|
How many songs until all of my songs are no longer songs of you? |
goodbye
to the vessel that carried us
the stale-aired castle
that caused our collision
goodbye to
every black corner
and the vaccuum
that held our breaths
sucking us in
holding us in
goodbye
to my familiar |
In case anybody was curious....
the only CD I listened to in Hawai'i was the Kings Of Convenience. It makes me wistful and happy and calm all at once, and reminds me of one exciting, complicated summer many moons ago.
beautiful for writing or sketching in the early morning, a cup of Kona coffee beside you and the whole big world on your mind, in your heart and upon your shoulders. |
Tonight walking home after an awkward encounter with a cute guy at the bookstore (unwittingly asking where to find a particular book that ended up being in the dreaded self-help section), I pulled the classic single jenna sigh of accepted aloneness. It starts off like any old breath, just your usual need for oxygen. Except halfway up I realize my chest seems to be embraced by chains, fleshy, interlocked links wrapped around me again and again like a corset, the air in my lungs pushing against the locks. And so I breathe deeper, hoping to free myself of this lonelyheart. Up up up like a lead balloon.
Upon release, I unfailingly and inevitably and unthinkingly end up letting out this weird sad little sound, like the kind of sound a dog makes when it can't catch its breath. The balmy summer air cloaks my skin and I make my way home. Home to sleep diagonally in a queen-sized bed. |
|
It's hard to find the right fit. Hard to find someone who's just the right height to put their arm around you. Or who walks at the same pace as you, whether in New York rushing mode or post-Sunday brunch lolling mode. Or who cocks their head to the correct side and breathes at the right time and has the same tongue rhythm whilst kissing. Or whose stomach fits right into the small of your back as you sleep. Someone who breathes while you exhale. |
Tonight I took a break from packing my few belongings to sit on my stoop for the last time and take a breath of the New York summer air. I had just gone through a pack of photographs from my first six months here and was flooded with nostalgia from then, the time when I was new in this space and everything seemed possible and even probable. I was so thrilled to have a space of my own, a nook to call mine. I was terrified and excited and determined. I was unchained to anyone and untied to any career. I had two suitcases and a laptop and everything I laid my eyes upon was fresh and different and gorgeous.
Once again I find myself unchained and searching for everything to be new, aching for a new taste in my mouth. By now, my neighbors have changed and my roommate has become plural and therefore I've outgrown this city cage. It's time to get a real bed and my own television. The air that first weekend was as warm and wet as it was tonight, and though I don't have the same blind enthusiasm as I did four years ago, I am full of hope for a new nook to call my own. |
The best music moment of the week:
At the Death Cab For Cutie concert, as the band played what would probably have been the last song before the encore, "The Sound Of Settling".... as the music swelled to a triumphant climax, a completely unforeseen thunderstorm swept into Brooklyn. The wind blew into McCarren Park Pool in what seemed to be one fell swoop, shaking the band, the equipment, the lights, and all of the crowd reveling and singing along soundlessly below. Death Cab crashed through the refrain, lights flashing against their faces, their shirts and hair blowing furiously, dust sweeping angrily among the basin of the venue. |
|
My cell phone finally broke a couple of weeks ago. Broke for real, dropped for the 100th time, smashed into four irreparable pieces. There go, like, 150 phone numbers. There goes the first material evidence I had to prove that yes, I really lived in New York and I was giving up my Arizona-ness for good. Gone, all of the photos I took during the days before my digital camera, during the summer I was first becoming an assistant, when Dustin and I were still new and an unknown item to the rest of everyone. There go the photos from the Strokes concert, from Cake and The Flaming Lips. There go the photos from that one week, that one time. There go all the saved text messages from past loves and lovers, and from my mom just to say she loves me, and from my friend who heard a song that made her think of our singing-out-loud times, our getting-over-that-douchebag times. There goes my memorized alarm clock navigation, a body memory trusty enough to reset five more minutes even when half-asleep. There go the last three years, in four irreparable pieces on the ground. Yet another way to start anew this year. Here we go again.... |
Everybody (well, maybe only the very lucky?) has one of those friends who knows so much music from so many different genres that they're very nearly an encyclopedia. You know the type - that friend who can talk for hours about The Beatles or David Bowie or Nirvana and who opens you up to great music that you never would have found otherwise. I've had a few of those people in my life (and have even been a version of that to one or two people), but, as I am currently lacking that presence, I've discovered the internet equivalent.
