7/8/12

Woke up in my childhood bedroom. Needed to hear a song. Picked this one.

It's soothing, with a cyclical melody, gentle picking, vivid descriptors.

"The boat that failed it's only sail
is burning in the river
It's heating up the water mains
while the rest of the house just shivers
It's sinking fast
straight through the grass
A buoyant mask
A medical grasp
And that....

Was all I had to give her

But I will take my hand's mistakes
Stay afloat in
this flushing river
With the smell of your soul
and fix the bridge that bowed
from the blows that age delivers

But I fear collapse
as your weight will pass
You know I love you more than you will know

Something
is coming for us
It's coming through the vents
For the worst and best.

And so it seems,
Like old beliefs,
We're struggling in the water
Fishing for a fish that knows
A way to save the other

Don't turn blue it's turning the room
As it spins the violence
Coats the walls in bother
Carousels and comet tails are somewhere in this river
Lonely as lost my mind"

~The River 

Cassino, Kingprince

Closing out what's become one of my favorite albums of post-college life, this is a song I play to steady, to center, to grab onto. Tonight, after this time-warp trip full of friends and alcohol, the need to get over myself is less than normal. Too worn out to care. 

Here, surrounded by ballerina calendar photos and the wrought iron crosses all I can think of is who I used to be, and how I feel so much more myself at home. Home's not here anymore; it's not anywhere exactly, but it's not here, the place I ran from the first chance I found.  

7/5/12

"So, is that what you call a getaway?
Tell me what you got away with.
Cause I've seen more spine in jellyfish.
I've seen more guts in 11-year-old kids.
Have another drink and drive yourself home.
I hope there's ice on all the roads.
And you can think of me when you forget your seatbelt,
and again when your head goes through the windshield.

And is that what you call tact?
You're as subtle as a brick in the small of my back.
So let's end this call, and end this conversation.
and is that what you call a getaway?
well tell me what you got away with.
cause you left the frays from the ties you severed
when you say best friends means friends forever

So, is that what you call a getaway?
Well tell me what you got away with.
Cause I've seen more spine in jellyfish.
I've seen more guts in eleven-year-old kids.
Have another drink and drive yourself home.
I hope there's ice on all the roads.
And you can think of me when you forget your seatbelt,
and again when your head goes through the windshield.

Everyone's caught on to everything you do 

And I can't let you, let me down again"
~Seventy Times Seven
Brand New, Your Favorite Weapon

A decade's worth of friendship....everything we went through, the late nights, the breakups, the funerals.....and I don't even get a phone call?

There's a reason you keep people around who knew you when. To keep you grounded and smack you in the face before you do something stupid. To pull you back on your feet when fear drags you down. To remind you why the hell you're doing what you're doing anyway.

When you've been that person for someone for a long, long time, it's a more than a little disarming to hear they've moved across the country without a phone call. Here's hoping it's a rumor.

He was the last person I said goodbye to. The first person I wanted to see.

7/4/12

The Weakerthans, always.

I will say I prefer the version of this song from Live at the Burton Cummings Theatre, but still one of my favorite songs from them. Plus, I've already posted "Pamphleteer" even though that's what I woke up with in my head this morning. 

Pretty much all music from The Weakerthans sits perfectly at the intersection of story and song, and for that, it is some of my favorite to get lost in. 

"My confusion corner commuters are cursing the cold away
As December tries to dissemble the length of their working day.
And they bite their mitts off to show me transfers, deposit change
and I can't stop finding your face in their faces, all rearranged
And angry like you never were...

And I ease us back into traffic
Dusk comes on and I wonder why I'm always remembering you,
In civil twilight

For the most part I think about golfing and constantly calculate
all the seconds left in the minutes, and so on, et cetera
Or recite the names of provinces and Hollywood actors;
Oh, Ontario! Oh, Jennifer Jason Leigh!
This part of the day bewilders me...

Streets slow down and ice over,

Dusk comes on and I struggle to stop to stop to stop thinking of you,
In civil twilight

Hey, every other hour I pass that house,
Where you told me that you had to go
I wonder if the landlord has fixed the crack,
That I stared at, instead of staring back at you...

My chance to say something seemed so brief, but it wasn't.
Now I know I had plenty of time
Between the sunset and certified darkness
Dusk comes on and I follow the exhaust from memory up to the end
The civil twilight"
~Civil Twilight
The Weakerthans, Reunion Tour

7/3/12

Sigh. Sleep doesn't feel like an option tonight. There is too much see, too much to know, too much to wait out, keeping me restless and relentlessly aware.

I have listened to this song four times today. I was nine years old when this album came out.

Let us never forget how many songs Third Eye Blind has that are way cooler than "Semi-Charmed Life." This is my favorite example. It starts so simple, existing solely for the build before going right back to the start.

It starts alone, and it ends alone. It brings the story right back to the start. Well done, Stephan Jenkins. This album and these songs will prove timeless for many a kid who grew up in the 90s, though we didn't understand what they meant until much, much later.

"Visions of you on a motorcycle drive by
The cigarette ash flies in your eyes
And you don't mind, you smile
And say the world doesn't fit with you
I don't believe you, you're so serene
Careening through the universe
Your axis on a tilt , you're guiltless and free
I hope you take a piece of me with you
And there's things I'd like to do
That you don't believe in
I would like to build something
But you never see it happen
And there's this burning
Like there's always been
I've never been so alone
And I've... I've never been so alive"
~Motorcycle Drive By
Third Eye Blind, Third Eye Blind

7/1/12

A longtime favorite:



"All of the experts say you ought to start them young,
That way they naturally love the taste of corporate cum 
God bless the Indian Summer 
God bless the Indian Summer"
~Indian Summer
Pedro the Lion, Control