Finn

Into Temptation

Some nights it just happens. I fall into the depths of YouTube and I flutter between this and that .. and end up with a bonafide Finn-vaganza. I started off with Wherever You Are, a solo offering from a 2000-2001 webcast series. Things went a bit hardcore with my favourite Finn song: Suffer Never with Johnny Marr (The Smiths), Sebastian Steinberg (Soul Coughing) and Ed O'Brien & Phil Selway (Radiohead) as backing band. It was followed by Fall At Your Feet (studio version) - the song that made me buy my first Finn album. Then.. oh, obscurity: Don McGlashan of Mutton Birds performing Anchor Me with Neil Finn as backing vocalist. Less obscure, but certainly obscure enough, Finn Brothers performing Only Talking Sense on BBC's Later (I have an ace version of this song with Grant Lee Phillips doing harmonies, guh). And..

You get the picture.

And finally, "Distant Sun". The perfect pop song. The song that launched a thousand friendships based upon a shared love of the line I don't pretend to know what you want / But I offer love. The song that can still stop me in my tracks. This version was filmed at Crowded House's farewell concert in Sydney, 1996: around 2.11 the song just begins to hit me hard and I'm lost by the 2.35 mark. By the time the ad-libbing begins, I'm either snivelling into my tea, bobbing my head or dancing about (usually all three). It's not a perfect version but it's such a charged rendition.

Is it my favourite Finn song? No, as I said above, that honour goes to the deliciously dark "Suffer Never". Is it my favourite Crowded House song? Maybe, although I could say the same of In The Lowlands, Nails In My Feet (one of the rare studio recordings that's better than any live version) or Whispers and Moans. And then there are Four Seasons In One Day and Don't Dream It's Over, both classics in their own right. Don't get me started on pre-CH Finn songs or Tim Finn's solo stuff (Persuasion, omg! Twinkle! Why isn't there a YouTube version of the amazing Roadtrip?!).

But Distant Sun is my lodestone. It's my song. *reloads*

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Synergy

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Wheylona and I go back a decade (gosh). We first met when she worked in Sweden and was heading with friends to Denmark for a concert. I remember us walking through the streets of Copenhagen singing History Never repeats (youtube link) about twenty minutes after meeting for the first time. Ten years on, the American lives in the Basque country (Spain) and the Dane lives in the UK. History may never repeat, but time does move swiftly.

W. has written a fantastic entry about Will Ashford's recycled/re-contextualising word-art:

The artist, Will Ashford, takes pages from books and finds words and (near-)collocations that call to him, then designs his artwork around them. For me it's an amazingly engaging combination of art forms, resulting in layered, textured, juicy pieces that need to be savored and digested slowly. I find them very visually appealing--I love the the swirls, arcs, lines and dots, the touches of color on occasion, the contrast between sharp and blurred. I also totally dig the idea of taking words--things that seem so stable and static and fundamental--and highlighting the fact that they are not at all what they seem, or rather that they are more than what they seem.

Gorgeous stuff. And W. was lovely enough to say that experiencing Ashford's work brought me to mind. That means a lot to me, W.

Ashford's work brought another friend to mind. Bonnie MacAllister also works with the intersection of visual art and words. She's a performance poet, a visual artist and a feminist educator. I was lucky enough to receive a copy of her latest collection, Some Words Are No Longer Words about a month ago.

Sometimes I wish I could bring all my friends and acquaintances together in one room - all the writers, poets, thinkers, photographers, painters, crafters and performers - and just feed off the synergy. Whilst the internet does allow for easier interaction, having them all in that one room would be absolutely amazing.