in no particular order.
with no segues.
an abnormal blog for me (though there is still music to be had.)
there is a thread here though...a theme...i think.
ignore our sunshine and her ethnicity and gender, and this was me today:
• in what manner do you aspire to live your life? half glass full or half stolen? i'm not asking you how you actually live...but how you think you should live. hmm. on second thought, go ahead and compare the two. how does your (maybe) theoretical outlook compare to the actual lenses you wear?
you see someone running down the street...they aren't in proper running attire. do you assume that they are clutching a stolen credit card, or do you see a lover tortured by every minute he is apart from his flame, braving a pulled hamstring just to spend five more minutes with her?
when i was a kid, it was easy to be an optimist...the pessimism was much tougher, and i put in the work. i thought that it was so much more logical and realistic. nietzsche and camus resonated with, and came as a relief to, that privileged, arrogant, and green kid. fraternity was a lie. innocent until proven guilty was a waste of time.
that was before i ever experienced heartbreak. more importantly, it was roughly 70,000 smaller disappointments ago.
now, some days, i have to put in back-breaking work just to believe in anything or anyone. and yet, i keep doing it. i keep trying to attack the world like a puppy. i keep trying to look at everything as though it might just be the best thing ever. i keep trying to run up to things too fast, even if i wipe-out as a result. you know why puppies can keep up the, "i love this, i love this, i love THAT!" lifestyle? it's got to be because of how quickly they forget how much of a let-down everything is. i find it hard to forget, and it keeps getting harder to muster the joyous head-down charges. i mean, how many times does a horse walk into an electric fence before he gets the picture and stays away from the wires?
for the longest time, i had no trouble heeding the past and treading carefully around anything that might leave me vulnerable to anything at all. but...i've been charging headlong and head up into wires for the last few weeks, all of them so promising . i understood the russian roulette aspect of every choice...i think i just underestimated the number of bullets in the gun. i'm pretty well tired of getting electrocuted and shot in the temple.
wreckless eric. whole wide world.
go see stranger than fiction. best movie of the year (the only movie that comes close is little miss sunshine.) so smart and fantastic. also, i left the theater 100% in love w/maggie gyllenhaal...she always does good movies, but i've never loved her before.
• tired. i haven't really been sleeping more than 4-5 hours a night. only once in the last two weeks have i had a real night's sleep. i was planning to be asleep a couple of hours ago...this blog took longer than i expected. it doesn't help that i have five tabs open and that i can't even focus on this.
joanna newsom. sadie. lyrics. youtube.
And all that I want, and all that I need
and all that I've got is scattered like seed.
And all that I knew is moving away from me.
(and all that I know is blowing
like tumbleweed)
i, admittedly, let another music blog do the legwork on this, but i wanted to share it. besides, i'm a better writer than he is.
i've written about joanna before. lots. i've tried to warn that her voice is odd. i've tried to explain how her childish sounding lyrics are deeper than they seem. well, the best proof of this comes directly from her own mouth. check out this portion of an interview she did w/tiny mix tapes:
"TMT: One of my favorite and one of the most heart rending songs on your new record is "Sadie," is there a story behind it?
JN: There are actually three stories; as with almost all of my songs, there's this recurring triumvirate structure that imposes itself without my even realizing it at first. The three subjects are always connected, but often in merely intuitive or symbolic ways. In this particular song, the most straightforward subject is my then-dog, Sadie, who passed on recently. She was a lovely white Labrador who liked nothing more in the whole world than to play fetch. And I've always been impatient about that; I'd look at the soggy pinecone dropped at my feet while I was trying to get into my car, and I'd say, "I'll play with you later."
The second subject of the song is a friend, my age, who was diagnosed with cancer. I remember marveling at the reaction of people around me, the way they sprung to action, finally articulated to her their love and appreciation, finally made those lunch dates they'd always talked about...and I sheepishly include myself in this phenomenon. It wasn't disingenuous; it was just that our collective illusion, that we have forever to let someone know how loved she is, had been shattered.
The third subject is one of my most beloved friends, whom I've grown apart from. We had this sort of running argument, or a running series of disagreements founded on the same fundamental points of divergence, and if we had been close at that point, talking every day or whatnot, then those disagreements would have seemed like nothing. But because our correspondence had fallen behind, and we'd developed insecurities and bitterness, these disagreements became all-consuming; we fixated on them, let resentments build around them, let a silence build between us. And I remember just having my breath taken from me in one sickening moment when I paused one day to imagine what I'd do if this friend fell ill with cancer, like my other friend. I knew that I would fly to be with her, stay by her side forever if I had to, and revel in her extraordinary rarity, intelligence, kindness, forget all the shitty stupid petty small points of contention between us, because they were so insignificant in light of our own inevitable mortality.
So. Those are the basic subjects of the song. It's about all sorts of things, but I guess the main story is about death, love, putting things off..."
beautiful.
drinking: full sail wassail
listening: joanna newsom. y's. followed by george winston's december. followed by fiona apple's when the pawn....
just returned from watching: stranger than fiction.
reading: still murakami. i'm soooo slow.
playing: nothing...xbox broken.
art: lisa alisa
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