I am going to California today. I am so excited, and so ready.
In a way, I feel like I could dip my toes in the ocean and turn around and go home when I get there, but I know that that is not the plan at all. There is something there, too, and I have to spend the time I allotted to see people and things and to be in places until I'm ready to leave. I have had very little mapped out this whole time, by design, until I have to make the next decision. That was the central point, to learn to listen again. And I'm still hopeful, although I don't know about what. I'm nervous, too, but that's becoming standard, something to be worked through to get to the good stuff.
I can't stop thinking about Georgia O'Keeffe. I keep thinking about courage, and creativity, and singular dedication to a craft that somehow shapes a life. I've been wondering if I have it, or if I just love it as an idea, a museum exhibit itself. I hope I do. I love how she didn't know she was looking for New Mexico and found it, how she just kept showing up until it all happened there for her. New Mexico was hers -- it's not mine, I know, and it doesn't have to be. It's just so useful as a guide.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
I like that I don't know all of her story. I like how Christine and I sat on the couch last night and watched the dvd that I bought at the museum, listening to Gene Hackman narrate this pioneer artist's life, and how several times we looked at each other in some kind of amazement and also recognition of what that takes, of what it requires to make that kind of life come together. (And also the mutual acknowledgement that this lady was a badass. Just was, so much of one.)
I have found a lot of solidarity out here. I have been surrounded by the energy of strong, compassionate, giving, people, some of the best of all of those qualities I've ever known, I'm not kidding. Everyone who has welcomed me has been a healer of some kind, which I didn't plan at all, except in my subconscious. I couldn't have done it better if I had.
I have also found some bullshit and nonsense, both in and outside of myself. Life continues and connections begin, reappear, and disappear in the middle of all of this activity. I do not take my best friend or my sister or my parents for granted, but I especially don't when those voices that know me the best come to me from far away.
I haven't had any great revelations, just a few little ones, and I'm okay with that, because those were the ones I needed to get out of the way so the rest of the things will come along. I have lost some track of the things I wanted to document -- not pictures, there are plenty of those -- just thoughts about some of the things I'm seeing, but those are all in my brain for when I need them, too. Somewhere in the middle it just blurred, a lot of it, into signs and markers and mountains -- much of it beautiful, some of it desolate. I have loved seeing all of the things I've seen so far, even if I didn't love all of it.
I've gotten reacquainted with some of my ingenuity, and the edges of my anxiety, too, and what I need -- not want, an important distinction -- to do to work with that. I have made some unwise decisions, but nothing too huge and damaging. I have carried some pain with me for a very long distance that is dug in pretty deep, and that's uncomfortable, but I am going to set that shit on fire as much as I can, every day, until it's gone.
Finally, this silly picture before I get going again. I stopped in the dark and stood on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, in a huge puddle. I did this because I have this family who I miss so much, who once sat around a restaurant table and spontaneously sang "Take It Easy" along with the overhead music. It happened several years ago. It was one of the best moments of my life, easily, those endless rounds of "oooh-oooh-ooohs" with the people I love the most -- so simple and everything that mattered at the same time. And although I felt like the jerky tourist I was when I stopped to take this (plus, that puddle was disgusting, seriously) it was for a higher purpose, I swore silently to the cars driving by in the dark, slowing down to look, until I could get something that didn't make me look too bad. I wanted to say I'd done this silly thing, that I had a piece of my heart in the form of people in mind when I did.
Lighten up while you still can. Don't even try to understand. Just find a place to make your stand, and take it easy.
It's not a bad goal. I'm done with trying too hard, but I'm not done working, at all. I am really looking forward to the next stop.
I grew up surrounded by music, an environment my parents provided out of their love for it that has served me well throughout my life. When I'm not getting enough of it, especially of the live variety, something goes sideways in my world that has to be put back on course.
So it was that I drove to Portsmouth, Virginia, yesterday, to see Duran Duran live on the first day of a trip I'll tell you about soon. I had seen them in October, the latest in a series of their concerts I've gone to that altogether kinda sorta make up for the fact that I missed seeing them on the Seven and the Ragged Tiger tour in 1984/85. That one was special, as in off the crazy train of awesome hook special, because I got to shoot some photos of the show from the very front of Constitution Hall.
Very front. As in, that is John Taylor's hand, and I took it, so, yes, that is where I was.
So I can say I did that, one time. That was a pretty big deal for me.
Sarah took that, and lets me use it when I want to. Thanks, Sarah.
Last night I wasn't in the photo pit, nor did I even have my big camera with me, because I didn't know the venue well enough to know if it would fly to have it or use it, and there is nothing more aggravating than getting stopped with a camera and my car was all the way over by the Coast Guard building and, well, iPhone, it is you and me, as usual. (It turns out it probably would have been okay, but I was actually kind of grateful not to have to deal with it.) (Every time I walked or drove or parked by that building, I said "AHOY!" aloud to myself. Don't you wish you were there? No? Yeah, I totally understand.)
