[seconds and decades]

I'm further north than south

2012-01-29T21:28:00.000-08:00

We went to a yurt near Astoria for the weekend. It had a killer skylight.

Mama said knock you out.

2012-01-27T06:25:00.000-08:00

I'm working on a story about two teenage boxing brothers. The older one, Gabe, just fought his first pro fight. The younger, Cesar, is fighting for the amateur national championship next week. I went to watch some sparring matches at their gym Wednesday night. Boxing (particularly in a dark room) is NOT easy to photograph. Oh well. These blurry shots feel like what being there felt like.

Burn what is left of me.

2012-01-26T06:28:00.000-08:00

More scenes of the sandy ground.

where the light bends at the cracks

2012-01-25T10:23:00.000-08:00

and I'm screaming at the top of my lungs
pretending the echoes belong to someone
someone I used to know

new slang when you notice the stripes

2012-01-22T13:40:00.000-08:00

I went to the beach. Found some messages in the sand.

Under the sea

2012-01-18T21:59:00.001-08:00

My new friend Cristina spent two days this week teaching me how to pick, clean and cook various sea creatures. We started seafood fest 2012 in this tiny shop on Powell Boulevard crowded with tanks of live creatures (and a few, namely fish and squid, dead). Here are some scenes I shot with my phone.

In this misty place where hunger finds us

2012-01-12T07:34:00.001-08:00

The fog has rolled in thick in Portland this winter. Here's my fire escape, disappearing into it one morning.

Driving through it, I keep thinking of lines from what was my favorite poem in college:

Fog Report
By Audre Lorde

In this misty place where hunger finds us
seeking direction
I am too close to you to be useful.
When I speak
the smell of love on my breath
distracts you
and it is easier for me
to move
against myself in you
than to solve my own equations.

I am often misled
by your familiar comforts
the shape of your teeth is written
into my palm like a second lifeline
when I am fingerprinted
the taste of your thighs
shows up
outlined in the ink.
They found me wandering at the edge
of a cliff
beside nightmares of your body
"Give us your name and place of birth
and we will show you the way home."

I am tempted
to take you apart
and reconstruct your orifices
your tongue your truths your fleshy altars
into my own forgotten image
so when this fog lifts
I could be sure to find you
tethered like a goat
in my heart's yard.

how fast a thing unravels

2012-01-08T10:27:00.000-08:00

Is that where it happens?
Only yesterday when I came back, I had this
diaphanous disaffection for this room, for spaces,
for the whole sky and whatever lies beyond.
I felt the eggplant, then the rhubarb.
Nothing seems strong enough for
this life to manage, that sees beyond
into particles forming some kind of entity?
so we get dressed kindly, crazy at the moment.
A life of afterwords begins. - john ashberry

And if the distance we've sewn together is thin

2012-01-05T12:29:00.000-08:00

For the past few New Year's Eves, Ryan and I have made stop-motion videos to memorialize our nights. The conceit is a little silly -- they're mostly staged portraits from a night -- but they're fun, I think. Making the pictures creates this space of excess celebration and nostalgia, I think, which, for my money, is pretty much what NYE is about. Anyway, this year, we were wondering how we should make the video, and Ryan thought it would be fun to recreate an old Photobooth. He took a picture of Photobooth curtains, brought over his flash, et voila. He shot most of the photos, and you can see them on his Flickr account, but here are some I made.

Broke both legs, but I'll be just fine

2011-12-31T06:15:00.000-08:00

Even when I was young, when New Year's Eve seemed only to happen elsewhere, I loved this holiday. Back then, the chance to stay up late was special enough. We watched Dick Clark's innocent countdown, and I imagined one day I would join the crowds underneath New York's falling ball. The hour between the East Coast's new year and Louisiana's always felt surreal. Which year was it exactly? Were we really so behind? Local TV stations sometimes staged their own countdowns, but the real thrill of another year passing always felt over by 11 p.m.

In junior high, I watched MTV's East Coast new year's specials with my best friend Ashley. We drank Welches sparkling grape juice and once thought we had made wine simply by adding wintergreen certs. We jumped on her brother's bed, claiming we were drunk. I spent Y2K alone, again watching MTV. My parents had friends. My brother had friends. I did not. I was 17 and cried until 10 p.m., at which point I just went to sleep.

My later new years were mostly drunken blow-outs. I kissed strangers. I kissed boyfriends. I kissed girlfriends. I overheard cat fights. I started arguments. I kissed some more. One night we ran down the street -- not drunk, but holding balloons -- then crowded into Portland's tiniest bar to listen to a 12-piece brass band sound the end of 2008. We couldn't stop smiling. The train ride home felt like a party, but I was already tired.

Last year I had my first proper adult new years eve -- dinner, Apples-to-Apples and a glass of champagne. The biggest commotion came when I sat on a toothpick. For the first time in a decade, I did not kiss anyone. We watched a countdown on a website called New Years Eve Ball. I went to bed before 1, happy, sober and ready to start a new year. That was the last great night I had for a while. For months after, I thought 2011 might be the worst yet. In many ways, it has certainly been the least static for me. I spent a good bit of the year stumbling, slouching toward whatever. But I also had a ton of fun, and when I look back on 2011, I want to remember these moments instead:

-- French Press adventures: We swam, ate hot dogs and other, more elaborate dinners. We kayaked and walked around painted hills. We built fires, told secrets, composed songs and made a thousand pictures. In short, we did it up all over the northwest.

-- Working out with a personal trainer: This seriously changed my life.

-- A's last month in town, though that was pretty bittersweet

-- Trips to the river, listening to Mariah Carey and Kid Cudi and drinking watermelon beer

-- Staying up all night talking to M at the Ace Hotel

-- Cabins!

-- Picnics, talking about rap, shoes and girls with L

-- Shopping and photo-clicking with K (plus watching Studio 60)

-- Coffee at L's in Iowa

-- Watching basketball with L in Chicago

-- Dancing to "All Night Long" with R

-- Fourth of July with my family

-- Cooking, learning about linguistics with K

-- Meeting/writing about Hugh's epic bike ride

-- 6 a.m. texts, learning how to say good morning again

-- A hot tub in perfect sunlight, soundtracked by wind chimes

-- Getting Lafayette!!

And finally, yesterday, the day before the last day, was totally perfect. The last day came quietly, in a room full of antlers, and I felt wholly different -- better -- than a year ago.

We never live long enough in our lives / to know what today is

2011-12-30T14:34:00.000-08:00

Last week, on my day off, I went to follow a photographer around as he makes Type 55 Polaroid portraits of his neighbors. I had a blast. The experience really put me in a great mood for Christmas. Anyway, tomorrow it -- along with the story about the car-free family -- are running as centerpieces in the Oregonian. I only had two hours to write this, but check it out if you're inclined.

Bobby Abrahamson was tired of running away. For years, the photographer had been jetting to foreign countries, shooting a roll a day of landscapes or street scenes -- faraway pictures in faraway places. In June, he found himself with a new home in St. Johns and a plane ticket to South America. Just once, he realized, he wanted to stay.

The 45-year-old cashed in his ticket and began what has become a daily ritual, walking through St. Johns with an old Crown Graphic camera and a pack of expired film, making portraits of his neighbors. The 100 or so black and white photos show a neighborhood made up of the blue collar, the quirky and the buttoned-up. Of families and misfits, young and old.

"I wanted to make photos where you got to know the people," he says. "I wanted to start moving in closer. Home is a place of discovery."

The stark street portraits show subjects locking eyes with the viewer. Abrahamson rarely captures much of a background. The people are the place.

READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE (AND SEE HIS PORTRAITS) at OREGONLIVE.

Best of 2011: Movies

2011-12-29T06:10:00.000-08:00

These are the five best movies I saw this year.

1) Bombay Beach
Nothing inspired me this year the way this movie did. I would happily watch scenes from it every day. It's beautifully shot. It pushes the boundaries of documentary. And the characters are indelible. For a taste, check out this excerpt.

2) Weekend
Two men have one weekend together. This has the best aspects of Before Sunrise and Before Sunset with its own charm. Easily the sweetest, best gay movie I've ever seen. Somehow it's soft, subtle and beautiful, even with a cocaine and sex scene or two.

3) Beginners
Mike Mills' most recent film is quirky in a smart, enjoyable way that his wife's film (The Future by Miranda July) just wasn't. I think that's because underneath the bells and whistles, this is a sweet, pure story. I love the score, the acting, the plot development and the main character's illustrations.

4) Blue Valentine
When I was watching this movie, I found it totally cute and sweet. But I felt wrecked for weeks after by its doomed-love-is-hopeless message. Even now, nearly a year later, I can't hear the film's central song -- "You and Me" -- without a knot tangling inside my gut. Unlike the other movies in this list, I never want to see this one again. Too powerful.

5) Bill Cunningham New York
This movie is so charming, but it also handles some serious and sad moments with aplomb.

This is about waiting, shifting from one foot to another

2011-12-28T11:58:00.000-08:00

See, our lips bend.

