Also, what’s a good book to start with if I want to read more James Tate? Thank you for your music and its endless place in my life. 21 u/dcberman David Berman Jul 15 '19 Thank you. With Tate just go get "Selected Poems". It changed my thinking as sure as the Butthole Surfers did* I recomend reading the last three chapters of Otto Rank's Art and Artist, especially "the artist's fight with art".

My only question: What is one book or record that has moved you emotionally in the past year? PS: I read somewhere you weren't much of a movie guy. I'm not either. But, I recommend watching Paris, Texas starring Harry Dean Stanton (if you haven't seen it already). It reminded me of you and your writing. Cheers. 15 u/dcberman David Berman Jul 15 '19 Diary of a Man in Despair by Friedrich Reck-Malleczewin. A for me, heretofore unseen view of Germany in the thirties and forties by a bavarian "landed aristocrat" choking down extravagant contempt while he watches it all go to hell.

Also, do you have any book recommendations for someone about to start college? 72 u/dcberman David Berman Jul 15 '19 edited Jul 15 '19 I'm with-holding. ​ ​ Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton Complete Emily Dickinson

What is your favorite book/novel? Do you have any recommendations for us? 26 u/dcberman David Berman Jul 15 '19 Ill recommend a Robert Stone short story i go back to re-read every year at least once. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1987/06/08/helping-2

Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton Complete Emily Dickinson

He told me his favorite novel was Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone.

"Ritchie Sacramento" follows the previously shared "Dry Fantasy" and arrives alongside a video from director Sam Wiehl that you can take in below. Mogwai's Stuart Brathwaite shared in a statement that the song "is dedicated to all the musician friends we've lost over the years" in pointing out its connections to prolific composer Ryuichi Sakamoto and late Silver Jews/Purple Mountains songwriter David Berman. Brathwaite explained, "Ritchie Sacramento's title came from a misunderstanding a friend of ours had about how to say Ryuchi Sakamoto. The lyrics were inspired by a story Bob Nastanovich shared about his friend and bandmate David Berman who proclaimed 'Rise Crystal Spear' as he threw a shovel at a sports car."

David

I heard a female voice softly reading these lyrics

1977

The band was formed in December 2003, in Haninge. Their name comes from a lyric in the song "People" by the Silver Jews.[1]

CH1009: SCUD MOUNTAIN BOYS: Pine Box LP "This time of year the light comes through the pines in flat beams and spark points, glancing off the frost that decorates the grounds of the light-studded medical cities. For a six-sided second I feel like I'm back in the haunted Piedmonts, a decorated major in the Japanese Inner Space Program, renewing my vow to bear down on the truth even if there is none for the hundredth time. After the exodus of the Calm Reflectors I had started seeing the Scud Mountain Boys around town with their Baltimore haircuts, the guitarist's guitarist carrying his 1873 'trapdoor' Springfield rifle, the progeny of the muzzle-loading French Charleville muskets that had whacked so many Redcoats around these hills. I had heard it was the band's tradition to lay dinner on the table uncooked and then set the table on fire.I was out for a walk with Mr. Fiddler the other night, when he turned to me and said, 'this is the time of year when the region is at peace with itself.' I turned to laugh in his face when the impulse subsided. He had been right of course. I'd already seen it happen in the slide projector's cone of lit dust: the November sky hovering over lives of dark employment like a televised clay bank, breech-loaders replacing muzzle-loaders, crows wired to the sky like marred pixels, portraits cubed into accordioned life while every single object of perception waited for us in the air conditioning. Yes, tennis crested in the seventies, killing Eddie Money and the last of the Holmby Hills Rat Pack, but how many times did we have to witness the L.A. fireplaces reflected in L.A. wineglasses before it ended?You meet these suburban kids with Biblical names, but there are walls behind their eyes, strange mathematical mountains at whose base we sit playing our native keyboards and rinsing our teeth with digital snow. I'm starting to believe that the inscription above the portal describes this side, not the next. Few people know that George Washington's favorite song was 'The Darby Ram,' or stop to think that before he was a statue he scratched his weld, got the hiccups, and danced alone in his room. All the 'human things.' He must have been scared when he fought in the woods, hiding in the dormant Christmas trees, his hand gripping the black walnut musket stock. In those times and these we turn to the pacifics of a Gamelan orchestra for transport and release. We stand by the hind legs of a K car, listening to the new city cassettes, searching for some sign of human residence here beneath the justifiably uncelebrated Massachusetts sky. This treasured early work brought calm forecasts and sad peace to our house. I hope you take it with you when you go. - D.C. Berman, Original Liner Notes to 'Pine Box' LP

This is definitely from an incel's perspective, and I also realize it's also the ultimate neo-liberal love song, as we sit in a place of peak individualism. It's not the kind of message I'm proud to spread. I don't intend it to be a love song to the self — it's more of an 'I'm stuck with myself' song. If no one wants to fuck you, it's your fault.