Ntelos Wireless Pavilion is a cool spot, an outdoor performance space on the water that is covered with white tent-like things that make it look like a much tinier version of the Sydney Opera House. Except yeah, it's totally not, and it's in Virginia. I catch crowd vibes quickly, and these people were out to have fun. Portsmouth was drinking beer and watching music this Wednesday, you guys, and it was fun just to be among them.
I also hadn't road-tripped to a show in years, probably since I saw Pearl Jam in Toledo in nineteen ninety-something, when I was living in Dayton. I liked being a stranger in a strange land inhabited by some of the most vocal, devoted Duran Duran fans I have ever seen, men and women, young and as old as I am, maybe even older, if that's possible.
My highlight was overhearing the guy in sunglasses who came bounding from the stage area before the show to show his friend his setlist AND the lyrics to Planet Earth. I don't know where he got them, but he couldn't have been more excited. He'd seen them at Hampton Coliseum in 1984, I know that much now, and they were AWESOME and are STILL AWESOME. Yesterday appeared to be his Duran Duran Christmas and high school reunion combined. Favorite part:"Let the Music Play" is in the band's pre-show house music rotation. He recognized it, and yelled, pointing towards the heavens, "LISTEN! It's SHANNON! From the EIGHTIES!"
I like being around happy people, and happy people on music? Better. He was incredibly loud and in my ear with this, and I didn't even care.
So, the show was fantastic. It might have been my favorite of the five I've seen. I like that they bring the same level of energy and range and crowd interaction to every show. I like that they are fun. I like that they don't play to some less-than-two-hour phone-it-in standard. I like that they have a gorgeous stage production. And yes, I like that they are still cute. (Because they totally are.)
But most of all, I love the music, the old stuff and the new stuff. Of course I'm emotionally wired to react to The Reflex and Wild Boys, Notorious and especially the oldest stuff, like Planet Earth, which still gets me moving like no other. But I really like Girl Panic, The Man Who Stole a Leopard, and the title track from All You Need is Now. It's a solid album. My favorite artists are those who keep reinventing over the years.
This is why I love Indigo Girls, worship at the Prince altar, and cannot wait to see what Lady Gaga comes up with in ten years. This is why I can't get with Chris Cornell's solo work, because it's not...good. This is why I mourn Janis Joplin and Jim Croce especially hard, and why I'm sorry Amy Winehouse couldn't kick her demons. This is why I took myself to see The Red Piano in Vegas. Yes, Elton John is one of my personal and musical heroes (it's deep, I'll tell you about it sometime maybe, how I even forgive him for The One.) And one of the reasons is that he has changed so much, and tried new things. The wealth and fame of a pop/rock/whatever career doesn't guarantee or necessarily motivate this, so I appreciate growth and change in artistry more than anything.
I'm happy that Duran Duran stuck around, and that they keep making new music, and that they keep touring a central part of their lives at what must be rather a sacrifice to their personal lives, but hey, I guess it's good work if you can get it.
I'm especially grateful that they played "Save a Prayer" before ending with "Rio" for the encore. They didn't play it in October, and I thought I wouldn't hear it again. Thankfully my phone died (the only time you'll ever hear me say that, I'm pretty sure) before that, so I could focus on the music. I hope the girl next to me wasn't too freaked out by the lady next to her crying like a fool through the entire damned thing, but I couldn't help it, and oh well, I'll never see her again.
"Take a chance Like all dreamers can't find another way You don't have to dream it all, just live a day"
It's interesting how favorite songs can change meaning for us as our lives change. That was good. Just live, one day. I can do that, I think.
I need a life that includes more music, and more experiences like this, is the thing. That's what last night told me. This show gave me what I needed to help put me back on course. It made me remember my better self, what feeds me inside, what makes me smile and sing and dance. I haven't had many experiences like that lately. You never know what will do it, but sometimes you do. You just have to remember. You just need a reminder.
I'm hitting the road better for it, I know.
Thank you to Sasha at Red Magnet Media for hooking me up with the tickets, and to Duran Duran for making a day in my ordinary world rather extraordinary. These shows burn into my brain in the best possible way, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to share this experience with you. If you're in or near Atlantic City or Pittsburgh, they'll be up that way this weekend. Snag a ticket and go. I totally would if I could.
Last night Jen and I went for Cuban food, which was lovely. There were these mojitos that were so, so good, the best I've ever had, pretty much, and I've never really counted them among my favorite drinks. But there I was, halfway through a steak and sucking on these gorgeous, fresh sprigs of mint, happy to be alive.
I felt the waves of an astoundingly good mood, rode them, held them at arm's length, hoping they'd stay. "Let's hold onto this, shall we? We've seen them in the wild, shh...and here one is," I said out loud to myself as I parked the car, because if there is a thing I try to do daily it's crack myself up.
It's good to keep in mind when you're down in it that it can all turn on a dime, right? Get better, feel good? It's just elusive, the real deal, sometimes, a little moreso lately with a cranking daily routine, some strange upheaval and endless introspection that lends itself to everything but happy most times. But there it was, proof for later, like that stupid butterfly of happiness you're not supposed to chase. Or the setting it free and it'll come back to you if it likes you nonsense. Green streetlight through the window, one of my favorite people in the world -- she holds my feet and my delusions to the fire with kindness -- you need one like her if you don't have one, those drinks, a fried potato appetizer that did just what it was supposed to do, leaving me wanting more more more. The waiter was a sweet and flirty older man in a pale blue guayabera, charmed with Jen's smile and Spanish fluency that could make a much stronger man than he fall in love. He tolerated me, which was fine, he was kind, he brought me steak and then coffee and tres leches cake. It's good not to be the center of attention sometimes. I am not always so good there.
