MIA - Winehouse tribute track

‘27‘ is said to be an unfinished demo from a relatively recent recording session and features the stinging lyrics “All rock stars go to heaven/ You said you’ll be dead at 27“. It's pretty and sad.
27 by _M_I_A_

Bill Withers - Lovely Day

Jay is the man.

Look at the beautiful anniversary letter we got from Jay:

Dear Nick and Evelyn,

It is one year since your most magical of marriages in the beautiful hills of Tuscany. I want only to send you profound best wishes and heartfelt congratulations from our entire family.

The first anniversary is considered to be a “paper” anniversary, apparently paling in light of the silver and gold anniversaries of years to come. But don’t underestimate paper. Unlike silver or gold, paper’s source is in a living organism, a tree

with roots, supports, and a crown of leaves. Stay rooted in love, continue to support each other in becoming the persons you are called to be, and your crowns will not be of leaves but of an ever growing glory of goodness which is more beautiful and lasting than silver or gold.

Happy Anniversary,

Jay, Jacqueline, Jerry, Julian, Thomas, Patrick

(My response pales in lyrical comparison):

Dear Jay, Jacqueline, Jerry, Julian, Thomas and Patrick,

Thank you so, so much for your lovely email, and for thinking of us on our anniversary! Fittingly, we were in Italy that weekend for a friend's wedding! (The bride, a childhood friend of Nick's, was marrying an Italian, and they had a lovely ceremony in his hometown of Castelfranco, just north of Venice). Attached is the actual setting where we read your email together: a terrace in the Old Town centre, sipping candy-coloured spritzes, and just enjoying each other's company. Not a bad way to spend an anniversary! We dared turn on the blackberry for a few minutes (despite outlandish roaming charges! :) and read your letter together. So touching; beyond lovely. And yes, your tree imagery definitely made me a little misty-eyed :)

Thanks so much to all of you for your support from the very beginning. The aim in a marriage is, like you say, to grow together through the organic unpredictabilities of a life shared. But young saplings also need some support in the beginning! It's friends like you who provide that, helping us grow into our best selves, able to weather all the winds and storms that may come.

Thank you so much,

Much love to you all,

Eve and Nick

Rox in the Box- The Decemberists

Jesus H. Chirst...

Watch this short video on a poet who has Alzheimers. It touches a deep, deep nerve. It's like Grandfather... Some of the moments they capture make you want to crawl under a rock to hide from the glare of our fragility and mortality. ...But then you crawl back out, because it's that fragility, in the end, which makes all the little moments that make up life so beautiful.

The Beauty of Maps

An episode from an amazing BBC series on maps as cultural objects, historical records, and as art. Incdentally, I fucking love maps, so this really couldn't be more convenient!

This episode deals with the Mappa Mundi, poduced in England in the Middle Ages, when Europe was teetering on the brink of the Renaissance. Incorporating crude geography, religious thought, history and myth, maps like this are the closest thing to an Encyclopoedia this age produced.

It does not face Nortward, as is the convention now, but Eastward - towards Jerusalem. It also chronicles the monsters and savages that live in the little-known outer edges of the known world...

And, like a time-capsule, it reveals not only what they saw, but the deeply, fearfully Christian lense through which everything was understood, making this a map that depicts not only the world as they saw it, but the world in relation to eternity. Yeah, it was one hell of map...

"Our love affair with maps is as old as civilization itself. Each map tells its own story and hides its own secret. Maps delight, they unsettle, they reveal deep truths, not just about where we come from, but about who we are.”

Daft Charleston