5/15/12

This is a song that makes me want to write every feeling in the world ten times over, while simultaneously feeling like I will never come close to being half as beautiful about it.

Probably one of my favorite songs about growing up. Also one of my favorite songs from The Weakerthans, which is a tough list to make. Definitely some of my favorite lyrical phrases. Dusty school yards, elegant plumage, wet cement....phrases I should know enough to be able to emulate in my own writerly way. All I can tell myself is these things take time, practice, and getting up each morning to try again.



"We emerged from youth all wide-eyed like the rest/Shedding skin faster than skin can grow/and armed with hammers, feathers, blunt knives words, to meet and to define and to but you must know/the same games that we played in dirt, in dusty school yards has found a higher pitch and broader scale than we feared possible and someone must be picked last, and one must bruise and one must fail./And that still twitching bird was so deceived by a window, so we eulogized fondly, we dug deep and threw its elegant plumage and frantic black eyes in a hole, and rushed out to kill something new, so we could bury that, too.

The first chapters of lives almost made us give up altogether. /Pushed towards tired forms of self immolation that seemed so original, I must, we must never stop/watching the sky with our hands in our pockets, stop peering in windows when we know doors are shut. /Stop yelling small stories and bad jokes and sorrows, and my voice will scratch to yell many more,/but before I spill the things I mean to hide away, or gouge my eyes with platitudes of sentiment/I'll drown the urge for permanence and certainty; crouch down and scrawl my name with yours in wet cement."~Sounds Familiar
The Weakerthans, Fallow

5/14/12

One of the prettiest songs about one of the worst feelings. I've felt it before. I hope I never feel it again.

Maybe I'm just in a haze lately, but all that seems to stir me is loud pop punk, mixes from high school or really sad folk. Or maybe that's just how I always am, and I'm trying to flatter myself. But yeah, this song, cut and dry. The pangs of moving on, emphasized in chromatic notes, gorgeous harmony and the wavering-just-so,  barely-there-vibrato of the amazing Joy Williams. Her voice after the second chorus sends chills through my entire body that just make me want to make music, or collapse and never get up until someone I love picks me up. Maybe both.


"Haven't you seen me sleep walking?
'Cause I've been holding your hand
Haven't you noticed me drifting?
Oh, let me tell you, I am


Tell me it's nothing
Try to convince me
That I'm not drowning
Oh let me tell you, I am


Please, please tell me you know
I've got to let you go
I can't help falling
Out of love with you


Why am I feeling so guilty?
Why am I holding my breath?
Worry 'bout everyone but me
I just keep losing myself


Tell me it's nothing
Try to convince me
That I'm not drowning
Oh let me tell you, I am


Please, please tell me you know
I've got to let you go
I can't help falling
Out of love with you


Won't you read my mind?
Don't you make me lie here
And die here
Please, please tell me you know
I've got to let you go
I can't help falling
Out of love with you"
~Falling
The Civil Wars, Barton Hollow

I don't want to give up the best love I've ever had. But do you have to give up something you love to get the rest of the world? How do you know what's worth holding onto? I don't think you ever do...rather I think that's a decision you make for yourself...but, sometimes, what you're holding onto is slipping away and there's nothing you can do but let it happen, and feel the pain as you feel your heart change.

5/13/12

Embedding is disabled on this beautiful Tom McRae performance but it's stunning. A haunting song. A "stay-here-in-fear-and-die-or-run-in-fear-and-live" kind of song. I like it.

"Change the locks on the door.
Put out the light in the hall.
I do not live here anymore

Put the world in a box.
Turn the sign to the street.
Aim for where horizon and blue skies, meet

But all I know is
I'm not ready yet
For the light to dim
Got a suitcase, got regrets
But I'm hopeful yet

I've been a gifted thief
Stole everything for the cause
I never had fingers as light as yours

So wake up pretty girl
See the hope in small things
Disappointment can wear you thin

But all I know is
I'm not ready yet
For the light to dim
Got a suitcase, got regrets
But I'm hopeful yet And I'll raise this glass of wine
And I'll say your name...

So let's be killers babe
Make the great escape 
From all the bitter words 
Of every crowded street and empty heart
It's Christmas Day, Brooklyn in the rain
But I am safe inside a better world of hope and memory
Drunk on velvet wine, southern cross for light
Deal your cards and hope that I can play a better hand this time"
~Got a Suitcase, Got Regrets
Tom McRae

I haven't made the best choices. Haven't made the worst ones, either. I've hurt the right people sometimes, and put the wrong ones on pedestals, more times than I care to share on both regards. I've also loved harder than I ever thought I could, or would dare to.

When it came down to it, the suitcases were easier to carry alone than the regrets. Sharing the past with someone makes nostalgia that much less lonely. But, like the suitcases, it takes a little more time to unpack when alone.

5/6/12

I keep a couple dozen old burned CDs in the center console in my Saturn. There's plenty more where these came from in a big and dusty faux leather binder that I spent around $25 on back in the day - which felt like a lot. But when I got the Saturn this past fall, with the first car CD player I'd ever had, it was a chance to rediscover the CDs that used to spin in my Discman on a daily basis.

