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.

Mix Tapes: An Actual Mix Tape!

Whaaaat? That's right. An actual mixtape! (Well, sorta. A playlist. Whatever.)

Perfect for a Wednesday night when it starts storming/pouring five minutes after you've ordered takeout. At least, that's what just happened in my life. Dammit.

Thanks, Spotify:

Weekend Mix Tapes Edition: Tossin' Off Your Compliments, Wow

Sam Smith has the kind of voice that wraps around you like a blanket, comforting you with its beauty and raw emotion. (Or is that just me?) I first heard this with "Lay Me Down," with his acoustic version that's so impeccable and intense it'll make your heart break. Then there was his acoustic take on Disclosure's "Latch"—which was already great—and holy shit:



This week, he's done it again with "Safe with Me," but this time with some production from Two Inch Punch that takes things to a slightly different place. Get ready to believe in love:



Then there was this terrific, minimalistic video—lights in tree branches, that's it—to match perfectly with Volcano Choir's song, "Byegone" (Volcano Choir = Justin Vernon of Bon Iver with band Collections of Colonies of Bees).

I don't know what I love more: when Vernon starts declaring, "Set sail! Set sail! Set sail!" or at the end when he sings, "Tossin' off your compliments, wow/Sexing all your Parliaments" — what does that even MEAN? Oh, just listen:



Finally, in other music news that left me absolutely delighted this week, AlunaGeorge's debut LP, Body Music, is now available to stream. It's perfection. Standout tracks: ALL OF THEM. But here are a couple of my favorites.





One week till Lollapalooza madness! Happy listening.

Tearjerker Alert: Danny & Annie

TRIGGER WARNING: The following video depicts a story of true love, voiced by the actual couple and displayed in heartwarming cartoon medium (think: UP). If you have a beating heart, this will likely make you feel a little blubbery. And if it doesn't, get out of here: you have no soul.

Earlier this week, my friend Beth sent me this video during the work day. "Maybe save that for later," she warned, "#tears" — so like the smart young lady I am, I waited until I was out of my open layout office space and alone in my apartment to watch it. 

Thank God I did, considering I not only got teary-eyed, I actually got so choked up I made one of those weird, hiccup-y cry noises that made my cat Layla look at me suspiciously. 

Without further ado, the story of Danny and Annie (presented by StoryCorps). This is the kind of stuff to melt cynics' hearts everywhere. Enjoy.



"You walk in with me, you walk out with me."

Let the Breeze In

[image via herpaperweight]

After last week's Chicago heatwave—and spending much of that directly in the sun while attending all three days of Pitchfork—today's almost-cool breeziness has been so refreshing. And that's not to say that I've been wandering around, enjoying the weather all day. I actually spent my day waiting on a technician from AT&T to show up (who finally arrived 40 minutes past my 4-hour service window)—and then waiting another three and a half hours for him to fix the lines that would give me my Internet back. 

But my windows are all open, and from the second floor of my apartment, the breeze has been blowing in since I woke up this morning. While I waited for my Internet to return, I read Vogue and Vanity Fair. I painted my toenails. I folded my laundry and poured extra cream in my coffee. I tried a new circuit workout. I wrote a letter to my grandmother. Life without the Interwebs wasn't so bad after all, I figured. Aside from the increasing anxiety that I was never going to get work done for the day. 

Once the lights on my modem finally flashed from red to green, I started frantically catching up on work for the day. But then I decided to calm down. I'd get it done. I poured myself a glass of wine and listened to Camera Obscura and Daft Punk while I wrote. 

I got it done. 

And I feel just like this picture. 

In Other "News," Turns Out Women Like Getting Laid, Too

"It is by now pretty well understood that traditional dating in college has mostly gone the way of the landline, replaced by “hooking up” — an ambiguous term that can signify anything from making out to oral sex to intercourse — without the emotional entanglement of a relationship.

