December 01, 2020

The series in PDF

My dear friend Ralf Sauter surprised me this week with what turned out to be, inadvertently, an early birthday gift: the complete Grain Sparrow series in beautifully formatted, delightfully readable, search function-ready PDF!

Scrolling through it, I was alarmed to see how many typos Id failed to notice back when I was posting my write-ups daily, but thats all right. The only real howler Ive spotted is in the When He Returns write-up, where I call the song that opens Big Bloods wondrous album Operate Spaceship Earth Properly  "Where We Were Young" instead of its true name, When I Was Young. Other typos generally seem to be the comprehensible kind.

For anybody who would like Ralf’s PDF for their records, here is a download link:


Today, December the 1st, I turn 31. I woke up at 6:30 in the morning with Joni Mitchell in my headCold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire.

Translation: The Kittens of the Apple Forest (Mari Iijima)

Back when I was translating a Matsumoto song or two a day, 1983 felt like a wasteland, and wound up making me feel pretty discouraged. ...