Beulah Land

Taken By Trees-Open Field

Last night was Festival de San Juan and it was pretty hilarious. The entire city packs the beach and lets of fireworks and plays music and parties until the morning. It sounds really cool, but I realized last night how much of the world truly is made up of corny peace sign t-shirt wearing, goofy group photo around the fire taking, litter spewing, suburban nuclear family crap. And for an oh so brief moment, once again had that feeling of weird selfish isolation. I'm not so different though, I guess. And for what it's worth, with headphones on and the beautiful scenery and people setting off fireworks left and right, it is in fact the perfect enviroment to listen to Person Pitch.

Anway, in accordance Anton and I bought three bottles of cheap delicious wine, juiced a few lemons into a huge empty jug of water, threw in some orange juice for good measure, and headed down to the beach. The resulting drinking experience was not unlike sucking down a gallon of your own vomit. However, it got us both trashed enough to start buying overpriced Estrella's off the mysterious Indonesian beach beer guys, who I'm convinced now, are part of some larger organized crime outfit. It also got me drunk enough to change into Anton's swimming shorts in front of half the population of Barcelona and go drunken swimming in the sea after dark again. The Mediterranean, by the way, has a killer (literally) undertow. But the water is actually blue green and salty and warm and wonderful.

Afterward as we were walking down the boardwalk back to the flat, I decided to hop in line and brave the horror of a Spanish "Honey Bucket" (port-o-pot). This is a mistake as I immediately lost Anton and was left screaming his name through the throngs drunk Spanish passers-by, who, once again, would NOT be out of place farting around with teased hair at the County Fair. You see, I had left my keys in the flat and Anton was my only way back into the house. After I had blown out my voice I decided there wasn't much else I could do other than walk home through the horde and sit on the street outside the door waiting for Anton to get the same idea. This was not a pleasant walk, as you can imagine and involved a sailor's weight in cursing.
Anyway, I made it back to the house after about an hour of walking. This isn't really worth mentioning, as I would have had to do that anyway. But I was exhausted, and resolved that I was going to get myself back in that apartment come hell or high-water. This began about fifteen minutes of ringing the buzzer downstairs and kicking the door. And RIGHT as I was about to give up, who would show up at the other end of the door, but a smiling little Anton. I was so relieved to not have to sleep in the Plaza across the street that I didn't even mind that he has been watching me pleading into the little camera thing by the buzzers for most of that time.
fucker.

Whatever, I woke up this morning not hung over with the sun shining and feeling generally great from not smoking for two days and have been listening to Taken By Trees to celebrate that fact.

You may or may not be aware of Victoria Bergsman. Or rather you may not be aware that you know of her. She is the other voice on Peter, Bjorn, and John's "Young Folks". She's also the former lead singer of Swedish retro-pop group The Concretes. This is her solo debut, produced by Bjorn Yttling of afore-mentioned tri-named supergroup. It's very, very good. Go ahead, give it a listen. You'll probably enjoy yourself.