Until recently, those who studied the rise of hookup culture had generally assumed that it was driven by men, and that women were reluctant participants, more interested in romance than in casual sexual encounters. But there is an increasing realization that young women are propelling it, too." —"Sex on Campus: She Can Play that Game, Too," by Kate Taylor

“Sex on Campus: She Can Play that Game, Too,” an article published in The New York Times on July 12, begins with a description of a young woman called A. When “A.” finishes her night’s worth of studying, she texts “her regular hookup, the guy she is sleeping with but not dating.” As the article goes on to describe: “He texted back: Come over. So she did. They watched a little TV, had sex and went to sleep.”

Apparently, it’s noteworthy that college women are more interested in pursuing their degrees, partying with their friends, and getting laid than falling in love and being in a relationship. While I see the good intentions behind articles such as this—women are driven; women want to have sex; women like to work hard and then party hard—ultimately this article, like many others on this topic, leaves me only rolling my eyes and feeling angry.

Why am I rolling my eyes? I’m rolling my eyes because in 2013 it’s only “an increasing realization” that women are propelling casual sexual encounters. I’m rolling my eyes because of women like Susan Patton, “the Princeton alumna and mother who in March wrote a letter to The Daily Princetonian urging female undergraduates not to squander the chance to hunt for a husband on campus,” who said:

“I thought, ‘My gosh, what have we come to that these brilliant young women are afraid to say that marriage and children are significant parts of what they view as their lifelong happiness?’ ” Ms. Patton said.

“They have gotten such strong, vitriolic messages from the extreme feminists saying, ‘Go it alone — you don’t need a man,’ ” she added.

First off: Plenty of brilliant young women truly don’t view marriage and children as significant factors to their lifelong happiness. It's not that they're afraid to say it. They actually aren’t interested. Shocking! Second: LESBIANS. They exist. Fucking acknowledge that. Not every woman is straight. (Maybe the group she talked to were all straight women interested in marriage and children, but that is simply not representative of every woman.)

But then we get to the “strong, vitriolic messages from the extreme feminists” and I just have to laugh. As this article points out: “But, in fact, many of the Penn women said that warnings not to become overly involved in a relationship came not from feminists, but from their parents, who urged them to be independent.”

(So none of these parents are feminists? Sounds to me like parents who urge their daughters to be independent and driven are exactly that.)

Now, why am I angry? I’m not angry because of this article. I’m angry because this article has to exist in the first place. I’m angry that the first young woman interviewed for this story was only comfortable being addressed as A., which is not even the initial of her first name! The need for anonymity was so important that she was only comfortable using her middle initial.

And why?

“Because they believed that talking publicly about sex could come back to haunt them — by damaging their reputations at Penn, their families’ opinions of them or their professional future — the women spoke on the condition that their full names would not be revealed. Most are identified by their first or middle names or by a middle initial.”

Reputations. Family opinions. Professional futures. These are the things at stake if women dare to not only be free with their sexuality, but are free to speak about it openly. And even with the anonymity, A. was still not comfortable revealing how many sexual partners she has had!

Perhaps articles like this are a step in the right direction for women, and our right to be sexual beings, just as men. But I long for the day where these articles aren’t necessary.

Where women who say they “hook up” rather than pursue relationships because they’re focused foremost on their studies aren’t, in turn, scared that this choice would jeopardize those future opportunities, should their identities be revealed.

I’d like to read an article about women hooking up that doesn’t include the inevitable rape plotline, with the underlying message that women must be wary about getting too drunk, because then what might have been a casual hookup could turn into a casual rape.

I’d like to read about results of a sociologist’s study that doesn’t result in saying that men aren’t focused on pleasing women in hookups because of the sexual double standard, “which sometimes causes men to disrespect women precisely for hooking up with them.” And that women aren’t judging other women for their sexual experiences and reputations!

Enough already!

Now let’s listen to En Vogue!

FREE YOUR MIND.