IN THE SHADOW OF THE ROSE, BUKOWSKI

bukowski is an appropriate spokesperson for this month’s theme. you could say his poems are what keep him alive, but they also point to an awareness of his own relationship with time. he had come to terms with many of time’s grand and gut-wrenching designs, and he found comfort in making reality feel as real as possible. his experiences and encounters with the world are delivered bluntly, with the harshness of a slap or a burn. that's how the ‘heat’ of the moment can feel sometimes, like a violence, an assault on the body and the mind and the house built to protect them. a response might be paralysis, shock, a crack in the walls of the house.

this poem exudes this type of heat and pressure. the kind that pushes down on top of you, that works to throw off whatever balance exists. a series of flash-bombs launched at the reader, a never-ending stream of action to contend with. sometimes, the moment is designed perfectly to torment. we feel its affliction from all sides. and yet, we can’t act, we can only absorb the shockwaves in our stillness. when intensity strikes, the quiet is not far off. bukowski knows this interplay, he writes about it like it’s part of his craft - and it is. the poet waits patiently in the wings, ready with the words we will inevitably lose to the passion, the presence, the hellfire of the moment. then, as time goes on, the moment outgrows itself - becomes too big for its body - and is fated to take on everything that follows.

-liv

excerpt from THE BELL JAR, SYLVIA PLATH

i don’t know how this wasn’t already the centerpiece of how i was thinking through this conversation about time and what it means to move through it, but i think that may be a good sign. i’m looking to make peace with time, and sylvia plath under this tree was not feeling peace here. i really used to think about this quote allllllll the time, because i have rarely related to any single piece of writing more than this page right here. i have recited it back to myself, i have shared it with people, i have warned myself of this fate, i have imagined myself as her, sitting beneath the fig tree, analysis paralysis and the heartbreaking consequence of indecision. i find myself constantly worried that if i choose one path all the way, then that’s it, that’s my life and i cannot choose another. like a jack of all trades and master of none. i do forget how long life is. but i also have an overwhelming awareness of its shortness too… and so much time in the shade of the tree feels like living in the shadow of time instead of in the light. i have imagined my life unfolding in so many ways, grieved dreams i feel i didn’t act on in time, watched time itself eat the possibilities of life. i suppose that as time goes on, this quote remains a fire under me to truly be present in time. there is dreaming and then there is living and dreams are beautiful and give us hope, but as is evident, les temps sont durs pour les rêveurs (times are tough for dreamers).

-sum

TIME AND TIME AGAIN, WE WISH

▶︎ •၊၊||၊|။|||| |

tracklist:

1. Born on a Train - The Magnetic Fields
2. I’'ll Be Your Mirror - The Velvet Underground, Nico
3. Should’ve Known Better - Sufjan Stevens
4. Maynard - Wormy
5. Burial At Sea - Tucker Zimmerman, Big Thief, Iji, Twain
6. Ball and Key - Color Green
7. I’d Have You Anytime - George Harrison
8. Ever Since New York - Harry Styles
9. Place To Be - Nick Drake
10. Heard Somebody Say - Devendra Banhart
11. Oh My Love - John Lennon
12. Now and Then - The Beatles
13. It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody - Weyes Blood

NO TOMORROW, JUST FOREVER

♫⋆｡♪ ₊˚♬ ﾟ.

tracklist:

1. I Melt With You - Modern English
2. Are We The Waiting / St. Jimmy - Green Day
3. Forever Young - Alphaville
4. Birds of A Feather - Billie Eilish
5. Pictures of You - The Cure
6. Tezeta (Nostalgia) - Mulatu Astatke
7. Last Night on Earth - Green Day
8. On My Side - Dehd
9. Time To Move On - Tom Petty
10. Illusion Of Time - Daniel Avery, Alessandro Cortini
11. Tomorrow Never Comes - Elvis Presley
12. Tomorrow Never Came (feat. Sean Ono Lennon) - Lana Del Rey
13. Patience - The Lumineers
14. Never Saw It Coming - Tigers Jaw
15. Whatsername - Green Day

REMAIN IN LIGHT, TALKING HEADS

there’s an urgency on this album that registers from the opening rhythms. it’s a call to dance, to shake your inhibitions, to embrace a kind of expression that defies logic. it’s the heat of the moment. it’s the heat and the moment in dialogue with one another, edging each other for 40 dynamic but perfectly controlled minutes.