Some are mixes, some are albums. Some are labeled in Sharpie, some are decorated in swirls and stars and colors with little pictures accentuating words in album titles. Some are not labeled at all. They're all a nice daily reminder of who I am, where I came from, what I stand for, etc. It's also a nice way to spice up what I'm listening to on my drive in, as there's always a surprise or two to be found.

So today I pull out a disc at random on my way to the grocery store and laundromat, and it's Something Corporate, "Leaving Through the Window." OK. I'll take that. From the opening bars of "I Want to Save You" I'm suddenly a sophomore again, and all I want is some boy with shaggy hair and kind eyes and a killer CD collection to hold my hand and wear my hair ties and rubber pink bracelets on his wrist.



"She drives away, she's feeling worthless 
Used again but nothing's different 
She'd stay the night but knows he doesn't care 


Home by three, a deafening quiet 
The porch light's off guess they forgot it 
She'd cry herself to sleep, but she don't dare" 
~I Want to Save You
Something Corporate, Leaving Through the Window

I keep listening as I go through my day and I remember how this album as a whole is still so, so good. It's real, it's raw, it's driving. It's part of the original class of pop punk that arrived at an early-decade apex right when the kids were really starting to pay attention and start screaming for more. But it's never too angry, and there's slower moments, hinting at the heartfelt sentiment Andrew McMahon would continue to shape on "North" and with Jack's Mannequin. He talks about skin and limbs and veins and cars as was the way back then, but it's never for surface value, it's just the poetry of it. Combine the lyrics with piano-driven melodies and key-change choruses, and you make an album that was as classic than as it is today.

Ask almost anyone who graduated high school between 2004 and 2007. They'll tell ya.

One song, "The Astronaut," was never a favorite in high school, but today it made more sense. That chorus kicked in and I kept driving, silent, onto my destination. Today it felt inspiring. Today it reminded me that if you're going to worry about any road, it should be the one before you, and what you saw on the way there is right where it needs to be, namely behind you, but also in memory.




"i've been sleeping with ghosts 
i've been watching stars 
crawling out of the sky 
and i've been hoping 
i'm close to the space man movies 
i call my life 


and i've been climbing ladders through time 
i've got tunnel vision 
but i'm doing fine 
and i've been 
watching stars coming off of the wall 
and maybe if i'm lucky i can catch them 
before you fall 
and you are not alone 


calling out to the astronaut 
i need some of what you've got 
i need to be high 
crawling out of the world she brought 
calling out to the astronaut 
i need to be high"
~Astronaut
Something Corporate, Leaving Through the Window

5/5/12

I shouldn't be surprised, that I always seem to end up in the same place. And I don't like saying "always," because nothing is ever truly permanent, but it's startling to me how easily I fall into the same traps. How the unreachable becomes a beacon. How often I mistake conflict for comfort - what a mess that can make.

Other things reoccur, too. Like how what I have and who I am is never good enough. And how I can't just let myself relax. How I can never decide if I made the right decisions, if I kept the right people around, or if I let the wrong ones go. These are secret traps of my mind, and when I fall down the chute it is difficult to climb back up. But the uphill climb is getting faster. With age comes certain types of agility.

This song makes me think of those loves that never die, the kind that I remember when I'm in a difficult place, like I am feeling tonight. It's entirely simple but entirely beautiful, with a slowly building structure that erupts into vivid glimpses of what makes up love and feeling and life. An ode to the best parts of life we all get to live out in one way or another. It will be enough. And the turn of phrase at the end - the following love home, to love following you. It's one in the same, isn't? Don't we carry our love with us, wherever we go? It may feel, often, that we're alone, that we've left and it's gone but it's all still there. In our fragile, selfish, scared heart. You can sense it in those places you know too well.

Something tells me this guy pours it all out on a stage.


"I will follow love all the way home 
I will follow love all the way home 
Though it breaks my back and leaves me all alone 
I will follow love all the way home 


Though I'm sad you've gone away 
I hear love, it goes by different names 
Though your parting dims the day 
Nearly put me in my grave 
I will follow love all the way home 


Home- where the bedroom smells like clean clothes 
Home- where it's alright in the cosmos 
Home- you don't think so, but you're so close 
Home- if it's not balanced, then it's almost 


I will follow love all the way home 
I will follow love all the way home 
Though it breaks my back- and leaves me all alone 
I will follow love all the way home 


For those afraid to die alone 
Think of all the friends that you have known 
And every blade of grass 
Every face that kissed you back 
All the sunsets and pouring rain 
Every joy and holy pain 
Every kiss and bloody stain 
Ah, the proof that we have lived
In no beginning and no end
Every flash of light you've seen
Every color, every dream
Will be forever singing on 
In the holy mind of God
The immortal burning sun with 
Every person that you've loved
And I swear it will be enough. 
And you'll be there 


And Love will follow you all the way home 
Love will follow you all the way home."

~I Will Follow Love All The Way Home
Tyler Lyle, The Golden Age & Silver Girl