Pandora is a genius website that is just like that musically-savvy friend. Just type in a song or artist name, and it creates a playlist based on the musical attributes of that song. I find myself listening throughout the day, and jotting down dozens of new artists that I must check out because wow, how did they know I'd like that! I totally love that! Any mood you're in, they've got two hours of songs for you to listen to.
And so, here is my list of my five favorite items opened to me by Pandora.com (in no particular order, but I'm pretty sure they all came from 2 playlists - the identity of which is for me to know and you to ponder):
1) "Lotion" by Greenskeepers
2 ) "Keep Me In The Frame" by Rob Laufer
3) "Alternative To Love" by Brendan Benson
4) "5-22-02" by Golden Smog
5) "Way Down Here Without You" by Superdrag
Bonus generalization: Anything by the Mommyheads, and mostly anything by Teenage Fanclub - how have I not heard of these? Must go buy CDs.
Best song I somehow didn't know by an artist I love: "Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)" by George Harrison
Best overall playlist: based on Kings Of Convenience
.... but that last one I might have chosen because it was the only thing that soothed a hangover. |
|
O, heart of mine. Scratching at the walls of my chest. Be quiet now, won't you? |
|
May First, 2008. Wow. The passage of time continues to amaze and frighten me in ways I never anticipated... the older I get, the more out of control I feel against time, like the first twenty years were a steep uphill roller coaster climb, and now I've reached the apex and my late twenties are the first breathless, terrifying two inches on the other side of the arc... you realize there's no turning back now, you can't get off, you can't change seats. You are where you are. You are strapped in here and here you will stay. All you can do is hang on to someone's hand and scream and accept the feeling of your stomach in your throat. |
Oh Devendra Banhart.
Sure, I could go on and on about the technical merits of "Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon," the seamless changeups, the juxtaposition of variant styles and yet cohesiveness throughout songs of hippie folk, be-bop, jazz, slow tango and gospel, the wooden (sometimes nautical) ambience strung throughout, the delicate, gorgeous, overwhelming weight of each song. I could write books about its aural beauty.
But to be truthful, since the day I started listening to this album, there is just simply very little that could shake my utter, visceral love for it, because it fills something inside of me. On that day, there seemed to be thousands of little holes all over this heavy heart o' mine... difficult to detect with the naked eye, but trust me, if the original owner of this heart came back and did an inspection, I would not get my security deposit back. So I guess "Smokey," and my dear Devendra, were somehow able to be the spackle over the holes, filling in (if only temporarily), all of the crevices that everyone else had abandoned and I had ignored. By no means identical to the material, texture or even color as the original walls; but, at least until the next tenant moves in... it'll do. |
Tonight's planned entry will have to be put on hold for a bit; I came home from work (yeah! On Sunday! The noive!), turned on my computer and found, much to my horror, that something got seriously fucked up within my hard drive (story of my life) and it's now as though I just got a brand-new computer from five years ago. Luckily I still have all of my files, but I've had to reset every.single.goddamn.setting. on this shitty HP PC. And my "g" key is stuck (again, story of my fucking life).
THE POINT of all of this is that along with everything else, my iTunes library was wiped! Horrors! I had to reload all of my everyfuckingthing and in doing so, was forced to look at all of the music I've chosen to surround myself with while at that of the most hallowed and sacred of places, home.
