A Song For You

Best Thing Going (For Tuesday)

It appears that there was a glorious(-seeming) t.v. pilot called 111 Gramercy Park filmed in 2003, and never picked up. Some kind of American Upstairs, Downstairs? And look! Tippi Hedren, Frank Langella, and Joel Grey were in it! And look! You can watch (some of) the pilot on the YouTube! I haven't yet, because I'm at la oficina. But I feel I can recommend it alls the same.

And b.t.dubs.--this accompanying image is unrelated to above unaired series pilot. I Google-Image-Searched "111 Gramercy Park," and boom. Do you think it's the spa at that Schrager-rape of the G.P.H.? I might actually love the mural...

Love In This Club: Roye'l

He's a fresh alternative, blending styles from the past, the present, and the future. Watch, and tell me you don't wish he was singing this about you:

The Best Thing Going (For Monday)

Verses

"The Tennis Court Oath" (1957)
John Ashberry

What had you been thinking about
the face studiously bloodied
heaven blotted region
I go on loving you like water but
there is a terrible breath in the way all of this
You were not elected president, yet won the race
All the way through fog and drizzle
When you read it was sincere the coasts
stammered with unintentional villages the
horse strains fatigued I guess . . . the calls . . .
I worry

the water beetle head
why of course reflecting all
then you redid you were breathing
I thought going down to mail this
of the kettle you jabbered as easily in the yard
you come through but
are incomparable the lovely tent
mystery you don’t want surrounded the real
you dance
in the spring there was clouds

The mulatress approached in the hall—the
lettering easily visible along the edge of the Times
in a moment the bell would ring but there was time
for the carnation laughed here are a couple of “other”

to one in yon house
The doctor and Philip had come over the road
Turning in toward the corner of the wall his hat on
reading it carelessly as if to tell you your fears were justified
the blood shifted you know those walls
wind off the earth had made him shrink
undeniably an oboe now the young
were there there was candy
to decide the sharp edge of the garment
like a particular cry not intervening called the dog “he’s coming! he’s coming” with an emotion felt it sink into peace
there was no turning back but the end was in sight
he chose this moment to ask her in detail about her family and the others

The person. pleaded—“have more of these

not stripes on the tunic—or the porch chairs
will teach you about men—what it means”
to be one in a million pink stripe
and now could go away the three approached the doghouse

the reef. Your daughter’s

dream of my son understand prejudice
darkness in the hole
the patient finished
They could all go home now the hole was dark
lilacs blowing across his face glad he brought you

End of Term

I, somewhat like Kanye West, may never cease thinking of time academically. And late April brings that breathless, it's-almost-end-of-term/beginning-of-deep, unknown summer feeling that simply must be met by a certain species of ethereal club-jam, a "dance song that can make you break down and cry." Last year it was Usher and Young Jeezy's "Love in This Club," a track so heavy we had to name a recurring A&P segment after it. This year--right on sched.--comes "Knock You Down," a collaboration between Keri Hilson, an all-around fantastic dame, who earned writing credits on Brit's Blackout and starred in the "Love in This Club" video, Ne-yo, and Kanye. And Lo--I cannot stop listening. It is layered and icy, ready for consumption.

I recall something Kelefa Sanneh wrote about the Timbaland/Danja beats on Timberlake's Futuresex/Lovesounds in 2006, "they sound like The Limelight imploding." And (as usual!) he's right. There is a sort of deconstruction of house music happening in these middle/late aughts and in this tune that I dig dig dig. Along with it's tripped trance beat, the lyrics spoken and sung by all three counterparts in "Knock You Down" create a very real conflict. There are shifts in tense. Keri and Ne-yo seem to conjure a dizzy, present love. Kanye seems to be writing a eulogy:

let the hour glass pass right into ashes.
let the wind blow the ashes right before my glasses.
so i wrote this love letter right before my classes.

Isn't this sort of 'yes and no' exactly what makes contemporary pop music so poetical?

In 2007, at the tail end of a blissed acid-trip in Oaxaca, on the roof of our hotel, P.M.C. and I were leading each other through a tour of Beyoncé. He had recently fallen in love with B'Day (in Ponza of all fantastic places), which I did not know (beyond requisite singles), and I had long loved Dangerously in Love, an album of SUCH merits, unknown to him. I played "Me, Myself, & I," a break-up song full of declarations of independence. He recoiled, went grey, shook his head, "No, no. I don't like this. You see. Can't you hear it? She doesn't mean what she says." P.M.C., who I trust implicitly in the sensory realms, was so very correct in his hallucinatory pang of an assessment. The essential bit of that track is the eerie, sad conflict between the tough lyrics and the lovesick, girlish delivery (the utter opposite of her potent anger/power in B'Day's reflexive "Irreplaceable").

These happy and sad, impish and powerful ballads of the millennium reflect our own pressing confusions about sex and love and gender and patria, especially when combined with one of those spooky, "imploding" machine beats. Future Perfect (ha). End of term.