"You Cheated Me" by Martha Wainwright

You Cheated Me


So, those of you who know all about my obsession with all things Wainwright and McGarrigle, will most likely not be all that surprising. I was cruising around YouTube with some friends the other night when I noticed that I hadn’t really watch too many music videos recently. I also then started thinking about how in my writing class on visual culture, I have a day planned to talk about music videos. And I am excited about it. There was this awesome day in my pop culture class when I was a junior in undergrad when two friends came up with a music video theory. Awesome, right?

Well, I recently discovered that Martha Wainwright is going to covering some Edith Piaf songs, and I decided to check out some of her music videos. I found the one for “You Cheated Me” from her most recent CD, I Know You’re Married But I’ve Got Feelings Too. The video is so interesting, not to mention that the song is uber-awesome.

What I think is so awesome about the video is it how it uses the sofa. I mean, it is pretty hard not to miss, right? She sort of comes embedded in it, and I wonder if the sofa is a metaphor for how we become consumed by our emotions and anxiety after we discover some really bad news. The sofa is a place of comfort, and it is a place where we can get away and escape through a variety of means: conversation, TV, reading, avoiding work, sleeping.


Here are the lyrics:

I know you've got to go
And I wanted to be afraid to say
But I'm not
I'm scared to death of what you've become

You were my only ally
Now you're looking around for an alibi
Why don't you go ask your new set on the set of lies

Chorus: You cheated me and I can't believe it
I've been calling since four o'clock last night
You cheated me and I can't believe it
I saw you singing and dancing in the rain
All the way home

You left the keys in the door when you left that night
I don't wanna point the finger but I can't help it
Why don't you run your scared little ass down the block
I'll catch up to you when you come back and

Chorus

When all the bills have been unrolled
And your story has been untold
Tell me if it was worth it
To see the whole damn thing unfold

Chorus (2xs)

Moving Home

“To sum up, what we have discovered through the study of motility, is a new meaning of the word ‘meaning.’ The great strength of intellectualist psychology and idealist philosophy comes from their having no difficulty in showing that perception and thought have an intrinsic significance and cannot be explained in terms of the external association of fortuitously agglomerated contents. The Cogito was the coming to self-awareness of this inner core. But all meaning was ipso facto conceived as an act of thought, as the work of a pure I, and although rationalism easily refuted empiricism, it was itself unable to account for the variety of experience, for the element of senselessness in it, for the contingency of contents. Bodily experience forces us to acknowledge an imposition of meaning which is not the work of a universal constituting consciousness, a meaning which clings to certain contents. My body is that meaningful core which behaves like a general function, and which nevertheless exists, and is susceptible to disease. In it we learn to know that union of essence and existence which we shall find again in perception generally, and which we shall then have to describe more fully.”

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Colin Smith. London and New York: Routledge, 1958. 170.

More Happenings

Okay, so I totally noticed that one of my old college friends (Melody) posted this on her Facebook wall, but I had to post it here too just in case some of my friends that aren't hers who didn't get a chance to see it could see it for the first time. Like her, I am probably way to excited about this, but as you probably know, one of the things I am totally interested in is Happenings. This random occurrence of art and performance being made. I hope you enjoy!



I know that there are some elements to a Happening that are controlled and practiced. Certainly these actors/dancers had to learn their parts. But the sheer joy of some of spectators is just so amazing, and the fact is that many people in the station were probably shocked at this. This rather mild, amusing Happening is one to share.

The Crevasse

Although this crevasse is not in the Patagonian glacier, I have to admit it is pretty amazing, visually that is. [Sorry for that lame inside joke, but for those of you that know it, I hope you take some pleasure at others' expense.]

Check out this awesome 3-D street art I found in TSWL yesterday when I was "working." This particular piece is by Edward Muller and was a part of the "Festival of World Culture" in August of 2008.

One Of The Places Where I Want To Live...

I was perusing the NY Times site, and I often like to look at the pictures that accompany ads. I was so excited when I came across this one, and I was even more excited to see that this house was actually in Rhode Island, a place that I have always dreamed about moving to. And by dream, I mean think about a lot and know that it probably won't happen. However, if I had enough money, I would totally buy this place (after Mt. St. Michael, Mt. St. Michel, and the Biltmore...although I technically think this house would be the cheapest).

The house is named Clingstone, and it sits in Narrangensett Bay of RI. It was built by the Mr. J. S. Lovering Walton and Mr. William Trost Richards in 1895. It was eventually purchased by Henry Wood, a distant family relative in 1961 for only $3,600 dollars. Since then, Wood has made the house practically a completely green house with solar power, seawater composts for water, collecting basin for purifying rain water, etc. So yeah, that makes the house completely great...but I want it because it looks so beautiful. I can just see myself sitting at a window typing on an old school typewriter thinking of my youth traveling abroad.....

Sources: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/07/garden/07clingstone.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp