Claire Cronin - "Weight of the Kill". We dream of diaries that tell us tomorrows: I did it, and it worked out. The calendar will tell us what we are, we say - twins or virgins, bulls or fishes, appointed by stars. We judge ourselves by our friends, by the company we keep. But it's our actions that dictate our lives, or perhaps it's our thoughts, or perhaps it's our memories & culture, or perhaps our genes. Or perhaps our futures comes from the twisting up of expectation and regret, like the way we twist up a cone of paper or foil, before we fill it with flowers, or with chestnuts, or with french-fried potatoes, like that time in Wales, before we got on the bus. [buy Claire Cronin's exemplary Proof of Names EP]

Mari Kalkun - "Hommikuvalge (Morning Light)". Janey stepped onto the edge of the lake and stood there, listening. Peter was still on the shore, at the edge of the trees. "Well?" he shouted. She answered, "Seems OK!" She shifted her weight onto her right foot. She could hear the ice creaking in the cold white day. But there were no tremors, no cracks. There she was, standing on frozen water. "Are you going to come out?" she asked. He said, "No, never." Janey squinted at him, Peter in his blue coat, tall boots to his knees. Was he lying? Was he exaggerating? Or was he saying No, never, because he didn't know? Janey despised liars, despised blowhards who said things they didn't really mean. She remembered her father's old records, with speeches of Linus Aasmäe. There is nothing stronger than kindred spirits, Aasmäe would say. Stronger than family or nations. The comrades that we choose. She looked at Peter. He had taken out his camera. He was about to take a photograph of her, or else of another part of the lake, without her. [as with Monday's post on Pes i Gruppa, I discovered Mari Kalkun through Far From Moscow, an exceptional website of Russian and Baltic music. Mari is Estonian. Buy this album.]

(photograph by Wilma Hurskainen)