On the way home I drove under the railroad bridge just underneath the Mormon temple, "Surrender Dorothy" spray-painted on it as it has been for all my life. I don't even know if they bother painting over it anymore, that's just what it is, a tagged command hovering over speeding cars in the shadow of this enormous Emerald City-structure, golden Joseph the archangel blowing a trumpet at the very top. It must be jarring to see it if you've never driven by it before, but for lifers here it's just part of the landscape, a flying monkey landmark, no witch in the sky, just the words, in paint, not broom exhaust. Joseph always looks to me too precarious, like he will fall into the suburban trees and houses way before Armageddon comes, but that's the danger of calling the troops, I guess. Besides, I know he never will. I'm sure he is specially protected.
I wisely nixed Delilah for my own playlist, and "Rock of Ages" came up in the queue and I didn't skip it, as I've been doing for some reason lately on this particular mix. Maybe because it was 60 degrees at 10 p.m., the sunroof open, and something about the night and the old song and the weather and my life came together and I hit the button on the steering wheel that miraculously (to me, I don't get wires) raises the volume. Up up and up, although now I was on the Pike and I usually try not to bother people at stoplights. I hear some dreadful noise from other cars there, and I try not to be part of the problem, but I broke the rules of street engagement just this once.
It's better to burn out than fade away.
I remembered an ex yelling because I let Def Leppard claim that line when Kurt Cobain wrote it in his suicide note (like he would have quoted them? I don't know what I was thinking), never having heard Neil Young in my musically scattered youth. It still makes little difference to me, although I know from "Harvest Moon" and "Ohio" now. I screamed out every word of that song, remembering the week after my grandmother died and how twice, so strange, "Coming Home" came on the radio while I was night highway driving, and how then I'd done the same thing, thrown open the sunroof on the Beetle because even though it was January then, I just needed to feel the freezing cold air to feel alive in the face of so much death and over and gone. I screamed the words then too.
"I took a ride in a world, I'll be spinnin' for the rest of my life...Are you tough enough for my love...Just close your eyes to the heaven above..."
Are you tough enough. Who wants to have to be, really? It's an interesting adjective to apply in this case, but it's probably best not to overanalyze some things, Cinderella songs among them.
It felt good again, last night, the loudness and the air and the silly lyrics. It felt like me, not just me 20 years ago driving home after a restaurant shift, all the windows down, smoking and singing and probably crying sometimes, the way you do when you're growing into your first grown-up version of yourself. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to go back there, although there are parts I'd like a do-over on for sure if I didn't think it would upset the outcomes even worse, mindful as I am of the impact of one butterfly wing. Somehow it all shook out this way. Who's to say we should change anything.
It felt like me now, too, at least the best one who's in there, who needs some things, who will cop to wanting some too, who is still trying so hard, just like back then, to get out, to be heard, to rock in her own way, if she's honest.
Just say you need it. And if you need it say "yeah."
You should, really. I should too. But mostly I have got to remind myself to turn it up, because that is when I remember the best of who I am, or at least the most real.
All in all and I'm Loving every rise and fall The sun will make and I will take Breath to be sure of this In the end and then All will be forgiven when Surrender rises high and I Gave what I came to give
I didn't get Red Hot Chili Peppers tickets this weekend. I was prepared to do so, and through a technical glitch I wasn't able.
I've been acting like it wasn't a big deal, because oh my God, do you see what else I have to spend and save my money on? Tickets to this show aren't a big deal. I need to learn to practice moderation in the every day and then I know I won't be so pressed when the big things come. I don't even know where I'll BE when these show dates roll around. Who would even go with me? Why am I even concerned about this?
Because.
This is one of my favorite photos I've ever taken, on the inside track at Pimlico five years ago when my boyfriend Anthony Kiedis and Flea and those other guys played Virgin Festival.
It was an amazing day. I was alone, I didn't care. It is a film shot from a disposable camera. I saw the Chilis and the Killers and some other people. It was fantastic. I crawled inside that music.
I loved every rise and fall. How often does that happen?
December. I cannot believe it. Another year just about burned and what? How did that happen? What happened? Where did it go?
I've been running since September, it feels like, inside and out, and with four days of rain and a winter weather advisory today I want to stay home and in bed and let it all shake out. (I have the best bed in all the land. I recommend getting a slightly shittier bed so you don't want to be in it all of the time, but I'm already screwed. I love my bed like a person, except slightly more appropriately.) It's true that things are circling back to some kind of center -- I've been having that thought lately, incessantly, actually: "sometimes the center holds." And I don't know where this comes from except it's what I keep thinking in spite of some data to the contrary from this stupid, irritating writer brain.
