aural fixations
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Aural Fixations, The Rumpus Mixtape #10: Making a Pie
Making a Pie (Instructions for Pie and Life) 1. The act of reading poetry is a fine thing to incorporate. Begin, say, with Cornelius Eady’s “Gratitude” and take it from there.
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Aural Fixations, The Rumpus Mixtape #9: Chilly Scenes of Winter
You can see the architecture of things in winter. Structures glisten. Naked trees drip with clear popsicles. We find ourselves alone with ourselves. Everyone else has gone away to someplace warmer/better/more fun or else they are tucked indoors. Even…
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Aural Fixations, the Rumpus Mixtape #8: Van Gogh
Van Gogh … beauty that breaks your heart. Vincent painting images that he had to view through the bars of the asylum. Vincent eating his paints.
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Aural Fixations, The Rumpus Mixtape #7: Revelry
Revelry. A raw expression of joy. Delight. It’s loud, laughing, possibly bawdy, frequently boozy.
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Aural Fixations, The Rumpus Mixtape #6: Drinking Red Wine
There are picnics where people discuss how long the potato salad can be out in the heat and there are picnics where people discuss Wittgenstein. At Wittgenstein picnics, the people are drinking red wine. White wine is a kiss; red…
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Aural Fixations, The Rumpus Mixtape #5: Maudlin
Maudlin: a feeling we don’t so much encounter as create. A sad place with funereal bits and a ladle of self-pity. Darker than Fitzgerald’s dark night of the soul, it is a place far past despair.
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Aural Fixations, The Rumpus Mixtape #4: Reading Didion
Great writers wound us. Their words cut into our bodies; their ideas become notions of ourselves. Cue Joan Didion. She stitches sentences through your brain. You emerge exhausted and charged — agreeing, disagreeing and questioning. Reading Didion invites a…
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Aural Fixations, The Rumpus Mixtape #3: Revolution in the Air
Revolution begins with devotion to a moral vision and a belief that egregious wrongs must be made right. In this way all revolutions are a revolution within. These days, there is both revolution in the air and a fear that not…
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Aural Fixations, The Rumpus Mixtape #2: Chicago
Chicago. Sometimes it gets overlooked as a great city as we tend to focus our energies on considering the coasts and leave the interior as a great blur in our minds.
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Aural Fixations, the Rumpus Mixtape #1: Pastoral
Pastoral. For a long time we’ve thought of that simply as pastures, poetry about streams and paintings of lush, lime green grass. Cows. Works by Virgil. A certain longing for the countryside. Shepherds. Hills rather than towns. Yes all of…