corporeal
I finally broke down and bought the newest Killers CD. I don't really remember hearing anything about it but I loved the first album. Just as catchy with each listen as that curs-ed Bleed American by Jimmy Eat World. The kind of album you're often embarrassed you have but nonetheless sing along to with abandon each and every time. So I bought Sam's Town hopefully but without huge expectations. Even so, I was disappointed. There are huge sections of the album i would delete completely, some songs that I love until they get to the end and I'm like why would they end like this and ruin a perfectly great song?!! I have similar problems with Rilo Kiley's The Execution of All Things, which has been solidly in rotation in my house, car, and while painting the condo for the last month. Two rules of rock-music-making that Amanda believes imperative to success: 1) Do not ever replicate carnival/circus music in a song and expect success. You are no kind of Clown Posse: you are indie rock. 2) Along those veins, thou shalt not speak to the innocent hearing bystander. No talking, please, and no addressing the audience.
Rilo Kiley has I believe three songs on the album that have the buuuh^bah^bah carnival sound to them. I would like them to release this album with those sections taken out. Else I will be forced to play with the .wav files and correct it myself. That said, the rest of the album is phenomenal, really really fantastic.
Now to shift subjects: while listening to Sam's Town, I heard a song called Bones, which I really do like, a couple of the lyrics in particular. And it sparked an idea for photographs... but here's the thing: it would require people being naked. Nothing would be visible but I would have to find a couple willing to be nude in front of me. Last summer my nude photography cherry was popped in a most unceremonious way involving a somewhat intoxicated gentleman at a motel. It sounds perhaps more scandalous than it was and I photographed two people nude the day after that but it was a bit traumatic. This project would be much more positive as I would not be trying to photograph a guy acting like a john, but the problem lies mainly within the finding of participants who are not only willing but that I also want to photograph. Finding a guy who looks like a cliche john in a bar is not difficult. Finding two interesting and in-love people comfortable enough in their skin that they don't mind being photographed nude complicates the process.
Hmm, it just occurred to me that this is Austin. And that's probably not that difficult.
DAMMIT. I just remembered the other project I wanted to do and haven't. Sigh.
some kind of wonderful
i have been feeling very creative lately. wanting to create so many things, which is made that much more difficult by not having any spare time to do much besides sleep. which i suppose you can't even classify as spare time. just time. already slotted for a necessary human activity. what little time i've had has gone to painting. to looking for an apartment online. with the remainder spent staring into space imagining a tiny internal miniature self struggling under the weight of MOVING and NOT EXERCISING and PACKING and BEING LONELY and NUMBNESS and CALIFORNIA. i have had many ideas for poems which have gotten shoved to the back of my mind until they fall off the table and get pushed under the sofa, left with only the dust bunnies for company and possibly to never be found again.
anyway, the point of all this is to say that in lieu of having time to create myself i have been doing quite a bit of online reading and surfing looking at other people's creative pursuits. this has brought me to some pretty cool things. first off, i discovered that one of my beloved singer-songwriters, mike doughty, has a
*blog*. now i've been a longtime reader of jude's
*blog* but hadn't really ever looked to see if anyone else had them. it seems to be the kind of thing that only the singers i heart who have achieved moderate success and then been relegated to the fringe of all things related to fame and money have time to keep up with. anyway, i love mike doughty's blog. he posts about books and his creative process and what music he's listening to at any given moment and random photos he takes and it's really easy for me to just get sucked in for hours. he is basically doing exactly what i want to be doing. at some point in my life, i would *love* to just exist from day to day taking pictures, making music, writing poems. is it a selfish pursuit? sometimes i feel it is, but when your day job doesn't improve anyone else's quality of life, what's the difference? i think it's better to, say, write about a wheel in a unique way that other people can identify with than to just be a cog in the wheel. but i digress...
besides that, i was looking around for miranda july info (the performance artist who is the main character in "
me and you and everyone we know," a movie that borders on perfection through quiet weirdness) and came across this web-based project she's doing called "
learning to love you more." it's basically a list of creative assignments for people to complete and then post their take on, featuring things such as: make a portrait of your friend's desires; re-read your favorite book from the fifth grade; take a picture of your parents kissing; make an audio recording of a choir; write your life story in less than a day; hang a windchime in a tree in a parking lot. I LOVE THIS. lots of people have done it. there are 63 assignments. and there's even a
family of six in seattle who are doing every one and are going to have a showing there in october. and by looking at their site, i came across
this awesomeness. all of which just makes me feel like there are people in the world who are good to each other with no ulterior motives. i've had a lot of experiences lately that have made me feel like there are so few people doing anything but looking out for themselves that spending the day imagining families creating art with each other and strangers letting other strangers bunk on their couch just gives me warm fuzzy feelings. who does this? call me naive, but i want to meet these people. like tomorrow.
monkeyin' around
i just don't like to be normal. if i weren't allergic, there is a good chance that i would still be a cat person, but i feel like growing up the way i did (in the country, where all of our pets lived outside all the time), i missed the whole formative living with a pet thing. as a result, i am wont to dream of having pets that are somewhat out of the ordinary and impractical. what kind of pet am i talking about exactly? allow me to show you:
i absolutely fell in love with the monkeys in costa rica. what amazing and captivating animals. that's a baby white-faced capuchin above. and ever since i saw harry potter...
