LOOK - SOME NEW MUSIC! It's about time I talked about something recorded this century. I'm not keen on this blog turning into an '80s revival site - although there's a very strong argument for proper critical appraisal of said decade to rescue it from the claws of the Maconie locusts. Something, then, which could only have been recorded this century, could only have been recorded now. Something which is happening as you read. And that something is "Fuck It - The Official So Solid Crew Mix Compilation." A limited edition, so you need to get it now, preferably out of a grassroots specialist shop (like Streetvibe in Tooting High Street where I got mine; the very kind lady there is a serious contender for the best record shop assistant in the world right now). A wonderful piece of art which transcends the somewhat strained attempt to emboss the music, the culture, with "controversy," extending not only to the title (which is squarely polarised against the sleevenote preaching "community" and "crews standing together") but also the sleeve, displaying as it does various newspaper articles with the phrase "F**K IT" emboldened underneath (the asterisks speak so much louder than the U and C would've done) just like the good old days of the Roxy. (Sub)Conscious of history. But the music on here is so good and, dammit, so celebratory that there really is no need for the subtext, apart possibly from annoying the NME, adopting as they have the usual pretend affront at the failure of the crew to attend King's Reach Tower to grovel on their knees in abject apology at their moral transgressions, an attitude the success of which can be easily gleaned from the astonishing circulation figures which the NME has sustained over the last 20 years or so; or to annoy racist idiots like Decca Aitkenhead, who in the Guardian before Christmas tried manfully to avoid calling the crew "monkeys" while issuing a book full of middle-class slumming over a joke drug, the strength of which hardly compares favourably to that of Lemsip Max Strength. There is no specific credit for the mix on these 2 CDs, so one presumes that it's a digitally knocked-together job, but the flow is generally so purposeful and exciting that it scarcely matters (how I wish white operatives could have a similar lack of hang-up about auteurs, and that's definitely with a small "a"). Two mixes, each lasting either side of an hour, and full of propulsion and point, as methodical as "Trans-Europe Express" but actually much more involving. Involved are various SSC tracks, including mixes of all the singles plus a couple of new joints, as well as a pick-and-mix from various parallel crews including Pay As You Go Kartel (whose "Know We" is already one of the great pop singles of this century), Corrupted Cru and Geeneus (but, oddly enough, no Genius Kru) as well as the pop-friendly likes of Daniel Bedingfield and Mis-Teeq. Apart from a slight discordant overlap from Jameson's "Slow Jam" to DB's "Gotta Get Thru This" the mix is pretty well seamless and actually works towards a climax of celebration, rather than the apocalypse which I suspect the likes of Aitkenhead are avidly awaiting. This music is as radical as anything coming from glitchland (and more so, because it is squarely in the field of pop/dance and thus unburdened by manifestos other than the standard hip hop issue type) yet as approachable as a Labrador puppy. Something like "Bodyrock" by Tymes 4 is structured as radically as Matmos but falls right into the classic girl-group lineage known from the Shirelles onwards; avant-garde but emotionally euphoric. The killer sequence which climaxes CD 2 starts with the unpromising name of Beverly Knight, but fear not: "Get Up (SSC Mix)" jerks her real-ale soul vox to 69 rpm, killing soul as surely as Eric B at his peak. Then it's on to "Messin'" by Ladies First (sampling what sounds like the gong intro to Japan's "Ghosts"!) thence to SSC's "Friend of Mine" ("Sexy Boy" dumped in a gutter and rehabilitated with the street) and finally Ratpack's "Get You Rockin' (Synth Vocal Remix)" which, in terms of aesthetics, drive and belief, is right there in spirit with Gene Vincent. This stuff ROCKS. So give the Strokes/Stripes the evening off and try this. At present I would rate this above SSC's own "They Don't Know" album (although you should still have both) because it's not weighed down by concerns about "respect" or "cred" but sets out to entertain and move and does both (and more) with ebullience and flair. But this is a culture which you need to absorb. Otherwise one might as well give up and go back to the Charley Patton box set. I'm sticking with now because life without significant new discoveries and new realignments of beliefs is, frankly, not worth having, as Phil Larkin would have secretly agreed. posted by Marcello Carlin Permalink . . .