2011-12-27T21:00:00.000-08:00

The year will soon be over, and I'll return to documenting other people. These last weeks become pretty navel-gazey for me. Here is one other, a list of all the books I read in 2012. My goal for the year was 24 books. [EDIT Anna reminded me of another book I had read, plus I read one more, so GOAL ACCOMPLISHED soundly].

Those magazines started to pile up, though.

1. Joshua Ferris - The Unnamed
I liked the first half, hated the second.

2. J.M. Coetzee - Summertime
Great structure experiment, really engaging and fun to read.

3. Kristen Hersh - Rat Girl
This surprised me in how well written it is. It's weird at times, but also (again surprisingly) optimistic.

4. Jeff Lumine - Tales from The Farm
Too quiet for me

5. Jay McInerney - Bright Lights, Big City
I'm glad I read it (finally), but I didn't think the second person was actually necessary.

6. Richard Russo - Empire Falls
LOVED IT. Would read it again, happily. Great characters, great plot, great details.

7. Tom McCarthy - Remainder
Great premise taken too far

8. John D'Agata - Halls of Fame
Very original and interesting, but ultimately too experimental for my tastes

9. Isabel Wilkerson - The Warmth of Other Suns
For this, I have mostly expletives. It is so good. Reading it felt very important -- both politically and personally to me. I learned so much about my own family and our region. BUT. It could have been 100 pages shorter easily if she didn't repeat herself so much.

10. Darrin Strauss - Half a Life
I heard this story on This American Life, so I thought it would be repetitive, but it was actually really interesting and well written. It's a quick read.

11. Karen Russell - Swamplandia!
So fun to read. Very imaginative, but still relatable. I definitely want to read it again after some of the details go foggy. Right now, it's still so vivid in my brain. I could have done without some of the near-the-end creepiness/ghost talk, but still, I really liked it.

12. Gabrielle Hamilton - Blood, Bones & Butter
The first two-thirds of this book filled me with such immense pleasure. I couldn't stop telling people to read it. I bought my best friend a copy. All I wanted to do was go home and read it. The last third totally ruined that feeling -- it's boring, off-topic and totally unnecessary. I'm going to forget it exists, though, and just concentrate on the giddiness I felt reading the beginning and middle.

13. Carsten Jensen - We, The Drowned
Epic, a serious masterpiece. It is so long, and it's and not a subject I'd normally be interested in, but it was absolutely worth the time. It's beautifully written, deftly woven and richly detailed.

14. Arthur Phillips - The Tragedy of Arthur
Really inventive. I thought it dragged toward the end, but definitely unlike any other book I've ever read.

15. Yann Martel - Beatrice and Virgil
I liked the play section best. Otherwise, it was very didactic. It tried too hard to convince me that it's important.

16. Myla Goldberg - Bee Season
I never really got into it. The voice is too precious, and at this point (though maybe this was not true when this book came out), spelling bees have been overcovered.

17. John Kennedy Toole - A Confederacy of Dunces
I can't believe I hadn't read it before. I loved every second of this book. It's hilarious, inciteful, vivid. A total blast.

18. Ruth Reichel - Tender at the Bone
I'm so glad I read this after Blood, Bones & Butter because it is so much better. I wouldn't have enjoyed Hamilton's book nearly as much had I known this existed. Also, this doesn't have a bad ending. Really fun to read. I want to be Ruth Reichel's friend at any age.

19. Adam Levin - The Instructions
Possibly the largest book I've ever read. Carrying it around will invite stares. But I loved it. Reading it felt like reading the Bible to me, devotional. I wrote a lot of fragments down in my journal, and despite being so massive, I found it really readable.

20. Rachel DeWoskin - Big Girl Small
Totally hated it

21. Jeffrey Eugenides - A Marriage Plot
After the massiveness of The Instructions and the disappointingness that was Big Girl Small, I stopped reading books for a month or two. This was the perfect return. The characters felt so real to me, and I felt like I was learning something at every turn. It was well written in a way that does not demand to be noted -- it didn't inspire me into sighs and immediate underlinings the way his previous two novels did -- but rather it's written well in a way that makes the language beside the point. I never once found a sentence I didn't like, which left me to the business of just reading instead of critiquing. Totally fun to read and again the kind of book I'd easily read again after I've lost the vivid impressions I have of it now.

22. Dana Spiotta - Stone Arabia
I really liked listening to her interview on Fresh Air, but I didn't really like this book. There are parts I wanted to write down in my journal -- mostly meditations on memory or the way courting changes as you grow older -- but I never felt totally invested. I did read nearly all of it in one day, though, so it's a quick read.

23. Brady Udall - The Lonely Polygamist
Somehow this book was both complicated and simple. Though there are a lot of characters, the three most detailed are very alive and rich. It's a good story, entertaining and fast-paced. The end started to feel a little too dark and long -- and the ultimate end annoyed me -- but I still liked it.

24. Tea Obreht - The Tiger's Wife
I loved this so much. It's whimsical but serious, really well written and engrossing. The novel moves between three different stories/timelines, and critics have said she shifts just when each story gets good. That's true, but it made me so excited to keep reading so I could get back.

25. Tom Perrotta - The Leftovers
This was super easy to read and focuses on one of my life-long fascinations: The Rapture. I like a lot of the situations Perrotta comes up with, but his diction lacks something special for me. Some of the dialogue just seemed too easy. But I had fun reading it.

26. Hank Steuver - Tinsel
I really liked parts of this, but ultimately it felt like a long newspaper article to me. I bet it was really fun to report, so mostly I felt jealous reading it, but I didn't like the way Southerners are depicted as such an other. But I'm probably being sensitive. There were some really fun parts.

we keep on churning and the lights inside the house turn on

2011-12-26T19:40:00.000-08:00

Here's a video I made for a story I have in the Oregonian next weekend. I had a hard time chasing after them to get footage of them biking, so the b-roll isn't great. But Vivianna was a great interview.

Best of 2011: Songs (1-10)

2011-12-22T22:35:00.000-08:00

ONE - BEYONCE - 1 + 1
Nearly every time I've heard this song (including the 45 times in a row I listened after I first heard it), I have been blown away by the way Beyonce manages to make such a special moment out of a song so simple. Though the song's actual structure and melody aren't innovative (in the way that say "Countdown" is), this is a song for this specific time we are in. "We ain't got nothing but love." The sentiment isn't new ("Even though we ain't got money, I'm so in love with you honey"), but it's one that has persisted an unusually long time now. For much of our country, connections, relationships and love are the only riches people have -- and with job growth so slow, the only riches some can even hope to have. The country is in war or conflict or holding zones all over the place. Taking in national news -- political debates increasingly boiled down to polarizing impracticalities -- can feel like its own war. When I hear this song, I imagine a woman in this time, our time, caught in a whirlwind -- "Just when I ball up my fists" -- but mollified, protected by love -- "I realize I'm lying right next to you."

That she conveys this -- an anger, a fear, a trust bubbling below the surface -- with such a controlled tone and a beat that barely varies (it's hardly even there) is just proof of her talent. Atlanta singer-songwriter The-Dream wrote this song, under a different name, for his own second album. He also wrote most of "Single Ladies," so his talent is one that really finds magic with Beyonce. He leaked his demo sometime this year, and while I think his voice is great, the juxtaposition of his intended version with Beyonce's underscores for me how much of the power of this song is Beyonce's vocal talent. Take, for example, the cell phone video Jay-z shot of her rehearsing before she performed the song for the first time (on American Idol). For my money, she is the aught's most consistent (and evolving) pop star. Hundreds of listens after that first 45-spin run, this song still makes me cry. And even though I wasn't in love this year, when she sings "I don't know when I'm gon' die, but I hope that I'm gon' die by you," I feel exactly what she means.

TWO - ADELE - ROLLING IN THE DEEP (JAMIE XX REMIX, featuring CHILDISH GAMBINO) (plus the original, plus Lil Wayne's SFTW cover)
Because this was the most unavoidable song of 2011, I get that music bloggers are going to lash out against it. But I love the lyrics, and I loved dancing to it. It was covered and remixed every which way, which I think is one of the great themes of the year. The communal-nature of the Internet, where we all can somehow exist in one space, has taken music back to the share and sample like crazy nature of the 1960s. Somehow, this song felt like it belonged to all of us. And even though it was everywhere all of the time, the lyrics made Rolling the Deep feel personal, too. We could have it had it all, indeed.

THREE - HOLCOMBE WALLER - HARDLINERS
After a dark February and March, this song became my daily devotional. Holcombe's sweet voice, beseeching, "Repeat after me: I won't stop loving" made me hopeful for some future I wasn't always sure would exist for me. I love the line, "Don't laugh 'cause there just might be a soft curve in your hardest line." For me, this song is pure and beautiful deliverance -- not to mention catchy and backed by a gorgeous and smart video.

