Category Archives: Music

24
December
2013
Tags: General, Holiday, Music
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Waltz With Me, Doris Day

I’ve always maintained that many Christmas songs, far from being the merry-fest some would have you believe, are actually sadder than most people realize. There is often an underlying thread of melancholy that runs through them ~ ‘Silent Night’, ‘The First Noel’, ‘Away in a Manger’ ~ these are depressing dirges. Moving yes, but mournful too. Sometimes they’re filled with longing and yearning ~ ‘I’ll Be Home For Christmas’, ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ and this ‘Christmas Waltz’, a slower-paced waltz that speaks of lonely nights, solitary cocktails, and some elusive eleventh-hour epiphany of redemptive romantic love.

Yet what happens when there is no Christmas miracle here? When there is no solace? What happens if the only realization is that Christmas comes but once a year, and never really changes anything? Then, I think, we have to pretend to believe, and if we are lulled by a pleasant Christmas waltz let’s rise to the occasion and dance. Who better to get that started than Doris Day?

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17
December
2013
Tags: Holiday, Madonna, Music
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The Madonna Timeline: Song #102- ‘Masterpiece’ ~ Holidays 2011

{Note: The Madonna Timeline is an ongoing feature, where I put the iPod on shuffle, and write a little anecdote on whatever was going on in my life when that Madonna song was released and/or came to prominence in my mind.}

It was holiday time in the year 2011. I walked the streets of New York, visiting Chris and Suzie, but for this moment between day and night I was alone. Twinkling Christmas lights glowed in shops and restaurants. People hurried by with gifts and shopping bags. The gorgeous panoply of a night in New York, and all its noise and quirks, its glimmer and shimmer, its heartache and gorgeousness. How could such beauty and sadness coexist so closely together?

Well in advance of her upcoming album, Madonna had leaked ‘Masterpiece’ in support of her new film ‘W.E.’ which she directed. It played over the end credits (not soon enough for Oscar consideration, but it did end up winning the Golden Globe for Best Song). Upon first listen, I was hooked, in the same way that some Madonna songs have of instantly capturing my attention and love, speaking to me as if I was the only one who could truly understand.

The impossibility of loving something so perfect, or of loving someone so beautiful that they exist only on a pedestal, is something most of us experience at one point or another, but mostly from afar, never as the recipient of such adoration. We all think we want that, and maybe some of us really do.

On the street is a different sort of beauty, an intangible one. New York during the holidays can be really stimulating, or really depressing. Hovering somewhere between the two, my evening began, and ended. It was a jewel of a moment – hard, gorgeous, impenetrable, striking – buffeted by friends and loved ones, but isolated in the middle, and maybe the end too.

If you were the Mona Lisa
You’d be hanging in the Louvre
Everyone would come to see you
You’d be impossible to move
It seems to me that’s what you are
A rare and priceless work of art
Stay behind your velvet rope
I will not renounce all hope

A week or two later I found myself in Boston, walking through the Public Garden as dusk fell. It was just after the golden hour, when brave artists would have been packing up their easels in the spring, if people still tried to create, if they still tried to make something of beauty. The branches that once held leaves and spring blossoms were barren – the only adornment being a few light-catching segments of ice, and some stalwart crotches of snow. The last vestiges of the day faded quickly, and soon it was dark.

That weekend, to escape the cruelty of the cold, I went to find respite in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, its center garden courtyard filled with greenery, backed by the soft fall of water, cushioned by a blanket of moss. Potted tree ferns arch finely reticulated fronds over gravel walkways. It would be an ideal place to get married, if they allowed it. Instead, couples can merely hold hands, or steal quick kisses. No ceremonies or receptions are allowed. No matter – today there is no one to hold my hand.

And I’m right by your side
Like a thief in the night
I stand in front of the masterpiece
And I can’t tell you why
It hurts so much
To be in love with a masterpiece
Cause after all
Nothing’s indestructible

Several works of art were stolen from this museum back in the early 90’s. It happened right before I started at Brandeis, and I remember it being in the Boston papers whenever a lead was followed. A couple of men dressed as police officers convinced the security team to let them in late one night, then proceeded to tie them up, and steal several priceless works, cutting them rudely and crudely out from their frames.

