My Insides Are Twisted

Sara Asnaghi [from Organs in Pills] (2006)

Ainara LeGardon - Sickness (mp3): Ainara's Basque body of work runs smooth on breaths and whispers. Until it ruptures jagged and twists at 2:28, and then self-heals again. Sometimes these things just happen without cause or reason, my mom says, welcome to life.

A Place To Go

Allison Grant [from "Image As Place"]

It's snowing buckets... blankets? Fields of cotton, crisp new lampshades, empty websites, furry white jackets, halogen lights, saltine cracker crumbs, teeth, porcelain toilets, scoops of yogurt, albino elephants, curdling milk. It's snowing untouched places to go. It may always be.

Rose Melberg - Things That We Do (mp3)

I Can See You Listening

Natalia Pokrovskaya [from "Control"]

Natalia asked people to listen to their favorite music, specifically a song that provokes the strongest emotion. I imagine the girl in the photo glancing quizzically down at her iPod, scrolling gently through the As, then cracking a smirk and flicking quickly through half the alphabet to The One. A song by the Sleigh Bells burned on a birthday CD by her friend Raelene. As soon as she pressed play, Natalia began photographing. I think this photo was taken at the ooooh at 0:55.

Sleigh Bells - Ring Ring (mp3)

That's a Hard Question

Laura Swanson - Coat (2005)

A woman, a needle woman, came across herself in a coffeeshop bathroom mirror. She pressed her thin fingers into her sunken cheeks, stared for a minute, then crinkled a brown paper towel and disposed of it purely for routine. He thought she emerged wobbly, the needle woman, with focus only in the tips of her pointy fingers. He watched as she tipped over to sit. She laid her long fingers in her lap, tapping a chaotic reality as her smile lied nicely. Sorry that took so long.

He smiled back, but gently deepened his questioning. It seemed to take her by surprise.

I don't know, I just grew up thinking my brain worked differently. She explained. I always smashed my adjectives together. She shifted in her chair, glanced to him for reassurance, then around the room. Finding none, she raised her palm in front of her face. This is a stupid example, but I might describe my fingers as thin pointy long.

I just did. He thought.

She noticed herself in his eyes and proceeded. But I'd continue with a string of twenty adjectives. Until I made no sense. It's like my brain speaks in emotions more complex than language, you know. She paused to find the right words. I think I think like music.

Charles Spearin - Marisa (mp3)

[Learn more about The Happiness Project which illuminates melodies in the natural cadence of speech]

Put Me to Pasture

Fred Muram - Rug #3 (2008)

He pauses at the top of the carpeted stairs. Right hand gripping the wooden bannister, left palm flat on the patterned yellow wallpaper. A glance down at the steps leading up to here. Fleshy toes pour over the edge. An Elvis Costello record skips below It's almost touching // It will almost // almost // almost. The words send a chill through the chandelier in the hallway. Nothing good comes of regretting. He blinks hard and feels his beard with his upper lip. But without regret, they're only mistakes that will never be fixed.

Scott Matthew - For Dick (mp3)

Stuck Like Glue

April Gertler - He Wanted To Expose Them (2007)

Warpaint - Billie Holiday (mp3): I'm not sure if it's the inexplicable spelling, the Smokey Robinson lyrics, the gentle acoustic strum, the Xanax haze, the stretch to falsetto harmony, the feathered reprise. But there is nothing you could do to tear me away.