I could give you a list of where I've been beyond the bits and pieces I've shared here, but that's probably really boring. I could tell you about the people I've been with and that is so much less of any kind of boring, given as I am to hanging with compelling people whenever possible. But those stories will have to hang themselves on the line one by one. I don't know where to begin, so I'm going to let them pick and choose.
I don't ever know how to catch up after so much time away. But I can say that I've been to Pittsburgh, California, Philadelphia and then back home. I've been in a place called the Mississippi Delta that I knew nothing of before some friends pointed me there, and it will take a good long while to share just what I think and feel from that experience. I've been consoled by rain on a tin roof and delighted by the sight of the Pee Wee's Big Adventure dinosaurs from the highway enough to put returning to see them on my ever-in-progress life list.
"Au revoir, Simone!"
"Au revoir, Pee Wee!"
Such is the state of affairs, constantly, around here.
(The rain on the roof part is as good as you'd expect, and if you've heard it, you know.)
I've shriveled from three hours drinking Champagne in a steaming hot tub under desert rain with some of the smartest and nicest people I've ever met. (I am not making that up. I am not.) I have chopped up and roasted a sick amount of winter squash hours before I got on a plane simply because I didn't want it to rot on my friend's counter. I have chaperoned a field trip. I have gawked at William Faulkner's story notes from where he posted them on his bedroom wall a long, long time ago, and watched a late-day southern sun slant beautifully through trees in his backyard. I have bought one single Christmas present that now I have to take back because someone else bought it too. I have won a football helmet autographed by this year's NFL rookie squad, and I have had a genuine Hog teach my best friend and me how to pour a Guinness. I had a wonderful Thanksgiving with my family, twice. I have won a $500 Apple gift card. I have lost a camera. I have held Crow for .5 seconds. I have not been eating my vegetables. I have communicated, incessantly, and mostly well.
And that is just the past 30 days. I've been lucky, mostly. I'm guided and supported in some kind of providential way by some of the smartest and most compassionate people I have ever known. I have had friendship and love of an insane level thrown at me from various quarters. I've sung my way across four or five states in vastly different parts of the country. I have come to some kind of comfortable truce with not knowing much, with throwing my best light and dark intentions in the washer of the world and sort of hoping for a change that they'll run together.
I have not been stopped once, not on the highway or in security. I have had two plane rows entirely to myself. I have been -- remarkably, and there are a few people out there who will know just how much -- almost entirely unafraid of flying, for the first time in my life.
And in the middle of all of the problems and confusion and absolute lack of clarity that I've suffered for months on this latest go-round, I have a core of something now that I know is relatively solid in spite of the fact that my brain is porous and short-sighted enough that surely it could all come undone at any time.
I turned 13 in December, 1983, and like so many other kids my age, I was madly crazily in love with Duran Duran.
I developed a deep, personal relationship with John Taylor then, and I should probably minimize it now. I should probably tell you I'm over it. I should probably tell you that there is not a creepy time every June 20 when I remember that it's his birthday. I should probably say that when my friends who have similar feelings tell me that they love him more that I'm kidding when I tell them with a fierceness that they are absolutely stone cold wrong.
I can't. I'm not. I won't. I can't.
He looked like this then.
Seriously? How do you process that when you're an (extremely) awkward 13-year-old? Well, if you're me, you make a scrapbook. (Yes, I still have it.) You swindle your mom out of money to buy overpriced British music gossip magazines because they had pictures that American magazines didn't. (Thank you, Smash Hits.) You paper every possible surface of your room with his face.
You play air bass, although you have no musical skill. And when you get to high school two years later, you take a creative writing elective wherein your first story is a pitiful fictional account of your MARRIAGE to this man and your vacations ("holidays", naturally) on the very islands where his band's videos were filmed.
(That last one may have been a little bit painful to type. Oh well.)
I loved him. I thought he was beautiful. I was 13 and he was...24? 25? Sure. Then I was 14 and the video for "A View to a Kill" debuted on Friday Night Videos in the spring of 1985, and I sat up and wrote a NOTE in INSTALLMENTS to my friend Carmen, who was doing the SAME THING at her house, while we waited for our ONE CHANCE that week or maybe, oh my hell, EVER to see this video.
If that doesn't amplify the knowledge of our collective access to media now, I don't know what does. And really, all of my love for immediate gratification aside, was that so bad? We learned anticipation. We had to wait and wait, and doodle flowers and "I LOVE JT" in bubble letters (Simon, in her case) and sit up later than we usually did and then, all of a sudden, there it was, the three-minute thing we were waiting for. There they were, and then they were gone.
That summer I went to what may have been the first concert of my teenage years -- Howard Jones and Paul Young were in the same timeframe -- to see John with Andy Taylor in Power Station, partially processing my grief at missing the entire band on tour in support of Seven and the Ragged Tiger the year before.
My parents sat in the Merriweather parking lot and drank beer and waited for my cousin and me to emerge. I was even more smitten. He had started another BAND. He could do anything, truly. He was even more beautiful in PERSON.