To date, the crime has never been solved, nor the stolen pieces found. The empty frames remain hanging, as Ms. Gardner’s orders were that nothing in the museum be touched or moved no matter what. I walk by those spooky frames, eerily empty of all the beauty they once held, and want to cry at the state of the world. It turns out that beauty can be robbed ~ cut out, rolled up, and stuffed into the night, never to be found again. Not yet, anyway.

From the moment I first saw you
All the darkness turned to white
An impressionistic painting
Tiny particles of light
It seem to me that’s what you’re like
The look-but-please-don’t-touch-me type
And honestly it can’t be fun
To always be the chosen one

Across the room from one of the missing works, I walk to the window looking down into the courtyard. Where were you, Ms. Gardner, when your painting went missing? What tears did you cry when they tore out your heart? A carpet of baby tears spilled onto stone far below, while delicate orchids drooped their weeping colorful cargo. Sometimes beauty made the heartache.

And I’m right by your side
Like a thief in the night
I stand in front of the masterpiece
And I can’t tell you why
It hurts so much
To be in love with a masterpiece
Cause after all
Nothing’s indestructible

Christmas Eve at my family home in Amsterdam, NY, that same year ~ 2011. Candles flicker on the piano, stockings hang from the mantle, and Christmas music plays softly in the background. Decked out in holiday finery, and the scent of Tom Ford’s Santal Blush, I am unimpressive for any of those reasons, at least for those assembled here tonight. My niece and nephew bound down the hallway in their diapers. The family is together, intact. It will be the last time. I want to cry for how beautiful it is, how wonderful life can be. I want to cry because I know it cannot last.

Nothing’s indestructible, Nothing’s indestructible…

Beauty swirls around me, glittering and sparkling from the Christmas tree, light bouncing among the crystals of a chandelier, and dazzling the eyes. I loosen the silk tie around my neck and slip off the suddenly-stifling pair of wing-tips from my feet. Years ago I would lie down in this very space, on this very carpet, and look up at the tree. I would squint my eyes until it went slightly out of focus, until the lights merged and danced and became abstract spots of color, orbs of illumination. I would feel overwhelmed by its beauty, and the first drops of moisture would splinter the images before my eyes, fracturing their pretty perfection.

I wanted company as much as I wanted to be alone.

And I’m right by your side
Like a thief in the night
I stand in front of the masterpiece
And I can’t tell you why
It hurts so much
To be in love with a masterpiece
Cause after all
Nothing’s indestructible
Cause after all
Nothing’s indestructible.
Song #102 – ‘Masterpiece’ ~ Holidays 2011
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15
December
2013
Tags: General, Music
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Heal Me

The brilliant Casey Stratton brought this beautiful piece to my attention tonight, when I needed it most. It’s by Sleeping At Last. It’s amazing the power that a proper piece of music can have to transform, and heal, and help. And maybe tonight I will… sleep at last.

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14
December
2013
Tags: Holiday, Music
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A Song for Winter

When the world turns quiet, and there’s a pause in the holiday hustle bustle, this is when I feel it. Like the grief that reveals itself in times of calm and contemplation, the memory rises to the surface ~ a memory of happiness and wholeness ~ a memory of you. Sunset rooms and summer songs always appear preferable, but winter holds her own charms, in a plaintive voice over a simple piano. The musical companion to falling snow. A song for the season.

 

The lake is frozen over

The trees are white with snow
And all around
Reminders of you
Are everywhere I go

The soft folds of white sheets form a different winter landscape. Feather-filled pillows, cool white light from the window, and the cradled warmth of the morning bed. Then, the jagged icy flow of memories, of the warmth made by two – so much more enveloping than the solitary heat of a single body. I miss it already, the heaviness of the heart like some stranger in a foreign city, walking alone and watched curiously by the locals. I pull into myself, tucking the blanket under my chin, bringing my knees up to my chest, and holding on tightly. In this fetal position, another winter is born.

It’s late and morning’s in no hurry
But sleep won’t set me free
I lie awake and try to recall
How your body felt beside me
When silence gets too hard to handle
And the night too long

A fireside perch. A cup of tea. A way to quell the cold of winter. And Christmas, coming as it always does to light up the shortest days, somehow making things sadder, more melancholy. So I think of something happy, of summer walks and lavender fields, of laughter and mirth and the merriment of a meal with a friend. I think of beginnings and firsts and starts of new journeys, the time when all is laid out ahead, when all has yet to happen ~ the endless and glorious thrill of possibility. Then I think of you, and of people at their happiest. You can’t be angry with the world when you think of people in their most genuinely happy moments – the light in the eyes of a parent watching their child walk for the first time, the wonder of a child bounding towards the tree on Christmas morning, the tender look of a person gazing through tears at another, at the moment two souls touch.

