Saturday, December 27, 2008

You were supposed to grow old. Reckless, unfrightened, and old, you were supposed to grow old.

today i was reminded why i like to write...or at least, why i like to write on the interwebs.
this meanders. i haven't posted in so long, that i'm just going to go with the flow here. there is a main theme, but the "structure" of this thing is going to be tangents inside of schisms of asides. it'll be tender buttons w/far less repetition...or homosexuality...and with nouns and no sex (mmmm...i could go for some alice b toklas ice cream from Marianne's)

seriously, this one goes all over the place and as always, it's easy to see where the music sits...feel free to scroll down unless you've got a few minutes and like me an inordinate amount.

i had taken to listening to my ipod on completely random.
normally, i use my playlists to filter an insane quantity of music down to something manageable. not too many months ago, i got a new computer....a beautiful, beefy laptop on which i'm writing now. in the xferring of music from old computer (still up and running...though solely for dangerous/chancy surfing) to new, i managed to lose my playlists. now, many of you know that i am an enemy of apple, and a self-loathing owner of apple products (including my new iphone, which is pure sex.) the primary reason for this hatred isn't geek posturing, but the s-load of proprietary roadblocks that apple stacks in their very shiny products. some of you may know that it is impossible to remove files from ipods and put them on your computer through apple-approved methods. this is a pile of horseshit (i love that firefox doesn't correct the spelling on horseshit!) when one pays a ton of money for an external drive that can play music, once should be able to use it like an external drive. period...end of story. eff you apple...right in your stupid a.

in order to be truly happy, i need my playlists, so i couldn't sync my ipod for the last few months (the old ones would have been deleted upon syncing...effing stupid crap...the music is MINE, regardless of the fact that i stole most of it), which gave me little reason to surf for new music. of course i could manually put the new songs on the ipod, but every time i thought about how apple was cramping my style, i just got angry.

a few weeks ago when joanna abandoned me for a day, i decided i was going to solve my problem through any illegal means necessary. super-duper-over-long story short, i finally came upon yamIpod, which appears to be the greatest freeware out there for hijacking your ipod. specifically, it is the only one i found that allows you to remove playlists themselves. awesome. these playlists that i need to be truly happy.

however, i had taken to listening to my ipod on completely random.
since i am constantly listening to music, tons of forgotten songs popped up, until i had a nice list, sufficient for a blog.

however, as you may have noticed, i don't really blog anymore.
but, apparently, i do.

a few things have led me back to blogging.
i may have mentioned, in paren, that i got a sexy new phone. if i hadn't already named my snowboard vera, then i guarantee that the iphone would get that name. well, now that i have internet at my fingertips all the damn time, i have started reading cvjm's blog again. thus, i started commenting and bouncing to other blogs as well (as a former blogger, i know how rad those comments feel.)

you may have noticed that my last post was actually a repost. (oddly, i've never received so many comments before...maybe i should just cycle through my best posts every few months?) the cause of that repost should be fairly clear from the (now censored) rant its beginning. however, despite my displeasure, i enjoyed revisiting that past post, and i LOVE that, through no further work of my own, i was able to hit a few souls who missed it on the first time around. that post is one of the few that is close to my heart, and one of the very few that strays into anything but pure frivolity. for those that didn't catch it, or don't feel like taking the step back, it was largely concerned with memory.

i used to meditate a good deal on memory, i think in large part because mine is so poor. i physically hold on to absolutely everything. every time i cleaned my room as a kid, i found new places to squirrel away junk. you should have seen it circa the end of high school....probably half of my 12x12 room was filled with random shit. because i've never had to move everything out of here, i've never done the massive filtering wherein i toss all of the childhood crap, though i've certainly pared down over the years. i still have a few big boxes--at least--of flotsam that connects me to moments/feelings from my childhood (i wonder if the exes would be flattered or creeped out by the scrap piles.). you see, i don't think everyone out there can relate to having an atrocious memory for the past: i legitimately CANNOT dredge up a lot of these memories without the trinket that sends me there.

