This week's (12/19) playlist:

1. "Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child," Louie Armstrong. Some days more than others.

2. "Western Skyline," Richmond Fontaine. There was blood, and glass... but that's not where the story ends.

3. "Orphan Girl," Gillian Welch. Shh, baby. Listen. A whisper-twang from a motherless/fatherless/siblingless heroine who reminds all would-be lost holiday souls, YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

4. "The One," Oh Susanna. Depending on when it hits you, this is either a declaration of buried love, a melancholy melodrama on the miracle of unlived lives (i.e., the female Brokeback Mountain), or a fixed-stare prayer that concludes, "I won't let go of your beating breast till the world decides that it's time I rest/And through the night of deepest black, I will walk beside the one who brings the light."

5. "The Christmas Song," The Raveonettes. Seems like everyone I know wants to quit their job, start something new, find that perfect oasis where they're understood and given the freedom to explore their organic gifts, their hidden talents, their true genius, and are provided with a canvas on which to bestow their pearls of wisdom without having their fragile spirit and ideas crushed at every turn. Then there's this, and all those wanderlusty bells, and all the pagan-ritual lights on the trees and houses, and all that beautiful mistletoe and snow, and that's all she wrote.

6. "p.s.," Film School. A lazy-taut organ, a lolling snare, a Velvets riff, and a poet's out that insists, "Don't confuse me with my confessions."

7. "Hippy Hippy Shake," The Beatles. Tough to pick one highlight from First Avenue's 35th anniversary bash--Craig Finn riffing on John Berryman ("Washington Avenue Bridge," anyone?) and cameoing with the Doomtreers and Jessy Green; the Mofos and Rifle Sport holding court in the Entry with old-school impudence; the dude (I could have been having a senior moment, but was that Wilbur from Wilma and the Wilburs?) running around getting all sorts of characters to sign his autograph jacket, hundreds of cellphone-photogs and digital shooters capturing the moments. But this one, by Curtiss A was nothing short of transcendent, as was his soft sha-la-la-la reading of "Baby, It's You" a few minutes later. Here's a photo of Bill Batson, Cindy Lawson, and Randy Weiss, courtesy of Jay Smiley.

8. "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)," Bob Dylan. If I hadn't gotten lost at dusk in Southern Minnesota ("2-18, it's a lonely road," indeed), I wouldn't have born witness to the snow drifting across the highway, the wind howling and the slowly spinning futuristic windmills out the window, or heard Mary Lucia outro this guitar-fried blues epic "about" pretty much everything that matters these days and yesterday with a genuinely gobsmacked and so right-on, "That is so good, it's SICK." Like the bumpersticker says: All who wander aren't lost. Or sick.

9. "Pheromone," Prince. Take a whiff, from Diane Ackerman's A Natural History Of The Senses: "Pheromones are the pack animals of desire (from Greek, pherein, to carry, and horman, excite). Animals, like us, not only have distinctive odors, they also have powerfully effective pheromones, which trigger other animals into ovulation and courtship, or establish hierarchies of influence and power.

"Sometimes messages can't be merely immediate, they need to last over time, and yet be a constant signal, like a lighthouse guiding animals through the breakwaters of their uncertainty. Most smells will glow for a while, where a wink may vanish before it's seen, a flexed muscle imply too many things, a voice startle or threaten. For an animal who is prey, the odor of its hunter will warn it; for the hunter, the odor of its prey will lure it."

10. "Castanets," Alejandro Escovedo and "Wonderful Ass," Prince. Happy holidays.

11. "At The Department Of Lost Songs," Jens Lekman. Not even his own irrepressible cute-cleverness can sabotage the wonder that lies at the heart of this small little song about small little songs.

12. "Soul Meets Body," Death Cab For Cutie. Before there was this, there was this:

Song
By Alan Ginsberg

The weight of the world
is love.
Under the burden
of solitude,
under the burden
of dissatisfaction

the weight,
the weight we carry
is love.

Who can deny?
In dreams
it touches
the body,
in thought
constructs
a miracle,
in imagination
anguishes
till born
in human--

looks out of the heart
burning with purity-
for the burden of life
is love,
but we carry the weight
wearily,
and so must rest
in the arms of love
at last,
must rest in the arms
of love.

No rest
without love,
no sleep
without dreams
of love--
be mad or chill
obsessed with angels
or machines,
the final wish
is love
--cannot be bitter,
cannot deny,
cannot withhold
if denied:

the weight is too heavy

--must give
for no return
as thought
is given
in solitude
in all the excellence
of its excess.

The warm bodies
shine together
in the darkness,
the hand moves
to the center
of the flesh,
the skin trembles
in happiness
and the soul comes
joyful to the eye--

yes, yes,
that's what
I wanted,
I always wanted,
I always wanted,
to return
to the body
where I was born.

13. "All That I Had," Paul Westerberg. A coda of sorts to "Things," but this time he shucks off worldly possessions and old acquaintances, like the peaceful boat-working wiseman at the end of Siddhartha, and finds himself feeling strangely fine. Good for him.