 

And this is how I see you
In the snow on Christmas morning
Love and happiness surround you
As you throw your arms up to the sky
I keep this moment by and by

In the deepest, darkest corner of night, somewhere in the dimmest hours before dawn, I finally feel warm again. At least, there is the echo of warmth from all that came before. Somehow my solitary body made its own heat, carved its own niche into the universe, whether or not you wanted it here. I stay in bed longer than I usually would, turning over onto my side, gazing at another empty pillow. A day or a year or a decade has gone by, and when I try to find you again, when I foolishly roll over and smell the place where your head would have rested, of course it no longer carried your scent. Somewhere in the night that slipped away too.

Oh I miss you now, my love
Merry Christmas, merry Christmas,
Merry Christmas, my love
Sense of joy fills the air
And I daydream and I stare
Up at the tree and I see
Your star up there

I am trying to hang onto this. It’s too easy for these things to recede and fade away. I hold myself in the way I held you ~ tightly, desperately, close to my chest ~ like it was the last bastion of whatever was going to save us from sadness, from solitude.

And then something new, something less selfish, something I’d never wished for anyone without first wishing it for myself ~ the wish of happiness. With or without me, it’s all I want for you. In your smile and your laugh, in your contented sighs and relieved breaths, the thought of you at your happiest makes it all okay. Is that what true love is? Learning to let go…

 

And this is how I see you
In the snow on Christmas morning
Love and happiness surround you
As you throw your arms up to the sky
I keep this moment by and by.

Blankets of snow, showers of kisses, layers of laughter, wishes of cheer. The ever-revolving toy top, spinning infinitely while the rest of the world watches and waits for it to topple. Love twirling wildly, charged by some centrifugal force of the heart holding it all together. Dizzy, I fall back into bed, groggily trying to determine whether it really happened, or whether it was a winter dream. Outside the snow begins to fall again.

Christmas is coming, and all I can do is cry.

 

 

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10
December
2013
Tags: Holiday, Music
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Carey On With Christmas

Forget ‘Vision of Love’. Forget ‘One Sweet Day’. Forget ‘Hero’. Mariah Carey’s greatest contribution to pop culture was, and remains, ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’. It’s damn near impossible to write a modern-day Christmas song that will last the test of time, but this looks like it might be a plausible contender. Since it first came out in the 90’s, it’s been a seasonal staple, and with all the cover versions piling up, it seems in no danger of fading away. Plus, it’s catchy as hell and makes everyone feel a little bit better, no matter how Grinchy some of us want to be.

I don’t want a lot for Christmas
There is just one thing I need
I don’t care about the presents
Underneath the Christmas tree
I just want you for my own
More than you could ever know
Make my wish come true
All I want for Christmas is you.

From the opening bells and the bombast of the initial build-up, to the bouncing bass and timeless pop melody, it’s about as near to perfect as a Christmas song gets. Coupled with the romantic yearning that informs more holiday music than you realize, it’s one of those cozy and sweetly earnest songs, the kind that tugs at heartstrings and hope, leaving a giddy taste of love ~ a love made all the warmer during the holiday season.

All the lights are shining so brightly everywhere
And the sound of children’s laughter fills the air
And everyone is singing, I hear those sleigh bells ringing
Santa won’t you bring me the one I really need
Won’t you please bring my baby to me?

This song was the starting salvo of the Structure holiday music tape – something that played perpetually in all the long hours of holiday retail work I did in the 90’s. But as annoying as the “You mean you forgot cranberries too?” bullshit holiday songs could get, this one never got old. Even at the end of a long day of dealing with irate customers and even more irate managers, I felt reinvigorated when it started up again. It spoke to a lifelong search for the one – that person I wanted so badly – the only one I wanted beneath the mistletoe. Even if I didn’t know who that was then, I knew the longing, and I knew the want.

I just want to see my baby, standing right outside my door
I just want you for my own, more than you could ever know
Make my wish come true
Baby, all I want for Christmas is you.

