Short Storytelling

nobody@vox.com(Krissy) — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 21:54:31 -0700

I'm not exactly recommending This Too Will Pass by The One AM Radio, but I do want to share the lyrics from one song. The CD is nice enough, if you're in the mood for something extremely mellow you should check it out, but these lyrics to "In The Time We've Got" are pretty captivating.

I took you to the place where I was born. You said that it was just as I'd described. We moved in soon after the days turned warm, just in time to see the spring arrive. I watched you through the windows in our room. Your hair grew long under the arbor shade. Our love was new, but the hour grew late too soon; how suddenly that honeyed light would fade. You had the city in you. Always in the way you moved were the skyline and the avenues. You had the city in you, I knew. When the autumn came, the leaves turned one by one, 'til the barren trees were left to stand alone. You still felt the same, you said, as since we had begun, but a longing crept into the eyes I'd known. I watched you pack; I was rooted to the spot. We fell asleep awhile beneath the oak. "It's our job to live as well as we can in the time we've got," was written in the note I found when I woke. You had the city in you. Always in the way you moved were the skyline and the avenues. You had the city in you, I knew. So before the weary ache wore through, you slipped back into the avenues.

Maybe Hrishikesh Hirway can have a career as a novelist if the singer-songwriter thing doesn't work out. Listen to "In The Time We've Got" or download it.

I saw the film Paris, Je t'aime this weekend. It's 18 vignettes about love in/for Paris each by a different noted director, so it is, as you would guess, quite a patchwork of stories. It's worth seeing for a few different reasons, but what fascinated me most was the sheer challenge of telling an entire story in five or so minutes, and seeing solutions from different minds in back-to-back succession, with hardly time to pause and absorb in between. Go see it while it's still in theaters (but only after you've seen "Once".)

I'd gone to RottenTomatoes.com to skim the reviews beforehand, and several of the critics used the word "omnibus" to describe the film. So after heading to dictionary.com, I learned a new word this weekend. Problem is, it's such a specific term that I might only find one or two opportunities to use it in the remainder of this lifetime, and it's one of those words that you can't just throw into conversation without sounding like a pretentious jerk. Because no one knows what omnibus means without looking it up. OK maybe one of you knew. Mind you, I love strange, specific and unwieldy words, but words are meant to convey meaning, not stump people.

Vox is serving me up Jeff Buckley banner ads. I have no idea how I feel about this.

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when the lights go down in the city

Short Storytelling