I Don't Live Here Any More!

 

...which is to say, I'll no longer be posting here.

But don't worry, the Rainbow Chronicles aren't dead! We've just moved. Please come visit! I can promise more frequent posts, and ... well, that's about it.

Find me here: alisonhamm.com 

Thanks for reading, and following, Chasing the End of My Rainbow.

love,

Alison (composes)

Monday Mix Tapes: Autumn Leaves, Old Ideas

Leonard Cohen made it hard for me to work today.

This Monday started like many do in late September—sun pouring through the leaves, green but tinged with the hints of yellow, orange, and amber soon to come; a slight briskness in the air that hints at the cold soon to come; and me visiting NPR First Listen and squealing with glee at the albums soon to come.

At the top of the First Listen page, there's a black-and-white shot of Lucinda Williams, badass as ever in her leather jacket, heavy eyeliner, and a look in her eyes like she’s either just knocked out a man or put back a double shot of bourbon, maybe both. (Lucinda, I'll get to you soon!)

I scrolled down: Perfume Genius! Mapei! Sondre Lerche! And finally, LEONARD COHEN.

Because Mapei has one of the catchiest pop songs I’ve heard in quite some time (“Don’t Wait”), I listened to her album first. And while I think the reviewer got a bit heavy-handed with the whole theme of ear-candy/candy/pop music/sugar, “Don’t Wait” certainly has that “kick of cayenne” that makes a caramel go from merely tasty to memorably delicious. Which is to say, okay, I get it. Overall, it’s definitely a pop album I’ll return to, even though the second half starts to feel a bit flat, and I could really do without the majority of Mapei's rapping.

Back to Leonard. Prior to his 2012 album, Old Ideas, I was a scattered and halfhearted fan at best. I realize of course that this admission would make most Leonard Cohen fans snort, or pat me on the head and say, “Okay, dear.” That said, ask me how many fucks I give, now as well as then. I was too busy, at the time I was falling in love with Old Ideas, writing lyrics from “Different Sides” in my journal and committing them to heart (“Both of us say there are laws to obey/but frankly, I don’t like your tone/You want to change the way I make love/I want to leave it alone”).

I fell in love with the low growl of his voice, his lyrics (!), and his backup singers. I listened again and again. I revisited his old songs, the albums I’d once listened to halfheartedly, and marveled at my former self. Who was I, that I wasn’t enthralled by “Dance Me to the End of Love,” “In My Secret Life,” and “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye”? I guess it’s no different, really, than how I now cringe at the memory of the Good Charlotte poster that hung in my college dorm room in 2002.

Our tastes change and adapt over time. Today the trees outside my Chicago window are full of yellow- and orange-tinted green leaves, but too soon, there will only be bare branches. Leonard Cohen’s voice sounds pretty much nothing at all on both Old Ideas and Popular Problems like it did in 1969 on Songs from a Room.

It feels fitting that the 80-year-old musician—yes, he turned 80 years old, yesterday, Wikipedia informs me—would release his latest album, Popular Problems, in the fall. A season, that for me at least, marks some of my happiest and saddest memories, and for those of us in Chicago, some of our last days of warmth as another winter looms. As I wrote several years ago, “the air has that crisp, cool feel once again. It's my favorite time of year, but it also makes me feel homesick as well. Not even homesick, exactly, but more like longing for something lost, a place that no longer really exists.”

Of course, Leonard puts it better, on one of my favorite tracks from the album, "Did I Ever Love You?":

Was it ever settled
Was it ever over
And is it still raining
Back in November
The lemon trees blossom
The almond trees wither
Its spring and its summer
And its winter forever


This album is packed with songs that tackle everything from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to torture, killing, and all “my bad reviews,” and even though it—tragically—is a mere 36 minutes long, Leonard’s clearly in no hurry. After all, he kicks off the album with “Slow,” a song that feels equal parts sexy and self-deprecating, and all parts fucking terrific.

The seasons will change, as will my tastes and probably yours, but I can guarantee that my still-recently acquired love of Leonard Cohen is here to stay.

“It’s almost like salvation; it’s almost like the blues.”



Popular Problems comes out tomorrow. 

Monday Mix Tapes: ***Feminist

 

In case you had forgotten that last night, FEMINIST flashed in giant words behind the "greatest living entertainer" during the MTV VMAs. 

Je suis içi 4 this performance.

Get More:
2014 VMA, Artists.MTV, Beyonce, MTV VMA Video Vanguard (Medley), Music, More Music Videos

"By lifting verses from Adichie’s TED talk on gender equality and using it to inspire her own music, Beyoncé is bridging the gap between academic feminism and everyday feminism. If young women attendees at her On the Run tour can scream out the lyrics to “Flawless” and mean every word, who says they can’t  eventually read Audre Lorde?"
— Ms. Magazine

Oh, once is not enough:

to be sorted later

I’ve been writing a lot of emails to myself lately. Mostly, I’m sending articles, essays, and short stories, but I’m also sending notes, quotes, and music. I get a strange kick out of emailing myself, because while on the one hand it seems like a completely logical method of reminding oneself to do something, on the other hand, it feels and is completely ridiculous. “Dear Me, read this later.”

These things that I've been emailing Me are not at all related to one another, really—mostly they're just different things that interest me and that have threatened to destroy my productivity at work on that given day. So instead of letting the Internet win, I have created a chain of emails to myself, all under the subject line "to be sorted later," not that I know what it is exactly I plan on sorting later.

(Source: violetas-verdes)

Currently, I am planning to sort the following things out later: a recent short story in the New Yorker, submission guidelines for a website that I'd like to write for, two writers' tumblrs, an interview with one of those writers, and something about Lars Von Trier, and something about walking. Specifically, something. One email says only, "LARS VON TRIER - ?" and “on walking…”

Yes, I am aware I sent these notes to myself, so I probably should know what these things mean. But I don't. Well, I sort of do. Two Sundays ago I watched "Nymphomaniac," Volumes 1 and 2, and it left me feeling odd and unsure of my feelings and vaguely disturbed, but not as disturbed as I thought maybe I was supposed to feel. I think I wanted some critic to tell me if Von Trier was a misogynist or pro-woman. Then I thought that maybe I should be an adult, and come to my own conclusions. Then I got annoyed by the whole thing and put the question of Lars Von Trier out of my mind entirely.

As for the "on walking..." note, your guess is as good as mine. I like to walk?

Moving on: I still have more to sort. Come to think of it, I haven’t actually sorted any of these things yet. I haven’t read that short story yet. I haven’t yet read Roxane Gay’s piece in The Guardian about Ferguson. I still haven’t read the poem “The Lost Art of Letter Writing,” for fucks sakes!

(via razorbladesalvations-deactivate)

One of my problems is that I want to read everything at once. Sometimes this gets more out of hand than others. I still haven’t finished my summer Shakespeare project. My brother and I are in our third year of doing this. We pick a different Shakespeare play each summer to read, and then we might talk about it a lot, or a little, or not at all. The point is the reading of it, mainly. Jay texted me three weeks ago, saying, “Finished Lear” and still, I’m not done. The underachieving younger sister strikes again! Ha, ha.

