Wow.

This: "He remembered that they were but flesh, a wind that passes and comes not again."

And this: "'You wrote that he had this or that person's throat cut,' he answered. 'But you neglected to indicate who sometimes did the cutting.'"

Marilynne Robinson's Reverend John Ames: "nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defense." Might be time to reread Home and Gilead.

"Romans 10:9" by the Mountain Goats

It's Summer Out There But Not in Here: A Summer Mix, 2012

Available for download here.

1. "I Was the Fool Beside You for Too Long" by Yo La Tengo.

2. "Wave Goodbye" by Ty Segall Band.

3. "Never Stops" by Deerhunter. This comes from a concept album that swirls around in insomnia, dreams, and getting trapped in dreams. It's probably been three weeks since I had a good night's sleep.

4. "It's a Wonderful Life" by Sparklehorse. People tend to assume this song is "ironic" or sardonic or sarcastic. Mark Linkous:

In a way. I got fed up with people in America thinking that my music is morose and depressing and all that. That song is like a "fuck you" to journalists, or people who are not smart enough to see what it is. But in the end, it was more about how everyday, you should pick up something, no matter how minuscule or microscopic it is, and when you go to bed, you can say I was glad that I was alive to see that. That's really what it's about.

[Tragically, Linkous, who had attempted suicide five years before this album came out, succeeded nine years after it's release. So there's that.]

5. "Wake" by the Antlers.

6. "Deuteronomy 2:10" by the Mountain Goats. "The Emims dwelt therein in times past, a people great, and many, and tall, as the Anakims."

7. "A Belly Was Made for Wine" by Royal City.

8. "Ghost" by Neutral Milk Hotel.

9. "The Taming of the Hands that Came Back to Life" by Sunset Rubdown. I've been trying to use this on a mix for a long time. It's fantastic, great live too. As best I can tell, it's about a guy so wrapped up in the Mountain Goats music that he can no longer interact or empathize with others like a normal human being.

10. "Bows and Arrows" by the Walkmen. This song has been a loyal companion for some time.

11. "Lovecraft in Brooklyn" by the Mountain Goats. John Darnielle's a genius at sinister.

12. "Drmz" by A.A. Bondy.

13. "To Old Friends and New" by Titus Andronicus.

You know that feeling when you want to post an Okkervil River song because it's a wondrous thing of beauty, but then you don't really want to own the message as yours because their lyrics are just too damn fraught, weighed down with too many implications, and so you worry about what you might be unintentionally communicating, what you might be perceived as suggesting, and you worry that people will think about it too much and that they'll start to worry about your general health, soundness, sanitas?

Yeah, me too.

The kids won't let me post any more Mountain Goats. So.

This an amazing song, a musical Jim Shepard story, only with (very) grim hope.