cold on the shoulders of giants

--some damn good bobby bare jr. live appearances on kexp can be found here in their archives.

--excerpt from Barry Hannah's essay "Christ In the Room" from the new Oxford American:

" My goods, by Christ's direction, derive from Satan, kicked out of heaveh for Pride. I am a blithe conformist. Episcopalians do not give up comfort for Christ. Neither do Baptists, Catholics, or Church of Christers. A good enough symbol of American Christians would be a Lexus parked in front of a church. It wouldn't take much of a cynic to add an Abrahms tank.

But I am relishing our guilt, my shame, now. Rolling in that good, good mud. Chiefest of sinners, never to be forgiven, etc. Though who among us with any conscience has not wondered if we're even worth saving? I have never heard a description of heaven that suffices for this human heart. I don't want to sing praises in a host of angels, and "streets paved with gold" just sounds like the last touch to Las Vegas.

On the other hand, most of us have prayed for a return to blissful ignorance and wonder. Our minds do nothing but define our worries and hatreds. This may be Hell itself. We already know it thoroughly.

We have all worked in the foyer of the lunatic asylum. Release and deliverance by work is all we know. But we pray and beg for something else across the river and into the shade of the trees. For me, that is where Christ stands."

these are the opening words to Hannah's short novel Hey Jack!:

"I go back to Korea. Do I ever. Sometimes I stand on a corner with a book in my overcoat looking up at the sky and begging it to snow. I stand there in my undefended face, no weapons on me, knowing so much it is an agony not to write it down, and thus iI have gone home, over and over, and written this down, so as to distinguish my life, which has not been so much lately, and to share the tales of our little town. In that way the sands of time will perhaps not cover us up.

You will find me changing voices as I slip into the --let us say--mode of the closer participant. Otherwise I am sane, except for once in my life, and do not speak in tongues or hear voices as they do in certain churches. My eyes get bigger than ever over the situation of this town and my passing through it. I have settled here because of the university library and the distinguished bookstore, and also the old gentlemen who sit on the chairs around the square to reminisce. These old men have not been treated well in other fictions by the authors in other states in others times. But you cannot ignore the fact that it takes a certain strength to sit out in such a hot shade in the summers and watch the cars and young scoundrels."