birthday coincidences

This seems especially apropos after my drinks date last night:

I think that there is a place where she [Scarlet] realizes that people come in and out of your life. Sometimes for a day, sometimes for longer. And all of them make you what you are. You can't separate these people out of you. They form who you are. Even the ones that you kind of say well... you know, I don't know if I wanna be formed by them anymore.(laughs) But you are in some way. You are. That's why, maybe, you don't have to look at them so harshly because they have affected you. At the end, though, you know... it's us as individuals with our... mm... with our love for the land. For something intangible, that when soulmates come and go, you're never alone even when you're standing just you in your shoes, because you carry them with you.
-Tori Amos, Scarlet Stories, re: "A Sorta Fairytale"

Happy 50th, Tori Amos. Oof, I feel old.

have a holly jolly christmas

As the child of an alcoholic, I find this song deeply and darkly hilarious.

I must become/a lion-hearted girl

Current song obsession:

(I'm not using the actual video because the song is abridged and the video is stupid...I'm pretty sure it's about people doing the Macarena  at a Ren Faire.)

"because I want to"

i do it for the joy it brings
because i'm a joyful girl
because the world owes me nothing
and we owe each other the world
i do it because it's the least i can do
i do it because i learned it from you
i do it just because i want to
because I want to

everything i do is judged
and they mostly get it wrong
but oh well
'cuz the bathroom mirror has not budged
and the woman who lives there can tell
the truth from the stuff that they say
and she looks me in the eye
and says would you prefer the easy way?
no, well o.k. then
don't cry

and i wonder if everything i do
i do instead
of something i want to do more
the question fills my head
i know that there's no grand plan here
this is just the way it goes
and when everything else seems unclear
i guess at least i know

i do it for the joy it brings...

-Ani DiFranco "Joyful Girl"

then they just put down their hands and moved into the sky

and we had barely said hello and it was time/to say goodbye

In two days, it will be my one year anniversary here in New Orleans. I'm lying in bed, wine drunk and sweaty from a combined bike ride and lack of great AC, singing sultry Ani DiFranco songs into the dark and I realized this felt familiar.

I'm still sweaty, tired, happy, and sad.

It still feels right.

I cannot stop listening to this song. Thanks, Alyson.

"ain't it strange that I'm a human being"

I've been listening to this song on repeat for the last week.

monstermash

Marla really wants to lay on the keyboard. I have moved her 6 times.

texts from tonight:
Me: A nice young man just asked me out on a date in this here cawfee shop. I turned him down, but still cute.
Alyson: Whoa :)
Me: Guess the strung out student look is sexy to some! (not kidding here. I was curled up in a chair, wearing an overly large cardigan, scrawling notes and randomly muttering to myself.)
Alyson: mmm heroin geek chic. Mandi, Queen of the Coffee Scene :)
Me: hahaha "her glassy red eyes shone like rubies; the grinding of her teeth, the sweetest symphony!"
Alyson: I love you :)
Me: I love you too :)

Me (to my mom): Listening to B.B. King while studying and thought of you. Hope everything is ok. I'll try and call you tomorrow after class. Love you.

I'm so worried about my mom. She's so so close to totally losing her shit and I don't know what to do other than try and be in touch as often as I can, but sometimes, it's just too much for me to hear everyday. After I sent her that text, I started wondering what I would do if she did harm herself. It's becoming more and more of a tangible thought for me and the reality of it is terrifying. I had to stop thinking about it because I was choking up in the coffeeshop. I think the worst thing I can imagine happening to me, short of dying, is my mom dying. Even the thought of dying myself is tempered by the sadness it would cause her. I remember when Candace died and she told me, "I'd never be able to go on if something happened to you. I would just stop functioning. I would die too." In some ways, it's my motivation to be good to myself, not to harm myself. In other ways, it's repressive; I'm loathe to show depression around her. But I'm torn between my worry for her and my complete lack of desire to be around my family situation because it's so painful.

This happened today:
Justice Department to Stop Defending Federal Law on Gay Marriage

President Obama, in a major legal policy shift, has directed the Justice Department to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act - the 1996 law that bars federal recognition of same-sex marriages - against lawsuits challenging it as unconstitutional.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Wednesday sent a letter to Congress to inform them that the Justice Department will now take the position in court that the Defense of Marriage Act should be struck down as a violation of gay couples' rights to equal protection under the law.