It’s no wonder I haven’t finished King Lear yet. I’m also currently reading: The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles, Living History (because I felt it was required reading before reading Hillary Clinton’s latest book), and Bad Feminist. Oh, and A Wrinkle in Time, because I learned it was going to be made into a movie, so of course I needed to read it again. (My most recent reading of it was in 2010. I am insane.) I’m supposed to be halfway through another book, Cutting for Stone, as part of a book club my friend Natalie invited me to join. I haven’t opened the book. It is 658 pages long.

I’d say I’m not always like this, but I’m always like this. I have a permanent stack of books. The other night I grabbed Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention off the shelf, and then The Dream Songs, and then I realized I had two other books, and my journal, in my hand. And then you add the Internets, including access to the New Yorker archive (!) to this equation, and that’s it. I’m dead.

Sometimes I feel like I’ll never get around to sorting it all out later. Constantly, I’m reminded of my mother, sitting in her green chair, which is now my green chair, with a stack of books on the floor next to her. She had bookmarks in all of them, including Les Miserables, which I stole from the pile after my mother died. I’ve added it to my own stack of books from time to time over the last 12 years, but it never makes the cut. It always ends back on the bookshelf, to be sorted later.

(via brittanickel)

Rehearsing a Limited Openness: Sharing, and Hiding, So Much

[via here]

I can’t stop thinking about this New Yorker article I read last week, “Virginia Woolf’s Idea of Privacy,” by Joshua Rothman. To be clear—and I write this feeling incredibly sheepish—I have not read much Virginia Woolf. In particular, I’ve not read Mrs. Dalloway, which Rothman focuses on specifically in this article.

But thinking about privacy, and what that means today when there’s a constant opportunity to share, and over-share on the Interwebs, fascinates me. This is a rather long excerpt, but it’s important regarding how Woolf’s sense of privacy could remain relevant today in the world of Facebook (all emphasis is mine):

Woolf’s abstract, inner sense of privacy bears the stamp, of course, of a very particular time and place (not to mention Woolf’s very particular biography—she had an unusually rich hidden life). It’s indebted to feminism, and to the realization that men, but not women, have long been granted a right to solitude. It also flows from the particularly modernist idea that there is a coherent, hidden, inner self from which art springs. Today, we may be more likely to see art as a collaborative process—the product of a scene, rather than a person. We are also, I suspect, especially aware of how much we rely upon on social networks to help us know ourselves. In recent years, philosophers have argued that other people may know us better than we do.

To me, though, Woolf’s sense of privacy still feels relevant; when I keep it in mind, I see it everywhere. Adelle Waldman’s novel “The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.” is, among many other things, a gender-reversed retelling of the love story at the center of “Mrs. Dalloway”: like Clarissa, Nate chooses the lover who can’t know him over the lover who’s determined to. (He does this, in part, so that he can continue to surprise himself—that is, continue to create.) Meanwhile, on Tumblr and Facebook, we seek out the same private sociality that Woolf described. Usually, we think of social media as a forum for exhibitionism. But, inevitably, the extroverted cataloguing of everyday minutiae—meals, workouts, thoughts about politics, books, and music—reaches its own limits; it ends up emphasizing what can’t be shared. Talking so freely about your life helps you to know the weight of those feelings which are too vague, or too spiritual, to express—left unspoken and unexplored, they throw your own private existence into relief. “Sharing” is, in fact, the opposite of what we do: like one of Woolf’s hostesses, we rehearse a limited openness so that we can feel the solidity of our own private selves.

Now, while I haven’t read Mrs. Dalloway (how did I get that English degree? I forget), I did read The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., last summer. I don’t know about Clarissa, but Nate was mostly just an asshole. I look forward to reading and seeing how Clarissa relates to his character.

Do I rely on my social network to know myself? What do other people know about me—or more accurately, think they know about me, based on my social network persona? Recently I met up with my friend Beth as she was finishing up a work happy hour. She introduced me to one of her colleagues, who gave me a knowing look and said, “Oh, you’re ‘alisoncomposes,’” as if we’d met before.

What does that even mean? Who is "alisoncomposes"?

I think about, with some degree of nervousness, how much a complete stranger could learn about me from a quick glimpse at my Twitter feed. If Stranger on the Internet looked at tweets from the last two weeks, for instance, he or she would learn: I’m a Planned Parenthood supporter; my mother is dead, and her birthday was last Tuesday; I’m a John Legend fan; and that I may or may not have have watched ‘Coming to America” recently. Among other things.

That’s a lot! And it’s also nothing at all! Because:

But, inevitably, the extroverted cataloguing of everyday minutiae—meals, workouts, thoughts about politics, books, and music—reaches its own limits; it ends up emphasizing what can’t be shared. Talking so freely about your life helps you to know the weight of those feelings which are too vague, or too spiritual, to express—left unspoken and unexplored, they throw your own private existence into relief.

With all that sharing, there was still much left inside, and off my Twitter feed. With the “limited openness” of sharing these moments online, it did exactly what Rothman writes about: “emphasizing what can’t be shared.” I’m not sure if my “private existence” was thrown into relief by tweeting, “My mom would have turned 63 today, so I'm celebrating her life while I work the only way I can: blasting Fleetwood Mac in my earbuds.”

Those 140 characters shared a lot, all at once. But certainly, there was much, much left unsaid with those 140 characters, and those are complicated feelings I hold on to tight, unable — and frankly, unwilling— to share with anyone, especially the Internet.

Because, well, it’s private.

---

There’s so much more to this article than I just gibbered about. Read it now, will you?

love,
alisoncomposes/Alison

Your Love is Killing Me / Promises

“Break my legs so I won’t walk to you/Cut my tongue so I can’t talk to you/Burn my skin so I can’t feel you/Stab my eyes so I can’t see”

Fuck, that sounds outrageous just to read it, doesn’t it? Not so when Sharon Van Etten sings — no, wails — these lyrics in her new song “Your Love is Killing Me,” the most recent single she’s shared off her forthcoming album, Are We There.



I didn’t think she’d be able to produce an even swifter kick in the gut than she did with “Serpents,” from her last album Tramp, but I’ll be damned with this one. I'll. Be. Damned. Before we get to the requests for leg-breaking, tongue-cutting, skin-burning, and eye-stabbing, she begins the song:

"it’s understood
you’ll be a man
by the time I see you
we’ve been through
better days
and you’ve tasted all my pain"

At least, I think that’s what she’s singing. With each listen — and I’ve listened to it maybe 10 times in the last several hours — I keep straining toward my speakers, trying to catch every syllable through all the emotions she’s managing to convey with her voice. I mean, her voice: just listen to how it bends and turns and wrecks you in this song. No wonder I’m having a hard time understanding things like:

"try to tell you this when I’m sober
how I feel about loving you
try to remember all the turn of events"

and later:

"You love me as you torture me."

I absolutely cannot wait to hear her perform this live. Whenever that may be, I hope I’m just a little wine-drunk, enough not to care if my knees buckle and I choke back a sob or two.

