Wednesday, April 30, 2008

soundtrack for the end of an era

so i figure, because i make soundtracks for pretty much everything, and most of my (important, psuedo & sometimes not-so-psuedo influential) memories are attached to music, it's only fitting, approaching this juncture in la vida that i explain the one that has been created from 2004-2008. the idea of becoming an actual person is terrifying, but if more time comes with more music like this, i'm all for it. ready, go. in no particular order, and sure to leave many out...

. a case of you [joni mitchell] - shakti summer 2007
. track 9 (germany to germany) [ratatat] - nottingham, walking down langdon fall 2006
. headlock [imogen heap] - ballerina dancing, sullivan hall sept 2005-may 2006
. buildings [regina spektor] - the love, regina mix summer 2007
. winter [joshua radin] - singing to myself in quito jan-may 2007
. in the sun (acoustic) [joseph arthur] - freshman year
. evening chai [the blue scholars] - waiting in the dark april 2007
. boy with a coin [iron & wine] - 632 howard place summer 2007
. the big ship [brian eno] - tiputini biodiversity station february 2007
. warm tape [red hot chili peppers] - running on lakeshore fall 2005
. shine your light [robbie robertson] - thanksgiving 2004
. hard to concentrate [rhcp] - everywhere summer 2007
. the warmth [incubus] - sitting on the back deck at liz spring 2005
. anna molly [incubus] - sleeping at the library december 2006
. i love rain the most [joe purdy] - co-op living september-november 2006
. bayani [the blue scholars] - early morning cold january 2008
. staring at the sun [tv on the radio] - jones hall spring 2005
. these days [nico] & this time tomorrow [the kinks] - slow motion wes 2004-2008
.
view from heaven [yellowcard] - october 2004
. leave me to love [imogen heap] - heart/stomach cure, gorham st. summer 2006
. the denial twist [the white stripes] - pickney st. november 2006
. dance music [the mountain goats] - dinner parties in the kitchen june-december 2006
. god's country [ani difranco] - everywhere summer 2007
. itch [ani difranco] - everywhere fall 2007
. these words [natasha bedingfield] - the radio on the river august 2005
.
annie's song [joe purdy] - staying up all night october 2006
. the hustler [res] - coming into my own summer 2006
.
swallowed in the sea [coldplay] - working at mayo summer 2005
. person person [mirah & the weeds] - walking in the cold, charter st winter 2005
. second time around [yo-yo ma] - satc and 12th ave basements summer 2005
. downfall [matchbox twenty] - 30 mi. biketrips, pine island summer 2005
. the other side [david gray] - reading in the backyard, lake mendota summer 2006
. dreams in the hollow [jesca hoop] - hobos on state and barriques spring 2008
. clam crab cockle cowrie & only skin [joanna newsom] - the great hall and the hamsters november 2006
. bad things to such good people [pedro the lion] - home from helen c. sophomore year
. guns are drawn [the roots] - cleaning the kitchen senior year
. in an aeroplane over the sea [neutral milk hotel] - hot convention 2005
. saeglopur [sigur ros] - nottingham fall 2006
. hide and seek [imogen heap] - coming home, being home summer 2005

hello, babies. welcome to earth. it's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. it's round and wet and crowded. at the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. there's only one rule that i know of, babies—god damn it, you've got to be kind. -vonnegut-

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

spring pieces

"- and go out and meet something I don't understand. a man would have to put his soul at hazard. he'd have to say, 'ok., i'll be part of this world." - no country for old men

running by the monona terrace. k. sachs on the blues guitar. groceries and guiness. polka-dotted ballet flats. the last spring in madison. smoky quartz. black current tea, mozzarella veggie ciabatta sandwiches, and blood oranges. thesis writing tuesdays at barriques w. the rego. plaza thursdays. dreams about fire escape revolutions. collecting blank postcards. making amends. daylight savings time.

underdogs with good intentions | amputees with stamp collections
plywood skinboards ride the ocean | salty noses suntan lotion | always seriously joking
and rambunctiously soft-spoken
you're such a good friend i hafta break your heart [ k. dawson ]

maybe all men got one big soul everybody's a part of, all faces are the same man.

Friday, February 15, 2008

or just, see you later?

i guess it's not the way you always planned it
looks like you're heading for a crash landing
that's just the way it looks from where i'm standin'

rollercoasterofaweek. waking up with a fever, watching a senator take hold of a nation, driving two hours with my surrogate family to a city by the sea (or the best that i can get, in the middle of the snowiest winter in wisconsin history). the tiny small children bring me up, and your familiar eyes weigh heavy on my mind these days. one minute i'm cruising toward the open ocean, the pulitzer, the teacher of the year; the next, i'm alone in a library, my bed, the corner of a cold, deserted street. the king size bed with the selfish space-sleeper. cafe au kahlua. visits with my chicos like old times, but still aching because it will never be the same. vd, sola. i like it that way, mostly. just not when i've had a few screwdrivers, my house is full of lovers, it won't stop snowing, and my dates keep falling flat of overarching effort.

things i'm looking for this year:
the jim for my pam.
a publisher.
the appropriate situation in which to reenact each of the individual bluth family chicken dance(s).
a house by the sea that rumbles and moans.
sleep.

