Hiatus

I’m headed out to Montana to read and take some pictures.

Here are the CDs that travel with me wherever I go, whenever I go someplace that qualifies as somewhere else:

Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music

Creedence Clearwater Revival, Willie and the Poor Boys

Minutemen, Double Nickels On The Dime

Louis Armstong, The Hot Fives

Kinks, Something Else

Van Morrison, Astral Weeks

Rolling Stones, Exile On Main Street

Bob Dylan, Basement Tapes

Fela, The Best of Fela Kuti

Yo La Tengo, Fakebook and Painful

Tom Waits, Rain Dogs and Mule Variations

Byrds, Sweetheart of the Rodeo

Pogues, Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash

My Bloody Valentine, Loveless

Goodbye Babylon

The Clean, Compilation

Magnetic Fields, 69 Love Songs

Duke Ellington, The Blanton-Webster Band

Velvet Underground, Loaded

Big Star, Third

Neil Young, Decade

Rochereau and Franco, Omana Wapi

LaBradford, Mi Media Naranja

Ramones, All the Stuff

Charles Mingus, Mingus Ah Um

James Brown, Live at the Apollo

Replacements, Pleased to Meet Me and Let it Be

Johnny Cash, Love, God and Murder

Clash, London Calling

Count Basie, Atomic Basie

Wire, Pink Flag

Husker Du, New Day Rising

Stevie Wonder, Talking Book

Dave Godin’s Deep Soul Treasures From the Vaults, Volume One

Chuck Berry, The Great Twenty-Eight

Tommy Keane, Based on Happy Times

Steve Earle, I’m Alright and Transcendental Blues

Sonic Youth, Daydream Nation

Lounge Lizards, Voice of Chunk

Elmore James, King of the Slide Guitar

Rod Stewart, Every Picture Tells a Story

Def Jam Music Group, 10th Year Anniversary

East River Pipe, The Gasoline Age

Red House Painters, Ocean Beach

King Sunny Ade, The Best of the Classic Years

Culture, Two Sevens Clash

X, More Fun in the New World

The Handsome Family, Twilight

Nick Drake, Way to Blue

Mekons, Rock ‘n’ Roll

Nick Lowe, Party of One

NRBQ, At Yankee Stadium

Hank Williams, Forty Greatest Hits

Harry Nilsson, Personal Best

Ornette Coleman, Dancing In Your Head

Pretenders, Singles

Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers, L.A.M.F.

PJ Harvey, Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea

The Goldwax Story, Volume One

Elvis Costello, Get Happy

Guided By Voices, Do the Collapse

Warren Zevon, I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead

Charley Patton, Screamin’ and Hollerin’ the Blues

Guitar Paradise of East Africa

Dusty Springfield, Dusty in Memphis

Louvin Brothers, When I Stop Dreaming

Skip James, The Complete Early Recordings

Basehead, Play With Toys

Alejandro Escovedo, Gravity

In the recurring dream

my mother stands

in her bridal gown

under the burning lilac,

with Bernard Shaw and Bertie

Russell kissing her hands;

the house behind her is in ruins;

she is wearing an owl’s face

and makes barking noises.

Her minatory finger points.

I pass through the cardboard doorway

askew in the field

and peer down a well

where an albino walrus huffs.

He has the gentlest eyes.

If the dirt keeps sifting in,

staining the water yellow,

why should I be blamed?

Never try to explain.

That single Model A

sputtering up the grade

unfurled a highway behind

where the tanks maneuver,

revolving their turrets.

In a murderous time

the heart breaks and breaks

and lives by breaking.

It is necessary to go

through dark and deeper dark

and not to turn.

I am looking for the trail.

Where is my testing-tree?

Give me back my stones!

–Stanley Kunitz, from The Testing-Tree