"The President and I have concluded that classifications based on sexual orientation warrant heightened scrutiny and that, as applied to same-sex couples legally married under state law" a crucial provision of the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional, Mr. Holder wrote.
-NY Times

Currently reading J.L. Austin's How to Do Things With Words in prep for indie study + research paper + thesis. Excerpt:
Yet I will content myself here with pointing out that one of the things that has been happening lately in philosophy is that close attention has been given even to "statements" which, though not false exactly nor yet "contradictory," are yet outrageous. For instance, statements which refer to something which does not exist as, for example, "The present King of France is bald." There might be a temptation to assimilate this to purporting to bequeath something which you do not own. Is there not a presupposition of existence in each? Is not a statement which refers to something which does not exist not so much false as void? And the more we consider a statement not as a sentence (or proposition) but as an act of speech (out of which the others are logical constructions) the more we are studying the whole thing as an act.

So, I tend to walk around wearing headphones a lot. I like having a soundtrack of sorts, plus when I'm reading, music helps me concentrate. As I was walking to my car earlier, I was listening to "Beginning to See the Light" and drumming with my hands and, apparently, singing aloud, judging from the surprised looks of 2 passerby. I just smiled at them and continued on my way, which I hope was a good mask for my embarrassment.
Well I'm beginning to see the light.
Well I'm beginning to see the light.
Some people work very hard
But still they never get it right
Well I'm beginning to see the light.
There are problems in these times
But none of them are mine
Baby, I'm beginning to see the light.
Here we go again,
I thought that you were my friend.
Here we go again,
I thought that you were my friend.
How does it feel to be loved?
How does it feel to be loved?

"and you all want the lovely music to save your lives"

broken social scene done broke my mind.

I saw them at Pitchfork this past summer and I ALMOST didn't go to this show because I couldn't find parking at Tipitina's and the Will Call line was forever long. And some girl offered me $40 for my ticket. But I went for it and I'm so so glad. I haven't been that thrilled at a show in a very long time. I couldn't meet up with my friends so I ended up making some new ones with some dudes, when we bonded over some self-entitled bitches trying to scoot in on our space. We danced and sang and shouted song requests until we were hoarse.

When I saw BSS over the summer, they mostly played all new songs, plus "Cause = Time," "Fire Eye'd Boy," "Superconnected," and "7/4 Shoreline." They played all those this time too (Kevin Drew changed the lyrics on "Superconnected" to "and I love the darkness/it's what happened to me/I was talking about things/I could not believe" to "and I love forgiveness/it's what happened to me/I am talking about things/that I still believe."), but they added in "Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl" (I think I lost my voice screaming in glee when that happened), "Lover's Spit," "Stars and Sons" "Looks Just Like the Sun" (I was pretty surprised at how much they played off of You Forget It In People, actually), pretty much the entire Forgiveness Rock Record and, as an encore, they did "It's All Gonna Break" (which caused an immense dance party) and closed with an acoustic version of "Major Label Debut." They went over their time by almost 40 minutes and even though I've been up since 6:30 this morning, I was running on exhilaration.

amazing fucking show.

young liars

Well, it's cold and it's quiet, and cobblestone cold in here
Fucking for fear of not wanting to fear again
Lonely is all we are
Lovely so far, but my heart's still a marble in an empty jelly jar
Someday suppose that my curious nervousness stills into prescience, clairvoyant consciousness
I will be calmer than cream,
Making maps out of your dreams
But will psychic ability kill the nativity or simply diminish the flinch?

"how can I explain, I need you here and not here too"

After my last post, I decided, seized as I was by my inability to leave things undone (for reference, this whole falling out happened a year and a half ago) and a flaring up of my superstitiousness, to refriend AA on Facebook. He accepted shortly after and I IMed him and sent him that post. We had a good talk and, in the end, I was glad I had followed up on my fit of pique.

I have this sort of awful habit of clinging to unresolved situations, of trying to "right" them, even, sometimes, to further detriment of the situation (and/or my own sanity). I can't stand a lack of finality or resolution when it comes to my friendships, even though I'm generally pretty avoidant when it comes to other sorts of confrontation. I don't quite understand it and I know it drives other people nuts, but I can't help it. I'll think things over until I'm obsessing about them, dreaming about them, trying to figure out something, SOMETHING that will make it better, even when sometimes "making it better" is just dropping it.

The best explanation I have is that my best friend, Candace, was killed when I was 17, in a car accident, while we were in the midst of a fight and not speaking to one another. A few years after that, when I was 21, a very close friend/ex-boyfriend died of cancer. I had been avoiding him due to some things occuring that I'm still not really able to write about. The thing with Candace ate away at me for years and it was only through distance and some pretty intense counseling that I was able to get (mostly) past that...guilt. Guilt mixed with something else...maybe stubborness and a general inability to forgive myself slights. But I think it goes back further than that; I can think of similar incidents years prior.

