Lolita, qu'ai-je fait de ta vie?

"I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita."

I'm promoting Nabokov's Lolita to stand among my top three favourite books along with Great Expectations and The Favourite Game. Time spent between the pages of Lolita feels like a transitory haze. Its gorgeously written with so much precision and command for the English language. You really must read it, it's beautiful, hilarious, frighteningly clever, allusive and textured. A total sigh - the product of a literary genius.

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• Listen: So Real by Jeff Buckley
  

You can always say that summer had its charm

Photo by Cupid's_Tricks

Watch: Cardigans Sick and Tired
Watch: Cardigans Carnival

from the 1994 album Life by the cardigans

Not cruel, only truthful

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see, I swallow immediately.
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike
I am not cruel, only truthful –
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me.
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

- Mirror by Sylvia Plath

• Listen: Tori Amos Tear in my Hand
  
• Listen: Silvia Plath reads Daddy
  

Martha Frenzy

You thought I would say “Martha Madness” but that would be a cheap alliteration. Rufus Wainwright’s little sister has long stolen my heart and these past 2 months have been a bit of a Martha Wainwright Pilgrimage for me. I saw her at the mod club in Toronto for the first time in June among middle aged gay couples who made up most of the audience. Then she gave a free concert at Harbour Front on Canada day where she informed everyone of just having gotten her period backstage and how it’s appropriate in terms of matching the colors of the festivities. She is hilariously endearing and her music is evocative of the 90s - definitely among the only new artists of the 21st century that is genuinely impressive and unique. Martha is irrefutably the young female Leonard Cohen of our generation.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sF_tUMitBE Martha performs Leonard Cohen's Traitor for I'm Your Fan
• http://hypem.com/track/508248/Martha+Wainwright-Far+Away Listen to Far Away from her first self titled album

This is Martha Wainwright performing her new single You Cheated Me from her latest album I Know You're Married But I've Got Feelings Too at the mod club back in June

Lay across my big brass bed

Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed
Whatever colors you have in your mind
I'll show them to you and you'll see them shine

I long to see you in the morning light
I long to reach for you in the night
Stay, lady, stay, stay while the night is still ahead

- Bob Dylan, Lay, Lady, Lay

• http://hypem.com/track/364334/Magnet+featuring+Gemma+Hayes-Lay+Lady+Lay Listen: a cover by Magnet and Gemma Hayes