 

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09
December
2013
Tags: Music
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Empty as a Drum

Enveloped by ice, and stranded at a grand hotel, I haunt empty hallways with an extra day in Dallas, somewhere in the middle of a sprawling country. In a dim corner, I sit and write letters as dusk approaches. Now and then one of the hotel staff ambles idly by with a nod or a polite Hello. Over the speakers, this song comes on:

When I saw the break of day

I wished that I could fly away
Instead of kneeling in the sand
Catching teardrops in my hand
My heart is drenched in wine
But you’ll be on my mind
Forever

While happiness will always be a hotel for me, there’s a bit of melancholy that seeps into such a transient world. As I sat alone on a couch, looking out onto the gray world, I thought of the people who traveled through the space. Some were stuck an extra day, like me, biding time until the way back home was clear. Some were at the height of their weekend getaways, giddily coasting on the freedom that vacation affords. Some were merely working, trudging through their work day while mustering the courtesy to say Hello to a lonely guy writing letters above the lobby.

 

Out across the endless sea
I would die in ecstasy
But I’ll be a bag of bones
Driving down the road alone
My heart is drenched in wine
But you’ll be on my mind
Forever

So far from home, so far from my heart, yet somehow so safe in my solitude. How strange the way time alone can change things, and heal things. Sometimes we all need that.

 

Something has to make you run
I don’t know why I didn’t come
I feel as empty as a drum

And sometimes we need a little bit more.

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22
November
2013
Tags: Music
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The One Thing That Never Fails to Make Me Cry

Flash mobs.

There, I said it.

My saddest little confession: flash mobs make me cry.

Every single time.

It all goes back to fifth grade at McNulty Elementary School. I had Miss Lampman, and we spent a good chunk of the year learning about the United States. To aid in our remembering them, we had to learn a song entitled ‘The Fifty Nifty United States’. It was simply a list of the states (in alphabetical order) set to music. [To this day, I can recite all fifty alphabetically thanks to this song. Try me.] The culmination of weeks of rehearsals was that we would go around to the other classrooms and sing it for them. This was before I became terrorized by performing or speaking in front of people, so I didn’t have any fear in my heart. Instead, I had the flu, and on the day we were set to perform, I had to stay home from school.

In truth, I totally forgot about missing the sing-along, even through most of the next day. But as we approached the last minutes of our final period, the teacher came up to me and said that everyone had been saying that they wished Alan had been there, so they recorded a video of one of the performances. Now, I’m always shocked that anyone thinks of me when I’m not around, much less talks about me. (Strange, but true.) So I was sort of thrown, and admittedly touched, that people even noticed. Then she started the video. Most of the class was concerned with finishing whatever projects they were working on, chattering on in end-of-the-school-day nonsense, but I leaned back against a desk and watched my classmates sing the song. The camera panned across the pool of faces, each person singing earnestly and unabashedly, and it felt for a moment like they were singing to me.

Now, I don’t cry in front of people. I barely cry when I’m not in front of people. And by the fifth grade, I was just as cold and stand-offish (in a lovable way) as I am today. So I was not prepared for what happened next.

About halfway through watching my classmates and friends and teacher, I started choking back tears. This immense wave of emotion at having been missed, a sign that surely I was part of something, came over me and my eyes welled up. I caught myself just in time, wiping away the first bit of salty water and willing myself to regain composure. I looked around at my classmates. A few looked back quizzically, then went on with what they were doing. A few smiled. I don’t think I’ve ever felt as much a part of something as I did at that moment.

And so, whenever I see a flash mob video it never fails to elicit a few tears, and a memory of the one day I felt like I belonged.

Here are a few of my favorites. You probably won’t cry at any of them (I have yet to meet someone who bawls like a baby at the sight of a flash mob), but for me each of these brought on some tears.

In this one, it’s the smiling spectator at 3:05 and 3:38.

This last one was all about the little girl conducting at 3:35 ~ along with the music, the faces, and the way people can still come together as one. How can you not be moved by that?

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16
November
2013
Tags: Gay, Music
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A Glambert Reborn

Though I haven’t seen ‘Glee’ in years, someone posted this on FaceBook and I was instantly reminded of why I loved Adam Lambert. He’s already been named a Hunk of the Day here, but if Tom Daley can get more than one shout-out, surely Mr. Lambert deserves just as much (if not more). There is no better show-man, and when the stellar theatrics are backed by such an amazing instrument (his voice, gutter-dwellers) I am nothing if not blown-away.