I don’t know when that will be, but as Owen Pallett wrote in his The Talkhouse review on the new Tori Amos album: “In the meantime, I’m a trembling mess.”

Sorry to get a little out of order there, but being a "trembling mess" described it all too well. But this leads me to the next song I’d like to write about, the other new song that has me hitting replay and feeling in utter awe about the badassery of my favorite female musicians.

Yes, it's by the one, the only: Tori Amos. She’s just released her 14th album, and boy, are people talking about her. Over at NPR, one take wasn’t enough, so they gave 10. (It’s amazing. Read it.) And, as I mentioned, Owen Pallett has written a rather incredible piece on his fandom experience with Tori Amos, which I identified with on many levels.

My complete experience with loving Tori deserves a standalone written ode, though, so I’d like to focus on this one particular track from Unrepentant Geraldines. It’s called “Promise” and I’d really love it if everyone would listen to it, now:



You’ll notice that this isn’t Tori alone on the vocals: her daughter, Tash, sings with her on this, this utterly gorgeous “mother-daughter vow” — as Pallett describes, “their voices joining together like ivy and brick; it is devastating.”

“Where the sun shines/ I will be there/ You are the light/ That follows you everywhere”

“Will you look for me?”

“I will rescue you”

Devastating. Well, Ann Powers at NPR might describe it as an "alternately intimate and trivial mother-daughter exchange," and maybe that's also so, and maybe that's why I find it so devastating.

It, like "Your Love is Killing Me" is a song I don't want to end, but when it does it's almost a relief, because I can take a deep breath and just think about how beautiful it is. Even the parts that are painful.

'Like a Last Rain' on Mother's Day

“And what about those who don’t have a mother?” — “The Unmothered,” by Ruth Margalit, The New Yorker, May 9, 2014

Last week an acquaintance of mine asked if I was celebrating Mother’s Day. I was caught off-guard. We were on the bus, and had been making small talk prior to this question; I hadn’t eaten any breakfast that morning; and I was not at all prepared to be reminded that one of my least favorite days of the year was on the horizon.

“No,” I said flatly. He looked away for a moment. I decided to be a normal human being and try again. I asked, brightly, “What about you? Does your mother live nearby?”

I knew it was safe to ask about his mother, because his upbeat and unassuming way of asking about the holiday made it clear he had a mother around to celebrate. I was right, of course. He told me about his lovely plans with his family and I continued to smile, wondering if it was at all obvious that inside, I was screaming.

The conversation moved on, as conversations do, and soon enough I got off the bus and walked toward my office, feeling more annoyed with myself than anything else. Sooner or later, I tell myself, I’ll handle these types of questions with grace. And maybe I almost did, this time. I’m not really sure. But what was my alternative? Drop the “No, my mom is dead” bomb in the middle of the 66 bus at 9 a.m.? No thank you. I guess I’ll just sound like a jerk.

With each passing Mother’s Day that Mother’s Day continues to, somehow, exist in this world without my mother alive, I convince myself that this year, I won’t have these moments. I won’t have the conversation I manage to have every year, where some perfectly nice, clueless person who still has a mother and doesn’t really know me asks about my Mother’s Day plans. (I wrote about this dilemma on this very blog four years ago, actually.)

All of this is to say that I’m fine. No, really, I’m fine.

---

“Trust me, I’m too aware of the fact that my mother is gone to wish her here in any serious way on Mother’s Day. But does the holiday have to be in May, when the lilacs are in full bloom? When a gentle breeze stirs—the kind of breeze that reminds me of days when she would recline on a deck chair on our Jerusalem porch, head tilted back, urging me to ‘sit a while’?”

---

Mother’s Day often has a way of making me feel very alone in this world. That, of course, is insane. Over the course of the day, I got thoughtful texts and messages from different women in my life who are the proof that I am far from alone: my aunt Deborah; my cousin Micaela; my sister-in-law Tina; my friends Lauren and Natalie. But to not have my mother here on this Earth is to feel a specific sort of aloneness, something that, in spite of all the messages in the world, can never be replaced. This reality used to—and sometimes, on low days, still will—fill me with despair.

That feeling began to threaten me yesterday, if only for a brief moment. I started to feel the sadness take over. I made coffee and didn’t drink any of it. Everything had been fine, but then it was not fine. I sat down at my computer and found this article that I keep quoting here. I thought it would make me feel better, and it would have had I let it, but after I read it I just felt vaguely sick, nauseous. I went outside to my back porch and sat directly in the sun, my bare legs prickling from the heat for the first time in a year. I looked up and squinted into the sun.

I knew what I needed to do. I went back inside to get my phone so I could call my dad. I saw that he had already beat me to the punch, with a short text that said nothing and everything: “hey al hope you’re having a good weekend.”

I went back to my piece of sunshine and called him. The feeling that had threatened to turn this day into a nightmare faded. He is still here. It’s okay. It really is.

The sun was hot on my face. I was not alone.

---

"What is the death of a loved one if not an oxymoron? My mother isn’t here, and yet I see her everywhere. I kept on looking for hints of her on the page, as though by retracing her beloved books and poems I would get to reclaim a part of her that was already slipping away."

---

Later in the afternoon the weather shifted from warm sunshine to a cool thunderstorm. When the weather turned, I curled up with my cat Layla next to the open window, the blinds flapping gently from the breeze. I found a movie that I knew Mom and I had watched together, more than once—Sense and Sensibility.

Mom was not there.

Or was she? Next to my television, the framed photo of the two of us at my high school graduation stared back at me. In it, our cheeks are pressed together; our smiles are big. We look just alike. I remember, that spring, counting down the days until I would graduate. If only she can stay healthy to see me graduate, I would think. We made it to graduation. She made it even through that long, hot summer, to come move me in my college dorm. But that would be it. There would be no more landmark moments after that. No more. We’re done.

These thoughts are exhausting. These are the thoughts that take over on Mother's Day. I stared at our photo, not even paying attention to the movie, and I remember posing for it. I remember the feeling of my mother’s warm cheek against mine. I tell myself I remember.

Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet were still talking about something or other on my television screen. I stopped thinking and staring altogether and fell asleep, my fat cat’s paw resting in my hand.

When I woke up from my nap, the feelings were gone. The rain had stopped. The day was once again, just another day.

And I will miss my mom again tomorrow. And then again the next day. And all the days after. But it doesn’t have to be a Day. It just is. We keep on living.

---

“There’s a word in Hebrew—malkosh—that means 'last rain.' It’s a word that only means something in places like Israel, where there’s a clear distinction between winter and the long, dry stretch of summer. It’s a word, too, that can only be applied in retrospect. When it’s raining, you have no way of knowing that the falling drops would be the last ones of the year. But then time goes by, the clouds clear, and you realize that that rain shower was the one. Having a mother—being mothered—is similar, in a way. It’s a term that I only fully grasp now, with the thirst of hindsight: who she was, who I was for her, what she has equipped me with.

Like a last rain, my mother left behind an earthy scent that lingered long after she was gone.

Like a last rain, for a fleeting moment, everything she touched seemed to glow.”