FOUR - THE WEEKND - THE BIRDS, PT. 1
I spent many an hour at the gym, biking or running faster because of this song's furious cadences. That snare running below his smooth voice!

FIVE - YOUTH LAGOON - 17
I love the pacing, the lyrics and the build-up in this sweet song about imagination and youth. It's pretty cinematic sounding, which is why Ryan and I made a video inspired by it.

SIX - AUSTRA - LOSE IT
This dark, cold and synthy song is catchy and dance-y. It's also somehow accessible, despite being sung by one of the weirdest voices -- that operatic warble!! -- of the year.

SEVEN - BEYONCE - COUNTDOWN
This song is stuffed full -- with lyrics, with samples and horns and drums and synths. THIS is Beyonce crazy in love, and though it's teeming, it never feels dizzying. For me, this song is Pavlovian -- if it's on, I can't not dance. I've danced in my kitchen, in the car, in the living room while my cat eyes me warily. The video -- somehow even crazier than the production -- is my favorite of the year (tied with Rihanna's "We Found Love").

EIGHT - JAMES BLAKE - WHY DON'T YOU CALL ME?
The first 30 seconds of this song kill me. This song is probably the shortest on the list, and even its 1:36 includes multiple seconds of silence. But that line -- why don't you call me what we both know I am -- says more than enough.

NINE - NICOLAS JAAR - I GOT A WOMAN
This song, a woozy seductive reimagining of Ray Charles' I Got a Woman tucked behind some French, soundtracked many a rainy Portland day for me. So dreamy.

TEN - FRANK OCEAN - NOVACANE
I love Frank Ocean's voice. On this song -- a tale of meeting a girl and smoking novacane -- he sounds his best - sexy, mysterious, lonely and new.

Best of 2011: Songs (11 - 25)

2011-12-21T13:19:00.000-08:00

11. Lil Wayne - Six Foot Seven
This song has the best one-liners of any rap song this year ("Woman of my dreams, I don't sleep so I can't find her," "Paper chaser, tell that paper, 'Look, I'm right behind you,'"). My favorite is "Real Gs move in silence like lasagna." Wayne doesn't tell many stories with his songs anymore, and that saddens me, but he is still the wittiest rapper working. Run all that over this frenetic, "Day-O" sampling beat (thanks to "A Milli" producer, Bangladesh!) and you have a song so joyous it had me dancing 12 months of the year.

12. The Weeknd - Wicked Games
For me, this song is "House of Balloons'" center. It sets up the themes, the sound. In some ways, it's the least risky -- "Glass Tables" is weirder and more innovative, sound-wise -- but I like simple when it's done well. All said and done, this was the song I returned to most often from The Weeknd. Abel Tesfaye's a belter, a hook-maker. And here, that all comes together perfectly.

13. Youth Lagoon - Afternoon
Much of Youth Lagoon's album is sad, a quiet unraveling and study of his anxiety. This song is bouncier, happier, the kind of song you want to listen to at sunset as you drive. The lyrics -- about a metaphorical demon -- are just as sad as the others, but what stays with you after hearing this one is the oh oh ohs, the beats that sound like whistles, at the song's end. And they are pretty dang joyous.

14. Fleet Foxes - The Shrine/An Argument
This is by far the weirdest song on the album, so for my first few listens, I skipped over it. When I did listen, I kept getting stuck at "Sunshine over me no matter what I do." For a line that seems so sunny, it sounds so sad. Eventually, I came to feel both meanings -- usually at once -- as I listened. Sunshine, when you don't want to feel it, can be painful ("In the morning waking up to terrible sunlight ... when you talk you hardly look in my eye"). But by the year's end, that line felt hopeful, if still urgent. I love the turns this song makes, and, as always, I love Fleet Foxes' harmonies.

15. The Head and the Heart - Lost in My Mind
This is just an old-fashioned, foot-stomping alt-country revival of a song. I love the harmonies. I love the beat. I love the lyrical concept (along with the line, "Put your dreams away for now"). On many late-night drive homes, I sang this song as loud as I could, my rallying cry of 2011.

16. Lana Del Rey - Video Games
Ryan and I liked this song long before we knew there was a video or controversy or snobbery about her. I think it's ridiculous that in 2011 people are surprised to find someone may have been manufactured. Her plastic surgery lips are her own business. Personally, I just like this song. It's haunting, dark and pretty and thoroughly modern in its imagery.

17. The Vaccines - Wetsuit
This album reminds me of the early days of Interpol. This song is my favorite, mostly because it sounds like being 28: "We all got old at breakneck speed. Slow it down, go easy on me."

18. Drake - Marvin's Room
In this thoughtful, somber song, Drake gives voice to the late, drunken call to an ex. For most rappers, this moment would be reduced to one line -- and it'd probably be a drunken text -- but Drake is unlike other rappers. He expands the moment into a meditation -- on lost love, on his own life failings, on what it means to need someone "to put this weight on." Somehow he also squeezes in gender and race relations.

19. tUnE-yArDs - Powa
Her voice is just so special. I feel like she is most in control of it on this song.

20. Lil Wayne - How to Love
This sounds unlike any other Weezy song. The lack of frills makes Wayne sound more genuine than he usually does. I don't love hearing auto tune, but it's just barely there. The song is so plaintive and straight-forward. On it, Lil Wayne raps over a slow bass line about a woman who has had a lot of moments but none that were real. This perspective is new for Wayne, too. He usually has some choicely misogynistic words for women. With his next singles, he was back to old business, but I'm grateful for this respite.

21. The Weeknd - Coming Down
Abel Tesfaye's voice sounds especially beautiful and urgent here. As with other Weeknd songs, this one starts slowly with Tesfaye's voice at a sultury almost-whisper. Then, at "Ihe party's finished and I want you to know," the song explodes with a desperate beauty. This album, and this song especially, is, sonically, the sexiest I heard all year.

22. Adele - Someone Like You
I've had to stop myself several times this year from sending a note to someone saying "For me, it isn't over." Who didn't get all choked up and nostalgic with lost love listening to this?

23. ROSTAM - Wood
This is so soothing and pretty.

24. Drake and Rihanna - Take Care
My favorite aspect about music in 2011 is the way musicians keep building on each other’s work. Crack-addled (yet still clear somehow) Gil Scott-Heron wrote “I’ll Take Care of U.” Then Jamie XX pushed it forward with his remix. And now Rihanna and Drake are spinning it still further forward with this track, a song about "dealing with a heart (you) didn't break," about dating someone whose past comes with them.

25. Unknown Mortal Orchestra - FFunny FFriends
Music blogs call this song krautrock, kaleidoscope and psychadelic. I don't have words for it, but the first time I heard it, I wanted to hear it again. And again. And again. I thought it was something old, maybe dubbed from a cassette tape in the midwest somewhere. But it's new and from Portland, and I love it.

Best of 2011: Songs (26 - 50)

2011-12-20T07:42:00.000-08:00

I work on my favorite songs list all year long, so by the time December comes, the ranking can feel arbitrary. Did I really like this song more than the one below it? Hard to tell, but here I'll just settle on the order that feels right this week.

26. Austra - The Future
27. Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues
28. The Rapture - How Deep Is Your Love?
29. Azealia Banks - 212
30. Wild Flag - Future Crimes
31. Rihanna - Drunk on Love
32. Rye Rye f/ Robyn - Never Will Be Mine
33. Bon Iver - Holocene
34. James Blake and Bon Iver - Fall Creek Boys Choir
35. Tennis - Take Me Somewhere
36. Dirty Mittens - Any Time, Any Day
37. AgesandAges - No Nostalgia
38. Rihanna - We Found Love
39. Yelawolf - Throw It Up
40. Fleet Foxes - Sim Sala Bim
41. Childish Gambino - Freaks and Geeks
42. Little Dragon - Ritual Union
43. Lloyd f/ Andre 3000 and Lil Wayne - Dedication to My Ex
44. The Vaccines - All in White
45. Nicki Minaj - Super Bass
46. Chris Brown and Busta Rhymes - Look At Me Now
47. M83 - Midnight City
48. Burial - NYC
49. Cults - You Know What I Mean
50. Beirut - East Harlem

Best of 2011: Albums

2011-12-18T21:02:00.000-08:00

I've been making best-of-the-year lists since 2003. This week on my blog I'll unveil my favorite albums, songs and movies from this year. First, the albums:

1. The Weeknd - House of Balloons
This album is so dark and creeping, but Abel Tesfaye's sweet croon is like a north star guiding you through that darkness. I love the way the first song, "High for This," builds so that by the time it's over, you're already deep into Tesfaye's world without really knowing how you got there. The songs are catchy, innovative and perfectly paced. And though I don't inhabit most of the worlds he describes, listening to "House of Balloons" pretty much always has an emotional effect on me.

2. Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues
Robin Peckhold is a little younger than I am, but I feel like the lyrics on this album perfectly sum up what it feels like to be 28 right now. The album is beautiful -- at times sweeping, at times quietly pensive -- and searching. It sounded right soundtracking my sunny days just as well as it did the foggy ones.

