Sinister: it's a grey day

[Youn J. Noh]

Dear Sinister,

> are there any Los Angeles sinisterines who are going to see Air at the  
> American Legion Hall next saturday?

Just in the way a word seems to pop up everywhere after you find out its
meaning, an article on Air appeared in the last issue of the New York
Times Magazine.  So I found out that they are French.  That makes all the 
difference.  Does anyone use the word 'lover' anymore?  'Lover' could
make you weak in the knees, but 'amant' would cause a faint.  But it must 
be cos I am not a native speaker.  Surely the French do not feel that way 
about their native language.

It's snowing!  I haven't seen snow since I was 5 years old.  It's so
powdery and fine.  It's covering everything and making everything clean.  
The dead rat in the crosswalk must be buried underneath it.  (Unspoken
uncleanly things send a shiver down my spine.)  I had to bend down and
touch it (the snow not the rat), then felt silly as a car was driving up. 
(Our house faces the intersection.)  And being the first one to step in
it!

I picture Johan as a tall person with big hands and feet, so the image of 
him sitting in a tiny (to produce the right effect) chair hunched over
knitting needles was amusing.  And Newport Beach must have changed a
great deal since I last knew young people there (being ancient now) for a 
knitting society to be popular.  But then I read somewhere that knitting
is popular among young socialites such as Hilary Swank, so it must just
not be sinister.

Hannah does truly look like a doll in her sinister picture.  Whoever took 
it or stylized it was quite clever.  The eyelashes remind me of dolls
whose eyes open when you sit them up to reveal a glassy blue stare.  It's 
a bit eerie.

In one of the articles in the press archives on the Jeepster site, they
mention a sound like cellophane being torn on "Expectations" that's
supposed to be the sound of Stuart unzipping his cardigan.  Listen for
it.  It's quite exciting.  That ends my bias against zippered cardigans
as not being true cardigans.

Now then, I must engage in my usual round of doomed-to-fail Nick-baiting. 
On the basis of the following, might one question the sensitivity of
Nick's hearing?

Nick wrote:
It was a perfect moment.  One second Chris Moyles was roaring "And later
we've got only got SIR PAUL MCCARTNEY!!!" for the fifteenth time and the
next, there they were.  They played like *angels*. The song was lifted by
the introduction of a wonderfully graceful alternate guitar line.  Perhaps
some musically-minded person could explain to me what the difference was.
Mick had had his trumpet confiscated and played some kind of guitar
instead. 

But Mick wrote:
We recorded two songs. We did two takes of one, 'The Loneliness of a
Middle Distance Runner'. We asked if they could show the first. They
showed the second. All I can remember about that second take was me
playing the wrong chord at one point, and Stevie turning to me and
shouting, 'Play the right chords mate!'. Although said purely in jest, I
went to pieces, playing a succession of wrong chords after that. 

But the sentence "The song was lifted by the introduction of a wonderfully
graceful alternate guitar line" makes everything else unimportant.
Fumble and hide behind jokey sarcasm as much as you want, but it shows!
Imagine using the word 'lifted' in that way.  And it probably worked in as
an improvisation.

Yours,
Youn



+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
   +---+  Brought to you by the undead Sinister mailing list  +---+
  To send to the list mail "sinister at missprint.org". To unsubscribe
   send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to
  "majordomo at missprint.org".  WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister
 +-+  "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students" +-+
 +-+  "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+
 +-+       "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper        +-+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+