Me and Sylvia, smiling for the camera (August 2005)

`READIN`

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.

— John Stuart Mill (view other epigraphs)

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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: Ride

Ride! This song, along with "Oceanside" and "Birds in Perspex", forms the spiritual core of the record -- movement across a warm, beautiful landscape, by turns inviting, undemanding, threatening. Movement towards elusive love. Movement in the instant, with stasis immediately behind you and before you.

"By the end of which a billion creatures yet unborn will/ Die..." is almost the archetypal Robyn Hitchcock lyric -- the long, incantatory run of short syllables, the pause, the long-held syllable. That really rocks my boat.

The chorus of this song is one of the most beautiful lyrics on the record. Like several other love-related lyrics on the record, it looks a bit trite written down but in the context of the song, really powerful.

Here is a live performance of Ride at The Bottom Line (NYC), on Hallowe'en of 2003.

posted evening of Friday, April 13th, 2007
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🦋 Perspex Island song by song: Ride

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