after a long day of work, i decided to skip out on a company xmas happy hour and just stroll home to hop in my pajamas and enjoy a nice, alcohol-free, warm mug of hot cocoa. haven't gotten quite there yet, although i am at a happy half-way point in my worn out, holey, faded ass old navy yoga pants, and am currently drying my mangy hood head of hair, snuggled in some afghans. . .listening to bright eyes' "lua" on repeat.
walking through the snow, coming down so fast and heavy, this time for some reason not quite caring the unshoveled sidewalks. . . i just felt somewhat at peace. ok with the stress of not knowing what will happen next. ok with missing people. ok with gorging on massive amounts of office holiday snacks (tummy may not be ok, but i'm aight wit it--go cheesecake brownies!). . . anyway. then i notice the trend of songs playing on my iPod.
First it was my boiii, Elliott. Mr. Smith. Ahh. "Needle in the Hay." Disturbingly beautiful. Always reminds me of the Royal Tenenbaums when Owen Wilson tries to off himself, (not the US Weekly version, mind you, but Eli, or whatever the cracked out cowboy's name was). NO. Wait a minute, I mean Luke Wilson, the brother. Scratch that. Whatever, it was one of the Wilson brothers, but it def wasn't Owen. I just remember the madness in his eyes, his poor little tortured soul obsessing over his forbidden love for his (adopted) sister. I can't say I've ever had feelings like that for my broski, (sick sick sick), but I can relate to madness. uncertainty. despair. sadness. not now, luckily. like i said, i'm aight now, but shit. you know. those moments. the unspeakable ones. but only, wes anderson isn't directing my life, so, my dark little secret moments weren't as cinematically staged--but anyway. that song makes me feel good in a twisted way. like, ok, yeah. shit is fucked up. man, this is fucked up. life is fucked up. it's all fucked up. but what are you gonna do about it? the immediacy of torment in that opening strumming of guitar. . . shit just keeps on, keepin on. and at least he got good marks, right? goddman it elliott. why'd you gotta go stab yourself in the heart? you were so, so so beautiful. everything about you. fucking genious. i've got two reminders on my wrist. happiness. now. i just opted not to use a knife to etch it in, but ink instead. . .
holy tangent. but anyway. yeah. "needle in the hay". took me back. got me thinking. to some dark, dark, dark times in my life. but the comfort that i ended up ok. and i, would not, end up with a knife in my heart. and what doesn't kill us, makes us stronger.
speaking of stronger, the next track on shuffle was kanye. but not the new autotune swagger, but "all falls down" off of "college dropout." possibly my favorite kanye track ever, or maybe it's "family business," but whatever. it also brought some vivid memories flooding back. i remember the first time i heard this track. i was in madison, wisconsin. i was going to school at uw-oshkosh, and would make the hour and a half drive down to madison every other weekend to party with my girls. i was maybe 19, 20. fuck, maybe 21? i don't remember to be honest. it's very possible i was underage, but it's also very possible i was the only person old enough to buy beer out of the group of us. i don't recall too much, just that we were REALLY into miller lite cases and bottles of captain morgan. these were the days. when i was TIGHT with kelly, nikki and casey too i suppose. i don' t really talk to any of these girls anymore, i guess due to "drama" which i didn't realize. but this isn't to vent on bygones, this is to reminisce on the good times. before the shit went sour, smart went crazy, all stale, blah blah. man, girls can REALLY fucking suck sometimes. you know? shit. why can't we all be people to one another. . . . but yeah.
cases of miller lite. mannequin heads. aaron carter. liquid measuring cups full of cheap ass rum. and kanye west. "all falls down" was on all the damned time. multiple times a night. i didn't have mtv and sure as hell wasn't checking commercial radio (die hard college radio nerd, DIE HARD), so i had no clue who this KANE WEST fellow was. but then we heard the workout plan. and would drunkenly whip out our own renditions--crunches, situps, jumping jacks, more table dancing. ahh. we had fun, yes we did. destiny's child. rage against the machine. gloria estefan. i couldn't even tell you waht i was into at the time, it didn't matter. my girls wouldn't let me play shit. i think maybe i was in a coheed & cambria phase, but it doesn't matter. all i remember is kanye. and this song just made it all good--summed shit up in a nutshell. no matter how high we were on life, on dancing and being stupid young girls, it all would eventually fall down. like now, how not a single one of these girls will even talk to me for some reason i'm unaware of. oh well, we all grow up sometime or another. i'm not sure i could even balance on another coffee table to save my soul at this point, anyhow. . . still, nostalgia can be nice.
my walk home is really only about ten minutes. "needle in the hay" is 4:17. "all falls down" is 3:43. this left me with approx. 3 minutes left until i stomped the snow off my nikes and pushed the front door open and shook my eskimo parka hood clean of wet, sloshy flakes.
next up, mr. conor oberst, in his bright eyes glory dayz, "lua."
holy memories.
3 years ago, well, a little more than that now, i suppose as 3 years ago tomorrow i've been graduated from college, oberst released his double disc collection, "i'm wide awake, it's morning" and "digital ash in a digital urn". before college, my stint as MD at wrst, i knew shit about music. what i did know, was mostly garbage. i was not familiar with bright eyes, although i had heard mountains and mountains of praises for this doe eyed skinny boy who called himself bright eyes from the various pusher promoters who wanted me to chart this. . . i knew it was a package i needed to review personally and when i popped the first disc into my office's ghetto box blaster, shit got quiet. i closed my door. i stretched out on my linoleum plastic makeshirt couch/chairs with the stuffing seeping out. i put my feet up on the cobwebbed and sticker plastered filing cabinets. i took a swig of my mountain dew code red and chomped on some chili cheese fritos'. i started crying. without even realizing it.
this shit was good. i wasn't sad. i remember that. i was kind of happy. i was just confused. why hadn't i heard this sooner? well obviously, this album wasn't in stores yet or anything, but where was my musical taste? why did i waste so many years of my life obsessing with generic and forgettable pop shitards? i don't know. but the album had a profound effect on me. and digital ash did too. i took the two records home and listened to them non-stop for basically the next year after that. i think the only thing i listened to more was e.smith's "from a basement on the hill". those albums changed me. so did "surfer rosa," although that was way back in freshman year, so that's a different post.
bright eyes cheered me up. it made me sad. it made me sing loudly in the shower. it made me hold my teddybear close at night when i drifted to sleep. it made me want a boyfriend (i eventually got one a couple months later and he too, enjoyed bright eyes). listening to "lua" now reminds me of him. but it also reminds me of the jodi before, the girl i used to be. the woman i am now in comparison, and now that i'm without him again i just think, how does this affect me now?
as i concluded my march home, i saw two taxis drive by in the flurries. both turned their lights off the moment they passed my one-way street. the lyrics hit so close to home. . . when i took my iPod headphones off in my heat blasted apartment, I realized only after my cat gave me a look of wide-eyed confusion that i was singing almost well, (not the typical tone-def, hit a couple notes if you can believe it) at the top of my lungs. shit, hope i wasn't doing that the whole walk home. . . but i guess it wouldn't matter anyway.
anyway. i'm here now, in bed. in the warm comfort of my favorite place on earth. there's a smelly black kitten meowing to my left and i'm laying here thinking old thoughts and trying to figure out exactly how and when i got to where i am today. i'm not sad. i'm not angry. i'm not happy. but i am ok. and that's all i need to be right now. no matter what happens, and who passes in and out of my life--i always have my elliott, conor and of course, kanye. the only 3 men i need.
i think that hot cocoa is calling my name. . .
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