the other day, i inherited a new desk which led me back to blogging.
now, the one i had was truly an inheritance: it belonged to my grandfather. i believe, though we've talked about my memory, that he was a salesman of office furniture when he brought his family here from holland. it was a nice desk. however, it was too big for my little room, and when my sister was tossing her little ikea number, i did the switcheroo. i knew that the (giant) top drawer of the old desk had served as a catch-all for years, but i had no idea what i was dipping into. i'd had that desk for maybe 17 years, but there were items in there from well before that time period. there was a pencil that i won in cub scouts. there were micro machines from third grade (yes, i remember specifically which year that was because we played with them every day for a while there, out in the sandbox, making marble madness style runs for them to go down.) there was a small section of my rock collection; a stone cross i wore in my devout (more like passing) days as well as a yin-yang i wore for a spell in between (not to mention a playboy pendant that i probably bought at the fair and wore far far before i ever kissed a girl); my ex gf's high school id along with a bracelet and shoelaces from my hs gf; years of gifts in the shape of pigs which my mom gives me to "celebrate" my chauvinism. there was a paper from gamestop on which i wrote up my manager for using *CENSORED* and faxed it to his gf (whom i had never met.) KOME stickers. KSJO keychain. my charcoal pencils from the period when i wanted to be an artist like my mom. years and years of STUFF, none of it junk...all of it important enough to save for one reason or another.

this kind of drawer makes me melancholy. always. these happy memories are rendered sad by their distance. i'm totally old. all this stuff that was so important. all this stuff i've forgotten. i don't relish it, or celebrate it, i mope about it...but i'm completely unwilling to chance the alternative: forgetting.

so, a few things have led me back to blogging.





Ted Leo. Timerous Me. Lyrics.

the song i most wanted to share is one that i used to sing along with, w/o really listening to the lyrics. i admit to doing this shamefully often...especially given my snobbery surrounding words.
today, when i finally decided that i was going to write about it, i did some digging for an online mp3 of the song so the DMCA butt-puppets wouldn't erase my post (i was warned not to post more music or my blog would be shit-canned.) while digging, i circuitously found that i had even less of a handle on the topic of the song than i thought. while searching for "timory", i came upon the story of an OK Go song called "return" about a girl named timory hyde (lyrics of return. the end of that thing is pretty sad.)
this rabbit hole goes on and on, and it's getting more daunting to write this every time i stray away to look for more. song after song is written in remembrance of this girl, but the short version is that timory hyde died while at brown university, on her bday, when a friend hugged her and the window she was leaning on gave out, sending the pair three stories down to the driveway below. she was an artist and musician herself, and appears to have been beloved by all who knew her, and even a few who only knew the twinkle in her eye, as is evidenced by this song.

of all the random things i came across about this girl's death, this post moved me the most. i don't know if roberta is a mom, or a sister...but, talk about cleaning out a desk:

Roberta wrote:

I don’t know what made me do a Timory Hyde search but I found this. Thank you, Elliot, for writing it. I’ve finally been cleaning out Timory’s room because I know what I want to do with it and I know she would like it. I’ve tried to reach you through emails but they must all be different. I haven’t written but I should. Laziness overcomes me. Maybe emotion as well. I miss hearing from you. I’m going to try to find Leo’s cd. I’m looking forward to being “frozen” and also to the nice feeling that Timory drove another to song. She’d like that….. R
Wednesday, August 13, 2003 at 5:43 pm



i rarely print lyrics in their entirety, but, it's just such a perfect end to the post, and poses all the right questions. deep and melancholy food for thought...that's what my blog is.


Timorous Me

Me and Johnny sittin' in the green grass -
I don’t remember too much from that far back in the past,
But man, oh man, was Johnathan a laugh
In those days.
Apparently he was my very best friend -
We spent warm summer days wishing they would never end -
But I only know from photographs I look at
Every now and again.

And J-J-Johnny -
Ooh, ooh, all he left us was an apple tree,
And ooh, where'd he go, and ooh, why'd he leave,
And ooh, why do I grieve?

Now I don’t ever see Johnathan no more,
But my life rolls on just like it did before,
And I only wonder what it is
That I even miss him for.

Me and Timory holdin' hands -
I was shakin' hers, ‘cause she said she was a fan,
There was an awkward pause, and something that should’ve began
Just passed us by.
But I watched her sing along with every word,
In the prettiest voice that I never heard,
And I still see her dancing, wearin' my shirt:
Right there.

And t-t-timorous me -
All Timory left me was a memory.
And ooh, I was blind, and ooh, now I find
That I can’t see.

Now me and Jodi spend a lot of our time
Just sittin' in silence, driving late at night,
And maybe even wonderin' what’s on each other’s mind
This time.
But I know she’s like me, so I let it ride -
She’s dwelling in that quiet space left behind,
Where only peace can answer why,
And you abide
The birds must fly.