Owls With Knees

  

 

#34

02.03.10

 

Photo

 

Whether or not you find this image beautiful is unpredictable to me.  However, I hope that at least you find it to be interesting.  And if the photo isn't interesting or beautiful to you, I hope the music is enjoyable to your mind and your ear.  And if the music isn't enjoyable, then at least I hope you'll sign the guestbook before you leave and never come back (and who could blame you?)

 

I was putting Q to bed and didn't yet have a photo to post.  Typically I'd be sweating an oily substance that might be described along the lines of dulce de leche, but by this point I've learned to trust that Intrigue and Beauty Abounds... so there was no fear.

 

As I opened the book shelf in Q's bedroom to get Roald Dahl's The Enormous Crocodile, the night's read, I noticed his owl collection has expanded nicely over the past few years.  I called him over and we set them up on his dresser, and the photo of the day was safely procured.

 

Here is a different view, angled, that doesn't show all of the owls:

 

 

 

Music

 

Alrighty, then... how have you been enjoying today's experimental music?  I regard the Massachusetts band The Books very, very highly.  They are experimental, but otherwise simply cannot be classified.  They are a duo of high-brow art guys who call their music "collage pop", since they really cut-and-paste music bits, loops and samples in an almost visual way, while still creating an aesthetically pleasing aural experience.  I first learned of them when I heard their amazing work with José González on an AIDS benefit album, and I'll feature that song at some point in the near future.  Part of the reason for today's post is to simply introduce you to The Books if you haven't meet their sound already... knowing you met José González's sound back in blog entry #5.  Just wait until you hear their collaborative work featuring a Nick Drake track!  Ah, rats.  I've spoiled the surprise.  Hopefully you won't immediately google it... but I'd understand if you did.

 

This song, An Owl With Knees is very smooth to my ears... I like the simplicity of the lyrics and the space within the music.  The name of the song comes from the one sensible sentence in the entire lyric:

 

It's strange to see how time agrees

To slow down for owls with knees.

I think the meaning here is that owl's don't have knees, and time doesn't slow down for anyone or anything.

Parting Comments

 

T and I had been married 12 years when we decided we were ready to start our family.  When we learned we were going to have a little boy, a tug-of-war regarding the naming of our progeny ensued.  I was hoping for Miles Coltrane Edwards; T preferred naming him after my father whose initials are CQE.  T actually calls him CQE, and you've likely noted that I tend to call almost everyone by their initial(s) too.  Because my uber-cool nephew had the "C" of my father and his own father (different from my own 2 C's), and no one had claimed my father's "Q", and because Q is inarguably the greatest, most Qoolest letter ever invented, we eventually settled on my 1st C, my father's Q, and our shared E.  Voilá - CQE II.

If you're following this blog regularly, my condolences.  Yet at least you will have noted that we here in the Subarctic Edwards Clan have a fascination with owls.  It began when Q was a newborn.  We thought it would be cool to have a whole bunch of figurines of my father around his room as a reminder of whom he was named after, and also to look out for him symbolically.  Sadly, the marketplace has scant available figurines of my father (I think they're all bought out by the Madagascari as soon as they're produced from Trenton, NJ to Bangkok, Thailand), so we were forced to find a different representative from Kingdom Animalia to represent my father.  We decided on the wise owl.  Which is why we had an owl painted in the Q of that mural in his nursery, if you remember blog entry #8.  

From there we started collected interesting owls here and there, and family members have joined in the hunt.  The first piece we acquired is the owl second from the left in the photo above.  It is carved out of whale bone and has whale baleen for eyes.  I purchased it for Q while I was doing a field clinic in Nome, Alaska, at Maruskiya's Gift Shop when he was still an infant.  They have really neat Alaska Native arts in that shop; our piece was carved in Savoonga, St. Lawrence Island.  You should stop by there the next time you're in Nome!  The one in the front and center is carved from buffalo horn; the turquoise one on the far left was purchased by T's parents in Turkey, my parents got him the one carved out of light wood made by the same folks that make nutcracker ornaments in Germany, we purchased the round owl made from a gourd and the bug-eyed owl in the back while in the Caribbean a few weeks ago... so you can see, there is already a nice little worldwide collection going here.  If L.A. is the great melting pot for humans in the U.S. of A.; the second shelf from the top of Q's book shelf is the great global melting pot for trinkety owls.

Parting (Lame) Joke

What does the smart owl say?

Who, Who.

What does a very smart owl say?

Who-m, Who-m. 

Okay everybody... In unison now... on three...

1, 2, 3:

Groan.

Until tomorrow... thank you for looking, listening and reading.  CCE