It's kind of an odd assortment of songs - by no means is it a definitive jenna library. I now download most of my music at my much better, much faster, awesome Mac at work, and I listen to so much good shit there that I don't want to come home and listen to the same stuff here and get sick of it all. That's what iPods are for. Ergo, most of the stuff here at home is a collection of music I obtained between 3 and 4 years ago, with some random impulse downloads thrown in for good measure.
Let's see... I've got the entire Beatles collection, the entire Led Zeppelin collection (naturally), wow I remember my Kyuss phase (that was a lovely dark time), Madonna nestled between Lovin' Spoonful and Magnetic Fields, Queen reigning over Queens of the Stone Age... all kinds of classic rock and not enough indie rock and the perfect amount of soft rock and a surprising amount of prog-rock that I've never listened to. *gasp!* IS THAT A SUGAR RAY SONG? Delete, delete. Delete. Delete.
I've got music I downloaded because I had nothing better to do and it ended up being a decision my ears thanked me for (the Presets, Of Montreal, the French Kicks, Bumblebeez, Chk Chk Chk, the Eagles of Death Metal). I would say about 65% of this library reminds me of living with John on Mill Avenue. That's most likely because it's all songs he loaded on this machine for me before I moved, oh so many years ago. About 5% reminds me of long-distance dating Jesse, all of these songs I downloaded because I wanted to understand him better and feel fewer than three thousand miles away from him and because, well, music is one of the best ways to do that with someone you miss. 25% reminds me of walking around Manhattan with only my discman to accompany me, and being just fine with that. The last 5% is Christmas music. 100% of my music makes me think of a life I've never lived and never will.
I did some soul-searching and got rid of a lot of shit I know I never listen to and almost surely won't in my lifetime (all those Rush songs I downloaded at the behest of a former lover, 26 out of 30 Bright Eyes songs). And I've still got a lot (I mean A LOT) of music to sift through, whole albums I've just never gotten around to hearing but refuse to let go of (Von Bondies, The Thrills, The National, Stellastarr, Razorlight, the list goes on and on). Ah well, I'll have plenty of time to listen to them while crosswording and Prolific-playing and writing and painting and staring at my walls... at least until the next time my computer crashes. |
tonight, sitting on my stoop, i saw something i have never seen in my nearly four years of living on this block:
the moon. |
When a music lover does not have an iPod, and can only take a small CD wallet to last her a week full of planes, trains, and journalling, it is interesting (to me anyway) what makes the cut and will be brought to satisfy her ears on a traveling adventure.
The CDs I brought with me to Italy:
1) "Don't Panic!!!" - dance mix from Momo
2) Spoon, "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga"
3) Weezer, the blue album
4) The Black Keys - a mix
5) "Ashamedly Goofy Smile" - my guilty pleasures mix
6) Coldplay - the first one
7) Sondre Lerche - a mix
8) Badly Drawn Boy, "Hour Of The Bewilderbeast"
9) Of Montreal - again, a mix
10) "Different Again" - a mix from John
11) Weezer - the green album
12) Gorillaz - the first one
13) Led Zeppelin - a hard mix (I really like mixes, okay?)
14) Vampire Weekend
15) Foo Fighters, "The Colour and The Shape"
16) The Strokes, "Is This It?"
17) "Outta Here" - my mix from when I left Arizona
18) The Beatles, "One"
19) Jellyfish, "Bellybutton"
The only CD I listened to in Italy: Sondre Lerche. Perfect for watching the world go by outside of a train window. |
Welcome, March! Here are the music moments I'm loving this week.
1) ELO's "Evil Woman" - 3:08 in, the last "AH-AH!" You can't tell me that after that whole three minutes of shamefully uncontrollable dancing, that moment doesn't make you throw a fist in the air in time with the music.
2) The Beatles "From Me To You" - :42 in - "I've got lips that long to kiss you and keep you satisfied." So 1960s-subtle-sexual. It's like a melodic wink-wink-nudge-nudge.