Monday Mix Tapes: A Gunshot, A Breakdown, An Interlude

My main squeeze Lykke Li has a new album, I Never Learn, coming out May 5th, and of course I am over the moon about all of the singles she's released thus far. (Listen to "Love Me Like I'm Not Made of Stone" and "No Rest for the Wicked" for evidence.)

This latest one, "Gunshot," is my favorite. Partly because only Lykke Li can sing "I am siren, I am ivy / I'm no one, I'm nobody" and make it sound like perfection. But also, as another writer put it at Consequence of Sound, she "pairs emotionally-gripping lyrics with surprisingly bombastic musical accompaniment."

Give it a listen:



It seems that yet again, May is going to be the month all my dreams come true. Because along with a new Lykke Li album, Sharon Van Etten is also coming out with a new one, Are We There, and if that's not enough, Little Dragon is too, titled Nabuma Rubberband.

Is it too soon to predict that all 3 of these albums will make it to my top 10 list for 2014? Probably not. I mean:



As much as I'd like to go on and on about my girlfriends Sharon, Lykke, and Yukimi (and co.), we have to talk about PRINCE right now. He just released a new single, which starts off, "This could be the saddest story ever been told," and that's really not much of an exaggeration. I've never been so utterly delighted to fight off the urge to cry silently at my desk, which is what happened today at work when I first heard it and then proceeded to listen to it six times in a row. 

Listen to "The Breakdown" here, because due to what must be some sort of Prince magic spell, the Internets is not letting me embed it.

So not only does Prince have a new album on the way, we can also get ready for a digitally remastered, deluxe 30th anniversary edition of Purple Rain. Are you listening to me right now? A new Prince album AND a remastered Purple Rain??? Dear Universe, what did I do to deserve these beautiful gifts?

Finally, here's a little something from a new artist I discovered today, Rachel Foxx. Lawwwd. Yes. I had no idea a mere one minute and 47 seconds could be so much.  

"What the fuck she got on me?"

The Trumpet Player

Outside my apartment, but somewhere just out of view from my windows when I peer between the blinds, someone is playing a trumpet. This person does not know how to play a trumpet. At least, this person does not know how to play a trumpet well. Every other a minute, after a few (semi) successful notes, I hear those sharp, painful squeaks one might associate with sounds coming from a middle school band practice room.

With each new squeak, Mufasa, my cat, jerks her head around wildly. At first I was trying to drown out this noise with music, but now I’ve put it on pause, indefinitely.

The trumpet player has started to shout, or laugh, after each screw-up. At first I was confused: Am I imagining all this? Are the neighbor kids playing a prank? (I guess now that I’m 30, I legitimately have thoughts that include “the neighbor kids”?)

After one of the most offensive of the squeaks thus far, someone clapped. A dog barked—yipped, rather. Another squeak.

But then. Then! Back to the playing.

It’s been about 20 minutes. The squeaks are not as constant. Below the dim of traffic passing on California Avenue, I can hear it. The playing continues. It’s fainter, now, but steady. Every so often, there’s another squeak. Another shout. The playing goes on.

---

When I was about 8 years old, my mother bought a used piano. She had taken lessons as a child, but she decided she wanted to practice again. Whether this urge was driven by her purchase of the piano, or vice versa, I’m not sure. Regardless, she was going to take lessons, and as such, so would my brother Jay and me.

While my talent for the piano never went much past repeated one-handed playings of the Tarantella, or my other favorite, songs from The Little Mermaid book, my mother continued to practice. Our miniature poodle Tinker was not a fan of her playing. In particular, the dog was less than fond of her repeated attempts at learning to play Für Elise on Saturday afternoons.

From my bedroom, a short hallway away, I’d often be reading a book when Mom would take up her playing. She wasn’t bad, really; she just reached a point in the song where she’d miss her key, and then Tinker’s whine would get louder. She’d stop, yell at the dog, then start over. With each new beginning, she’d play the start with renewed confidence. You could hear it. I’d perk up a bit as I’d rest my book in my lap, listening. And then, the fumble. The dog whining. This would continue, until finally I’d hear her close the piano and open the front door to let “the damn dog out.”

Those opening notes of Für Elise have been burned on my brain since childhood. I can even picture her sitting at the piano, her posture perfect, just as it was whenever she sat at the computer.

She never did master the song. But better still, the memory of her perfect posture; the intensity with each fresh start; even her annoyance at the poor dog.

---

It’s quiet, now. The cars pass by on California Avenue. Mufasa is asleep, next to me, her head resting on my knee.

The trumpet player has retired for the evening.

Mixtapes, Pre-Valentine's Edition: You Got Me So Pathetic

If, like me, you're dreading getting through the work day tomorrow because it's just SO MANY HOURS UNTIL YOU CAN WATCH HOUSE OF CARDS, never fear. I have some jams for you.

Oh yeah, it's also going to be Valentine's Day, so I can think of no better way to start this off than with a song that goes, "You got me so pathetic." Ugh, I know. Don't remind me. But for a song called "Pathetic," it's really a lot more fun than you'd expect:




And then here's one for all you with one foot in, one foot out. (And yes, this is the same Kelis of "Milkshake," and if you have an issue with that, we clearly need to talk.) "I know I said, 'leave,' but baby don't go":




Finally, oh hai, Boots. I don't really know Boots and maybe you don't either, but we all should because: Beyoncé. Also, if this song isn't just the sex, well then, I don't know what is.




Happy almost-House of Cards/Valentine's Day! I love you.

PS - for you Chicago peeples, I wrote about three date-free date ideas for tomorrow night, or any Friday really. Yes, House of Cards is mentioned in this, too.

But Today, We Got to 30

Winter on California Avenue

To say this has been a rough winter is to grossly underestimate. The Chicago Tribune ranks it as #13 on a list of lowest temperature seasons in Chicago. Considering this list includes winters as far back as 1886, I think it gives us ample cause to say: It’s been really fucking cold.

One afternoon in January while I was working from home, my furnace started to crap out. As I waited for my landlord to show up, I shivered in front of my space heater, wearing a scarf, fingerless gloves, and a blanket wrapped around my shoulders. I felt so ridiculous I wanted to laugh, but I was too cold to laugh. I thought of Laura Ingalls Wilder and The Long Winter and told myself it wasn’t so bad. After all, it’s not like the snow was making my eyeballs bleed; I hadn’t been house-bound for months, I had just been sitting in my until-then warm-ass apartment watching Bob’s Burgers with a cat on my lap. Things weren’t really all that bad.

Yet I still keep finding much to complain about, if only in my thoughts, to myself. Like the evening the 66 bus was delayed and I waited for 20 minutes at the bus stop, the cold shooting needles of pain through my toes and fingers. Or how every time I’ve had to do laundry since before Christmas, I fear my death from the climb up and down to the basement on the steep ice- and snow-covered stairs. Or the mornings the thought of putting on all those layers, yet again, and stepping outside to start my commute made me feel so despondent that I stayed in bed for a full extra hour than I should have.