ok logically i KNOW i can't have a snow oil. i am a nice enough person that i'm not going to get a pet that has to be caged or anything, because screw that, they should have lives too, but man. wouldn't it be cool?
in other monkey news, and because there is no way to hide text or pictures on blogger as there is in LJ, i have posted over there so that people who do not wish to see pictures of my injuries may just read about them:
LJ post on my fight with a mirror. i lost.
longview catharsis
in all my nearly-27-years wisdom, a couple of weeks ago i volunteered to step in and paint the condo that my parents are about to sell. i lived in this condo for 4 years of college, from 1999 to 2003 when i graduated into the worst job market in at least a decade and my brother took over. that condo was freedom. i had somehow managed to convince my parents that since they were nice enough to pay for my schooling, they should at least invest in some property rather than throwing money away in rent.
so we traipsed all over austin until we learned of this unit not even really for sale which was the pet project of our realtor. we went to look and let me tell you, it wasn't pretty. the whole place smelled like dog piss as the tenant who'd been living there a while had a huge boxer or maybe two and it was wall-to-wall highly absorbent carpet. but i had this *feeling*. there was a huge balcony which no one else had access to overlooking the street. it was gated and in the horseshoe style with pool in the center, à la melrose place. and the window light was nice and it had great vaulted ceilings, and i just knew this was the one. my parents agreed.
the main bedroom was probably 20 feet long with a closet at one end, and there was a sink on the other side of the wall. so we knocked down the wall, put in a small bathroom and washer/dryer where the hall sink and end of the bedroom had been, gutted the kitchen, picked out all new cabinets and counters at home depot, ripped up the carpet and put in an affordable saltillo tile. not only was i living alone for the first time ever, but i was living in my own place, where i was the master, with my own stove, my own fridge, my own shower, my own walls to decorate however i wanted and my own door that i could shut and lock and no one else could get in. in short, it was heaven.
as time went on and i got more and more bored by the cool colors we had chosen for the rooms (teal, pale blue, and lavender/periwinkle), i felt it was time for a change. my bedroom transformed to a metallic satin silver. then, in 2001, the large white area that served as living room/dining room/kitchen became too depressing for me. i had broken up with my boyfriend of two and a half years, my grandfather had died, and i had fallen in love with a poet who i never so much as kissed. when i came back from montana that august, having gained a fresh perspective and some new friends, i went and bought red paint. it was called "rapture."
i chose a marigold color to accent the space on one side and several friends and neighbors came out to help. it was glorious. we recovered my couch to coordinate and suddenly everything looked so much brighter. everyone loved it. anytime people came who hadn't seen it before, they gushed. so when my mom told me that it was time to paint over it, not only did i see an opportunity to make some money before i head to california, but i also saw a chance to say goodbye. to put to rest something that i started. and to clean the palette for someone else.
i started last wednesday (on independence day), took off friday for the task, and worked all through the weekend. on sunday, i finished the main room and was considering giving up for the night. i had started to tape in my old room when i heard thunder. and i knew then that i couldn't stop. i had once written a poem, right at the time that i was falling in love with the poet with the line "ink of night spills down the sky, tonguing the horizon pink, as thunder builds on the silver walls like untold stories." i needed to hear thunder and rain in that silver room one last time. so as it started to rain, i began the task of covering the walls with white, working along the corners and crevices with the window open as the rain poured violently from the sky.
i didn't finish that night and the rain only lasted an hour or so, but i relaxed my grip on a girl i had been, in a space that is no longer mine to experience.
Labels: before, poetry
letter to todd
ten years ago, we were sitting on the mall in DC watching fireworks explode over the washington monument. we were sixteen. i was the kind of girl who wore black on valentine's day, and purple lipstick and blue mascara with regular abandon (to my mother's chagrin). you were unlike any guy i'd known before. you had an infectious laugh and way of talking straight through it and the most beautiful green eyes i'd ever seen.
that summer was the best and worst i've ever had and i wouldn't trade it for anything. riding the bus folded into each other; tearfully acknowledging what was to come under a tree our last day of the trip; making every opportunity to see each other again; making out in the back of my oldsmobile; having your mother answer the phone and tell me how sad you were, that you wouldn't leave the house and she often found you crying; spending an entire family beach vacation lying in bed, writing poetry and listening to sarah mclachlan's "surfacing" album; and that last day i saw you, the day princess di died, and we both knew that school was starting and how could we see each other again? and mary drove me back to midland and i laid in the backseat and cried while "everlong" played on the radio.
it was the first time i'd been in love. i felt like i'd been cracked open, like there was this whole other existence possible. that summer was when my poetry became visceral, when i found that i had a
way of observing and translating. todd, you were the one that brought me to poetry. to myself. i have loved several men since you. and i don't know that we would ever have come together at another time. but i just wanted to take a moment, ten years after the fact, and say:
i'm glad we did.
Labels: before