Seriously. The energy of my love for this guy I didn't and would never know probably wafted the 20 miles or so from where I lived to the White House and contributed to the finer points of policy. Mr. Reagan asked Gorbachev to tear down that wall two scant years later. Coincidence?
Maybe.
Anyway. It continued. Power Station quit and Duran Duran took a break with no known end and reconfigured. There was Arcadia, which I thought was quite good, actually, and then in 1998 John put his "Trust the Process" site together. A shirt I bought from that project is still one of my favorites and I'd show you a picture of that too if it wasn't in the laundry.
But I wasn't just a groupie, I swear. I may have had Duran Duran posters taped on every surface of my room, including the ceiling, which was a huge effort as I've never been terribly coordinated. But as I grew into my appreciation for their music, and spent crazy hours focused on what they produced, I knew they were talented and not just hot pieces OMG.
Because John said to, I listened to Chic and Bryan Ferry and Ultravox and T. Rex. He dated Jody Watley briefly, so I skipped over "Don't You Want Me" on my dubbed tapes with a certain level of disdain that only matched my envy for her hair. My mother had no IDEA what these cassettes were that she was after for my Christmas stocking (except for Chic, because everybody knew "Le Freak" and "Good Times", and my mom has always been pretty hip.) I knew who Nile Rodgers was, because they told me about him, and I learned early on that I didn't quite get Andy Warhol, but okay, I probably should. I knew that Barbarella was a Jane Fonda movie, and I thought it was funny that they were so obsessed with Debbie Harry, because who wasn't, then? And although language has never been a huge problem for me, "contrived" was one of the first 50-cent words I ever worked into my vocabulary on a regular basis, because they used it constantly in their interviews and it was something that I knew they really didn't want to be.
And yes, I owned one of those stupid fedoras, and may have purchased some jazz shoes, and rounded out that ensemble with my "Choose Life" t-shirt a la Wham's "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" video, because I was Brit Pop all the way. I only pronounced the "True" band's name as "SPAN-dau BAL-let" in what I knew to be entirely supportive company, but the truth is that I was a tiny Anglophile tool, immersed in the music and the vibe of a country that to this day I have never visited.
It was really, really fun. It was a sickness and a habit, and looking back over how it all evolved I know for sure that there is no way that I could have been any different.
And then there were songs. I knew every word to every song on every single Duran Duran record. Try me.
I can peform, in its entirety, including sound effects, the 12-inch single of "The Reflex" (this isn't easy, people) and when I am alone and I listen to "Come Up and See Me (Make Me Smile)" which was a cover tune lifted from a British band called Steve Harley & Cockney Rebels, a B-side on that Reflex remix and, in my opinion, one of the best on a very short list of what I consider great live recordings in all of pop music I cry every time. I also air drum, in this case. It's just a great song.
We had a thing, me and these guys. I don't know when it happened, although I entirely know why (it's not something I can explain, it just makes sense.) It has lasted since 1983 and I'm pretty sure it will always be with me, because why not?
In 2004 (I think, it may have been 2003) they came to D.C. -- to Constitution Hall, in fact, where I will see them this weekend -- on their reunion tour. I had never seen the group intact, and never even seen them perform in any configuration as Duran Duran, only Power Station.
I worried that it would be disappointing. I was concerned that it wouldn't live up to my memories, and that I was too old and too past the point of excitement with them for it to be a good idea.
I was wrong.
My sister and I went. We were in the upper deck, and it didn't matter, because it's one of those venues where you can see pretty well from anywhere. I lost my mind. I screamed like a teenager. They sounded great. The old songs were as I remembered them and the new ones weren't bad. I was so happy to be there.
We went back again in 2008, to a show at an outdoor venue on the Red Carpet Massacre tour. We had -- I think -- even more fun then. It was everything I needed it to be.
As for John and all that he portends?
Well, I think this. I think that in the mess of relationships and real life and growing up that is an adult, American life, that if we are lucky a few unsullied things and places and connections remain among the mess. He is one of those things, for me. He was one of the first men -- real or fictional or fictionally real -- who I thought was gorgeous and talented, tall, funny in interviews, with an accent that made me die and a strange little lispy voice that I can hear in my head right now. Was I ever going to know him or be around him or date him? No way. But could I have an uncomplicated, purely appreciative relationship with him at a time when I didn't know how to do that with anyone? Sure.
I don't think I still know how to do that with anyone. Can I still have that with him? Sure. My reasons for this are scarcely different from the reasons why pre-teens chase after Justin Bieber on his Segway, or why my mom's peers passed out for The Beatles on Ed Sullivan or why any of us feel any glorious moment of fleeting, unimaginable joy when we drive with the sunroof open on a perfect weather day.
Some things just are, and in our culture, this is one that we get for pretty cheap. I can always see the "Save a Prayer" lighter reflections in my mind's arena, is what I'm saying.
Sure, I could ascribe some kind of weird meaning to how John Taylor, as my first teenaged celebrity crush, represented the first of several (in an entirely fictional and unrequited way, of course) weird relationships with real live bass players and drummers that have taken place across the span of my life. I could say that he was the original representative of men I've driven around and waited for outside of crappy venues, carried their stupid amps and then kissed. I could talk about how scarily prescient it all was, and also the reason why I tell anyone who insinuates that I ought to go out there at 40 and look for a musician to shut her hole, because no thank you. The rhythm section is shut down. We have all retired, unless at some point I pick up a drum, which is entirely likely.
