the revelers. Ladies in dresses the color of pigeons' breasts, the color of rain, swished along bearing parcels, speaking softly to one another from under their feathered hats. Men in topcoats strode confidently, spreading the bleak perfume of their cigars, flashing their teeth, slapping the stone with their licorice boots.
"Carriages rolled by bearing their mistresses home, and the newsboys called out, 'Women murdered in Five Points, read all about it!' Red curtains billowed in the windows of hotels, under a sky going a deeper red with the night. Somewhere someone played 'Lilith' on a calliope, though it seemed that the street itself emanated music, as if by walking with such certainty, such satisfaction, the people summoned music out of the pavement."
--Michael Cunningham, pgs. 7-8, Specimen Days
"Crazy, Simon thought. They're all crazy. Though of course the passengers on the Mayflower had probably been like this, too: zealots and oddballs and ne'er-do-wells, setting out to colonize a new world because the known world wasn't much interested in their furtive and quirky passions. It had probably always been thus, not only aboard the Mayflower but on the Viking ships; on the Niña, Pinta, and Santa María; on the first convoys sent off to explore Nadia, about which the people of Earth had harbored such extravagant hopes. It was nut jobs. It was hysterics and visionaries and petty criminals. The odes and monuments, the plaques and pageants, came later."
--Michael Cunningham, pg. 320, Specimen Days
"The earth--that is sufficient;
I do not want the constellations any nearer;
I know they are very well where they are;
I know they suffice for those who belong to them."
--Walt Whitman
"The superfluous is the most necessary."
--Voltaire
"To lead the people, walk behind them."
--Lao-Tzu
"Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself."
--George Santayana
"Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's own ignorance."
--Confucius
"Failure is the foundation of success...success the lurking place of failure."
--Lao-Tzu
"There is a society in the deepest solitude."
--Benjamin Disraeli
"You can't say civilization isn't advancing, in every war they kill you in a new way."
--Will Rogers
"Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do."
--Edgar Degas
"When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it happened or not, but I am getting old, and soon I shall remember only the latter."
--Mark Twain
"It's kind of fun to do the impossible."
--Walt Disney
"The Shadow Voice"
My shadow said to me:
what is the matter
Isn't the moon warm
enough for you
why do you need
the blanket of another body
Whose kiss is moss
Around the picnic tables
The bright pink hands held sandwiches
crumbled by distance. Flies crawl
over the sweet instant
You know what is in these blankets
The trees outside are bending with
children shooting guns. Leave
them alone. They are playing
games of their own.
I give water, I give clean crusts
Aren't there enough words
flowing in your veins
to keep you going.
--Margaret Atwood
"His wings are gray and trailing, Azrael, Angel of Death,
And yet the souls that Azrael brings across the dark and cold
Look up beneath those folded wings,
And find them lined with gold"
--Robert Welsh
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