3. James Blake - James Blake
The silence on this album -- and there is a lot of it -- somehow feels both full and empty to me. This is the album I wanted to hear when I was sad, as if I could pour myself into Blake's many pauses. I admire what he's able to do with dubstep, but the songs I like best here are the ones that sound like snippets of gospel songs. The first 30 seconds of "Why Don't You Call?" sounds like a perfect little demo to me. I always want to hear them again.

4. Youth Lagoon - The Year Of Hibernation
I get that the sound of this album might not be for everyone. He recorded it by playing the original bedroom recordings in a garage and recording them again. That means the album can sometimes have a tinny, far-away sound to it, but underneath that is some very honest and beautiful songwriting. I love the lyrics of "17" and the way "Montana" builds so steadily until it erupts. I love the way it feels to listen to "Afternoon" while driving around during the fall. Nearly all of the songs evoke something purely cinematic, and I pretty much never grew tired of hearing them.

5. The Vaccines - What Did You Expect from the Vaccines?
I don't necessarily think the Vaccines are doing anything innovative here, but I just love listening to this record. I came back to it all year long, always finding a new favorite song. I listened to it at the gym, driving through the suburbs, cooking dinner in my city apartment. It's somehow dark and infectious at the same time.

6. Drake - Take Care
It took me a while to get into this album. I preferred his early, yearning mixtape. But "Take Care" has so many good songs and shows Drake really expanding his style (On "Thank Me Later," he often recycled through the same repetitive rhythms). And he is still rapping about subjects that no one else talks about. He's innovative, and I hope he pushes himself to keep experimenting.

7. Tennis - Cape Dory
This is so fun to listen to. A lot of the songs sound the same -- lyrically and sonically -- but I like those themes and sounds so much it doesn't bother me (plus it's such a short little album). The lyrics have a few little gems ("shifty wind that gusts and dies"), her voice is great and I usually feel pretty happy listening.

8. tune yards - w h o k i l l
I don't think this album is as innovative as it's praised for being. Merril Garbus admits that she modeled it after the music of the Ba'Aka pygmies in Central African Republic. Having been there and listened to their vocal polyphonies, I can say tune-yards' songs really do sound a lot like them. But she pushes them further, adding more drama and more layers, and I think her lyrics are at times really great (See: My Country). But the real secret weapon here is that voice. I thought she was a man for her whole first record, but it's mostly impossible to tell where that sound is coming from. She has such an incredible and powerful range. Really fun to listen to.

9. Beyonce - 4
For my money, she is the most interesting, consistent and talented pop star recording. She tries all kinds of sounds on this album, at times stuffing songs with a dozen samples and genres. Whatever she throws at the wall seems to stick; 4 churned out hit after hit this year. And she somehow does that without sounding like she is trying very hard. She is so good it feels effortless.

10. AgesandAges - Alright You Restless
Like the Tennis album, this one is comprised of songs that sometimes sound just like the one before it. But it doesn't sound like any other album I heard this year, so I'll forgive it its repetitions. I love all the voices, the church-like joy of the songs. There's not a dud on here.

Honorable Mentions: The Roots - Undun; Frank Ocean - Nostalgia, Ultra; Cults - Cults; Dirty Mittens - Heart of Town

Uptown, downtown, a thousand miles between us

2011-12-18T20:51:00.001-08:00

The night before we left, we wound up going over to Freddy Joe McVay's house. He is the youngest of the McVays -- a clan of five kids who lived across the street and one house down from Roy. Freddy talked to us about watching people fight in the street (Chatham was nicknamed Hell Street back then) and about learning how to mow yards under Roy's tutelage. He also showed us his shoebox full of pictures.

After we interviewed him then packed all our gear up, I went back in to say goodbye. I noticed a pair of photos on the wall -- he and his wife, naked except for a Confederate flag wrapped around them. They were posed in an old washtub. A sign -- "still hitched" -- hung off the side.

"These are some racy photos y'all have up!" I said. Without a lick of embarrassment, he said, "Oh, we took those up in Arkansas!"

On my way to you, old county, hoping nothing's changed

2011-12-16T18:48:00.001-08:00

Talking to Sean Purvis in front of his boyhood home really reminded me why I want to make this documentary. He talked to us about watching the older generations drink coffee and debate the Bible. He told me about the time Roy sold a song to the Judds but then couldn't find anyone to help him record it. Sean talked about Roy with such dumbstruck awe --- "Her poems were like something Edgar Allen Poe or Shakespeare did, and I was just blown away," he told me --- that I left our interview re-energized to tell this story. Sean talked about a Delhi that no longer exists. It's a town he worries no one will remember because no one has written it down, collected the memories. He was just a boy when Roy was already in his 60s. The people who really knew Roy have mostly passed.

Sean did remember one person who was a contemporary of Roy's. Miss Irby is at the nursing home still, he told me, so Aubree and I headed over there to meet her. She was a Jehovah's Witness who used to get into debates with the devoutly Christian Roy. By the time we met Miss Irby, though, she could barely form full sentences, let alone whole paragraphs. She couldn't stop touching me. She pet each one of my fingers, telling me how beautiful each one was. Then she kissed my hand and my neck before rubbing a snotty tissue over my hands. I kept thinking she was having a moment of clarity when I asked her about Roy. "He's up there, and ..." she'd say before trailing off. If she remembered Roy, she couldn't tell me. But when I stood to leave, she clung to me in the most sincere and sweet hug. Her smile was one of the widest I've seen.

Sometimes I feel like all the things I want to know about Roy are trapped -- in unfindable documents or in brains I can no longer access. But meeting people like Sean, who was so honest and simple in his love of the town that reared him, pushes me to keep searching.

rock me in the cradle in them old cotton fields back home

2011-12-15T12:15:00.000-08:00

On Monday morning, we met Archie Lee Harrell, a man about my grandma's age who also grew up in a poor, sharecropping family. He owns a few acres behind his house now. He showed (and shared with) us the most delicious satsumas, kumquats, peppers, persimmons and pecans that he grew back there. He is a humble man, raised with four other kids by a single mother, and he remembers watching Roy sleep on a bag of cotton in the fields. All the sharecropper's kids did that, Archie said.

When Archie dies, he wants to be buried in his khakis. It's who he was, what he wore nearly every day of his life. People should be able to makes those kinds of choices for themselves, he told us, which is why he got into it with a preacher who told Roy to wear a dress. Roy left the church, and judging by the look in Archie's eyes when he told us the story, Archie never forgave the preacher.

We'll take the highway; I'll see you in between

2011-12-14T14:27:00.000-08:00

I'm waiting in Little Rock, Arkansas, now to head home after a few whirlwind days in Delhi. I'll post later about the trip, the documentary and all the funny things my grandma said to me. But for now, I'll just share this moment that Aubree captured just before we hit the road this morning. My grandma let me video her making biscuits. Then we sat at her tiny table and talked about what I've learned over the past two years. More soon ---

the way good love can take leave of you

2011-12-08T06:47:00.000-08:00

I found him like this, sleeping on the book we would have read together. I never imagined myself owning a cat, but I am grateful for his rhythms, the way his paws knead me awake just before 6 every day. When I find myself again like this, it is nice to have him sleeping, purring warmly nearby.

[LISTEN]
Sufjan Stevens - Redford (for Yia-Yia & Pappou)
James Blake - Why Don't You Call Me?

Especially if you love as I love
falling to the earth. Especially if you're a little bit
high strung and a little bit gutted balloon.

The blues will never go out of fashion

2011-12-07T23:14:00.000-08:00

"the word 'parrot'
is not the right woman for you, hard to hold
and too much red"

[LISTEN] James Blake - Give Me My Month

we are drifting back and forth between each other

2011-12-05T06:14:00.000-08:00

Ryan and I wanted to practice making music videos, so over Thanksgiving we enlisted a few friends to create one for Youth Lagoon's song "17."

I've been walking in the same way as I did

2011-12-03T08:25:00.000-08:00

This time next week, I'll be in Delhi, La., working on my documentary, "Roy." My cousin Chris is joining the crew this go-around to work sound and to get some ideas for scoring the trailer (and if I have my way, the whole movie!). I started officially shooting for this two years ago over Christmas break. The movie is starting to take shape, though we still have a lot of unanswered questions. Look for a trailer and kickstarter page to go live after we return. In the meantime, follow our film page on Facebook -- http://www.facebook.com/amorphousfilms -- to see updates from the road.

Our life is not a movie or maybe

2011-11-29T20:50:00.000-08:00

Moving pictures from last weekend's Thanksgiving getaway:

when I go out to the pier / gonna dive and have no fear

2011-11-28T06:00:00.000-08:00

extra bright, I want y'all to see this

2011-11-27T14:00:00.000-08:00

A group of us spent Thanksgiving weekend in a cabin on the Sandy River. We had a bunch of tame fun, playing board games and light painting. Comme Ça:

Click any thumbnail to see the whole, larger image.

swear I'm just a bird

2011-11-23T15:00:00.000-08:00

For most of my life, I did not like children (Seriously, I would audibly groan if seated anywhere near them on an airplane.). I certainly never dreamed of wanting one of my own. But lately, I cannot stop feeling giddy at work taking pictures of kids. What have I become?