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14
November
2013
Tags: Madonna, Music
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The Madonna Timeline: Song #101 ~ ‘Mother and Father’ – Spring 2003

{Note: The Madonna Timeline is an ongoing feature, where I put the iPod on shuffle, and write a little anecdote on whatever was going on in my life when that Madonna song was released and/or came to prominence in my mind.}

There was a time I was happy in my life
There was a time I believed I’d live forever
There was a time that I prayed to Jesus Christ
There was a time I had a mother
It was nice
Nobody else would ever take the place of you
Nobody else could do the things that you could do
No one else I guess could hurt me like you did
I didn’t understand, I was just a kid

He is chasing me up the stairs. I struggle to run faster, my feet slipping out from beneath me yet somehow I do not fall. It feels like the harder I run, the slower I go, as if I’m suspended slightly above the ground, on some virtual treadmill, my legs running faster and faster but my body moving ever slower. He is gaining on me. I scramble up more stairs, around the landing, and grab the banister to dash into my brother’s room. It still feels like I’m flying in slow-motion, over the rust-colored shag carpeting, around the corner and through the bathroom into the room where my Gram used to stay when she was alive. There, it happens, there he catches up to me, there I fall.

I turn around and see the frightening visage of something that was once amusing – the vampiric form of… Grandpa Munster – ? – from the old Munsters television show. Only he is an evil version of that character ~ eyes gouged out, fangs dripping with death, the malevolence clear and concisely concentrated on me. It is a monster, and it has a hold of me.

I have landed near the door to the hallway that leads to my parents’ room. It is open, and I try my best to scream out, to shout, because there, twenty feet away, stands my mother. She is putting on jewelry, her back to me, and the louder I try to scream for her, the less sound comes out. She doesn’t hear me, and if she does – the most terrifying possibility of this nightmare I’m having – she doesn’t respond. I scream and scream and scream because I know I am about to die, and she simply fastens her necklace and moves out of sight.

The dream ends. I wake in a panicked sweat, my face sore from crying, my jaw weak from trying to yell. It is one of the few recurring nightmares I will have in my childhood, and by far the most frightening.

Oh mother, why aren’t you here with me
No one else saw the things that you could see
I’m trying hard to dry my tears
Yes father, you know I’m not so free
I’ve got to give it up
Find someone to love me
I’ve got to let it go
Find someone that I can care for
I’ve got to give it up
Find someone to love me
I’ve got to let it go
Find someone that I can care for

Another entry from the maligned ‘American Life‘ album illuminates what an under-rated record this was in Madonna’s career. ‘Mother and Father’ addresses the loss, betrayal, often-difficult and ever-complex relationship between parents and children. In this song (as in some of her most powerful – like ‘Promise to Try‘ and ‘Oh Father‘ – Madonna laments the loss of her mother, the resulting distance from her father, and all the messy overlapping emotions that informed her entire childhood and made her into the woman who conquered the world. The woman who wouldn’t need anyone else.

There was a time I was happy in my life
There was a time I believed I’d live forever
There was a time I prayed to Jesus Christ
There was a time I had a mother
It was nice…

Anyone who’s ever had a parent can relate to something in this song. Anyone whose parents have ever treated them unfairly, or misplaced their blame, or simply felt hurt themselves, will be able to access the anger and rage, pain and heartache, so raw and tender that the scars have never gone away. It never can go away, either – those scars are with you for life. What you choose to do with them is what determines whether you can forgive. The alternative though, is the case of Madonna, who lost her mother very early in life.

My mother died when I was five, and all I did was sit and cry
I cried and cried and cried all day, until the neighbors went away
They couldn’t take my loneliness, I couldn’t take their phoniness
My father had to go to work, I used to think he was a jerk
I didn’t know his heart was broken, And not another word was spoken
He became a shadow of the father I was dreaming of
I made a vow that I would never need another person ever
Turned my heart into a cage, A victim of a kind of rage

And then the messy mix of emotions, the ravaging cuts of guilt, the way time works to heal some wounds while re-opening others, the never-ending push and pull between people whose love can work in ways both wonderful and hurtful. When the love you have in your childhood is tempered by those conditions, when you can tell that you might not be as well-liked as others, you wonder if all love will be like that. It’s debilitating in a way, and the harm that results is irreparable. You must choose then to move on or let it destroy you.

