On Arthur

Emily majored in astrophysics at UC Berkeley, which helps explain all the astronomical imagery that blazes through this song and occasionally explodes into cosmic epiphany.

- from "Always Coming Home: Joanna Newsom" by Erik Davis in the winter 2006 Arthur Magazine.

This is currently my favorite sentence in the world. NAY! In the universe. It's cry-worthy (wow, i really want to erase that, but i won't).

Arthur Magazine is a great bit of reading. It's my required unrequired rag for when I'm feeling particularly out of the mainstream. You can pick up free copies of it from Amoeba here in Berkeley, but it's distributed at a bunch o places by dedicated followers (like my brother Steven, who had the grace to introduce me to it). It's got great articles on politics (no, not very conventional articles on politics), spirituality, music, etc. I believe the magazine's tag line describes it quite well: "A review of life, arts & thought." Of course, this is a review mainly aimed for hip liberals who have a rumbling penchant for the anarchic or wacky. Whatever, I like it.

Winter 2006 has a nice feature on Joanna Newsom - goddess with a harp (minus all the stereotypes?). Anyway, I can't stop listening to her new album Ys, particularly the song "Sawdust and Diamonds." Ten minutes of awesome.

In other news, you can expect me to be blogging a lot (unless, of course, i don't) because I'll be dragging my computer for notes this semester. I've always wanted to do it, but my old clunker was absolutely unwieldy.