Saturday, January 12, 2008

even though they weren't so sweet

"you're a funny girl, you know that indie? for someone who doesn't believe in war - you sure have a lot of books about it."
"i'm an atheist, too. but one of my favorite songs is a hymn."
"exactly. you're a funny girl. but that's what i love about you."
"you don't love me gorgeous. you love the idea of me."
"maybe i do. but maybe i love you, too."

  • remembering why it was there in the first place. i was so angry for a while that i forgot, and that's never the point.
  • conversations about writing; pulling it out of your mouth like a string coiled in the pit of your stomach. slowing the wheels long enough to spit it out on the page. spitting it wrong.
  • dreams about: a room full of broken pianos, the tango down 12th ave - backwards, sneaking around, climbing up and over.
  • no parking on the front step, the door step, the bus stop, the rest stop, the stoop for the vacant. no parking for the vacant, the vagrant, the worldly possessions collective. no parking.
  • {positively 4th street} for both sides, now.
  • the tri-bar hop with mr. rego (also known as the genna's - montemarte - nachtspiel loop).
  • samson; still my favorite r. spektor.
  • [the self-indulgent artist] v. [contributions to the greater collective] debate
  • "the slow wearing-down of time, right here in our faces" ( i get my philosopher's vox from my father)
  • sociological round table studies.
  • walking out the back door without really saying goodbye / and not making eye contact much because when i let myself / it might get dangerous again (and my stubborn from my mother)

[...don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in through the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.]
-advice to myself; louise erdrich-

Thursday, January 03, 2008

on jaguar sharks and the importance of catching meteors

i am obsessed with time. clocks. memory.

after the new year, i always end up looking back and getting caught in moments, mostly those which i've written down. except the actual words on the page, or wherever i've scrawled them, are not always the ones which i remember when i reread them. i see sapphire hummingbirds, and i mean the stream, and trying to settle. i think of basil, and a tiny bleach-blonde italian man who speaks spanish with an accent and has eyes the size of maracuya flashes inside my head.

my favorites are the times when all i wanted was to pause everything, to stop the progressive movement of time, and to be in wherever i was, eternal.

drinking hierba luisa from those little plastic cups on the front steps of the reserve every morning, waiting for bigote to finish breakfast; especially during rainstorms. watching the bats begin to swoop through the gulley from six fifteen ( just as the sun begins to go down thirty miles south of pedernales) until i can no longer see anything but quick flashes of black [and all the time thinking that maybe they are just tricks of light, things my eyes are creating, visual little white lies]. jaguar shark skies on the boat, sleeping restless first on the chairs and then on the deck, and then curled, cold and growing ill, against the bow itself. standing in alessandro's bathroom and staring at his grapefruit as they grow in the open window. the flight invasion over our heads near prince phillip's steps. mompiche; every moment. the lovely bones; every word[because of the story or because of where i was at, in my heart? maybe it was both]. singing on the beach by the bonfire, with harmonica and guitar and words about lonely sailors coming home from the sea.

sitting on top of the sand dunes, our dunes. talking about the brothers, and how their eyes are the same. not needing to say much. nothing and everything mattering in moments, and deciding spontaneously to come home. long distance telephone calls from airports, out of nowhere and that meaning all of it. being where i ought to be. singing on softball fields to baby girls in the twilight. drinking coffee at fair trade with the smart mouth, and the philosopher, and sola [plus peppermint ice cream]. doing yoga at james madison, and stretch stretch stretching up higher, toward the seagulls. pushing my ribs out toward mendota. morning breakfast dates with my girls. powwows in king sized beds. allowing the serenade to make me smile. darjeeling, and the emanation afterward. being terrified of say anything. inappropriate songs and unproductive evenings around the dinner table. gorgonzola and butternut squash and candied walnuts and raspberry port and banana pancakes and fair trade coffee and frozen snickers and pinkus bars and spanish rice and macaroni and newcastle.

they're running together there at the end. amassing weight, like a giant ball of letters, falling down a hill the size of san fransisco. the quickfire synapse collection which happens because i am tangential. and twitchy. i jump all around. but i'd rather be like that...i'd rather be like that, than straightforward and unscary and constantly content with everything. REVEL, i say. i kept it for a year, and i think i can do it again.


didn't i | didn't i tell you