Willy Mason

A new artist came my way via Brian named Willy Mason. My normal research tool dug up his homepage (desperately in need a makeover, I should say). One of the songs has really resonated with me, in the same way that The Streets does for hip-hop songs. (If you haven't checked him out, do so. Young, brilliant and kinda funny - he sings about texting and having to leave the party to get "bars" on his phone.) Willy Mason seems to put a new patina on the old power-to-the-people folk ballads, something in the four more years of Dubya that makes my heart turn that pinko-commie color. His voice is uneven at best, but the music does have a solid quality to it.

Some lyrics from the song Hard Hand to Hold (MP3):

Walking home again
becomes a battle with the wind
As it teases your previsions against shame,
Like all that wax in your hair
It becomes painfully clear
That as long as it's a fight, you'll never win,

(More lyrics from his songs here

Dream: Mechano-werewolf and the dough fighters

Last night's dream:
I was in a French horror movie -- there was a guy who was (through surgery and technology) turning himself into a werewolf. He had a twin brother who was normal. It was weird and I can (well, not as clearly now) remember his face and his twin's face. The mechan-wolf had more hair, stronger jaw and cheekbones, and more musculature. People kept speaking French to me, and all I could remember were phrases like "Ou ét le sal de bains?" (I have only had 2 quarters of French in my life, and I did poorly at that, so it was weird to be digging up all of that rusty knowledge.)

Then I was in a video game-type quest. (Maybe because I have been hooked on World of Warcraft, due in stores tomorrow!) I had a cohort in my quest but he was busy fighting the big baddie of this area and I was to take on the minions. The evil creatures I was fighting looked like a cross between a hollowed out gourd, the Pillsbury doughboy and Jack (from the Nightmare Before Christmas). Lean, doughy but dried out and hollow with a fixed open expression on their faces. It was creepy -- I wasn't particularly concerned in my dream about defeating them, but they were not easy.

They started coming down out of a big tree, and I took large, elaborate, heavy, iron, wavy branching swords and hurled them at them, trying to get them before they got out of the tree. But they easily dodged out of the way. So I had a big bone (like a dinosaur bone) that I was using to fight them but they seemed to get out of the way pretty quickly or grab the end of it. I think I was starting to get concerned then.