Anyway, yesterday I slinked around in the rain to take photos of kids racing to win a turkey.

Even cowgirls get the blues

2011-11-22T10:31:00.000-08:00

This is not an end; it's a massacre.

This is a long drive for someone with nothing to think about

2011-11-15T06:44:00.000-08:00

'traveling, swallowing dramamine ...
i've said what i'd said, and you know what i mean'

'and i'm trying to understand myself
and pinpoint where i am'

And the world, fulgent & resolute, clicks on

2011-11-14T16:47:00.000-08:00

I have not been making anything lately, so I'll offer you an intermission in the form of this poem, written by Aleda Shirley who taught at my college.

Song of the Abducted

The trees are full of owls. At night thousands
of them stare at me through the sunroom windows.
The phone rings; it is my dead friend, calling
from Boston. She talks & talks,
but I can get nothing out, I am choking

on questions. The owls' heads move so quickly
they do not seem to move. It started
when I was a child: late one night my father
stopped the car at a roadside park & dozed,
a silver thermos of coffee in his lap. I slept too,

in the back, & woke to a deer looking
in the window, its nose pressed against the glass,
eyes huge & glossy. The next thing I knew
it was morning & we were driving over the bridge
into Memphis. Later from a hotel room

I saw helicopters a few feet from the window,
but there was no noise. At night
everyone comes back to me eventually,
this one I loved & that one.
The air grows sharp as copper & there's

a beautiful green light that deepens
like water; I move through it slowly
but it is not wet & I never surface, no matter
how hard I kick my legs. Inside myself
I am several hours behind myself. From one summer

I recall flowers: sunflowers peering like faces
over a fence, knotted peonies fallen on the lawn.
For months, after I fell in love, I couldn't sleep
until dawn: nothing wedged itself between me
& the darkness. But passion dimmed to an ashy

smudge on the mirror & through the fanlight
I saw a collar of dead stars. The rumors you've heard
are true: behind danger lurks danger. Down
the street a house is on fire. Red light courses
through the room & I feel smoke like sticky oil

on my arms, the warm spot where the cat
was sleeping. When I come to I am peering
into the blue face of the television.
There is snow & in the snow a hint of static,
something cold & shifty I cannot turn off.

it’s true, we can’t go to Granada, but we can go on this walk

2011-11-11T07:54:00.000-08:00

These uncharacteristically wide shots are behind-the-scenes looks into recent photos made by Ryan and Amanda. They both like to use Polaroids, and when we were all in Seattle last weekend, there was a lot of Polaroid making going on. I look pretty weird in all of the photos, but here are their shots: Ryan's Instant(ces) blog and Amanda's ::catalyst:: blog.

You should be dancin'

2011-11-10T16:58:00.001-08:00

It's been a year this weekend since I spent a night at the Aloha Grange with about 100 square dancers. That one night set me up with enough interviews to keep me busy for months in the unincorporated community I cover. Since that night, I've been writing stories about the way this once rural area -- and supposed next great Portland suburb -- has changed despite no real planning efforts. Almost 60,000 people live there now, and for the first time since 1983, the county there is working on a plan for it. That probably sounds boring, but it matters to everyone there -- from the 83-year-old who told me stories about the way the now traffic-jammed road in front of his house saw more floods than it did cars when he was raising his kids to the teens I met last week who are tired of driving down sidewalk-less streets to other towns to find something to do.

Anyway, the night I went to the Grange, I didn't know any of that yet. It was my first attempt at really learning about Aloha. The first thing I learned is that place is full of sweetness.

Exhibit A:

ALOHA -- Almost everything has changed at the Aloha Grange. The farmers are gone. So are the strawberry fields. The square dancers have new hips and knees. And a few Saturdays ago, they debuted a new caller. He used a laptop, not a record player, to soundtrack the dance.

The story is the same across Washington County. When the area was predominantly rural, granges were the social centers of town. Though granges such as the Leedy Grange in Cedar Mill are still active, membership in most county granges has foundered. Statewide, grange membership has plummeted by more than 75 percent in the past 15 years.

But the Aloha Grange has adapted. When farmers threatened to shut down the grange two decades ago, a group of square dancers persisted. That's the best wood floor in Aloha, they said. So they took over the grange, and now, every Saturday night, a hundred people show up to dance.

Read the rest on Oregonlive.

the snakes I couldn't find

2011-11-08T06:00:00.000-08:00

But their house was already burning,

2011-11-07T21:41:00.000-08:00

Recent dried specimens:

Most things may never happen: this one will,

2011-10-29T17:13:00.000-07:00

Saturday, more or less:

End of an interstice

2011-10-28T15:50:00.000-07:00

Notes on a whirlwind:

1. Beyonce - 1+1
2. The National - Slow Show
3. Weezer - Across the Sea
4. The Smiths - Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want
5. Lovers - Let's Stay Lost
6. Otis Redding - Free Me
7. Ratat - Cherry
8. Youth Lagoon - 17

and here's where you will find me: get a pen --

2011-10-28T13:02:00.001-07:00

I've been having a lot of fun experiences at work lately, but I haven't produced any work I've been really proud of. I do, however, think these kids I met at a program about bats at a nature program were all pretty cute. I love going to assignments with kids because they are so unselfconscious.

Send me some lovin'

2011-10-22T19:06:00.000-07:00

Some days, I wonder how I could possibly consider doing any other job. Like Friday afternoon, when I left an interview with a Doris Day impersonator later than I imagined I would be. I still had to travel 30 miles west to the county courthouse to pick up a civil complaint. It was already 4:15 when I arrived; the records office would close soon. The security guards made me take off my shoes. And as I worked them back over my bare feet, I listened as the guards talked about the differences between marriage and civil unions.

"Big conversations here today in the courthouse!" I said with a wide grin.

A gay couple had just come in, one of the guards told me. Though the guards have all worked there for years, that's something they'd never seen.

"I wasn't even sure if it was legal, and if it was, where I should send them," he said.

"Well marriage isn't the same as a union," the other guard said. "It's legal."

"I just never saw it happen here before," the first guard said.

They didn't sound judgmental, just truly interested to see something happening at the courthouse they hadn't seen before.

"Well, y'all have a good weekend," I called, imagining two men marrying as I half-skipped back to the records room. The courthouse was nearly empty. No noise drifted out of courtrooms. The records office wasn't playing music as it usually does. By the time I made it back out to my car, I was amped up enough just on overhearing the guards' conversation (not to mention my previous hours spent with the Doris Day impersonator) that I called Anna up to declare my renewed love in journalism.

As we talked, I scanned around downtown. My eyes caught on the two 130-year-old giant sequoias that are kind of the pride and joy of the city. Six women and one man were hugging and taking photos of each other with a tiny point and shoot camera.

"I think I see them," I told Anna. "The couple who got married."

We got off the phone quickly, and I walked up to the crowd, a little nervous that I might look a little crazy in the suburbs if I asked if any of the women had recently married each other.

"Did y'all just have a wedding?" I asked.

"They did!" the oldest woman said. "They just got married."

Friday was their fourth anniversary. They met online under a shared love of horror movies. Only Sasha's parents -- including a father who grew up in Lafayette, Louisiana -- came to the ceremony. I told them I had a nice camera. I asked if I could take some photos of the group, some with the parents in the photo. They smiled. When I came back, camera in hand, half the crew was crying.

"My whole life, I thought I would never be able to get married," Sasha said. "I never thought this day would come."

Her tears stopped for a second as her betrothed explained that one day she will be a he.

"I'm transgendered," he said. "I want to transition, and then we'll be real married. Just married. Like normal."

He said his name was Stanley, that the night he proposed they watched the Shining. He said Sasha speaks fluent Japanese and sings beautifully. After the courthouse, they were going to drink and sing at a karaoke bar.

An official-looking man walked by, the kind of guy for whom the courthouse is an everyday gig.

"Congratulations!" he called. Sasha started crying again.

We exchanged phone numbers. I asked some more questions, hoping to maybe write something for the paper. Then I drove home past several century farms, down the lengths of wide open spaces not yet touched by Portland's urban cool. I dreamed of my own wedding, what my parents would be like. I wondered about Stanley's parents. The sun set. And as I wound my way on to the Interstate, I thought of Sasha, and I started crying.

So much held in a heart in a lifetime.

2011-10-21T10:09:00.000-07:00

There have been a few times in my life when I experienced pure, unencumbered happiness. They are:

1)Before I grew up and disappointed her by being myself, before I thought of boys or girls, I sat on a porch swing with my dad's mother in the just-dawn morning, drinking coffee that was more milk than coffee and watching hummingbirds zip up to her feeder.