IT'S IN THE TREES - BUT IS SHE COMING? "The Ninth Wave" sequence which comprises side two of Kate Bush's "Hounds of Love" must be one of the bravest things ever to be put on a number one album, particularly as this was at the time her first new recording in three years (no one blinks an eyelid at that sort of time lapse now, but in the '80s it was considered unduly lax and symptomatic of artistic difficulties - cf. Human League's "Hysteria"). I'd expect that apart from hardcore Bush fans, most of the casual buyers who made this record her best-selling one worldwide probably stuck to the procession of hits on side one and shrugged off "The Ninth Wave" as an indulgence. But both sides (and in those still vinyl-dominant days, side breaks still mattered aesthetically) are linked; the second side being a refraction and ultimate confirmation of the first. More cynical observers have described the album as "Running Up That Hill" plus support act. Certainly it is the key song in view of the concept of doing "a deal with God" and thereby playing around with life and death, simultaneously observing and participating (and who could forget her astonishing performance of the song on TOTP, the band stood in a line, motionless; in an era of Wham!, Five Star and Live Aid - BE HAPPY, OR ELSE - CARE, OR ELSE - this was, believe me, radical). The euphoria of "Hounds of Love," the song (albeit tempered by the closing refrain "I need love, love, love" - a Dadaist postscript to "Reynard the Fox") is followed by the equally ecstatic "Big Sky." Thereafter, however, a key song "Mother Stands for Comfort" which markedly refers to her mother being able to "hide the murderer," and then the sequence climaxes with "Cloudbursting" - perhaps unduly lumbered with the song's Donald Sutherland-assisted visualisation - with the government in a big black car (always the harbinger of death in pop - "Long Black Limousine" etc. etc.) coming for her dad - "a threat to the men in power." The finale is martial and ascending - this could almost have been used for the underrated '70s telefantasy serial "The Changes." It climaxes with the toot and rumble of a steam train - going backwards? Wendy Hiller in "I Know Where I'm Going" off to a prefabricated "Highlands" which was in fact located on the coast of Norfolk. "The Ninth Wave" is essentially a conceptual sequence of songs about drowning - or about the protagonist drowning (for reasons unstated - accident? suicide attempt?). As with dreams/reveries, a lot of information/insights are compacted into a very brief timescale - the whole sequence may only cover a very few minutes, with the woman drowning and others attempting to save her. A quote from Tennyson's "The Coming of Arthur" on the sleeve makes the title's origins clear - allegorical orgasm ("slowly rose and plunged/Roaring, and all the wave was in a flame")? Exchanging the experience? Swapping places? And don't forget the transgender subtext - right there in the sequence's first song "And Dream Of Sheep" - "They'll not take me for a buoy" (pun?). "Like poppies, heavy with seed - they take me deeper and deeper" the song closes, Bush sounding very blissful. Oh she's singing about sex! Or is she? Straight into "Under Ice" ("there's something moving" - "IT'S MEEEEEE..." dying in post-coital rapture) and then "Waking the Witch" where most passers-by gave up. In fact it's astonishingly prescient in its use of actual/sampled voices, breakbeats - would not be at all out of place on the forthcoming Chemical Brothers album, from what little I've heard of the latter thus far. And "Watching You Without Me" anticipates glitch. The drowner imagines, visits, inhabits, COMES and goes. This is radical stuff we're getting here - in 1985 this should have been filed next to things like "The Covenant, The Sword And The Arm Of The Lord" and "Horse Rotorvator." Talk about the first five minutes after death! (Compare this to the Scriabin-meets-Henry-Miller scenarios in Scott Walker's contemporaneous "Climate of Hunter" - although unlike that flawed record, "Hounds of Love" is free of OTT guitar solos and overly-flanged bass and therefore can still make sense now) Then to the axis of the side, "Jig of Life" where said life is called for again. Rebirth. Re-baptism - Riverdance! And indeed, directing and arranging the Irish ensemble, there's Bill Whelan, making the whole thing actually sound much more like a 14th-century Italian