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Aural Fixations, the Rumpus Mixtape #1: Pastoral
Pastoral. For a long time we’ve thought of that simply as pastures, poetry about streams and paintings of lush, lime green grass. Cows. Works by Virgil. A certain longing for the countryside....
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Aural Fixations, The Rumpus Mixtape #2: Chicago
Chicago.Sometimes it gets overlooked as a great city as we tend to focus our energies on considering the coasts and leave the interior as a great blur in our minds. But a great city it is, indeed, and...
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Aural Fixations, The Rumpus Mixtape #3: Revolution in the Air
Revolution begins with devotion to a moral vision and a belief that egregious wrongs must be made right. In this way all revolutions are a revolution within. These days, there is both revolution in...
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Aural Fixations, The Rumpus Mixtape #4: Reading Didion
Great writers wound us.Their words cut into our bodies; their ideas become notions of ourselves. Cue Joan Didion. She stitches sentences through your brain. You emerge exhausted and charged — agreeing,...
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Aural Fixations, The Rumpus Mixtape #5: Maudlin
Maudlin: a feeling we don’t so much encounter as create. A sad place with funereal bits and a ladle of self-pity. Darker than Fitzgerald’s dark night of the soul, it is a place far past despair. A...
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Aural Fixations, The Rumpus Mixtape #6: Drinking Red Wine
There are picnics where people discuss how long the potato salad can be out in the heat and there are picnics where people discuss Wittgenstein. At Wittgenstein picnics, the people are drinking red...
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Aural Fixations, The Rumpus Mixtape #7: Revelry
Revelry. A raw expression of joy. Delight. It’s loud, laughing, possibly bawdy, frequently boozy. It’s unexpected, a height you can’t plan. It’s sparkly, warm, merry. It’s one more drink, a round for...
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Aural Fixations, the Rumpus Mixtape #8: Van Gogh
Van Gogh … beauty that breaks your heart.Vincent painting images that he had to view through the bars of the asylum. Vincent eating his paints.Writing all those hundreds of letters to his brother...
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Aural Fixations, The Rumpus Mixtape #9: Chilly Scenes of Winter
You can see the architecture of things in winter.Structures glisten. Naked trees drip with clear popsicles. We find ourselves alone with ourselves. Everyone else has gone away to someplace...
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Aural Fixations, The Rumpus Mixtape #10: Making a Pie
Making a Pie (Instructions for Pie and Life)1. The act of reading poetry is a fine thing to incorporate. Begin, say, with Cornelius Eady’s “Gratitude” and take it from there.2. Clean surfaces at...
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