There's more to this, but seeing as how I've typed three different paragraphs and erased them, I don't think I can write more without rambling, so I'll leave it here for now.

I keep reading the lyrics to Of Montreal's "The Past is a Groteque Animal." The song isn't that fantastic, but the words are.

We want our film to be beautiful, not realistic.
Perceive me in the radiance of your terror dreams
and you can betray me
you can, you can betray me.

But teach me something wonderful.

hit the wall hit the wall hit the wall

I'm exhausted.

Unfortunately, that doesn't mean much, since I still have a lot left to do in the immediate future. I have a 20 page annotated biblio that's due Monday afternoon, that I have not even approached "almost done" on. I have a 7-page final due for the bullshit class. I've done a bit of re-reading for that and taken about a page of notes. It'll come together fine. I just need to sit down and type it out, but every time I decide to just get it out of the way, my brain starts its slow-burn freakout about the bibliography and I go back to read/note-taking for that. I also have a load of stuff to do at work, so much that one of my doctors asked if I'd spent the night at her place to help her finish this stuff in exchange for some overtime cash money. I didn't say no.

I canceled a trip to Baton Rouge for Friday night that I've been planning for about 3 weeks. I almost let myself get talked back into going by some friends, but I can't justify it. I can't justify driving down there and spending money (because all I really want to do is get wonderfully, obliviously drunk) and time that I don't really have, especially when I'll probably be there the weekend after anyway. It hurts though, because  if there was ever a time that I wanted a break from reality, it's right now. I wanted to see music and dance and see all my friends and sleep on Christie's couch. I need some platonic love.

I've done really well at holding up so far, in the face of school/work stress + holiday/winter blues, but I can feel myself trying to slip into that place in my mind where I just want to be dark and dreary, mad and sad. I notice myself slipping into eating habits that are indicative of ED-land and I've made a concerted effort to put a stop to that immediately. I'm just kind of burnt out and I keep telling myself, "I will do this after Monday..." So far, that list consists of:
-Cleaning the house (this is kind of a nightmare at the moment)
-Get drinks with Ann
-Go to BR
-Write and mail Christmas cards
-Go thrift shopping for winter clothes (I've been cobbling together cold-weather outfits. Tonight, I wore leggings, a jersey summer skirt, an ACL t-shirt, a hoodie, a pashmina and flats to the library.)
-Go to the bank
-Figure out what I'm baking for Christmas (spoiler alert: if you get a present from me, it will be baked goods)
-Call my mom

I'm running on nervous energy right now (which probably has something to do with my recently-gone-to-shit sleeping habits--vicious cycle there), and I need it to last me just a little bit longer until I can crash.

Not everything is terrible though. I am really looking forward to seeing everyone who is coming into town for the holidays. Ann is already here, Phillip is in from China, Ravi and Devon will both be coming in around the end of the month. So the idea of fun soon kind of sustains me. The idea of getting done with classes and getting A's also sustains me.

So let's end on a good note. Marla is snuggling with me right now. My sweet neighbors (or "gaybors," as they refer to themselves) decked our 4-plex out for the holidays and it looks amazing. I bought this dress and it came in today and looks fantastic on. I'm going to wear it to a party that I'm attending as Alyson's date. I made amends (I think) with someone. I've been listening to Brendan Canning's "Something for All of Us" and it has been doing double duty as a walking/dancing and a study soundtrack. Check it:

motivational speaker

R: so i got really depressed last night. "we make our own gravity to give weight to things, and then things fall and then they break and gravity sings" showed up in my feed as one of ___ statuses

i googled it and realized it was an ani song that you listened to a lot while we were breaking up
hour follows hour or something

me: yeah
I'm sorry

R: it's ok
not your fault or anything

me: I will say, it was a song I listened to because it made me feel better about the breakup

R: just an association

me: its one of those "no one's fault" songs

R: that's what songs are for

me: yeah

R: it's a pretty song

(...)
me: I liked the line "the most we can do is see each other through it"
you know, not to be...callous? but it's weird for me to hear that you were depressed
not that I don't think the breakup didn't affect you

(...)

me: but you're a lot more stoic than me and I'm not used to the idea of you getting depressed
and it kind of surprised me for a second, the idea that you might still get sad about it even though I still do and that's kind of obvious

I never really realized how much that song resonated for me until I just listened to it again.