I try not to complain, because again, it’s really not that bad, right? I have heat and a home and all those layers to keep putting on, morning after morning. I have enough hot tea to last for months. And I can almost always afford to add one more bottle of wine to the shopping cart (it helps when it’s $3 Winking Owl from Aldi). Last week, leaving the bar with a friend, we got in a snowball fight. One snowball smacked me in the ear, and slid down my neck below my scarf, but I was so flushed from laughing that the cold felt good. Yeah, it’s not all that bad.

Today, the temperature made it all the way to 30 degrees. I forgot my hat, and I was okay! It was utter madness. I missed my first bus leaving work, but in the four-and-a-half minutes waiting for the next one, at no point did I feel murderous from the cold. I came home, and made enough pasta to feed myself for the rest of February. I had to do laundry again. My steps are still so covered in snow and a thin sheet of ice that I probably should have just luged down to the basement. But I made it down, one small step after another; and up, one hesitant step after another.

As I walked back up the steps the last time, clutching my laundry basket, the neighbor’s dog jumped at the fence, barking at me like always. I almost lost my balance, but I didn’t fall. Beau, the dog, continued to bark.

I grinned back at him. After all, my bathroom is inside. And so is my wine. Ha, ha, I win this round, Beau.

Every day I don’t fall down in this ice and snow and slush and shit is like a gift. And the bus always shows up eventually.

Today, we made it to 30. Spring awaits. We can do this.

Monday Mix Tapes: Toni, Babyface, and Another Time

Next Tuesday, all my dreams come true.

That's right! On 2.4.14, Toni Braxton and Babyface are releasing their duet album, Love, Marriage & Divorce. 

About damn time. Cause, duh:



Look, I know I'm being a little flip about this whole thing, but I should probably be clear that my heart aches every time I listen to this song. (And I've been listening to it, often.)

Not only do I absolutely love Babyface and Toni Braxton collaborating with every fiber of my being, every time I listen to Toni Braxton sing, I'm transported to a different time. A time when I'd put my mother's Toni Braxton CD on in our living room while we'd be cleaning the house on a Saturday afternoon. A time when I so often snagged her Waiting to Exhale soundtrack to play in my room, she finally laughed and told me to just keep it.

So yes, while I can only assume that this duet album will be jam-packed with tunes to make my heart ache about love and romance and breakups (unless of course it's just an incredibly misleading album title), it's also going to make my heart ache in a wonderful, separate way.

It's like hearing my mom laugh again. It's the two of us in my little Dodge Neon, and her turning up the radio to one of our favorite R&B songs and tapping her hand on her oxygen tank to the beat.

I couldn't be more excited.

So let's take it back for a minute to one of mine and my mom's favorite Toni Braxton songs.

Poetry Slam: Our Whisper Woke No Clocks

[via here]

THE DREAM
by W.H. Auden

Dear, though the night is gone,
Its dream still haunts to-day,
That brought us to a room
Cavernous, lofty as
A railway terminus,
And crowded in that gloom
Were beds, and we in one
In a far corner lay.

Our whisper woke no clocks,
We kissed and I was glad
At everything you did,
Indifferent to those
Who sat with hostile eyes
In pairs on every bed,
Arms round each other's necks,
Inert and vaguely sad.

What hidden worm of guilt
Or what malignant doubt
Am I the victim of,
That you, then, unabashed,
Did what I never wished,
Confessed another love;
And I, submissive, felt
Unwanted and went out.

Monday Mix Tapes: Spend Your Snow Day with Sharon, Stephen, & SITA

Happy 2014, geeks!

It's really fucking cold outside!

Today in Chicago, it's record-breaking cold. We're talking wind chills of minus 50 degrees, here. In other words, it's the perfect time to wrap up in three different blankets, a scarf, and write while wearing fingerless gloves!

There are so many great things happening out in the world of music while I huddle with my Macbook in front of my space heater. First up, the much-anticipated arrival of Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings' new album, aptly titled Give the People What They Want. (You can stream the full album on NPR.)

"Retreat" (and its delightful, animated video) almost makes me forget that I'm currently living in the Arctic. This was recorded before her cancer diagnosis and battle, but I still take it as further proof that Sharon Jones will kick anything's ass. She is the boss.



Next on my list is Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks, largely because I'm geeking out over their upcoming album's name (Wig Out at Jagbags) and this video for "Lariat" accompanied by the lyrics, in French. (Also, to the girl applying eyeliner and the dude reading in the tub, je vous aime tous les deux.) You'll have a crush on the star of this video by approximately 34 seconds in, too. I promise.

"Tu n'est pas ce que tu n'est pas."




I can't stop listening to this next one from James Vincent McMorrow, either. Maybe it's just how high and perfect his voice gets when he sings, "I remember my first love." I can't wait to hear what else he's bringing on his new album Post-Tropical.





I found this next gem over at Disco Naïveté. Brace yourself. This girl can sing. Here, she's doing a cover of James Arthur's "You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You," and I can't wait to hear an original. Holy shit:



What's on your music radar this January? Tell me everything.

End of Year Mixtapes Special Edition: My Top 25 Tracks of 2013

Are you ready?! Are you ready to feel all the feelings?

I know I am.

That's right: It's Year Three of my End of Year Mixtapes Special Edition blogtastic music celebration! My top 25 tracks of the year! (For a blast from the past, check out my favorites in 2012 and 2011.)

Let me preface this year's list by saying a couple of things. One, this is not the place to celebrate Yeezus. (Or Miley. Or Robin Thicke. Though I will still agree/argue that "Blurred Lines" was catchy as fuck.) Two, it was a little hard to focus on finishing this, as THE QUEEN—yes, duh, Beyoncé—just dropped her surprise album last week, and I've pretty much listened to nothing else since. That said, I wasn't quite prepared to change this list into 14 Yoncé songs and ignore all these other tunes that have been near and dear to my heart.

So, let's do this! Behold, the songs that had me hitting replay again and again.

I hope you enjoy them even a fraction as much as I do.


25. Laura Mvula — “That’s Alright”

You know how I love my Brits. And while I enjoyed the entirety of Laura Mvula’s album, Sing to the Moon, this track was a clear standout for me. Her other songs, “Like the Morning Dew” and “She,” might showcase her classically trained voice more, but this song (and video) showcases that she is a boss. This stomping, snappy bizness starts off with her declaring, “I will never be what you want and that’s alright” — followed by my favorite, “Tell me, who made you the center of the universe?”



24. Jay Z featuring Beyoncé — Part II (On the Run)

I just can’t help myself. I love when these two collaborate. “She was a good girl until she knew me” — uh huh, Jay, uh huh. Wonder what it’s like being married to the Queen? (Oh wait, I think I just found out this past week. Ahem, "Drunk in Love" ... which is terrific, aside from the troubling/confusing Ike Turner reference. The fuck, Mr. Carter?) Wait, I'm getting off track here. The return of Bonnie and Clyde!



23. Foxygen — “No Destruction”

2013 started off with a bang, thanks to Foxygen’s We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic, which I promptly fell into a deep, deep obsession over. This song absolutely delighted me, and made me want to sing to any Logan Square hipster who annoyed me: “There’s no need to be an asshole, you’re not in Brooklyn anymore.”