estampie (Catholic roots!). It climaxes and then it's her (actual) dad back again, quoting Tennyson and urging her to live. So she does in the melancholy "Hello Earth" as she resurfaces, though remarking that she can still blot "earth" out "with just one hand held up high." Bidding the sailors and fishermen to come home. The storm makes its way towards America. "Out of the cloud burst the head of the Tempest - Murderer, MURDERER of calm!" Thus the murderer (and Eberhard Weber obligingly back on bass) from "Mother Stands for Comfort" - and the Home Service choir (arranged and conducted by Michael Berkeley!) welcoming her back from the darkness. And, to end, the sudden bright spryness of "The Morning Fog." The melody sounds like "Hounds of Love" played sideways, and she's living but does "love you much better now." A song which could very nicely segue into Mary Margaret O'Hara's "A New Day," the next step in the aesthetic ladder. A ladder of which Bush had reached the top with this masterpiece. By the time of her next album "The Sensual World" in 1989, Ms O'Hara had arrived, as had Kristin Hersh and Bjork; the Cocteaus (surely her spiritual niece and nephew?) were arriving at their peak; and Polly Harvey and Courtney Love were on the point of arriving. So she could go no further, and while "Sensual" is excellent, it is essentially consolidation and more of the same. Four years thereafter she required her parallel spirit, Prince, to help her out on "The Red Shoes." Since then she has borne, raised and looked after her children. She has said her peace. Recommended subsidiary listening Cabaret Voltaire The Covenant, The Sword And The Arm Of The Lord Cocteau Twins Treasure Coil Horse Rotorvator Dufay Collective Johnny Cock Thy Beaver (for more medieval estampies and evidence of the sexual subtext which lurks all the way throughout "Hounds of Love") Mary Margaret O'Hara Miss America Prince and The Revolution Around The World In A Day Keith Tippett's Ark Frames: Music For An Imaginary Film (made in 1978, but the magisterial first half of Part 3 stands as one of the greatest auralisations of a very English awakening - "Black Saint" Mingus filtered through Britten's "Noye's Fludde") Scott Walker Climate Of Hunter posted by Marcello Carlin Permalink . . .
Well, as it turned out Dawn did want her mother to come back from the dead and tried to persuade Buffy to set up a spell to do this. Naturally, as per superhero things in general, These Powers Can Only Be Used To Defeat Evil and Not to Change the Course of History (i.e. otherwise no plot). B reluctantly agreed but D was warned that "your mother may not come back quite the same way as she was." After the usual setpiece with Hydra-type monster security guard they got the tools to do it. All window dressing, of course. Because, again, what this episode was really about (after last week's practicalities in dealing with bereavement) was the emotional mess in those bereaved. The irresistible yearning for the loved one to return, to be resuscitated, reborn. D attacked B for "not caring - you go about Mom's death like it was a chore." That finished B off and she broke down. She HAD to keep busy to stop herself from thinking, to stop her from contemplating the horror, the grief - "I didn't want you to SEE me!" "Who's gonna take care of us now? I'm SCARED!" Organising the funeral, continually busy - that is how it must be dealt with. And then the killer blow - literally. A light appears behind the front door, glowing. D has the parchment with the spell on it in her hands. Scared beyond endurance. "It's Mom." The briefest yet longest of pauses. We cannot anticipate what stands behind that door. We retreat from it instantly. We do not wish to imagine what is there, what her mother has become. And, of course, Dawn, her emotions a wreck but her intuition razor-sharp, tears up the parchment, as she must do. The light disappears. B and D embrace tearfully. You can't bring back the dead. If you could, they would no longer be what you knew and loved, and memories would ignite and reduce the love to ashes of confusion. Leave the light. Let things be. Shit happened. It can't un-happen. Look at the light within yourself and try to carry on. That's how you keep the dead alive. This two-parter is the most astonishing thing I have seen on television in years. It told me what I needed to know. Thank you. posted by Marcello Carlin Permalink . . .
