Soundtracked

Isadora

Good afternoon, friends and followers! Today I have a special selection...a book I've purchased a few times for friends (including Kåre เลียม Enga I believe) because I love it so much and thought the recipients would enjoy it, and for myself because it hasn't survived lendings and moves and such. It's written by a Canadian musician (why'm I always reppin' Canada??), Hawksley Workman, and it's titled Hawksley Burns For Isadora  .

The items in this book, while categorized as poems, are mostly short paragraphs of romantic sentiments that originally appeared in print in the Personals section of the Toronto Sun want-ads. For those who don't remember or read newspapers, the Personals section was the place for missed connections, hook-ups, adoptees looking for their birth parents, and so on and so forth. Like a Tinder and Facebook oversharing and Twitter minus the character limit all rolled into one. Like, how dope is that? You open up the paper, looking for a job or a car or whatever, and your eyes fall to the Personals, and there's a fucking love note from one stranger to another that seems simultaneously oddly specific and vague, at the same time. Like, deeply personal. And all of the sudden, there's a book that collects them all.

And I don't know if you clicked on the Amazon link in the opening paragraph, but there's a small illustration of an average naked woman. Top bits, not the bottom. All throughout the book there is very tasteful artwork of women created by, of all people, Hawksley's mother. She's a multimedia artist who says in the book "Feminine based imagery documents beauty literally and symbolically through ample space, texture, bellies and organic elements...giving substance to time." You can't front on that.

I first came across Hawksley when Buffalo used to hold a weekly summer event called Thursday in the Square, a free concert series on Niagara Square downtown. Most went because it was a social event, but I preferred to go for the music if there was a decent band playing. Sometimes it would attract a crowd of around 10,000 people. Gord Downie was playing a solo show (I wrote about him two years ago for "Pursue the Horizon - Open for Signups" ; "Chancellor" ) and Hawksley was the opener. My sister and I giggled like immature schoolkids cuz his merch tent had thongs for sale, but we decided to check him out. Instantly we became fans for his stage presence...it was theatrical and inviting and loud but soft. The way he'd lurch on the stage, take a big step, and do a high-legged kick in the middle of a song like "Tarantulove" was crazy good. I don't care what People Magazine says; he's The Sexiest Man Alive and maybe the only person I've ever said that about. His lyrics can be sweet and biting, his talent is off the charts (he played most of the instruments on his first couple albums, and occasionally will send the rest of his band off the stage mid-song to perform a long-ass drum solo), and he's basically a sweet, thoughtful guy based on his limited social media. Like, I dunno...he put out a Christmas album of originals that blows everything else away, and this book is him basically longing for a girl who we don't even know if she exists or not. He's also self-effacing; if you get a chance check out the song "Fatty Wants To Dance"...he's talking about himself and the little era where he put on some weight and shaved his head. All in all, the man is a good time.

Which leads me to the meat of this entry. All of the prose (if I can call them that) pieces are titled isadora, (lowercase and comma intentional) as if they're a letter (and they're signed Hawksley as well). I'm actually gonna type this one out straight from the book, because I'm not sure it's available online anywhere on the sites that post actual poems.

isadora,
Pass this one on to the breeze, and keep a kiss. This one is just for you. My lover. My peace. My underwater breath. My green. My blue. We are moss on rocks. Like turtle babies sunning on their mama's back. The heat is ours. The Lucky. The Lovely. Kiss me forever, now. Even as this moment drifts towards its own tiny thimble-size grave, laid to rest beside all the other seconds passed. We celebrate. We move slow. We eat and drink each other. We sing. We scream. We pour. Bulbs flower. Skies dote on our bodies, clumsy and beautiful. We gaze. We know, we don't know.
         Hawksley

My first instinct is to paint this as a note to a long-distance lover, something I know a bit about personally. I love the capitalization in "The Lucky. The Lovely.", as if he's solidifying the inclusion of his lover. Moss on rocks, turtle babies sunning, thimble-sized grave, skies dote on our bodies...beautiful lines. Who wouldn't fall in love with someone who wrote you these things?

Yes, I have a soft side. Yes, I enjoy plenty of this man's work, and there are maybe two or three songs that cause me to shed a tear or two in the proper moment. Part of me wishes he were bigger in the US, but part of me also wants to keep him for myself. But I'm a giver and a sharer, so here we are.

I wrestled with trying to pick a Hawksley Workman song to accompany this entry, because there are so many good ones with exceptional lyrics and/or guitar and/or just a fun-ass video. But I settled on this because it's just him and a guitar in a radio studio, and it's something I've had to remind myself of occasionally in order to survive in this world.

"Clever Not Beautiful"   -Hawksley Workman

"Poets, lock up your words. Your tongues are all tied!
But let it be in every history book that the poets all tried
to lull us with lilting songs of a struggle
to mountain up a notion that we were something more than animals."

And that's all I got for today, fam. Things are going on that I don't know if I can discuss yet and I've got a lot going on tomorrow regarding my shoulder, so please, immerse yourself in some Hawksley and feel free to tell me about it...I love that shit. I could talk about my music for days. You know where the comment box is, my friends. And wash your hands!! Peace, as we sun our winter bellies, and GOODNIGHT NOW!!

"Emperor Penguin"   -The Tragically Hip
covered by Hawksley Workman and penned by Gord Downie

"Don't sound so detached; this is you and me.
Just give me your opinion before you turn to leave."