This summer I saw Foxygen perform at Pitchfork, and I think singer Sam France actually thought he was scaling that Blue Mountain he sings about as he climbed all over his set with his pants constantly falling down. He was absolutely off his rocker, and I loved every minute of it.



22. Marques Toliver — “Magic Look”

My love of Lianne La Havas led me to first stumbling upon Marques Toliver, and that promptly turned into love of his beautiful violin-playing and soulful voice. He put on a great performance at Lincoln Hall this year—which included him scolding audience members who wouldn’t put down their damn phones and stop chatting—and afterward I met him and was exactly as dorky and awkward as you would imagine. “If Only” was a close runner-up for my favorite on Land of CanAan, but there was just something about “Magic Look” that was just, well, magic.



21. Arctic Monkeys — “Do I Wanna Know?”

I was late to the game with the new Arctic Monkeys album, and then was pleasantly surprised how much I loved the whole damn thing. This song killed me, with: “(Baby we both know) / That the nights were mainly made for saying things that you can't say tomorrow day.” Well, shit.



20. John Legend — ”Made to Love”

John Legend is my husband. Yeah, yeah, so he had to go and get married in real life or whatever, but it doesn’t stop me from loving him, his new album, and this one in particular.



19. Low — “Just Make It Stop”

When I first heard this song in January, I was feeling all kinds of smug that I could listen to this tear-jerker and not weep. I was lucky enough to see Low twice in Chicago this year. While I was maybe having a wee bit too much fun at Pitchfork to get too sentimental about anything, when I saw them the second time, with the Chicago skyline behind them and a warm breeze blowing (yes, it was a warm, gentle, breeze, don’t take this away from me), I’ll be damned if I didn't choke back a tear during the few minutes this song played.



18. Kelly Rowland — “Dirty Laundry”

When I first heard this song, it felt like a swift kick in the gut. On top of the fact that it’s a beautiful, personal song, it’s an important one, too. I listened to it again and again. I still cry when I listen. Kudos to you, Kelly Rowland.



17. Rhye — “Open”

“I’m a fool for that shake in your thighs.” And from there, Rhye had me. Woman was one of my favorite albums of the year, and this track in particular just slays me. I said it before; I’ll say it again: "I wanna make this plain / Oh, I know you're faded / Mmm, but stay, don't close your eyes"

(For some puzzling, yet awesome, reason, Rhye released two videos for this song, so I’m sharing my personal favorite of the two.)



16. Phosphorescent — "The Quotidian Beasts"

I was listening to the Phosphorescent album non-stop right around the time I was reading Cheryl Strayed’s amazing book, Wild. So that might have had some influence on the fact that this song made me want to run off to the wilderness alone and just howwwwwl. But, umm, maybe that’s only me?



15. Blood Orange — "You're Not Good Enough"

Ohmygod, Dev Hynes. I loved you at Pitchfork, I loved your album, and most importantly, I love this song, even if you tell me, “I never was in love / you know that you were never good enough”:



14. Disclosure featuring Sam Smith — “Latch”

My devotion to Sam Smith has been pretty well documented here this year, so this shouldn’t be much of a surprise. And while I do recognize that this is a Disclosure song featuring Sam Smith, whatever. It’s all about Sam Smith for me. And yes, this beat certainly helps.



13. Alice Smith — “Cabaret”

Alice Smith released She, her follow-up to For Lovers, Dreamers, and Me (only one of my favorite albums of all time) this March, just in time for my birthday, and just in time for me to spend the better part of my year blaring this song way too loud into my earbuds. Maybe cause no one has ever demanded, “Where are you going with your life?” and sounded so damn great.



12. Lion Babe — “Treat Me Like Fire”

I kicked off the Mix Tapes in 2013 with this one, and I still quite agree that there was no better way to start the new year than with this: a big, sexy ROAR. Lion Babe, aka Jillian Hervey, aka Vanessa Williams’ daughter, aka lioness goddess. I mean, Lion Babe. You’ll see.



11. Tegan and Sara — “Goodbye, Goodbye”

Tegan! Sara! My darlings! My long-standing love affair with these two took a turn this year, when they transformed into a pop smash, and I couldn’t be more delighted. While I did wish the teenyboppers surrounding me at Lollapalooza this year knew a single word to any of their older songs, I can’t blame them. Cause I was freaking out right along with them when this song played, jumping up and down, yelling, “Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye!”

I spent many winter mornings at the start of 2013 walking downtown with Heartthrob blasting, feeling alternately defiant during this track and then crushed and defeated when it segued into “I Was a Fool,” one of my other favorites from the album. So let’s stick with the fun defiance, shall we?



10. Arcade Fire — “Reflektor”

Look, just cause Noel Gallagher has a bunch of gripes about Arcade Fire doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy them. This “sleek, dark disco epic” got a little help from David Bowie and had me constantly singing, “Entre la nuit, la nuit blah blah” to myself with delight.



9. J Cole featuring Miguel — “Power Trip”

I’m just going to ignore completely how utterly creepy this song becomes when you pair it with the music video. But know that I recognize that, okay? Okay? The point is, it still hasn’t gotten old every time Miguel comes in and sings, “Would you believe me if I said I’m in love?” I believe it. And that second verse just kills me. I can’t help myself.



8. Volcano Choir “Byegone”

Dammit, Justin Vernon. I don’t even know what it means when you say, "Tossin' off your compliments, wow/Sexing all your Parliaments" — and I don’t care. This song explodes right from the start, and I’m not exaggerating in the slightest when I say that at certain times, I’ve listened to it and felt like my heart might burst.

“Set sail! Set sail! Set sail!”:



7. AlunaGeorge — “Your Drums, Your Love”

Because: “I’ve been treading water for your love / whether I sink or swim, it’s you I’m thinking of.” That’s all.



6. Eleanor Friedberger — “Stare at the Sun”

“If that was goodbye, then I must be high” — YES! Yes, exactly! Good god, how I’ve been loving Eleanor Friedberger this year. I got to see her perform at Empty Bottle in June, and it was magic. (I saw her again more recently, opening for Colin Meloy, and that was NOT magic, but I’m pretending that didn’t happen.) This song makes everything okay! Everything!



5. James Blake — “Retrograde”

"So show me why you're strong / ignore everybody else / we're alone nowwww"

Well fuuuck, James, I wish we were. My god, I feel so much.



4. The National — “Demons”

Any year that The National releases an album is bound to be a great one for me. Any year that The National releases a new album and I get to see them play live is an even greater one. And that I did, in the boiling heat at Lolla this year, as I beamed into the sun while Matt Berninger and crew rocked my face off like always.

It’s pretty tricky for me to pick a favorite when it comes to these guys — I mean, “Graceless”! “Hard to Find”! “Pink Rabbits”! — but there was just something about this one I just can't get over. “When I walk into a room / I do not light it up / Fuck” gets me every.fucking.time.



3. HAIM — “Falling”

HAIM! I first felt the butterflies of a crush last year, when HAIM squeezed their way into my top 25 of 2012 with “Don’t Save Me,” but this year marks a full-blown, head-first love affair. This song starts off their terrific, terrific album and sets the mood just right.