2) The night before we started dating, I dreamed I was submerged in a clean-water pool lit from below. I did not have gills, but I could breathe underwater. My eyes were closed, but I could feel you climb in just before the dream ended. When I woke, I knew I loved you.

3) The summer before my senior year of college, I lived with two other people in what was basically a tree house of an apartment in Mississippi. We didn't have air conditioning, but we had hardwood floors, a sun room and the large branches of a magnolia wrapping around our windows. There were wind chimes in that tree, and one morning I woke up to what I thought was the most gorgeous natural melody. I lay in bed just listening for a few minutes. I realized soon enough that the melody wasn't the windchimes but my roommate Daniel playing the Aphex Twin song "Nannou" in the sun room, but for those minutes when I sleepily thought it was the wind chimes, I felt totally into the world.

4) We fought nearly non-stop as kids. You had scratch-mark scars left from my fingernails. But one afternoon, driving home with our usual Baskin Robbins, we heard a song on the radio and looked at each other, talking, as we've always been able to do, without words. I threw the car into park in the middle of the road. We jumped out. The doors were still open. We danced in the middle of the road in the middle of our neighborhood.

5) I met you at sunset. My hair was still wet. By the next day, I felt I'd known you a hundred years (or more) as we knelt in the library near Eudora Welty. The world smelled like old books and your cologne. You asked if I liked Faulkner. I wondered about Flannery O'Connor. I put a hand on the shelf of Welty to steady myself. It was May in Missouri and the sun seeped in through the stacks. We leaned toward each other and kissed.

6) In that same tree house apartment, we used to keep long sheets of butcher paper. When people came over for dinner (which they did nearly every night), we'd pull out the butcher paper and have everyone draw or write on it. At the end of the night, we'd tape the strip on to the back wall in the living room. One night, after polenta and vegetables, we gathered around the latest sheet and listened to a Talking Heads album. At that point, I'd spent my entire life moving around. My parents rarely stayed in a house longer than a year or two. For the past year, I'd been working on a zine about the meaning of "home." During the song "This Must Be the Place," I watched my roommate Amy -- as fine a poet/artist/friend as you could find -- sketch a portrait. When David Byrne sang, "Home is where I want to be, but I guess I'm already there," I wrote the line down underneath her sketch. I never worked on that zine again, and that piece of butcher paper stayed up for the rest of the summer.

Devils & Dust

2011-10-20T11:05:00.000-07:00

When I was growing up, when the sun shone and the sky rained simultaneously, people said the devil was beating his wife. This happened often enough: In the South, in the summer, a mid-day downpour is usual fare. As a kid, I could imagine the devil clear as day, punching on his betrothed.

When I tell people these kinds of stories here, they mostly see them as amusing or funny. They’re the kind of wild tales that make me a hit at parties. But they didn’t feel that way to me then. I spent whole nights calculating the timing of the Rapture. I spent days petrified that a demon would posses me. When I was 9 or so, the pastor cast out a demon one Sunday evening. We were on the third row, and something hissed into the preacher’s microphone.

“And don’t forget,” the pastor said afterward. “A demon needs a home.”

In leaving this woman — she had the totally cinematic name of Trauna — the demon would have to go into another body. A demon likes a dirty house, the preacher said, so if you aren’t good or clean, you are a candidate.

I covered my ears. My mother put one hand over my hands, another on my brother. I didn’t feel good or clean. I was mean to my brother, lazy with chores. So at night I lay in bed, repeatedly asking forgiveness. I did this without stopping, as if in the seconds between repentances, I might accidentally sin.

I could imagine demons and devils clearly, physically. They populated every Carmen music video the youth group idolized. And though those manifestations seem hokey, ultra ‘90s now, I still think of the devil every time the sun shines and the sky rains at the same time.

But this morning, when I looked through my car window back at my apartment, I couldn't quite imagine what the devil or his wife looked like. Instead, I saw this picture.

'Fear's a powerful thing.
It can turn your heart black, you can trust.
It'll take your God-filled soul
and fill it with devils and dust.'
- bruce springsteen

Carved your name across three counties

2011-10-18T19:45:00.000-07:00

'Ten decisions shape your life'

Fairest of the seasons

2011-10-17T07:06:00.000-07:00

The space between us

2011-10-16T20:56:00.000-07:00

I am totally enamored with the wind mills that line Highway 84 along the Columbia River.

"Will you walk with me out on the wire?
Cause baby I'm just a scared and lonely rider.
But I gotta find out how it feels.
I want to know if love is wild. And I want to know if love is real."

Unplugged

2011-10-14T06:45:00.000-07:00

While you wait (breath held, I'm sure) for the Basement Babies video we filmed, you can check out this early morning shot I made of Kate, singing "Oooze" acoustically. This is the song we made a video for, though in the official version Martin sings the song.

West with the Night

2011-10-13T06:00:00.000-07:00

An EP for driving East then West

1. Generationalists - When They Fight, They Fight
2. Sugar Billy - Super Duper Love
3. The Undertones - Teenage Kicks
4. New Order - Love Vigilante
5. The Clean - Thumbs Off
6. Styles Infinite - Aquarian Mind

Right-click, save as if you want the songs on your computer.

Self-portraits with monsters

2011-10-12T08:35:00.000-07:00

Monday I interviewed a lady who has been in the costume business since before I was born. Over the last 30 years, she's collected (or sewn) about 9,000 costumes. But after this Halloween, she's going to sell off her collection. I had a good time combing through all the looks, talking to her about the way the business has changed and what it means to part with something (or 9,000 somethings) you've had for three decades.

Here's an excerpt from the story, but you can read the whole thing on Oregonlive if you want.

Two women had traveled to the store from Oregon City in search of a quality Santa costume. For years, Pam Flohr said, people have told her husband Russ that he looks like Santa Claus. He has the pink coloring, the full white beard. Last year, he decided to make a little extra money off the resemblance.

But breaking into the Santa industry isn't easy. You have to have a nice outfit. And the good ones go early, the Flohrs learned. The same principle applies for Easter Bunnies, Hayes said. Those should be sought out in early winter.

Get teenage kicks right through the night

2011-10-11T06:06:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, Ryan and I went down to LA to shoot a music video for our friend Kate's band, Basement Babies. It'll be a little minute before we can edit it, but here are some behind-the-scenes sneak peaks.

City of Angels

2011-10-10T07:10:00.000-07:00

I took a brief dip in Los Angeles. This is a photo of my friend Kate.

Leaving rope burns, reddish ruse

2011-10-07T06:42:00.000-07:00

The city I cover has spent the year draining one of its two reservoirs so that it can repair a pipe. Right now, the 20,000-acre-feet reservoir is nearly dry, so the water department invited me up to "see the exposed glory hole."

The reservoir still has some water in places, though most of it is just exposed clay that has been hiding under 120 feet of water for more than a decade. Workers even found an old road still in tact.

Pardon my excesses here.

If you are still curious beyond this large amount of photos, there are more in My Flickr album.

Every chorus was your name

2011-10-02T18:02:00.000-07:00

no day is safe from news of you.
walking around africa, maybe, but thinking of me.

These pictures are supposed to be looked at while hearing this song

Tap on your windowpane

2011-10-01T16:13:00.001-07:00

Things are getting a little self-referential in here. One last swoop around --

Out living my life, getting out dreams

2011-09-30T05:39:00.000-07:00

Another nod to the last vestiges of summer, this one a video. When we were on Orcas Island a few weeks ago, Ryan, Amanda and I all shot video of the trip. That place is truly magical. You can see it in this video through all the giggling we do.

The love that people say you made

2011-09-27T19:30:00.000-07:00

Densely sweet and small present

I heard it was fun

2011-09-26T21:45:00.000-07:00

A couple of months ago, Ryan and I came up with an idea to take signs into a Photobooth some time to spell something out. We didn't have any ideas at the time, so we put it on the back burner. A couple of weeks ago I came up with the idea to spin the sign project into a summer memorial. Using lyrics from our friend Kate's band, I drew up a little diagram for an end-of-summer collaborative Photobooth project. Sunday night, a few days into fall, we all piled into The Florida Room for some combination arts-and-crafts // modeling // composing photo times. Ryan, Amanda and I edited the final project together.

Et voila, the people who made my 2011 summer worth living:

Needful things

2011-09-25T17:32:00.000-07:00

For the past two weeks, Amanda and I have been sending each other photos from our phones throughout the day. Technically, we weren't supposed to talk during these two weeks, but we did cheat a few times. Only a few. Kind of. We've got about 160 photos and are planning to make little books for/with each other of the larger project, but here are some excerpts.

