Day Five (Buddha Says Bye)

"What do you mean, you're leaving?"

"Just what it sounds like it means. I have packed up what few things I can consider to be mine and I am prepared to leave this place. And never look back, I might add," Buddha said. Buddha was not his real name, but he had been called Buddha for so long now that his true name was lost.

"Do you know where you're going to go?" I asked.

"Not exactly. I thought I would just venture out and enjoy all the sensations that freedom allows. Don't worry, I'll pass word to the Farm via Bumper Message, so as to keep you all informed. Well, this is it then. Goodbye."

The rain had been pouring down all week and the Farm was a soggy, muddy mess because of it. The others were nowhere to be seen as I stood in the drive, drenched, and watched Buddha walk out of our lives. There would be no Bumper messages. There would be no word from passers-by. There would be nothing. Just the day Buddha left us, cold, wet...and alone.

Day Four (A Sad Man in a Song)

I absorb records. I tend to consume so much music that record release dates all blur together. **SNOB ALERT** I spent much of this year consuming psychedelic world music from Turkey and Latin America to be bothered keeping up with whether Vampire Weekend put a new record out. I only loosely follow musical trends and I have completely turned my back on the pathetic joke known as American Radio.

Because of all that I rarely take the time at year's end to figure out what my favorite record was for the last 365 days. But this morning, in the shower, it dawned on me what my favorite record of '09 was: Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse Present Dark Night of the Soul.







Dig if you will a record produced and performed by Danger Mouse and Mark Linkous and featuring 11 various guests ranging from the Flaming Lips to Nina Persson of the Cardigans to the late Vic Chesnutt and even David Lynch himself on two tracks and hovering over the entire production as its chief influence. Now, house that record in a lavish book of Lynch photographs and then, to top it all off, have EMI step in and prevent the music from ever being publicly released. Thankfully, it streamed on a blog a few days before the injunction, and someone was nice enough to rip it. It wasn't too hard to find.

Why is it my favorite record of 2009? Because it plays like a really dark compilation of the best songs you've heard by a bunch of bands you really, really like.

And because it didn't really come out.

Score!

Day Three (Death's Tangent)

I was going to say something about the Beatles today but the finale of "Six Feet Under" totally knocked me sideways. What a fantastic show! I wept as though I watched my own family grow old and die.

Now that's storytelling.

Day Two (Sick Things)

I wake up in a small field. Once, here, a woman was arrested for carrying on a conversation with a nearby tree. Now all the trees are dead and for sale. In the distance I see some dead, vacant buildings, left abandoned.

I'm in my house. I know it's my house because I can almost feel safe. Safe, except there are two elongated, swollen, black slugs writhing in slippery ecstasy on the couch in the front room. Their wet slapping sounds echo down the elongated hallway and fill the rooms in a dripping, carnal haze that I now find myself trying to navigate through.

Somewhere in the house is a pink piece of paper that legally declares me an utter and complete loser, and for some reason I must locate it. It feels as though this simple piece of dyed, processed wood will solve all my problems. Quiet the voice. Prove a point. But will it?

The slugs on the couch continue their soggy ritual and a voice from behind me declares safety a myth.

I wake to find I was never asleep in the first place.

Day One (And So It Begins)

Pardon the mess, we're just setting things up here.

Introductions? Call me Gideon, for the sake of fiction. You want a mission statement?

Over the course of this sparkly new year I will lay myself bare. Or semi-bare. Or maybe I won't reveal one thing. Like I said, we're just getting started here. I do know for certain that we'll be talking a whole lot about music and, consequently, the stuff that goes on while it's playing. How's that for profound?

And away we go...