in music, there is this beautiful marriage of time and feeling. remain in light injects us again and again with this relationship, reminding us, as each song shuffles brazenly into the next, that time will only lend itself to deeper, fuller feelings. as the music unfolds, we notice the album’s shape: not an arc, but something more like the swing of a pendulum, pushing into the future without ever forgetting to draw on what came just before. we experience different variations of one moment playing out over and over, palpable rhythms carrying us forward so that we barely have time to situate ourselves. we just know that we’re moving and that something is happening to us as we shimmy through time, its shadows and its visions.

the ideas introduced on this album – a mosaic of funky beats, genres, and influences – take root quickly and come together to form the picture of an acceptable but unfamiliar whole. the pieces adjust themselves slightly with every track, and only by the end of the album is everything cemented in place. and by then, of course, there is nothing more to hear. in theory, time has run out. or has it? does the music linger? can we bask in its afterglow?

- liv

22, A MILLION, BON IVER

i actually first heard part of this album on the day it was first ever performed live! this was at a small festival i found out justin vernon was hosting in eaux claires, wisconsin in 2015, just after his agonizing hiatus from making music. this specific album has truly withstood the test of time for me! i once thought that i’d never be able to listen to bon iver again because he would always remind me of my first love, but going to that show was actually one of my first really intentional ways of moving forward in time while creating new experiences with the things that can continue to move me. timeless things like music, art, a beautiful place i get to remember. 

this album is a chilling, tender, experimental meditation on memory, loss, and the self through time. the iconic opening line “it might be over soon” is a knowing wish from within the deep, a moment of clarity in which a simple truth repeated can become a prayer. the sound is not the brand of indie folk we once knew as bon iver, but instead is layered, dissonant, fragmented. memories and moments in time struggling to entwine with an obvious identity. I hear him thinking through the way our past can linger with us, seep through our present, yet still feel so out of reach. by the end of the record there is a sort of peacemaking, a reckoning in time leaving him days with no numbers, an acceptance of time and its toils becoming part of us, despite all resistance we let it in.

- sum

CHALLENGERS, LUCA GUADAGNINO

i like the way this film seems to exist on two planes. there’s the visceral, the here and now that delivers on what the audience is primed to expect: a sharp, aesthetic composition of tennis, sweat, and lust. and then, there’s everything that’s simmering below it.

the main characters, three tennis prodigies, navigate a tense, ruthless depiction of a love triangle. but instead of loving or fighting or truly competing, they use each other – and the emotional pain suffered at the hands of one another – to fuel their personal successes. under each other’s watchful gaze, the pressure of the moment takes over and becomes a way of life. it’s this idea of overwhelming closeness that is so richly explored in the movie, the way our selfhood can become so inextricably tied to the behaviors and actions of someone else and how that carries on through time. pure codependency. a reliance on a near-oppressive dynamic, forged in the fires of momentary bliss.

i thought a lot about time’s role in storytelling while watching this film. will time account for what we’re seeing and why? is it merely the guiding hand over or under the narrative? is it something wiser than that, its own character with a set of motives crystallized by its own rules? a worthy challenger to the very idea of creation? the climax of this film doesn’t arrive until the very last scene, where we are asked to understand time as both divider and healer. the same device that haunts our sense of freedom, tests the control we have over our lives, separates us from what we truly love, is also the one thing that can repair the damage done.

- liv

FOREST OF NOISE, MOSAB ABU TOHA

this is a collection of poems that was just published in the last month by a poet from gaza. he is a palestinian poet, teacher, and father. his writing is beautiful but he does not write to be beautiful. i think he writes to declare his reality in time. he writes feverishly, a fearsome sense of running out of time, recounting the story of his homeland as it is being devastated before his eyes. he is a young person, only a few years older than me. i can tell from his dedications and poem titles that we studied the same writers. his poetry speaks the language of generations of resistance spanning time and space. this is an urgent and lucid voice calling out in the forest of noise, telling of a resilient, enduring people refusing to be swallowed. a movement through memory, life, death, anguish, fear, resistance, endurance, and unspeakable pain, mosab’s poetry is an urgent request to realize, confront, and act vigorously to move on the reality of now.

he will be doing a reading live at city lights bookstore in san francisco on monday, november 4th, and will read again in berkeley on november 8th. you could tune in virtually, too.

-sum