The Weakerthans – Aside lyrics:
…
In love with love and lousy poetry
And I’m leaning on this broken fence
Between past and present tense
And I’m losing all those stupid games
That I swore I’d never play
But it almost feels okay
…
I only recently have heard of music critic Bob Lefsetz. I’ve taken to reading his blog on occasion. His most recent post “Live With Lonesome” says perfectly something I’ve been feeling lately.
I’ve decided the best album of the year is the one I played the most. It’s a personal best. I may not have heard so much of what you’re into. But of the stuff I played, what I played most was Little Big Town’s “The Road To Here”.
I didn’t know I’d love it. But one song infatuated me to such a degree that I downloaded the rest. I was experimenting. If this experimentation wasn’t free I wouldn’t have taken the leap. Thank god it is and I did.
First and foremost, an album is a collection of great songs. It’s when this ceased to be that we gave up and only wanted the single. Doesn’t matter if there’s thirty minutes of music or ninety, it’s all got to be consistently great. And “The Road To Here” is. There’s a panoply of emotions. Different tracks register on different days. My favorite constantly changes. And I was convinced that the final winner was “A Little More You” until just now, when it was eclipsed by “Live With Lonesome”.
What could be worse? Oh, the single say they’re happy, that they’ve got options. But if you’ve got no one to bounce off of, no one to share your story with, the silence is deafening. You try to fill it. With television, newspapers and books. But none are adequate substitutes for human companionship.
You want to express your anxieties, your fears, as well as share your victories. But only to someone you trust. You don’t trust a one night stand. That’s a conquest, not a relationship. It’s a notch on your belt, but that notch won’t do much for you when you’re home alone, lying in bed, staring at the ceiling. You look for the light in their eyes, the understanding. And then displaying your warts, you attempt to merge. Pick well and your plug fits their socket. But sometimes the wire frays, there’s a short, and the connection burns out. And just that fast you’re thrown back into the pool, treading water, just waiting for another attempt at the high dive, for that exhilaration, that thrill.
If you like this post so far, I beg you to continue reading the rest of it over at Lefsetz’s site.
That’s what music is, a friend. It gets you through the loneliness.
We’re all just looking for something to get us through the loneliness.
Artist: Vienna Teng
Song: Harbor
Album: Warm Strangers
Lyrics:
we’re here where the daylight begins
the fog on the streetlight slowly thins
water on water’s the way
the safety of shoreline fading away
sail your sea
meet your storm
all I want is to be your harbor
the light in me
will guide you home
all I want is to be your harbor
fear is the brightest of signs
the shape of the boundary you leave behind
so sing all your questions to sleep
the answers are out there in the drowning deep
you’ve got a journey to make
there’s your horizon to chase
so go far beyond where we stand
no matter the distance
I’m holding your hand
It’s another one of those nights. I almost wish I had a beer in my hand.
I don’t.
Instead I’m listening to Joseph Arthur’s album “Nuclear Daydream.”
I just finished watching “Saved.” It’s an odd sort of feeling, but I do like the movie in general. It does a good job demonstrating some problems with pop-evangelical-Christianity. But the movie has no solution or realistic conclusion. I think one of the things that weirds me out the most is the main character reminds me of my ex-girlfriend. At least in looks if not in other ways.
I’ve been playing a lot of chess online lately. For some reason, turn-based games have had a grip on me lately. It may have something to do with the game of Risk I played on New Year’s Eve and the fun I had. So now I’m playing chess consistently (if you want to play, let me know), and today I was introduced to the wonders of Civ 4. Now there’s a game with great strategy and designed to look and play well.
Sometimes I wish my life took place in a series of turns. It’d be so much easier to determine where I want to go and what I want to do if I had a week to think between making life-changing decisions. In the real world, though, some decisions take minutes. Some decisions never get made.
Each decision plays a role in the greater whole.
Even though I had a lot of fun hanging out today, playing Civ 4, and passing the time, I still wind up in the same place at the end off the night. I’m in my room hanging out with machines and inanimate objects. I’m in a room where the only being capable of love is myself, and I’m no artisan of love.
These are the moments I am weakest.
Artist: Joseph Arthur
Song: You Are Free
Album: Nuclear Daydream
Lyrics:
Time is moving on
You and me
You and me
Suffering is gone
You are free
You are freeI know I let you down
Those days are over nowI’m no longer who I was
No longer who I thought I was
…
Yesterday, I had coffee with one of my roommate’s. The occasion marks my first visit to Starbucks in Bellevue. It was a good time. We talked about all kinds of random stuff including movies, liturgy, and women.
I went to Starbucks again today to have coffee (read: holiday-flavored peppermint mocha) with the assistant pastor at the church I’ve been going to. He’s from British Columbia (Canada) and a recent transplant here in Bellevue. He’s an interesting guy and somebody I could probably learn from.
I grabbed lunch at Chipotle. I love Chipotle. The giant burritos help me feel at peace with life. Afterwards, I looked for a haircutting place but had no luck finding it. So much for looking beautiful at Christmas.
Instead, I stopped by the library. I perused the stacks and stacks of books and reminisced about my trips to Love Library in college to write papers on obscure topics like Internet Censorship in China.
On this trip, surrounded by a significant chunk of human knowledge, I grabbed the December issue of Rolling Stone and settled down to read it in a comfortable chair. Honestly, it wasn’t that interesting other than a revealing article about Sufjan Stevens. Apparently, he doesn’t even own all the instruments he uses to make his albums. He’ll borrow instruments from friends or at churches, record music wherever he ends up, and then later use it on his albums.
The rest of Rolling Stone bored me. We all know it’s cool to not like the president. Old news… move on. Oh, and I don’t care how sexy Justin Timberlake is or how Green Day is trying to save the environment. Posturing is so… empty. Glass half empty — yup, I’m an emo kid. Or I would be if I could afford that posturing.
2006 has been a year of a lot of new music for me. I’ve acquired at least a few gigabytes of new music. Just casually glancing through iTunes it appears I’ve obtained 50+ albums released this year including physical CDs (albums, EPs, compilations) and digital music (albums, EPs, compilations, singles). This doesn’t even include retro pickups from years gone by (Weezer – Make Believe, Pearl Jam – “Ten,” etc). I just received the CDs from an eBay charity auction where I picked up another ten albums (four of which I already owned in some form).
The sad thing is I think I acquired a higher quality of music overall in 2005. Oh well… something to improve on next year. If I have enough money from bonuses in 2007 I’ll buy a stereo system and a record player so I can be a serious elitist. The Postal Service on vinyl! That’s the way to do it. It’ll only take one more record to double my collection of vinyl (Simon and Garfunkel – “Greatest Hits”).
If only. It takes so much work to be a serious materialist. Some day I’m going to give up, move to Guatemala, and live on rice, beans, and bacteria for the rest of my natural life.