Dave Hickey's Blues, Keats, Bill Withers and David Olney: An Unexpected Pleasant Surprise

Yesterday was one of those stupidly irritating days.  Not my job, nothing serious at all, just daily life in general, wanting to kill a child but having to restrain yourself as it was his 9th birthday and reportedly only one kid said Happy Birthday to him at school (can that really be true?) and it was SO unfair that he had to start back to school on his birthday (yeah, well) and his homework was SO hard (not) and, and, and, AND, and I guess I myself was moderately grumpy---perhaps in my own post holiday letdown.  I couldn't get warm so Ernie started a fire in the fireplace and all of a sudden, as I alternated between listening and ignoring my child's whines, I realized I'd missed my David Olney Ustream.....our standard Tuesday at 6:00 p.m. treat.  DAMN. 

I trotted over so the site to see if I could catch the end of it and found they'd had technical difficulties and what was there was a glorious 22 second video of his manager muttering at either Ustream or some piece of equipment, finally quietly growling "piece of shit" before it suddenly ended.  And Lord let me tell you, I was instantly cheered....it was indeed a thing of beauty.  Unfortunately they quickly deleted that so I couldn't watch it over and over but instead I got to watch the video of David Olney singing a new song called A Thing of Beauty. 

Treat yourself to ten minutes and watch this video.  After the song he talks a bit about what was behind writing it.  He talks about Dave Hickey's The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty,  his thoughts on finding unexpected moments of pleasure in a day and rails against the fact that poetry seems to have become the purview of eggheads.  It turned my day around and the fact that Ernie and I were huddled in the media room to escape the sounds of Michael Jackson pounding through the living room to a happy Owen and Leo.....well, it became a thing of beauty.  Thanks David.