But I don't want to do that. I just want to call that coincidence, really. Because it's shut down, that is, except for him. JT is forgiven, everything, because in my life, he didn't do anything wrong. He played the bass line on "New Religion" and "Come Up and See Me" and "Last Chance on the Stairway". He smiled that tremendous smile.
And in the most kickass way possible, me 40, him 51, he's still bringing it full circle, back to where we started, which was my favorite part anyway.
Disclaimer: My friend Sarah is working with Duran Duran on blogger outreach for this tour. I have a ticket to the show, and have agreed to use the #duransocial hashtag and to write a post about my experience. But as I hope I have made abundantly clear, I would have gone anyway, and shared my appreciation for these guys with you regardless.
Friday I left an entirely distressing meeting to go to Best Buy to buy an extra phone charger because I was going to a show in Northern Virginia that night and wanted the iPhone to be fully functional. Turns out they've adapted to the iTunes revolution by shrinking their cd department and deeply discounting a bunch of stuff. I bought Muse, Avett Brothers, a Janis Jopin remaster, Earth Wind & Fire's Greatest Hits and Prince's Rainbow Children -- the last because it was $5.99 and Prince is Prince. He may think he's got a direct line to Jesus Christ at this point, but who am I to argue with a guy who plays the guitar like that?
Nobody, that's who.
I listened to the Avett Brothers "I and Love and You" an excessive number of times this weekend as a result of buying this record. They seem like dudes I should find pretentious and played out (because everyone is "OMG Avett Brothers, have you HEARD?") but I don't, and this song is just beautiful.
Someone was talking to me Friday about wedding music and I had the insane idea while I was driving to Best Buy that if I ever get married and walk down an actual aisle I'm going to do it to the guitar bridge from Master of Puppets, which is my favorite guitar anything ever, nudging out the outro to "Layla".
3:32 here, kids, although it's longer and much more graceful on the record, transitions when the drums come back in especially.
Sue me.
(Note to people who loved old Metallica: God DAMN I love this clip. So much fun!)
Anyway, if I never get married or if I cave to my desire to do that when I do, make sure the whole thing is played at my funeral (looking at my sister and GoonSquadSarah.)
Friday night I saw Eric Brace of Last Train Home and his duet partner Peter Cooper play at Jammin Java in Vienna. I've been watching Eric play for almost ten years now, and I think he's one of the hardest working, most underrated men in the music business.
I was raised on and love bluegrass, which I don't talk about a lot, but just know that I know it in my soul. This is a Seldom Scene cover.
Although Eric wasn't born here and lives in Nashville now, he has done more than perhaps any other person here -- and certainly any other consistently working musician -- to honor the legacy of so many roots/country/bluegrass bands who have D.C. ties and he's doing the same for Nashville and country music as a whole. The guy is a trove of information and he imparts it in a way that is so unpretentious that you forgive him for being a music geek. Put it this way: I'm 39 years old and have a checkered musical past that includes seeing Poison live several times. I listen to the Louvin Brothers because of Eric, and not because he geeked or shamed me into it. It was because I watched him front a band of talented musicians with skill and heart, and I knew that he and my granddaddy could kick it by the turntable and he'd make no one feel stupid when he brought out his guitar. He feels it that hard. It was nice to see him play with longtime LTH trumpeter Kevin Cordt the other night, because although I know next to nothing technical about music, when I saw Kevin pick up a tune that he'd never played on one of Eric and Peter's songs and kick its ass, the look of utter joy on Eric's face was unmistakeable.
He's also nice and unfailingly gracious. Once he's seen you, he'll remember you at a show, and I think this is impressive given the miles he's logged over the past 25 years. I'll never stop repping him. ANYWAY.
Saturday night was spent with Sarah and her husband, who I also begrudgingly love and would save from a fire in spite of his desire to constantly needle me and call me by my last name. I still had D.C. roots on my mind, and made her listen to Karl Straub's Soul Parking. (Karl is silly talented. Just watch.)
and we sat around and they iPhone-bombed their own iTunes. It was rather fun.
Gabe and I have strange things in common. No comment on the Falco.
Today I tried to write and listened to Patty Griffin on repeat (and yes, some more Avett Brothers, I can't help it)
and thought about the difference that music makes in my day.
It's significant. I should probably talk about it more.
This started as a message for one person but it occurs to me that there are things that may be useful for other people too. But honestly I'll only hide the body for her. Maybe you, but probably just for her.
It is an interesting thing, this owning of our power, a phrase that I think is important as much as it makes me a little sick. It ebbs and flows depending on the weather and the circumstance. People talk about it a lot of times like it's easy, like we just need to read the right book or say it out loud three times or click our heels so we're magically at home in ourselves, everyday dragons stabbed in the neck.
But that's wrong, because a lot of times it's just really fucking hard.