2. Local Natives — “Colombia”

Back in March, I shared maybe one too many feelings in a post about Local Natives, but I don’t regret it. I don’t have the space here to fully explain what this song means to me. This song obviously has nothing to do with me, but it has everything to do with me. Somehow, someway, I hope my mom can hear it.



1. Janelle Monae featuring Erykah Badu — “Q.U.E.E.N”

Finally, my number one, my Q.U.E.E.N. Oh my fucking GAWD, I love this song so, so much. It's six minutes of electric-lady badassery. Or, as I wrote before, "Where does one even BEGIN with this song and video? The lyrics are gold. The beats are gold. The outfits! The dancing! BADOULA OBLONGATA!"

So, going into the new year, I think we should all remember two things. One: "Even if it makes others uncomfortable / I will love who I am"; and two:

The booty don't lie. 

Tis the Season

I am really getting in the Christmas spirit this year. Maybe it’s my new Christmas tree. Maybe it’s because my annual reading of Holidays on Ice had me laughing my ass off on the train to myself even more than usual. Maybe it’s my “Let It Snow” Spotify playlist. Maybe it’s from watching Christmas Vacation on a twice-weekly basis and texting quotes to my cousins nonstop.

Whatever it is, I’m going with it.

Yesterday I read this article, “The sentimental, cynical, undying charm of A Christmas Story,” in which the writer makes a lot of wonderful points, not just about that movie, but about the holidays in general. She writes:

"But what happens after that perfect Christmas, when you get the ultimate shiny, exciting thing you asked for, then realize it can’t get better than this? A Christmas Story doesn’t say, but we adults know what happens: The wanting of mere things starts to lose its glittery seasonal appeal. The magic of childhood yuletide fades, and eventually morphs into something else.

There’s a moment in the season-two Christmas episode of The Wonder Years—a TV series that does a much more sentimental version of the narrated-flashback trick from A Christmas Story—when narrator Kevin Arnold describes that transformation as one where the holiday stops “being about tinsel and wrapping paper” and starts “being about memory.” If you believe that’s what happens to Christmas when we grow up, then it makes total sense that narrator Ralphie looks back on the Christmas Story December with such wry wistfulness. It’s because very soon after, possibly the following year, Christmas turned into a time for him to look back, instead of looking forward.

The warm, achingly bright glow of nostalgia is what makes Christmas such an emotional holiday, and it’s also what draws some people to A Christmas Story."

First off, anyone who references The Wonder Years in an article about anything knows exactly what she’s talking about, in my humble opinion. But it’s the part about “the warm, achingly bright glow of nostalgia” that I think is so on point.

My childhood was packed with special Christmas memories. Going to my grandparent’s house on Christmas Eve, with our “Christmas Classics” or “A Very Special Christmas” tapes blaring in the station wagon (later, the Taurus). My brother and I would sing along to Jim Nabors’ “Go Tell It On the Mountain” and Run DMC’s “Christmas Is,” laughing hysterically to ourselves. While at my grandparent’s, we’d all help decorate their tree, one with those absurdly enormous multicolor bulbs and silver tinsel that got everywhere. My grandma would always let me set up the nativity scene on the windowsill, something that filled my child heart with joy and pride. On the way home, we’d usually give my great-grandma, Nannie, a ride home, and Mom would sit in the backseat next to me, a blanket over us as I rested my head on her shoulder and we looked out the car window in awe at all the Christmas lights on the houses.

On Christmas morning, my brother would run to my room to wake me up at an ungodly early hour, where we’d immediately run to the living room and squeal over our newly-filled stockings and presents under the tree. Then we’d run to our parent’s room, where we’d immediately get shot down about them getting up at 5 a.m. to open presents.

So we’d put on the shortest Christmas movie imaginable—typically, How The Grinch Stole Christmas (what is that, like 35 minutes long?)—and then run back again to wake them up. By this point, they’d usually cave, and as they made their coffee, we’d start passing out the presents. Stockings came first, followed by the presents. I always got to start the rotation of unwrapping, because I was the youngest.

Usually after all the presents were unwrapped, you’d find me in the recliner, already reading one of my new books while surrounded by wrapping paper. Next would be a Christmas breakfast, also marking the moment when Dad would inevitably try to play his Three Tenors Christmas album or Mom would try for Gloria Estefan. Afterward, we’d spend the day with my dad’s side of the family, which included two of my favorite Christmas memories with my Grandma Hamm—the year she gave me sugar cookie dough as a gift, and then the infamous year when she gave my younger cousin Claire peanut butter, which Claire promptly started eating with her fingers in the middle of the room, much to the aggravation of my Aunt Linda and the delight of me.

The point is: I was one lucky kid. I don’t have any sad or bad memories of the holidays, just ones like these. The last year my mother was alive, I was 17, a senior in high school. She almost died of a blood infection just a week before Christmas, but by Christmas Day, she was back home, feeling better—or at least putting on a hell of a show for all of us. I actually got sick that year, coming down with a fever on Christmas Eve, and I unwrapped those final presents with my mom in the room with a cold washcloth on my forehead, burning up with fever. But it didn’t matter: she was there. We were all together. It was a gift.


The holidays were the hardest after she was gone. They’re still hard. But we’ve had a lot of time for new traditions, and new family members to celebrate with, like my dad’s girlfriend, Debbie, who insisted I needed a Christmas tree for my apartment and knew just how much I would love to have some of my mom’s old ornaments. We have my one-year-old niece Polly, who could make even the coldest Grinch smile when she winks one of her gorgeous brown eyes, one of her new tricks. (I can only assume she'll be reading Dickens by her 3rd Christmas.)

So yes, I get a little emotional at the holidays, like when I burst into tears when I found the snowman ornament, the last ornament I ever picked out with my mom. I miss her terribly at this time of year. But I also know that I will always have those memories with family, and more to create with family and friends. Nothing can take away the memory of leaning my head on my mother’s shoulder, and staring at the holiday lights with delight.

Happy holidays to you all, and I hope, if there’s anyone special you’re missing this season, you have great memories to cherish, knowing that no matter how much time passes, those will always remain.

Now let’s drink some eggnog and make merry! It's getting too real around here.

And don’t forget:

“And when Santa squeezes his fat white ass down that chimney tonight, he's gonna find the jolliest bunch of assholes this side of the nuthouse!”

Monday Mix Tapes: You Wear Smug So Very Well

My brother sent me “Logan’s Loop” by Andrew Bird this past weekend. And as I sat in my Logan Square apartment listening, having only moments before, actually driven around the circle in Logan Square, I was so utterly delighted I clapped my hands with joy. And then listened to it five more times.

It’s his song, “Pulaski at Night,” though, that I want to share here. As with “Logan’s Loop”—and most Andrew Bird songs—again, the word that comes to me as I listen is delight.

“Greetings from Chicago / City of / City of love”:



Spotify really is a wonderful thing. Along with the delights from Andrew Bird that my brother shared, today, my friend Brad sent me this song by Poliça. His message with it was “All the feelings.”

