Motherfucker made me cry on a train. That’s not a nice thing to do but I don’t let stuff like that get to me anymore. Boys can cry, too. Don’t let the gender Nazis tell you different. Besides, Kazuo Ishiguro can’t hide his tear-jerking beauty any better than the rest of us can. I don’tContinue reading “Klara and the Sun”
Category Archives: essay
E Pluribus Unum
Someone, or some force, is doing a very good job of making us not like each other very much these days. We are divided by gender, age, culture, nationality, religion, sexuality, color, and by our economic and geographical place in this world. Think of the members of entire professions that we are asked, by someoneContinue reading “E Pluribus Unum”
To The Lighthouse
“Here sitting on the world, she thought, for she could not shake herself from the sense that everything this morning was happening for the first time, perhaps for the last time, as a traveller, even though he is half asleep, knows, looking out the train window, that he must look now, for he will neverContinue reading “To The Lighthouse”
Genius in our Midst: Billy Bragg
In 1983, Billy Bragg released his first album, Life’s a Riot with Spy vs. Spy, unleashing his ferocious talent on the music world. In acts of pure alchemy, he merges the rough-edged punk of The Clash with the earnest protest folk of Phil Ochs and sprinkles his songwriting with a unique perspective on the relationshipContinue reading “Genius in our Midst: Billy Bragg”
Charlie Watts
This one hit pretty hard. It was unexpected, for one thing, and for another he was one of the founding fathers of my musical development. After The Beatles, there were The Stones, as every schoolboy knows. The Stones were bluesier, dirtier, nastier, and a lot rougher around those edges that the Beatles had smoothed downContinue reading “Charlie Watts”
Words & Music by Mike Power 