14. "Hey You," Tommy Stinson. Speaking of wise 'mats.

15. "Conceived," Beth Orton. Can I can keep your dream alive? Can I keep it with mine? Do you still hold me at night? These are her questions. Answers: yes, yes, yes; lilting voice; hopeful mandolin (harp?); after-life melody.

16. "Where Have All The Average People Gone?," Roger Miller. A whistling man, making his way down the road, wondering if/where he fits in, and if there are any sane souls left in the world. A 35-year-old song that shuffles in nicely with any blank you care to fill in today.

17. "Comfortable," James McMurtry. My big sister Minnow keeps telling me I should read The Comfort Trap, but I'm getting bored with my own restlessness, and I'd rather listen to this, a ballad that nicely balances the agony and ecstasy of the cage, back-to-back with Tom Waits' "What's He Building In There?" and Steve Earle's "The Week Of Living Dangerously," or the Walsh Brothers' "(I'm A Walking Talking) Cautionary Tale."

18. "Christmas Present," The Rocket Summer. A crazy-gifted young man plays his acoustic guitar outside his beloved's window, hoping she'll unwrap him before morning. Best Christmas song of the year; then again, I could be totally wrong.

19. "Mary The Blessed," Dirty Martini. Hard to resist anything this wistful/playful, or anything that rhymes "Claire de Lune" with "shoot the moon."

20. "Virgin de Guadalupe," Niobe; "Hymn To Mary," Beth Nielsen Chapman; "Mother Of God," Patty Griffin; "I Summon You," Spoon; "Mary," Lou Barlow; "Mary, Queen of Arkansas," Bruce Springsteen; "Requiem," Eliza Gilkyson; "Our Lady Of Arturo," Ike Reilly; "God Save The Queen," Sex Pistols.

For Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, the biggest religious holiday of the year--bigger than Christmas, even--is The Feast Of Our Lady Of Guadalupe. As Catholic legend has it, the Virgin Mary appeared to the peasant Juan Diego several times in December, 1531 on the outskirts of Mexico City. Over the centuries, the apparitions have inspired all sorts of artworks and churches, and, most recently, a new shrine in La Crosse, Wisconsin, which is scheduled for completion in 2007.

I went to take a look last week. For the time being, the site now boasts a working church, a gift shop (custom-made Guadalupe Christmas tree ornaments: $40), an impressive votive-candle chapel where you can light a candle for one week for $10), and a restaurant (catering available), but no Guadalupe artifacts, shrouds, pieces of flesh, or other such relics that give a shrine its sizzle.

Yeah, it's difficult to believe many pilgrims would make the trip to such an ordinary place of worship, but business should pick up after word gets out that Our Lady appeared to me in the woods behind the church on December 9, 2005. She was wearing a black cashmere sweater, black tights, a black and white plaid skirt, black boots, and a white veil on her head. She was smoking a cigarette, looking out at the fresh snow-dappled horizon, and thumbing through Donald Miller's Searching For God Knows What and Rob Brezsny's Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

I was surprised, because I'd always half-thought that visions like the one Diego and Bernadette and I had were the product of vivid imaginations hungry for a sign, any sign, of grace in this God-forsaken world.

We didn't talk long. She said she liked my new Celtic cross medal. I told her it keeps me close to her and helps keep the vampires away. She asked if I'd stopped in at the La Crosse lager brewery off Hwy 61, and said Mary Magdalene sometimes appears to people there ("I love that girl, she was nothing but good for my boy; have you heard Ryan Adams's 'Hallelujah?'").

She asked me why I came, and I told her I can relate to the Brendan Benson song that starts, "Well I don't know what I'm looking for/But I know that I just wanna look some more/And I won't be satisfied/'Till there's nothing left that I haven't tried/For some people it's an easy choice/ But for me there's a devil and an angel's voice."

I told her the church is beautiful (I took pictures), and that I'm a sucker for stained-glass and candles and statues, but that I felt closer to her, you, me, god, what-have-you up in the woods (I took pictures), away from all the other pilgrims, digging the snow, trees, and birds (I took pictures). I told her it's like Neil Young said in this month's Esquire:

"When I was six, I really didn't know what God was. But I did know about Sunday school. I was reading a lot about God, but I was bored. I couldn't wait to get out of Sunday school. God was secondary to the whole thing. But as time went by, I got more and more angry, to the point where I didn't like religion. Hate is such a strong word. But I just kept getting angrier and angrier… until finally I wasn't angry anymore. I was just peaceful, because I thought: This is not fruitful for me. I rejected the whole thing and found peace in paganism. Jesus didn't go to church. I went way back before Jesus. Back to the forest, to the wheat fields, to the river, to the ocean. I go where the wind is. That's my church."

She quoted the mystics and Diablo Cody, who recently concluded, "If God can be found at a themed hotel in Sin City, I guess God can be found anywhere," and gave me this parting "same ol' same ol'" message to pass on to anyone who happens to happen upon it here:

"Peace. Unconditional love. Look out for each other. Don't hurt each other. Listen to your heart. Merry Christmas."