I gotta give it up
I gotta give it up
I gotta give it up
I gotta give it up
Find someone that I can care for
Find someone that I can care for

Yet even if you move on, even if you give up and let it go, even if you find someone you think you can love, who loves you in return, there will be doubt, there will be worry, there will be the nagging thought that you may never be worthy of love. Some of us can’t give it up. Some of us battle with the demons because they continue to battle with us. Some never change, repeating history, making the same misguided mistakes over and over. How do you give up on something so inextricably bound to the heart, even if it hurts?

I’ve got to give it up
I’ve got to let it go
I’ve got to give it up
Oh mother, oh father
I gotta give it up

I’ve got to give it up
Song #101: ‘Mother and Father’ – Spring 2003
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06
November
2013
Tags: Madonna, Music
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The Madonna Timeline: Song #100 – ‘Nothing Fails’ ~ Spring 2003

{Note: The Madonna Timeline is an ongoing feature, where I put the iPod on shuffle, and write a little anecdote on whatever was going on in my life when that Madonna song was released and/or came to prominence in my mind.}

I’m in love with you, you silly thing
Anyone can see
What is it with you, you silly thing?
Just take it from me
It was not a chance meeting
Feel my heart beating
You’re the one.

You could take all this, take it away
I’d still have it all
‘Cause I’ve climbed the tree of life
And that is why, no longer scared if I fall
When I get lost in space
I can return to this place
‘Cause, you’re the one
Nothing fails
No more fears
Nothing fails
You washed away my tears
Nothing fails
No more fears
Nothing fails
Nothing fails

In the grand tradition of ‘Like A Prayer’, both with its majestic chorus and its love-song-sentiment doubling as a spiritual declaration, ‘Nothing Fails’ is the 100th Madonna Timeline entry. From 2003’s ‘American Life’ album, this is one Madonna moment that should have gotten more recognition – as well as a proper release (even if I can’t imagine it on the radio).

In a single powerful chorus, Madonna strips a career of religious references away, not to mention centuries of beliefs, to reveal the core of the matter: religion is a man-made belief-system. Spirituality is founded upon love ~ love for the earth, for the universe, for other human beings ~ and love is its own religion.

I’m not religious
But I feel so moved
Makes me want to pray
Pray you’ll always be here

I was hoping that the 100th timeline might coincide with a more important milestone – instead, ‘Nothing Fails’ came at a relatively calm time: the start of spring 2003, when I was happily working in the Construction Management office at the Thruway Authority (an office of all gentlemen – God how I miss it), and the start of our second year in our current home, when things were finally settling down (and the remaining vestiges of 70’s carpet and wallpaper were at long last being excised). Those times of calm can often only be seen in retrospect, when one has the wisdom of distance. In my car, the ‘American Life’ album played on perpetual repeat, the latest incarnation of our Queen on hot and heavy rotation.

The song was a calming balm, a meditation on the infallibility and power of love. It was, like the best of Madonna’s work, an escape and a realization. Soaring on the growing chorus and rising strings, it carries the listener to a higher plane. The very best of music does that, taking you to a different space, a holier place, and somehow we are the better for it. Like most things having to do with Madonna, the journey was the reason. The way and the word.

I’m not religious
But I feel so moved
Makes me want to pray
Pray you’ll always be here
I’m not religious
But I feel such love
Makes me want to pray

For my part, I listened to it while driving to see friends, watching the budding trees rush by, or waiting for Andy to come to bed in the middle of the night. Shrouded in the mystery of love, the heart is also quelled by its power and force, the incontrovertible existence of emotion that has no discernible basis in scientific stats or concrete theories. Defying logic, forgetting reason, and flying in the face of fact, love fueled the human race. And when we didn’t know, when we couldn’t discern the workings of the heart, we created a system of beliefs to help us get our heads around it. Is that what religion originally was? Nothing more than a way of explaining science before we figured it all out on our own? I don’t know.

Sometimes I’m not even sure I know what love really is.

But sometimes… I am.

I’m not religious
But I feel so moved
I’m not religious
Makes me wanna pray
I’m not religious
But I feel so moved
I’m not religious
Makes me want to pray
Nothing fails
No more fears
Nothing fails
You washed away my tears
Nothing fails
No more fears
Nothing fails.
Song #100 – ‘Nothing Fails’ ~ Spring 2003
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03
November
2013
Tags: Music
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You’re Not the Only One

It wasn’t quite November, but there had already been a lot of rain. Even the mighty oak, always the last to let go her stubborn dead children, was releasing them, allowing them to get pulled down by the wind and wet. In the dark, though, bare trees were less desolate, and the leaves on the ground formed a blanket that softened footfalls and buffered a lonely kid’s wandering.