Like yesterday, I went to pick up my car from this horrible triple-parked garage in downtown D.C., having just left a conference that pissed me off because it wasn't anything that I found useful and it cost me a day and a hundred bucks. I was hot and afternoon-drowsy and generally out of sorts so when the woman in charge of the car-retrieval process spoke too fast while looking away from me and basically blew off my questions about how to get MY VEHICLE out of the basement of this hellhole, I lost it a little.
"YOU'RE NOT BEING VERY HELPFULLLLLLLLLLLLLL," I yelled, and it bounced off the walls, immediately aware that I'd hit a new low of yelling at a stranger in a parking garage and that she had 16 of my dollars for my trouble. And she didn't say anything, just waved her hands towards a wall where the elevator was, but I was already walking.
**Whistles poorly because palate is broken.** **Kicks rocks.**
Oh hi! Funny, right?
Anyway, they don't tell you when your parents sign you up for this 80-or-so-year summer camp that someday you'll be flipping out at a stranger in a parking garage who shamed you because you dared to ask for your car back. And this didn't really happen because you're a raging bitch but because you're not a fan of garages in general because of all of those times your mother told you not to go into them alone and you're really just nervous that you won't be able to find your car and you're completely floored and sad that the only person there to help you is functioning in the opposite of that capacity.
They don't tell you about the glamour of this touring stage production. They don't explain faulty logic and human crazy. They don't always explain nonviolent communication.
Giving credit where due, I did learn from them that it was nice to tip the guy downstairs who smiled and showed up with my keys and restored my faith in humanity and some balance to my little world.
Anyway. This circles away from me, thankfully, to the fact that I cannot always be with you and you cannot always hear me preach about stuff like this. But as long as I keep forking over 15 bucks a month to TypePad I guess you can click here and remember that while I don't condone constant yelling in public, that I do fully support the following:
You too are not only allowed but encouraged to be as powerful as you are capable of being on any given day and as angry as you need to be when it's necessary.
Even when other people don't like it. Especially then, yes. (A smart person once said that if you're not pissing some people off some of the time that you're not working hard enough.)
Nobody -- not one single person -- fundamentally owns your time or your words or your goals or your opinions or anything else for that matter.
Also, no one can tell you who you are, because they don't know, unless they're telling you that you're awesome.
And I can promise you that in the middle of the crazy that at least one person will be available to listen to you with minimal interruption, and would, under the right circumstances, help you hide the body. Probably more people would be, too, but at least one.
Because it's really important that you know your worth every day, no matter what anyone says or doesn't say. That's the most important thing, because everything else happens because of that and it's good when the things that happen are good.
And sometimes? All you need to bond for life is oddly similar values, a mutual disinterest in what other people are doing and an occasional forgiveness of different musical choices. That's a perk, I guess.
I take music really seriously. I always have. It punctuates my life more than most other things. I have never ever been solely tied to one type or another, although my social identity in certain periods of my life has been. I shared new wave/Brit pop as an adolescent, hair metal as a teenager and young adult and then songwritery type stuff from then on with friends and people who went to shows with me. It was just the way it turned out, but I could easily have left a Metallica concert and cried over a John Denver song on the way home.
I mean, I don't remember a specific time when that specific order of business occurred, I'm just posing a hypothetical to illustrate that It's hard work, this being me thing.
I went to an all girls high school that was racially and culturally integrated in every way for as small as it was. I developed an appreciation for hip-hop there that I've never lost, and because it's D.C. I learned about go-go too.
My friend from high school called me yesterday and said she had a ticket to Public Enemy and because I'd never seen them live I went.
Awesome.
Long may you run, Chuck.
Also we've come a long way from convent duty and the It's Academic team, respectively, I'd say. Better now than we were then, by a long shot.
I got this post idea from DiSnazzio, who I met this year when I met up with a bunch of lady bloggers in a Baltimore bar that played deafening techno music, again, as you do, (also I'm old and deaf) and who is now one of my favorite writers who doesn't write nearly enough. No pressure, I get it, I'm just needy that way when it comes to good writers.
I also love that we can not only share an interest in cheese metal but also in Gillian Welch because Revival was a life-changing album for me, and I'll tell her sometime maybe about how I wrote a research paper about the Dixie Chicks and politics, and how I had a few episodes where I channeled Natalie Maines while I was driving my car.
Anyway. Here you go.
American Idiot in its entirety, Green Day, although mostly focused on the half-hour from Jesus of Suburbia through Give Me Novocaine. I don't know what happened but this has crawled into my head and it won't leave and I listen to it constantly. I may be the only college counselor in the world who has a picture of Billy Joe on the cover of Inked magazine tacked up by my desk.
**I never promised to be normal.**
Jealous Again, The Black Crowes. One of the best songs ever written of the "you must sing me" variety, and not just because I'm fond of the "always drunk on Sunday" concept. I went to several iterations of the Horde Tour when I lived in Ohio - basically repeated jam band sorts of things that usually featured the Black Crowes and Blues Trav'ler (sic) - and I have some very fun, very hazy memories of same. If you're with me I will probably not rock out the DON'T YOU THINK I WANT TO DON'T YOU THINK I WOULD part like I do when I'm alone, and I feel sorry for you, because by the time it gets to "AM I JUST PLAIN LAZY AM I EVER EVER EVER JEALOUS" and it sounds like Chris Robinson says "lever" instead of "ever" there at the end, that shit is ON. SORRY. "Loose lipped and laughing" was also my AIM status message for a very long time a few years ago. Dork.