Today, readers, just for a change, I'm going to talk about death. No doubt this is already the most morbid of all blogs, but if blogs are by definition self-indulgent (and what form of expression isn't?), then the contours have to reflect and trace, if not yet supersede, the turnings of one's own life. Now, an artefact such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer would normally not come within a continent of the Church of Me, but having watched last week's episode (where she finds her mother dead of a brain aneurysm; nearly all of the episode is taken up with the reactions of her family and friends) it is astonishing that from the most unexpected of quarters there should come an absolute understanding of the turmoil in the minds of those left behind when a loved one dies. It was all there; the numbness in sorting out her wardrobe and choosing her burial dress, the split-minute fantasy of the paramedics being able to revive Buffy's mother, only to be dashed by reality, and - most powerfully expressed in the necessarily removed persona of Anya - the confusion and complete inability to deal with what has happened. Not knowing the routine. Not knowing how one is supposed to react. The sudden yet slow elasticity of time. That having been said, judging by the final shot it's likely that next week they will try to revive her. Nonetheless, even if you were unfamiliar with the pretext of the series, you should still find this a powerfully expressive work of dramatic art. Possibly more so than "Last Orders," the film. Based upon, but rather condensing, Graham Swift's novel (which in turn anglicised the plot of Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying") about four old Bermondsey geezers who drive to Margate to scatter the ashes of their butcher colleague Jack into the sea, reminiscing about their collective and individual pasts as they go, and reassessing their responses to love, time and mortality. Most of the dialogue has survived into the film. Although beautifully photographed and cinematically coherent, some of the "meat" of the book has gone by the wayside. In particular the failed boxer/fruit-and-veg merchant Lenny seems to have lost an awful lot of his subplots (particularly relating to his daughter) which is a shame as David Hemmings is perhaps the most potent presence in the work (eyebrows worthy of Francis Bacon). But Caine, Courtenay, Hoskins, Winstone and Mirren all give good accounts of themselves (as do the actors/actresses who play their younger selves) and it is a pretty moving film, albeit possibly slightly contrived in its "low key"-ness. I personally found the sequence where they stop off at Canterbury Cathedral very affecting, if only because I remember L and I walking through those same cloisters, down Butchery Lane and through the town just two summers ago, when everything was still good. As a pilgrimage it doesn't match the vision of Powell and Pressburger's "A Canterbury Tale" but it certainly should be seen, provided you read the book straightway afterwards. Nice, also, to see a sympathetic view of the working classes given the crap generally written about them in soaps and in the media in general. The idiots who scribble for the Sunday Times should take particular note - except of course they gave their film of the week spread to Marky Mark in Rock Star. posted by Marcello Carlin Permalink . . .
BIG MUSIC FOR A BIG WORLD = SMALL SALES Propaganda. "A Secret Wish." Played it last night for about the second time in a decade. It didn't sell in '85. I suspect that even if this were to be repackaged now under the guise of a new S Club 7 or Atomic Kitten album, it would still do the Fosbury flop. Is it still any good? Well, admirable but heartless, like sturdy Hitler Youth refrains having gone through the cleansing process. The songs here - even the cover of Josef K's "Sorry for Laughing" - are more like photocopies of songs, or business plans for songs, without actually being songs in themselves, and without the hard and pitiless sincerity that one gets (or got) from their second cousins Laibach, or the genuine siphoning of art from kitsch achieved by their brothers-in-law Yello. The best things on the album remain the "hits" - "Duel," of course, which although not climbing beyond number 21 in the UK thanks to a rather charmless performance on TOTP apparently did end up going gold, which appears with a remix of its "evil twin" "Jewel" - a stirring clatter which somehow should have been used on the Ridley Scott Silk Cut-in-the-mountains advert (the first cut won't hurt at all!). And of course the absolute masterpiece "Dr Mabuse" - the only track actually produced by Trevor Horn (he left the rest of it to Steve Lipson, and it shows; very much the work of an efficient disciple who, as Morley said of Theresa Bazar, knows which buttons to press, if not why) which roars out of its Gestalt paddock in 12 different directions. The Martians' idea of a Bond theme tune. Percussion drops like Ali left-hooks or the gates closing in on McGoohan. Orchestral orgasm to rival "A Day In The Life." MC voiceovers by the subsequently enigmatically absent Andreas Thein. On the LP/7" version, the "Don't be a fool" instruction is followed by what would eventually be a patented Pet Shop Boys poignant descending chord sequence. Sell him your soul. Never look back. Only number 27 in the Fun 40; clearly too rich, too over-lit, two years too late, or 17 years too early. Although for the full story one must hear the full 12"; atonal Andrew Poppy string swathes give way to a mournful electropop coda - the "Brookside" theme as restaged by Herzog. Problem with the Props is that you could never identify for them or feel for them, just gasp, but with oxygen rather than semen. They existed, but only as templates. Out of time? How come, then, that the Pet Shop Boys barely six months later were at number one with the most ZTT of non-ZTT records? Good timing, maybe - all the other synth duos had gone to the wall by that time, and Erasure were still warming up on the touchline - but there was something approaching a heart there, a reason; not just an excuse for Morley to smear his Baudrillard and Ginny Woolf all over the breadboard like spent bramble jelly. ZTT of course couldn't have done anything with the PSBs; they knew what they wanted, and eventually worked with nearly all the ZTT operatives (Horn/Dudley/Jeczalik/Langan/Lipson) but didn't need them. Nor of course could they have done anything with the Smiths, but that's another pickle to boil. Or Scritti. "Cupid and Psyche 85" - big production for a big world (Langan and Jeczalik again, albeit under Arif Mardin's exec) but a point. Someone/thing in which you could believe. And it was a top 5 album. Green couldn't go anywhere afterwards, of course - Anomie & Bonhomie pointedly glitch-free. Really two sides of the coin - one side the caress, the other the jackboot. And you can't understand one without immersing yourself in/subjecting yourself to the other. posted by Marcello Carlin Permalink . . .
LIBERA ME, OXFORD I watched the final episode of Morse again last night. Probably shouldn't have done. I have a lot of time for Colin Dexter - he is an acquaintance of Laura's dad of many years' standing (indeed L's dad makes a cameo appearance in "Death Is Now My Neighbour" pages 74-5, even though Dexter makes him say "awfully," which he has never said in his life, as opposed to "get off cunt," which he has said to virtually every act who has ever appeared on Top of the Pops or Later with Jools Holland not wearing a suit and/or tie). The Morse world should theoretically be antithetical to everything I recognise as "my world" but if you can accept the weirdness of thinking of murder as being "cosy" (cf Midsomer) then L and I always found it comforting. As usual, the last episode paraded a bunch of faux-hypertensive Telegraph-reading middle class wallahs (or MSWs as I shall henceforth refer to them) portrayed by overacting, underemployed B list acting stock (the rep reliables, as the old phrase went) with a mystery not terribly labyrinthine to unravel. But the "murder mystery" part of the story was always a kind of McGuffin for Dexter - the real interest was in Morse himself (i.e. Dexter - more or less interchangeable in character if not in circumstances, CD being a grandad in real life); the bleak non-life outside (and sometimes inside) work, the projection of failed emotions onto music rather than fellow humans, the red Jaguar which, like Milt Bernhardt's explosive trombone solo erupting in the middle of Sinatra's "I've Got You Under My Skin," hints at an inner, barely suppressed sexuality which is almost never allowed to come to the forefront. So essentially all the 20 million or so people who watched this the first time around watched it to watch Morse die, which he did gradually. Some inspired directorial touches from Jack Gold, too, for a change using the ITV commercial break format as a useful artistic lever. I think particularly of the link into the final break, where Morse, in dressing gown, sat deep in his armchair, tired beyond passion, wearily attempts to listen to some Faure (?) but after a few seconds presses the remote control again and switches the music off with an equally weary gesture, finally realising that even this refuge can now provide no shelter for his soul. He sits in silence, expressionless yet full of expression; like Krapp, waiting to die; not looking directly at us but not blinking either. The camera steadily encroaches upon his space, his face, his existence; the aesthetic cancer methodically eating away. He is 58 years old and has achieved nothing. He knows he is about to die but, like Lanark, has no express ambition for continued life. Comparable shots: Richard Bennett's speech about the earth and life and us before the fireplace in The Magnificent Ambersons; Paul Whitehouse as Rowley Birkin in his final monologue, staring directly at the camera in unspeakable grief. Ad break. Resumes with youth. Whirling around on his bike with what Dexter in the book calls "drums and bass" playing on his Discman. But this is no renewal. He is cycling in a circle, going nowhere. Regeneration or repetition? Morse appears on the scene. Asks the boy to hand him the cocaine. Empties it onto the ground. Advises the boy to read a book but casts an envious glance at the music, thinking "this is what I could have been" and then departs. The boy grins ruefully but not sardonically at his retreating figure, realising Morse's essential hollowness, and returns to the refuge of his d&b (Ray Keith?). In the quad (Lincoln College by the look of it). Chewing the fat with TP McKenna who's just mimed Faure's "Libera Me." Teasing re. potential murder suspect but heart only half in it. The murdered Harrison nurse. Murdered sexuality. Murdered him. Not getting it. Never got it. Ah fuck off, fuck off, I'll just die here if that's OK with you. Into Radcliffe Cardio. Croaks "Thank Lewis for me" (does he mean that literally?) and dies quickly. Murder plot in the way. As it should be. Goodbye sir. Is that a tear? No Randall and Hopkirk-type sequels with Inspector Lewis being advised and moaned at by the ghost of Morse? But sad sad sad. The seamless dissolve midway from a bucolic evening at Port Meadow to a rubbish dump secreting a body. The final, meaning, glazed-out glance through "Oxford" as seen on the Channel 6 ID. And it speaks to me and it says: look at that cracked old gargoyle of a skyline. Look at it. Then move on. Make this her memorial. posted by Marcello Carlin Permalink . . .