On the stereo, Guns ‘N Roses began their epic nine-minute mini-opus, ‘November Rain’. This song was the epitome of adolescent angst – is there a more cruel form of angst? – and whatever happens to you then is what sticks with you for life, no matter what you become, no matter how much you change, no matter where you go.

When I look into your eyes, I can see a love restrained,
But darlin’ when I hold you, Don’t you know I feel the same
‘Cause nothin’ lasts forever, And we both know hearts can change
And it’s hard to hold a candle in the cold November rain
We’ve been through this such a long long time, just trying to kill the pain…
But lovers always come, And lovers always go, And no one’s really sure who’s lettin’ go today
Walking away…
If we could take the time to lay it on the line, I could rest my head just knowin’ that you were mine
All mine.
So if you want to love me then darlin’ don’t refrain
Or I’ll just end up walking in the cold November rain.
Do you need some time on your own?
Do you need some time all alone?
Everybody needs some time on their own
Don’t you know you need some time all alone?

I tried to run. A black coat billowed behind me, the shadow of the monster I was becoming always at my heels, inseparable and inescapable, but that didn’t slow my steps. I ran up the street of my childhood home, the wind whipping leaves around me, teasing me to soar, to attempt to make and take flight, and the sky laughing cold tears down upon my soaked face. The faster I ran, the harder I went, the quicker I came closer to myself, closer to what I could not leave, and what I could not face.

The cold, burning sting of hand upon cheek, the prickling of an icy rain on exposed skin, and the welcome reassurance that there was still feeling here. A heart still pumped its blood, a brain still sent out its neurotransmitters, but that mysterious nether-region of feelings and emotions lay asleep, waiting for sabotage, waiting for the rest to turn. My feet started to burn, my calves and thighs ached, and my chest heaved with the remnants of years of asthma. I begged the wind and the rain and the night to bring deliverance, in whatever form I deserved.

I know it’s hard to keep an open heart when even friends seem out to harm you
But if you could heal a broken heart, wouldn’t time be out to charm you?
Sometimes I need some time on my own
Sometimes I need some time all alone
Everybody needs some time on their own
Don’t you know you need some time all alone?

I slowed to a walk. Golden lights in windows and doorways of happier homes glowed teasing, taunting, vicious reassurance – the promise that there was warmth somewhere, but always somewhere else. In my house, the promise of a plastic bag and sleeping pills lay hidden beneath my pillow, in the dark. Nothing else waited for me. No one knew I was gone.

And when your fears subside, and shadows still remain,
I know that you can love me when there’s no one left to blame
So never mind the darkness, We still can find a way,
‘Cause nothin’ lasts forever, Even cold November rain.

How many nights had I tried to run like this? Not with any destination in mind, only with the knowledge that I simply needed to be in motion, needed to thrash myself against the world – because the world hurts, and the only way to get through it sometimes is to thrash back and destroy. I started to run again, picking up speed, flying through the night. It was mostly downhill now, and I gave in to gravity, and my legs sped over the wet pavement, and for a moment it seemed I might be able to leave my mind behind.

This part of the song flashed in my head and I ran even faster:

Don’t you think that you need somebody?
Don’t you think that you need someone?
Everybody needs somebody…
You’re not the only one, you’re not the only one.

Outrunning my tears and pain, outrunning the boy they wanted me to be and the boy I never was, outrunning the boy I would never be. Outrunning the boy who might need someone, the boy who might be the only one.

Don’t you think that you need somebody?
Don’t you think that you need someone?
Everybody needs somebody…
You’re not the only one…
You’re not the only one.
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02
November
2013
Tags: Music
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You’re Only Ever Who You Were

You were the popular one, the popular chick
It is what it is, now I’m popular-ish
Standing on the field with your pretty pompom
Now you’re working at the movie selling popular corn
I could have been a mess but I never went wrong
‘Cause I’m putting down my story in a popular song
I said I’m putting down my story in a popular song

I love everything about this video. From the exquisite collar on Mika’s shirt, to the Mini-Coop shout-out (even if the one I want is Ice Blue), to the surprise-twist ending. Based largely (entirely?) on ‘Popular’ from ‘Wicked’, it’s a nifty extension of that song’s themes, with a deeper rendering of issues like bullying and ostracism. Backed with an irresistible pop melody, it’s the perfect way to say fuck-off as politely as possible. That’s a calling card worth leaving if you’ve ever been treated badly.

