The Cinematic Orchestra

Stumbled upon this band, The Cinematic Orchestra (the "orchestra" is misleading, what you see in the above video is just the supporting act for the live performance, they are actually a British electronic outfit). It's hard to categorize them. I can only say their music possess a soundtrack-like quality as their name suggests. When I searched for the lyrics of "To Build A Home", a casual post under the comments touched me unexpectedly, like something struck you and transported you beyond your daily thoughts.

"a man, his life settled, with others in tow, feels like a solitary figure in a lonely world. then he meets her. she, from the first glance, is strangely like home to him. against the stigma, against the odds, he embraces her. he builds a home away from home with her. he sees world like never before. he lives, but in his descent, he grasps the details for what they are. entirely real yet unreal. sadness grips him. the road diverges. he stands at the fork with two tragic paths before him. either way, a part of him will leave and turn to dust."





These led me to the singer Patrick Watson. Here's his "The Great Escape". With this a little enigmatic MV as a backdrop, it could well be a secular hymn for the modern work life, I suppose.

Status: In a relationship with Virginia Woolf

...He heard her quick step above, heard her voice cheerful, then low; looked at the mats, tea caddies, glass shades; waited quite impatiently; looked forward eagerly to the walk home, determined to carry her bag; then heard her come out; shut a door; say they must keep the windows open and the door shut, ask at the house for anything they wanted (she must be talking to a child), when, suddenly, in she came, stood for a moment silent (as if she had been pretending up there, and for a moment let herself be now), stood quite motionless for a moment against a picture of Queen Victoria wearing the blue ribbon of Garter; and all at once he realised that it was this; it was this – she was the most beautiful person he had ever seen.

To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf

It's just one of many very long lines (or rather flows of rhythmic narrative) in her writings like minutes of uncut cinematic shot coming to a revelatory end.

Considered to be Woolf's most autobiographical novel, words became floods of intense observation of human psychology and creative impetus that was so masterfully composed and orchestrated to the threshold of either to irrigate or to destroy. It's exhilarating. But at the same time you inevitably feel a bit disturbed and sympathize with the burden of her genius (she suffered depression through her life and in the end walked into a river near her home and drowned). You see a mind at work, a soul ventured, lamented and unfortunately despaired, some eighty years ago. It reaffirms my belief: Great art is transcendent, in the loosest possible sense of the word.

From the heart of hummingbird to ours

You can brick up your heart as stout and tight
and hard and cold and impregnable as you possibly can
and down it comes in an instant,
felled by a woman's second glance,
a child's apple breath,
the shatter of glass in the road,
the words I have something to tell you,
a cat with a broken spine dragging itself into the forest to die,
the brush of your mother's papery ancient hand in a thicket of your hair,
the memory of your father's voice early in the morning echoing from the kitchen
where he is making pancakes for his children.

The last lines of "Joyas Voladoras" by Brian Doyle.
A beautiful piece of writing begins with an invitation to consider the heart of a hummingbird, beats and pumps with facts, vigour, and ends inside a little left of our chest.

For full essay here.