kickoff...

greetings and salutations to all you fine people out there, and welcome to the inaugural post of woolgathering!

very quickly, let me just say that this blog was borne out of two stimuli: commenting* about late- period r.e.m. records last night on the aquarium drunkard site, which is a hell of a music blog by the way [and there's a funny story about him that i'm sure to get to at a certain point**], and a dictionary.com email that i got the other day:

Word of the Day for Monday, November 5, 2007

woolgathering \WOOL-gath-(uh)-ring\, noun:

Indulgence in idle daydreaming.

[also i have a friend named jimmy who has a blog, and he's a great guy and everything, but if he can do it, i can certainly do it. i mean let's face it the guy's basically functionally retarded].

but back to what i was saying, i hope that you enjoy this intelligent whimsy, dear readers, and that in the years to come we can become great friends. because i feel like i have a lot to say, a lot of wisdom to share... and you people should fucking listen to it.

until next time...

~lee.

*the aforementioned comments [unabridged]:

i am really looking forward to the new record. and i think that ‘new adventures’ is the best record that r.e.m. ever did, especially lyrically. that being said, you are really missing out on ‘up’– i mean the record’s a little more than left of center [’daysleeper’ and ‘my most beautiful’ notwithstanding] but it is not the cryptic mess everyone would have you believe. ‘apologist’ is nice for me to compare to ’so. central rain’ as far as the band’s progression goes. ’sad professor,’ ‘diminished,’ and ‘walk unafraid’ are really great tunes and the best tune on the record for me is ’suspicion’.

‘reveal’ i have fond memories of, living in athens the summer before september 11th. i remember bartending at the globe and missing that secret show across the street at the georgia theatre. i remember i was seeing this girl kelly and the video for ‘all the way to reno’ always seemed to be on at her house on mtv2. in fact, the more i think about it, ‘reveal’ to me is kind of cosmically, thematically, like the scenes described in the song ‘nightswimming’. drinking heavily at the manhattan and the go bar [once or twice actually with michael, though we’re not friends]. afterhours hot tub parties. meaningless-ish sex. i was about to turn 24. i, and also the world, was never innocent again after that summer.

‘around the sun’ to me is probably the least strong record r.e.m. has ever done. i don’t hate the record and have listened to it many times. that being said, i wish i liked it more than i do and it’s never really had that much of an impact on me.

so there you go, man. keep up the good day to day.

your faithful reader…

3 | lee henderson [the guy who used to have your old id] November 6th, 2007 at 12:23 am

http://www.aquariumdrunkard.com/2007/11/05/rem-wrangling-
in-the-monster/#comments

**here's that funny story about the guy from aquarium drunkard: i'm a pretty avid reader of his blog but never really paid any attention to him personally, right? until one day i catch his name-- justin gage-- and an absolute powderkeg of memory exploded off of my computer screen. we know that i lived in athens, georgia from 1996 until 2003 and then again briefly in 2006. but way back in 1996- 1997 i was underage and could not drink in bars [athens, georgia, incidentally, is nothing but one big awesome collection of bars. any report of there being a university there is a gross exaggeration]. this problem, however, was easily circumvented by showing the doorman someone else's valid id, given that that someone else was of age and shared your hair color. well that person, for me, was justin gage, whom i've since contacted to tell this funny story to. neither of us have any idea how i actually wound up with his license, but i'd like to thank him here publicly for all the miller high lifes and maker's mark shots i imbibed while under his guise. keep up the good work, justin.