L: Amanda; R: Casey

L: Casey; R: Amanda

L: Casey; R: Amanda

L: Amanda; R: Casey

L: Amanda; R: Casey

L: Casey; R: Amanda

L: Amanda; R: Casey

L: Amanda; R: Casey

L: Casey; R: Amanda

L: Casey; R: Amanda

L: Casey; R: Amanda

L: Casey; R: Amanda

You slide down your stairs to the heated street

2011-09-22T14:06:00.001-07:00

It's the last day before another equinox, and I could not be more grateful for the past few months. I was so certain in February that this would be the worst year of my life. I made peace with it even, steeled myself for the onslaught of 28. Instead, it was hands-down the best summer I've ever had. This is going to sound more diary-esque than I'm really comfortable with, but I'll ignore that this once for the sake of the record:

Thanks to the desert and the bay, the Washougal River and the 24 Hour Fitness. Thanks to 21st Amendment's Hell or High Watermelon, EAT's catfish poboy and that daiquiri I had in Louisiana. Thanks to my bike, my cat, my fire escape. Thanks to short shorts and boat shoes. Thanks to that Robyn song "With every heartbeat," which in one four-minute song flipped my whole brain. Thanks to Lil Wayne and Little Dragon. To Lloyd, Dolly Parton, Lionel Richie, Kid Cudi, Tennis, Mariah Carey, The Vaccines and New Order. Thanks to that Bruce Springsteen song "Backstreets," which almost made us cry on that dusty desert road. Thanks to campgrounds and cabins, corn and cantaloupe. (All that to say thanks to my friends, whose brains/hearts/brilliance made me stop all that yearning for somewhere, sometime else).

As my man David Berman says, "hello to feelings that arrive unintroduced!"

*Amanda took this photo of some handwriting I did on her wall. The quote is courtesy of Dorothy from the Golden Girls.

You're an animal, too

2011-09-19T10:46:00.001-07:00

One of the aspects I like most about working at a newspaper is the chance to go do all sorts of things I just would never do in my normal life. Some of those are things I'd never really think I'd want to do, but then they turn out to be enlightening. Friday i took my second trip of the year to a butcher shop, this one a Halal market. After covering the pig slaughter in 2009, I figured I'd had enough watching the way animals become meat. That assignment is still the hardest (and in that, one of the best) assignments I've done at the Oregonian.

But Friday was a good refresher -- not nearly as heart-wrenching, but I do think it's important to watch the way a whole animal is broken down into the disconnected pieces (I mean disconnected emotionally) that then get served up to the world. Plus, the butchers were so nice and excited to have me there. They told me all about their particular food ethos and about where the cows and lambs came from.

Nets my shadow's tangled in

2011-09-16T06:58:00.000-07:00

Square scenes from T:BA late night.

10 things I like

2011-09-14T16:22:00.000-07:00

- wind chimes
- hummingbirds
- Baskin Robbins' mint chocolate chip ice cream
- the cup of coffee I had in Iowa. I brought the beans from Portland. Sarah V did the percolating. And Laurel provided the perfectly warm apartment.
- the orange fire-king coffee cup my grandfather used
- the smell of rain in summer
- showering in late afternoon with the sunlight spilling through my shower window
- treehouses
- light boxes with old diagrams or x-rays in front
- card catalogs

I hung my hopes out on the line

2011-09-14T07:15:00.000-07:00

(will they be ready for you in time?)

The highway's jammed with broken heroes on a last-chance power drive

2011-09-13T06:00:00.000-07:00

Drown my feelings in the sea / dry out over the beach

2011-09-12T07:54:00.001-07:00

Ryan was averse to doing something so touristy at Doe Bay as posing with this wooden tiger (is it a tiger? I'm suddenly not so sure). But you can only take so many photos of the beautiful bay (my count: 300), so eventually we turned our lenses this way. The picture of me is on Ryan's camera, so sorry, readers, no snoop-a-looping into your author's visage.

Show a little faith there's magic in the night

2011-09-11T10:37:00.000-07:00

I want to guard your dreams and visions

2011-09-09T11:28:00.000-07:00

I had a moment last weekend, running up this small but steep hill where I thought, "This is my best self, here, with them." These two people have made Portland home this summer, a little spark of magic I felt sure would never happen. For the first time in at least a decade, I'm not aching for elsewhere or other times. They make me want to be here, now, a heart pointed only to the present.

My car's out back if you're ready to take that long walk

2011-09-09T11:22:00.000-07:00

(from your front porch to my front seat)

Summer adventures with Bruce and this girl. Twenty-eight's not so bad.

First day of school

2011-09-07T12:53:00.001-07:00

I've been up before dawn the past two days to go cover the first day of school (first, elementary, then high school). Not sure how great these stories are, but there were some moments in each that I like. All in all, I met some very adorable students.

My time at the elementary school included this little scene:

Mrs. Walsh isn't good at remembering names -- "I try really hard, but it takes me a while," she said -- so she gave each child a nametag and asked his or her favorite color. Blue and red easily won out, though a handful of girls chose purple.

Talia Tauti stood up to take her tag. She wore a pink shirt, pink pants and pink high top sneakers.

"My favorite color is turquoise," she said.

"Really?" Walsh asked. "I would have guessed pink because you're wearing so much pink."

"My mom begged me to," Talia said.

And my time at the high school featured this:

Mrs. Trakselis spotted a cell phone on Karimyar's desk and motioned for him to put it away.

"Gotta put away your technology, man," Pope told him. "You know what Coach Casey says about that? He says it's ruining society."

Pope isn't much of a technology man himself. He only joined Facebook this summer. "But I like immediately had 900 friends," he said. "Whew."

Someone like you

2011-09-05T19:17:00.001-07:00

I spent the night Friday in Amanda's Seattle studio, watching The Golden Girls and admiring her things.

Do not go gentle into that good night

2011-09-02T09:39:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I left an interview feeling totally buzzed about my job. Hugh told me about living in Virginia, how he would spend days at the Library of Congress. To tell his wife which stack he'd be in, he'd leave a note in the card catalog under "Anne Ferguson" (her name). They left Virginia a few decades ago, but a handful of years ago, they went back to the library and checked -- his last note was still there.

Anne told me how she worried her whole life that she shouldn't get married because no man would be able to carry her over the threshold. She's taller than Hugh, and when he carried her, she spread her arms and legs because she was nervous.

Hugh had homemade espresso waiting on the table when I arrived. He and I were wearing the same outfit. He sounded like a newscaster, looked like one, too. The couple has an ancient OED in the living room, which Hugh rescued from the incinerator when he was in the Navy in the 1940s.

None of that had anything to do with the story I was there to ask Hugh about, which is that he plans to bike 80 miles on his birthday. We got to that narrative, too, and then I went home to try to make a story as good as our two-hour talk.

Maybe this won't make sense, but the more I like talking to someone, the harder it is to write about them later. I had this same problem last year when I tried to write about the female pilot. So all week long I've been wrestling with trying to write something good about Hugh. I kept re-reading Dylan Thomas, hoping my brain would click in place.

Anyway, this is what I came up with.

Hugh Ferguson woke up one day feeling very old. Suddenly, it seemed, his body wouldn't cooperate.

He struggled to pull his wallet from his hip pocket. He threw out his shoulder when he picked up a suitcase. He was always thinking of a nap.

Last year, he wrenched his back trying to move a kettle drum for the Beaverton Chamber Symphony, and he decided right then: He would not go gentle into that good night. He would get in shape, live like a younger man.

He started a fitness regimen. When walking up or down stairs no longer seemed impossible, Ferguson set his sights on a task that did. Later this month, on his 80th birthday, he will attempt to bike 80 miles in 8 hours.

Read the rest on Oregonlive.com

The Instructions

2011-08-29T12:36:00.001-07:00

I'm reading a mammoth(ly good) book right now that keeps sending me to my journal to write down excerpts as devotions. This year has been so full of change for me -- the first half, painful, and now, the second half, exciting -- and so I am thinking a lot of the plans I made for myself and how they have changed. When I read this on the fire escape yesterday, I immediately climbed back into my apartment to write it down.

The passage before is about how in the Torah, Avram looked to the stars and saw that Avram would not have children with Sarai. What he didn't know is that God would change both their names, that at 99- and 89-years-old they would begin bearing children and become the Uber Patriarch and Matriarch for the rest of time. (In church when I was a kid, we sang a song that had a bunch of accompanying movements that went like this: "Father Abraham had many sons. Many sons had father Abraham. And I am one of them. And so are you. So let's just praise the Lord.")

Anyway, the excerpt:

"One wonders why, if the stars tell true stories, Avram did not, in the stars, read the story of his new name. It was surely there, the story of Avram's name being changed, but Avram on the ground did not see it. And so bearing in mind that his story was available and that he was capable of reading it, one can only conclude that he didn't find that story because he wasn't looking for that story."

- Adam Levin, The Instructions

Hyperlocal

2011-08-27T12:05:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year, our newspaper switched to a hyperlocal focus. As a writer, it can have its drawbacks. But for me, those drawbacks are equaled out by the opportunities. It frees me up to go to things that just sound fun to me -- regardless of a news peg. Because of it, I've toured the waste water treatment plant, hung out at a Water Department tailgate party and watched a bunch of brainiac kids discuss animal sounds. This is not at all a bad way to make money. Plus, I can write them in a way I can't write news stories destined for the print paper. I try to make them like Talk of the Towns, if Talk of the Town ever covered the Oregon suburbs. Anyway, this photo is from the animal sounds at the library day.

