The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.
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READIN
READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.
There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.
The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.
🦋 Perspex Island song by song: Birds in Perspex
And we come to the song that first made me want to get this record. It is so beautiful, my heart just stops. Love is clearly going to be a major concern of the record. The poetry contained in the first verse -- "Well I take off my clothes with you/ But I'm not naked underneath/ I was born with trousers on/ Just about like everyone" -- grips me so tightly, I haven't been able to get past that much to the rest of the song as more than an auditory experience -- although I hear a lot of snatches of lyric that sound like they could be really meaningful. As an auditory experience this song is fantastic. Listen to the vocal arrangements, Hitchcock and the backups singing to each other and with each other. Listen to the mind bending instrumental midway through.
The image Hitchcock had in mind, according to this interview*, was of birds contained in clear plastic paper-weights like the ones "they sell at seasides with crabs and shells in them" -- the birds are "a frozen moment waiting to happen". I haven't gotten my head around this song enough yet to see that -- I'm focussed on the psychological stuff still; but that "frozen moment" feeling was part of my response to "Oceanside". So: tension on the record between movement and stasis. How does love fit into that dynamic?
*Another great line from the interview, "Perspex Island is a sort of portable Avalon."
posted evening of Tuesday, April 10th, 2007 ➳ More posts about Perspex Island ➳ More posts about Robyn Hitchcock ➳ More posts about Music
