my heart it longs for something new

I'm taking a course that requires me to watch Before Sunset, the second in that talk-y, romantic Richard Linklater/Ethan Hawke/Julie Delpy trilogy.

So I dutifully watched it, then watched Before Midnight, because I hadn't seen it yet. Then I watched a few Youtube scenes from Before Sunrise, the first film, and that's when I re-watched this scene, where Celine find's a Kath Bloom album in a Vienna record store, and she and Jesse cozy into a listening booth and listen to this amazing song.



Since then I've learned basically all that the Internet holds about Kath Bloom: a total forgotten gem who had a fairly short career in the early eighties, after which she mostly focused on child-raising, was re-discovered by Linklater and featured in the film in the mid-nineties, she released a new recording in 1999 and has been recording and touring periodically ever since. These songs are just so simple and lovely.

I don't know what is happening in this video, or why, really, but this SONG. So pared down, so achy.



In 2009, there was a tribute to her songs made called Loving Takes This Course (that title.) and it includes this cover by Scout Niblett, which is on repeat forever.



Kath Bloom, everyone. Kath Bloom.

In which we are left to our own devices

Today one of my favourite writers on one of my favourite sites wrote her farewell post, as she moves on to bigger and (hopefully) better things .

Molly Lambert may be the greatest writer on the internet, and maybe the greatest writer in America. She has an ability to identify not just what it is, but why it is, about life/emotions/art/culture/cities/eras/Fleetwood Mac. She is the master of high readings and writings of low culture, and of low readings and writings of high culture. She takes it all apart to put it back together.

Molly Lambert writes about Jack Nicholson's sexiness and lack thereof and she gives voice to the anxieties of being the sole female in a boys club, and she does so with precise wit and a true heart. She writes in the voice of a smart woman writing as a smart woman (as opposed to the latest trend of smart girls writing like dumb girls), and she writes it fun. She doesn't need to write sentences in all-caps because everything she says is meant to be heard.

Molly Lambert understands the internet because she's growing with it, and because she is making it. Molly Lambert understands America because she's growing with it, and because she is making it.

A couple of years ago, Molly Lambert commented on a post here, and told me I should think about writing for This Recording. I haven't taken her up on it, but that comment means as much to me as any other success I've had in my short time stringing words together.

Best of luck, Molly. Open up, everything's waiting for you.