Flying saucers

2011-08-26T16:02:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week, I covered a disc golf championship for work. They players are easily the most welcoming interviewees I've ever met.

We come on the sloop john b

2011-08-17T21:00:00.000-07:00

Here's a video I shot for the Oregonian. Thanks to Rob Finch, who edited it.

Abstract, in lyrics

2011-08-17T14:07:00.000-07:00

My current brain/heart state:

Things ain't always set in stone [that being known, let me know]

***

So it's better my sweet that we hover like bees 'cause there's no sure footing

***

Hello to the era of going to the store to buy more ice because we are running out. Hello to feelings that arrive unintroduced. Hello to the nonfunctional sprig of parsley and the game of finding meaning in coincidence.

***

And do I really have a hand in my forgetting?

***

Souvenirs only reminded you of buying them

***

Strap your hands across my engines

Pickled cherries

2011-08-14T22:52:00.001-07:00

Ryan, Randi and I pickled cherries Sunday morning. We'll know next weekend how they taste. For now, here's what they looked like in transit.

And if you truly just cannot get enough pickle processing, you can watch the little video I put together from mine and Ryan's footage:

I set out to get you with a fine-tooth comb

2011-08-11T11:37:00.000-07:00

I miss my friends

2011-08-11T10:01:00.000-07:00

I wanna hurry home to you, put on a slow, dumb show for you, crack you up, so you can put a blue ribbon on my brain.

Desert Hearts

2011-08-07T12:25:00.000-07:00

We went to the desert in Eastern Oregon

Extremities

2011-08-06T14:22:00.000-07:00

Down by the river

2011-07-26T21:41:00.001-07:00

About 20 of us headed an hour out of Portland last weekend to a supreme cabin on the river. Matilda wanted some new Facebook photos, so a bunch of us took photos of her. Here are mine:

People wanna know who I am. I tell them I'm a yo-yoer.

2011-07-21T22:20:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I'm amazed at the things I get paid to do. Like earlier this week, the company paid me to make a video of this awesomely talented yo-yoing teenager.

Do not open unless

2011-07-21T22:03:00.001-07:00

I think we should we have opened this. Anna does not.

Best 10 of the first six

2011-07-08T23:24:00.000-07:00

Here are my favorite 10 songs from the first six months of 2011. They aren't in any order.

1. Tennis - Take Me Somewhere
2. Nicolas Jaar - I Got A
3. Holcombe Waller - Hardliners
4. Adele remixed by Jamie XX featuring Childish Gambino - Rolling in the Deep
5. The Weeknd - Wicked Games (See also: The Weeknd - The Birds Pt. 1)
6. Frank Ocean - Novacane
7. Austra - Lose It
8. Childish Gambino - Freaks and Geeks
9. Lloyd f/ Andre 3000 and Lil Wayne - Dedication to my Ex (Miss That)
10. Rye Rye featuring Robyn - Never Will Be Mine

Adult Swim

2011-07-02T18:47:00.000-07:00

adventures of 'the hat'

The airport always reminds me of you

2011-07-01T22:26:00.000-07:00

My camera is broken, so I'm resigned to the phone for now. I am intrigued by the way these iPhone apps makes images pretty when they otherwise would not be pretty. I'm in Louisiana for the weekend, also rolling old school with a disposable camera. Yes, I could just not document, but I have the most handsome nephew of all time. The urge is too great!

Anyway, I spent the day in liminal space, remembering different airport memories.

Summer girls

2011-06-27T15:11:00.001-07:00

I spent the first weekend of the summer drinking cold brew coffee, playing games, looking at (and photographing and talking to) my cute friends, buying the country's best strawberries, cooking and relaxing. Unfortunately, I keep forgetting to take my camera out into the world with me. So the phone photos will have to do:

Purrrrvez Musharraf by any other name

2011-06-26T22:26:00.000-07:00

I have seriously turned into one of those women (the cat lady kind). The best part of most of my days is opening up my apartment door and seeing him sitting there. It is not the part where I get litter all over my feet when I'm walking to the bathroom barefoot in the middle of the night, but even that bit of nasty doesn't dilute my love.

PS: His name is Lafayette, but Jay came up with the best names for cats, including Stickers and Purrvez.

GIS - We Max video debut

2011-06-23T11:08:00.001-07:00

Today is the debut of a rap video I made with my friends Aubree Bernier-Clarke and Aaron Wong (they're also working on the documentary with me). I met these teenage boys four years ago when they were in high school in a suburb just east of Portland. We've kept in touch, and when they won the chance to perform on BET this year, they asked me to make a music video for them. They won B.E.T.'s Wild Out Wednesdays competition in January, and they're headed back to 106 and Park in August to compete in the All Stars competition. Check out the video we made for them.

G.I.S. "We Max" from Amorphous Films on Vimeo.

And if you're just dying to see how my video skills have improved over the years, check out this video I made of them about three years ago after school one day:

Flannery, at 23

2011-06-12T13:09:00.001-07:00

We celebrated Flan's birthday with a bike ride and a tamale picnic on the bluffs

It rains when you're here, and it rains when you're gone

2011-05-25T12:45:00.000-07:00

Sleep will never visit you anyway

2011-05-24T22:04:00.001-07:00

'if you're still the person you used to be
and understand how much you're needed,
how a sign from you can set me free."

-- Carl Dennis

Siren song of the South

2011-05-23T13:41:00.000-07:00

About a month ago, I went down to Delhi, Louisiana, with my fellow filmmakers from Amorphous Films to work on my documentary. This trip was so much more productive than our trip last year. We're planning to head back down in September. Here are a few shots from interviews inside the Delhi Church of Christ and also on Hell Street, where my grandma grew up.

To see all the photos so far from the documentary, check out my Flickr album.

de Colores

2011-05-17T22:30:00.000-07:00

I made this video and wrote this story for the Oregonian about a town's first student mariachi band.

Hillsboro School District Mariachi band from Casey Parks on Vimeo.

HILLSBORO -- The Hillsboro student mariachi band already had played the Mexican folk song "De Colores" twice, but band leader Dan Bosshardt wanted to hear it one more time.

"Let me hear just the violins," he said. "Now the trumpets."

Bosshardt, who teaches music at Lincoln Street Elementary School, broke the song down to a few notes at a time, showing one student how to angle her wrist and another how quickly to strum his guitar.

"Next week is the super-most-important week in the history of Hillsboro mariachi," Bosshardt said. "It's our last chance to practice before the big day."

Joshua Arciga-Reyna, 17, fidgeted with his trumpet. Sometimes he hits a sour note, and he wanted the band to be perfect before its performance May 24 in front of the Hillsboro School Board. The board meeting is their chance to prove that the mariachi band is worth the district's investment, Arciga-Reyna said.

"It's an honor to perform in front of the school board," he said. "They're the bosses of all bosses. But I feel pressure, too. If we make a mistake, I worry they might think, 'So long, mariachi band.' I don't want that to happen."

Read the rest on Oregonlive.com

Spring jamz

2011-05-07T08:28:00.000-07:00

Here are some of my favorite songs this season. Right-click, save as, to keep:

Austra - Lose It

Childish Gambino - Freaks and Geeks

Adele - Someone Like You

The Weeknd - Wicked Games

Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues

Online

2011-04-30T22:53:00.001-07:00

I'm in Louisiana, working on the documentary about Roy Hudgins. We've set up a Facebook for the film. Please like it: Amorphous Films for updates, photos, etc.

I'm up in the woods

2011-04-24T15:12:00.000-07:00

I went cabin camping last weekend.

Little things (kill)

2011-04-19T16:43:00.000-07:00

K. reminded me of this quote from Before Sunset:

I always feel like a freak because I’m never able to move on like… this, you know? People just have an affair, or even entire relationships. They break up and they forget. They move on like they would have changed brand of cereals. I feel I was never able to forget anyone I’ve been with. Because each person had their own … specific qualities. You can never replace anyone. What is lost is lost. Each relationship, when it ends, really damages me. I never fully recover. That’s why I’m very careful with getting involved, because it hurts too much. Even getting laid… I actually don’t do that… I will miss of the person the most mundane things. Like I’m obsessed with little things. Maybe I’m crazy but when I was a little girl, my mom told me that I was always late for school. One day she followed me to see why. I was looking at chestnuts falling from the trees rolling on the sidewalk, or ants crossing the road, the way a leaf cast a shadow on a tree trunk… little things. I think it’s the same with people. I see in them little details, so specific to each of them, that move me, and that I miss, and… will always miss. You can never replace anyone, because everyone is made of such beautiful specific details. Like I remember the way… your beard has a bit of red in it. And how the sun was making it glow… that morning, right before you left. I remember that, and I missed it. I’m really crazy, right?