And here are some thoughts from a hero and contemporary of mine. Does the quiet lamenting of the lack of "new movements" mean a cessation of the ability to be moved by music? Do we all move on to cinema/jazz/classical after the age of 35? Do we keep up because we love music or is it out of desperation or even routine - a job to be done? See what you think. posted by Marcello Carlin Permalink . . .
faves2001 posted by Marcello Carlin Permalink . . .
Or one above, one below, as it turned out. I'll get the hang of this eventually. posted by Marcello Carlin Permalink . . .
The Canon posted by Marcello Carlin Permalink . . .
Below are two threads from the renowned I Love Music discussion board which indicate the immense gulf which divides the thought from the felt, the black from the white, the life from the existence. Most of the posts on the Jay-Z/Nas thread are done by posters who otherwise never appear on the board and who appear to have strayed over from another one via a link. There is more fire, passion, sexiness, mischief and downright joy to be had from this thread than virtually anything else on ILM. Contrast with "the Canon" (crass answer: "well I've always preferred Epson"), without doubt the deadest, dullest, whitest weary willy of a thread ever to appear on the bored board. The pointless point-scoring, the standard orchard of vacuous verbiage disguising the fact that they're saying the same thing (for Jay-Z/Nas read Beatles/Pixies). It illustrates quite perfectly how white will never cross over to black, how "Blue Monday" and "Rockerfeller Skank" will remain the sole dance records in Gavin and Emma's collection, and really makes me want to be stupid - in the sense of being decisive, having firm beliefs which cannot be shaken, in summary having less to worry about, without taking all sides of the argument into account and vacillating in a vacuum as "intelligent" people tend to do. The parallel downside is, of course, that, having given The Blueprint and Stillmatic plenty of spins to prove their worth, I wish that their fans could find something really worth getting passionate about. I increasingly feel like the proverbial butt-kickee in the Charles Addams cartoon: "The man who didn't like The Blueprint." I don't dislike it - simply find it a perfectly serviceable but deeply average mainstream pop-rap record with nothing that Mr Hova hasn't already told us 96 times over on his previous 48 albums. But I don't understand why everyone else, even Reynolds, even Carmody, even The Wire, are hailing it as though it were Pet Sounds reincarnate. Haven't felt this alienated from general opinion since, oh, Rum, Sodomy and the Lash. So we either learn to think less, or to think differently. Does eclecticism kill heart and love? Does Tim Westwood, who apparently owns every hip-hop record ever made but no records in any other genres, understand more about the pounding heart of music, than the Robert Sandalls of this world who hear everything and listen to nothing? Should I simply post a list of 20 albums here and say, I shall write about these and only these and/or base any judgments, as far as there can be any, upon the standards which these albums set? I'm certainly tempted. posted by Marcello Carlin Permalink . . .
Jay-Z / Nas hip-hop throw down? & other throw-downs? posted by Marcello Carlin Permalink . . .
Marcello & Laura threads in I Love Everything This tells you everything you need to know. posted by Marcello Carlin Permalink . . .
PRELUDE/EPILOGUE It was an extremely hot night, the last Saturday before the August Bank Holiday. The heat finished her off just as it had done her mother five summers previously. The cancer, invisible for four months and incurable when visible, did its work swiftly. I knew her for almost half my life. A waste of a good brain. Not, however, a wasted life. That is how I am what I now am. Hopefully wiser than I was before I knew her, but frequently I wonder whether I have learned anything. The challenge is to keep her - as I knew her - alive, through wonder, mischief, love and - hopefully - wisdom. posted by Marcello Carlin Permalink . . .