Hour Follows Hour
Hour follows hour like water follows water
Everything is governed by the rule that one thing leads to another
You can't really place blame, 'cause blame is much too messy
Someone was bound to get it on you while you were trying to put it on me.

And don't fool yourself into thinking things are simple
Nobody's lying, still the stories don't line up
Why do you try to hold on to what you'll never get a hold on
You wouldn't try and put the ocean in a paper cup

'Cause I have had something to prove
As long as I know there's something that needs improvement
And you know that every time I move
I make a woman's movement

And first you decide what you've gotta do
and then you go out and do it
And maybe the most that we can do
is to see each other through it

Hour follows hour like water in a river
And from one to the next, we don't know what each hour will deliver
We just call it like we see it, call out loud as we can
And then afterwards we call it all water over the dam

Maybe the moral high ground isn't as high as it seems
Maybe we are both good people whove done some bad things
I just hope it was okay, I know it wasn't perfect
I just hope in the end we can laugh and say it was all worth it

'Cause I have had something to prove

As long as I know there's something that needs improvement
And you know that every time I move
I make a woman's movement

And first you decide what you've gotta do
and then you go out and do it
And maybe the most that we can do
is to see each other through it

We make our own gravity to give weight to things
Then things fall and they break and gravity sings
We can only hold so much, is what I figure
We try and keep our eye on the big picture
And the picture keeps getting bigger

And too much is how I love you but too well is how I know you
And I've got nothing to prove this time, just something to show you
I guess I just wanted you to see
That it was all worth it to me

15 albums

There's a meme on Facebook right now, asking people to list the "fifteen albums you've heard that will always stick with you." I thought I'd post my own list here for posterity, with some notes

This is the list I posted to FB:
1) Ani DiFranco- To The Teeth-I first heard this album when I was 15. I had downloaded "Pixie" on a late night Napster binge, drawn to it because "Pixie" was my nickname at the time. I listened to that song for HOURS. Later that same week, I was in Wal-Mart with my mom and saw "To the Teeth" (the irony of that kills me now. I realize now that the album must have just been released and Wal-Mart might have had a few copies before realizing the content/language. I used to love picking up unedited CDs at Wal-Mart). Of course I had to have it and the album has resonated with me in different ways for the last 10 years and I always find myself listening to it at transitional times in my life (break ups, new relationships, moving, graduating high school and college, etc.).

2) Smashing Pumpkins- Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness--The soundtrack of my teenage years. I was obsessed with the Pumpkins. I used to have a tradition of playing this CD every time I got a new car (I'll have to tell the story of my high school cars one day...it's nothing pretty).

3) Janis Joplin- Pearl- One of the first vinyls I ever bought. I've listened to and loved Janis since I was in the womb.

4) Bessie Smith- Nobody's Blues But Mine- The first album I bought at LA Music Factory in NOLA. In my first semester of college, I took a theater class that required us to see 3 plays at LSU. One of these was Ma Rainey's Black Bottom and I did some research on the title character. I went to LA Music Factory wanting to but a Ma Rainey record but either they didn't have one or it was out of my price range. I had heard a few Bessie Smith songs before and remembered that she was influenced by Rainey, so I bought this record. During this time, I was seeing a therapist and I moved out of my parents house for the second time and got out of a detrimental relationship. The first night I moved in, I put this record on and turned off all the lights and sang myself to sleep.

5) Feist- Monarch- This album is chock full of great breakup and love songs. I listened to it a lot when I first thought Ravi and I were breaking up, which also happened to be in the middle of my senior finals. It's been on constant rotation ever since.

6) Simon and Garfunkel- The Essential Simon and Garfunkel- Someone said that using compilations wasn't true to the spirit of the exercise, but I actually own this (double) album and its the one that sticks with me, so I think it's acceptable. I don't really have a backstory for this. It's just a set of some really great music. I will say that sometimes, when listening to S&G, I remember a passage from one of the BSC books (R.I.P. my set of these--THANKS MOM.), one of the Dawn books, when Dawn notes that she knows her mom is depressed because she's listening to Simon and Garfunkel.

7) Stevie Ray Vaughn- Texas Flood- I seem to have a thing for second-wave blues. This album reminds me of my parents especially my mom, who LOVES SRV. She and I used to dance around to this, especially the song "Pride and Joy."

8) Broken Social Scene- Broken Social Scene- Ravi introduced me to BSS and, in a way, this album reminds me of him. But, it's also a stand alone fantastic album. In the heat of senior finals, when I was typing two twenty page papers, living off of coffee and Taco Bell and sleeping on the floor of the Delta office, I used to put "Windsurfing Nation" on repeat and type as fast as I could.