As usual, Bradley, you are correct. I actually didn’t really pay any attention to the lyrics on my first five listens or so (because yes, I’ve listened to this at least 10 times today). But I’m paying attention now, and damn:

You’re pushing me away and then you’re pulling
You wear smug so very well
If you were in love with me I could never tell

It’s time for you to go
But I’ve glued my feet to your floor
It’s time for you to leave
But I’ve wrapped my hand around your leash
It’s really quite confusing

Speaking of all the feelings, like most of America, I saw "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire" this weekend. So let’s listen to a song from the soundtrack! Here’s Sia being fucking rad like always, with a little help from The Weeknd and Diplo.




Happy almost-Thanksgiving!

Like Fire Balloons in the Sky: The Inspiration, The Courage, to Share

"I see me, my eyes filled with tears, because it was all over, the night was done. I knew there would never be another night like this.

No one said anything. We all just looked up at the sky and we breathed out and in and we all thought the same things, but nobody said. Someone finally had to say, though, didn't they? And that one is me."

— Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing

My fixation with Zen in the Art of Writing has probably spiraled out of control, into a strange place. (Not probably, clearly: after all, inspired by said book, I’m writing things like THE LAMP and THE MOUSE.)

But lately, I keep opening the book, in a desperate search for some inspiration, and keep feeling drawn back to the passage above. Out of context, it can mean anything and nothing. To give you the actual context, though: he's describing a final memory with his grandfather, lighting a fire balloon and releasing it into the sky on the Fourth of July in 1925. It's incredibly beautiful. It even inspired him to write a story called "The Fire Balloons," many years later. Bradbury also wrote about that night, and about his inspiration for the story, for The New Yorker:

But I could not let it go. It was so beautiful, with the light and shadows dancing inside. Only when Grandpa gave me a look, and a gentle nod of his head, did I at last let the balloon drift free, up past the porch, illuminating the faces of my family. It floated up above the apple trees, over the beginning-to-sleep town, and across the night among the stars.

We stood watching it for at least ten minutes, until we could no longer see it. By then, tears were streaming down my face, and Grandpa, not looking at me, would at last clear his throat and shuffle his feet. The relatives would begin to go into the house or around the lawn to their houses, leaving me to brush the tears away with fingers sulfured by the firecrackers. Late that night, I dreamed the fire balloon came back and drifted by my window.

Fire balloons or no fire balloons, I'm still drawn to this idea from the passage in Zen, of sitting quietly, looking up at the sky and relishing the moment. Not sure when, if at all, to say something.

It's like how I feel about writing; how I feel, specifically, about this blog. As I've strayed from posting on this blog—even neglecting my beloved Monday Mix Tapes for months, gasp!—I found myself losing inspiration in general. After only publishing a post here and there every couple of months, it's easier to think, maybe this blog has almost run its course. I don't know. But the more you wonder when is the right moment to say something (to write, rather), the more you continue to merely sit quietly. (In my case, this means getting an idea, thinking about it, and watching Frasier instead of writing, and sharing it.)

Maybe, like many things, this blog, and what I get out of it, is just not quite what it was before. And that’s okay. Maybe it’ll just be exactly what it is. Whatever that may be. Ultimately, though, I hope to never lose the inspiration to write, and to share, however that happens. And wherever it goes on the Internet, or even if it just stays in my journal.

Would releasing a fire balloon into the night with his grandfather have remained such a poignant memory for Bradbury, had he never written about it? Probably. But luckily he shared it, so we could see, if only for a moment, the way he saw it, looking up in the Illinois sky in 1925.

I’m certainly no Ray Bradbury, but I like the idea of saying something. There may never be another night like this, after all.

Like he wrote:

“And, after all, isn’t that what life is all about, the ability to go around back and come up inside other people’s heads to look out at the damned fool miracle and say: oh, so that’s how you see it!? Well, now, I must remember that.”

Monday Mix Tapes: You Never Could Have Been a Good Lover

I'm pretty sure I was in love with this new Blood Orange by 15 seconds in. And while Dev Hynes could pretty much be singing about anything, and I'd still think he sounded great, these lyrics in particular fuel my obsession. They're hilarious and awful and true. ("You never could have been a good lover/ Watch what you say/ Could never mean a word and still hurt you")

Oh, Dev Hynes, you're good enough for me (but my standards were low anyway):




Then, fitting with my love of all things Alice in Wonderland, I stumbled across this weird, beautiful little gem (via disco naivete). Looking forward to hearing more from Mononoke after hearing this:





I'm a little late to the game with the latest Arctic Monkeys album (it came out in September, so in Internet time, I'm YEARS behind). But damn if I'm not listening to the whole thing, and this song in particular, "Do I Wanna Know?" on repeat. My bf Sam Smith also does an incredible cover of this, making me suddenly start to think being in limbo with someone must be the most wonderful, sexy thing in the world.

"(Didn't we both know) That the nights were mainly made for saying things that you can't say tomorrow day"

Do I wanna know? Ooof. I'm not sure if I do. The whole damn album is packed with questions. But I love it:




Happy Monday! (Did you miss me? Do I wanna know?)

THE LAMP

The lamp next to my bed is broken on the top, and tilts slightly to the side. A crack runs across the top, past the jagged edges from where the glass had shattered.

I love it. I cannot bear the thought of ever having a different one. (I used to have two. But the other one, that matched it, broke as well, years ago. Back when the breaking of such a lamp was just an annoyance rather than a complete devastation.)

I still remember how I felt after my then-boyfriend knocked the lamp off the nightstand, as I kneeled on the carpet in my bare feet, picking up shards of glass. I don’t remember why it got knocked over, though. Was it a careless gesture during a fight? Was it from a drunken stumbling? I can’t remember. I just remember how I felt, picking up the shards. Knowing it was never going to be perfect again.

It’s dangerous to leave it, he said. The edges of the glass are sharp.

I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care!

I hated him for breaking the lamp. I hated me for caring so much about a stupid lamp.

But:

It was my lamp. My mother had bought the two lamps for me, to match my new, big bedroom after my parents expanded our house. I had been so special, with my new, huge room. To get to my new room, you had to walk through a hallway—and to the left, right before my new room, was my bathroom. My own bathroom, with my own shower.

I was special, then. I was a child.

The matching lamps—one for the nightstand, one for the dresser—reminded me of the ones that had been in my grandma’s bedroom. Antique (looking, at least), with two globes, one big, one small. If you twisted the knob in the middle once (one click to the right), the bottom, small globe would glow. One more click, and the top would, too. Another click: both, glowing. The lamps were flowered, much "girlier" than most things I liked. But I loved the clicking: one, two, three.

I’d put my book down next to the lamp when it was time to go to sleep. One last click, and then darkness.

The lamp is broken on the top now, and tilts to the side. A crack runs across the top, past the jagged edges from where the glass had shattered.

But I still love the clicking: one, two, three. I still put my book down next to it when it is time to go to sleep. With one last click, darkness.

It reminds me that at one time, I had a mother who bought me two matching lamps, to match my new, big bedroom.

And that is something. That is special, still.

This post is part of a little writing experiment inspired by Ray Bradbury, to "conjure the nouns"—read more details here. Former entry: The Mouse.