I ain't afraid of ever. Losing faith in you.
You bastard.
Mistaken I.D., Citizen Cope. His debut album was a thing of beauty and I love this song.
For Whom the Bell Tolls, Metallica. Kind of a tie with this and Master of Puppets so maybe I'll just say both. Sure. I could tell you why this is but then I'd have to kill you, right?
Der Kommisaar, After the Fire. This song and Come On Eileen should be on any existing 80s compilation. I don't know what I'm saying when I sing it but whatever, and that dadaDUHDUHDUH guitar business and the tambourine? It's just a weird, awesome song that makes me feel like I should punch someone or do something otherwise very aggressive but I don't know why. Why is she riding with the others in the subway singing? I have no idea, but it's some heavy shit. And by the time they start yelling what sounds like "CHOP!CHOP!CHOP!" at the end, I just don't even know.
Home Sweet Home, Mötley Crüe. I've been on a weird kick with this one. Again. I do not own hairspray (haha, hairspray) at all anymore but the video makes me wish I did. And then I remember it's only 1989 in my mind.
Levon, Elton John. I can't help it. Like I can skip a song that starts off with "garage" said the British way? I'm not that strong. I'm not going to talk to you about "Tiny Dancer," though, except to say that one of my very favorite Tweets ever was "Get the fuck AWAY FROM ME, tiny dancer."
Digresssing. I'll save my Elton issues for my next therapist.
Red Dragon Tattoo, Fountains of Wayne. People who think Stacy's Mom is the best thing they ever did make me cry. I mean, not really cry but...almost. They could have stopped with Utopia Parkway, the cd this song is on, and that would have been fine. Perfect, stupid pop song.
John Saw That Number, Neko Case. There is nothing wrong with anything she does in my opinion and this song makes me want to go to church. And nothing makes me want to go to church.
New Religion, Duran Duran. This summarizes everything that was awesome about them, that's all. If you don't know I probably can't tell you. Stop distracting me.
Ramble On, Led Zeppelin. This is one of my favorite songs of all time as I believe I've recently mentioned. It's on my exercise playlist and unlike some of the stuff on there that I'm sick of I don't ever skip it. I think the length of this list indicates just what a creature of habit I am.
Change, Blind Melon. Shannon Hoon broke my partially-grungy little heart when he died and I never even really liked No Rain (except for the fact that it's a super depressing song lyrically and it sounds so bouncy and happy, which is somehow appropriate for the time and the genre.) This song stays very relevant to me. I'm a fan.
Hem, Reservoir. They are not well known and so therefore unappreciated for what is absolutely beautiful music, and this is the only song that works when I feel like it's all done. I can't listen to it in public because it usually makes me cry. Funnel Cloud is an amazing, amazing record and anyone who cares about songwriting and a voice that is the last one I want to hear before I die should listen to it. This particular song is about Pittsburgh, and it makes me feel like I'm from there even though I'm absolutely not.
Peter Piper, Run D.M.C. I do not have to be intoxicated to perform Raisin' Hell in its entirety. I mean, really perform it. I can nail this one. No, I don't know how I happened either.
Sweet Child of Mine, Guns 'n Roses. I will never turn it off, not ever, unless it's the radio version that cuts off the guitar in the beginning because that's a version that shouldn't exist. Like that band ever needed to hear less from Slash. Not a good idea.
Lodi, Creedence Clearwater Revival. My father was a CCR freak and I'm guessing he must have listened to this on repeat because I have no other excuse for my love for it other than I like downbeat stoner hippie music. NOT THAT I DO. Maybe it's just a metaphor for my life. Oh Lord, stuck in Lodi again. I've never been there but that's a small detail. Suburban Maryland, Lodi, whatever. I think I just like songs that have that final crushing poignant lyrics/music moment, because the part at the end, "If I only had a dollar for every song I sung," kind of punches me, Centerfield notwithstanding. (Because no. No no no, on every level no.)
Belle, Al Green. It's a weird song. I have no idea what he's talking about, Jesus or his boyfriend in some kind of love triangle with a woman he's dating, but I apparently don't care.
All These Things That I've Done, The Killers. I can wear this whole cd out and I know I love this song a lot partially because it was so great live. Nothing like a room full of people screaming "Don't you put me on the back BURNER-ER-ER," there's really not.
The Winner Takes It All, Abba. I have opinions about Abba songs, yes, and this one is actually really pretty and really sad. I could talk about Waterloo too, but I won't.
Heavy Metal Drummer, Wilco. This doesn't sound anything like the title, but infectious it is.
Silver Lining, Rilo Kiley. Just because. It always puts me in a better mood.
(I'm skipping songs but I'm stopping because I'm compulsive about lists and I need to stop because it will be 287 songs long and no one wants that, really, no one.)
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