9) Radiohead- OK Computer- This is almost cliche, it's on so many lists. But that doesn't negate how fantastic this album is.

10) Decemberists- Castaways and Cutouts- I know "Picaresque" is the popular favorite, but there are just more songs that I like on C & C (music factory). This album reminds me of Winter 2007, being sad, spending lots of time with Nancy and Devon.

11) Fiona Apple- Tidal- Poetic teenage angst. I used to scrawl Fiona lyrics in my journals, especially around the beginning of college.

12) Tori Amos- Tales of a Librarian- Reminds me of post-Katrina, being discouraged but also meeting and loving a ton of new people, singing "Cornflake Girl" with Christie and Josh.

13) Lauryn Hill- The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill- I was obsessed with this album when it first came out, especially "Everything is Everything" (which I still love to listen to for an uplift.) I still think it's Lauryn Hill's best work and better than The Fugees The Score. Plus, lots of run to sing/rap along with.

14) Jeff Buckley- Grace- I tend to think this one is self-explanatory, though I haven't seen it on anyone's list. I've always flirted with this album, especially "Hallelujah" but it too went into heavy rotation around breakup time. This album always provides a certain very strong memory for me...it snowed the morning of my French final, my very last undergraduate final, and I was running on 1.5 hours of sleep (after finally finishing those 20-pagers). I had "Last Goodbye" on my iPod and as I crossed the street to enter Francioni Hall, it came to the bridge of the song ("did you say/'no, this can't happen to me...'"). I felt like running, like flying. Since then, I always feel a rush of adrenaline when I listen to that part of the song and it brings me right back to that sleep deprived, freezing, exhilarating moment.

15) Red Hot Chili Peppers- Californication- I almost didn't put this because I thought I'd get laughed at, but you know, fuck it. I love this album, have loved it since it came out and it holds a crazy amount of memories for me. And, frankly, I loved a lot of the mainstream music between 1996 and 1999.

Honorable mentions:
Arcade Fire- Funeral
Smashing Pumpkins- Siamese Dream
Madonna- The Immaculate Collection (my first CD!)
Ani DiFranco- Not a Pretty Girl
Tori Amos- Little Earthquakes
Beatles- Abbey Road
TLC- Crazysexycool
Rolling Stones- Sticky Fingers
Nirvana- Nevermind
Pearl Jam- Ten
Alice in Chains- Dirt
Everclear- So Much For the Afterglow (look I KNOW. But this album addressed that crazy depression I felt in my teenage years and it resonated with me. And sometimes I still listen to it and sing/scream along. It's like pop music cut with glass.)

"somebody more like myself"

Today, I was running some errands for work and I stopped into a uniform shop to order some labcoats for the doctors. While I was there, Jewel's "Down So Long" came on the radio. I had such a visceral reaction that the saleslady actually had to reach across the counter and grab my arm, saying "Hey! This the right monogram?"

It wasn't so much the song itself as hearing Jewel's voice. I'd sort of tuned her out after "0304" came out, but in doing so, I also shied away from a part of my coming of age that Jewel was apart of. It's sort of strange, thinking back on it, because I doubt I would have ever said Jewel was one of my favorite artists. But I spent countless hours of my teenage years listening to "Pieces of You" and "Spirit." My first car (not counting my mom's car that I totaled--not my fault!),a beat up 1990 Mazda MX6, only had a cassette player--the radio didn't work--and I played "Pieces of You" so many times that the tape broke (leaving me with Alice in Chains "Dirt", The Traveling Wilburys "Volume 1" and Eric Clapton's "Greatest Hits"). I remember lying on my bedroom floor, reading the poems in the liner notes of that CD and trying to write my own similar ones, because Jewel was my first introduction to free verse and I loved the freedom of it. The story of Jewel living in a van when she was a teenager resonated with a kid who badly wanted some assurance that shitty circumstances could lead to good things and that independence was achievable and worth fighting for.

I think there's this sense of constant struggling in her lyrics, whether it's with the falseness of the world around us or drugs or lost love or with self-identity...and I think that personified a lot of my emotions through those years (and hell, even now) in a way that other artists I listened to at the time didn't. She was something of a gateway to other artists I could relate to in that sense, especially that other well known poetry writing folkster, Ani DiFranco.

It's a little embarrassing to devote an entire entry to my teenage love of Jewel, but I can't shake that feeling of nostalgia. When I got home, I downloaded "Down So Long," along with a couple of other Jewel songs and I've been listening to them on repeat. They still evoke a kind of confused determination that I find very comforting right now.