3) LCD Soundsystem "New York I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down" - 3:22. You spend the whole song feeling depressed and (if you're like me) walking around New York thinking about how ridiculous it is, and when the music finally kicks in you think, "Yeah! Fuck you, New York!" Although I have to say, I agree with the ironic lyric, "You're still the one pool where I'd happily drown."
4) Spoon's "My Little Japanese Cigarette Case" - I have trouble thinking of any other song that makes a coke addict seem so happy to be sad.
5) During the final refrain of Peter Bjorn & John's "Object of My Affection," at 3:54 in, the extended note of the word "now." This song makes more sense to me now than it has in the last year that I've loved it, and this moment brings a final gust of air into a song about the fear of moving on, and the power of accepting your life in each stage. |
goddammit i miss you.
nothing is soft enough. |
I'm not sure if anyone still reads this blog, seeing as my postings have become rather spotty, but I'm going to try to get back into it. For today, inspired by Chuck Klosterman:
Five Music Moments I'm Loving This Week:
1) The sychronized moan of "Awww" at 1:42 of The Beatles' "Ticket To Ride." I never thought of it as a particularly sad song, until I was made sad recently, and for some reason this specific moment adds a touch of frustration to an upbeat, classic pop song.
2) The fade-in of "Fall In A River" on Badly Drawn Boy's Hour Of The Bewilderbeast. For some reason, whenever I listen to this CD I never see this song coming, and hearing the beginning familiar touches of the song get me every time. It's such a slow, beautiful fade... feels to me like a reverse drowning.
3) The saw-ish sound at the beginning of Weezer's "Getchoo." It's such a fucking ROCKING song and this chainsaw noise makes me visualize a lithe, long-haired girl in jeans, kneeling, then throwing her head back and arching her back at the beginning of this song. Which is perfect, because the rest of the song commands a particular kind of fearless thrashing. Could this possibly be the perfect indie strip song? I'm open to other suggestions.
4) The piano and "oohhhh, la la la" throughout "Country Robot" by The Incredible Moses Leroy. Hearing it instantly makes me slow down, relax, and feel sadly content all at the same time.
5) The extra guitar kick between riffs during Rilo Kiley's "Moneymaker," specifically around :10 and :16 in. Goddammit I hate this band but goddammit I can't resist loving a few of their songs. While still hating them. I won't apologize.
I'll try to do this once a week or so. If you're reading this, leave me a comment and let me know, anonymous or not, just so I know I'm not doing this for my own goddamn amusement. |
|
This lip gloss, rose and mint, feels like spring to me. It smells like March and the first time you realize you can breathe normally, the sun bathing your face. Its tingle on my lips and light scent remind me of a new red dress, the first time I wore it, and the hope of a new season, emerged from another cold winter. The panic and hope of what a lonely summer may bring. |
The other day at work I looked out the window, and in the empty air of the canyon between my office and the Empire State Building was a bird, wings fully open, coasting on the wind. I didn't think much of it but I couldn't pull my eyes away. I wanted to see the bird flap its wings. I stared at it for a full minute, and it never changed the structure of its pose. Never flapped its wings once. It floated down, circling the church below, then up, past the side of my window, out of sight, and back into view again, floating up and up, effortless. I stared in awe of the amount of control and practice that simple grace must command. The precision, the sensitivity to the size and strength of the current of air on which it soared.
Today at work I looked out the window and gazed at the bright blue sky encompassing the cavernous city and couldn't help but admire the clouds. That sounds ridiculous and hippie but against the sharp, almost unreal sunniness of the sky, the clouds were so gorgeous, these layered white-to-gray cumuluses, full and frothy... bosomy I would even say, if I weren't so afraid of being a hack. They ambled across the sky, the layers writhing over each other, and all I could think of were the monsoon clouds in an Arizona sky in August, crawling in from the west at 4pm exactly upon a hazy yellowed dusty sky, the smell of moist dirt. And all I felt was terribly alone, down to the depths of my dusty yellow heart. |
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
msmanhattan's journal