My problem, I never was a model,
I never was a scholar,
But you were always popular,
You were singing all the songs I don’t know
Now you’re in the front row
‘Cause my song is popular
Popular, I know about popular
It’s not about who you are or your fancy car
You’re only ever who you were
Popular, I know about popular
And all that you have to do is be true to you
That’s all you ever need to know

It bring back memories of school. I wasn’t hugely picked on, but I certainly wasn’t popular. To this day, I wouldn’t say I’m popular. If you don’t feel that at the beginning – if you never feel like you belong – you can’t ever really feel it. Even if you are loved. (And in all honesty, I had my own Mean Girl moments or picking on others. I paid for those in my own way.)

As for my schoolmates, it’s been fun watching some of them progress in their own lives now that things like FaceBook and Twitter exist to illuminate those from our past. I won’t get catty about whether they’ve aged well or remained in shape or made something out of their lives – those stories are theirs. And the real bullies, the losers who were racist or homophobic or simply ignorant and hateful, well, I doubt they’re even on FaceBook.

Always on the lookout for someone to hate,
Picking on me like a dinner plate
You hid during classes, and in between
Dunked me in the toilets, now it’s you that cleans them
You tried to make me feel bad with the things you do
It ain’t so funny when the joke’s on you
Ooh, the joke’s on you
Got everyone laughing, got everyone clapping, asking,
“How come you look so cool?”
‘Cause that’s the only thing that I’ve learned at school, boy
I said that that’s the only thing that I’ve learned at school.

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22
October
2013
Tags: Music
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Rainy Tuesdays

Rainy Mondays get all the glory, but rainy Tuesdays are where the real heartache resides. We are accustomed to the brutality of an unforgiving Monday – it’s the Tuesdays that we don’t expect to be so tough. They sneak in, capturing by subterfuge, taking it all down because we already think we are safe. But we are not. Like the painful crack of the unexpected emptiness immediately after an airport good-bye, the decimated inconsolable grief that no curled-up fetal position can relieve, it’s a hurt that lingers, a hurt that stays.

The music is by London Grammar. The first song is ‘Interlude’. London calls to me still, I have not yet given up. I haven’t given up on a lot of things. The longing is still here.

The second song is ‘Nightcall’. Both are good for a foggy morning, or a rainy Tuesday, or a bus ride taking you to where you think you want to be.

 

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19
October
2013
Tags: Music
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All the Nights I Sleep Alone…

It feels as if I’m the least lonely when I’m by myself.

In a crowd of people, surrounded by friends, at a family dinner, sitting next to my husband – those are the times I feel lonely.

When I’m alone, I don’t worry about present company. There is no need to exclude, or to be excluded.

You’re my water
You’re my wine
You’re my whiskey
From time to time
You’re the hunger
On my bones
All the nights
I sleep alone

How I wish I could explain this better. How I wish to be someone better than I am.

How I wish I didn’t make such a mess of things by trying to be right and perfect and pretty.

How I wish I could stop.

Sweet intoxication
When your words
Wash over me
Whether or not
Your lips move
You speak to me

Are you out there? Are you listening? Are you the Hunter’s Moon or the starlight? Or are you the setting sun?

I will wait for you to rise, whatever you are, wherever you are.

Yes, I will wait.

Like an ocean
Without waves
You’re the movement
That I crave
And in that motion
I long to drown
And be lost not to be found

Leave me to this melancholic madness, I will lose myself and be fine.

We all wake in a fog. For the lucky ones, it clears as the day progresses.

For the unlucky ones, the ones who don’t get enough sun, the fog never lifts.

It’s my fault, and it’s your fault, and it’s no one’s fault.

But there is a fault, and a fissure, and I will not wait for it to grow.

You’re my water
You’re my wine
You’re my whiskey
From time to time

‘Drunkard’s Prayer’, Over the Rhine

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14
October
2013
Tags: Madonna, Music
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The Madonna Timeline: Song #99 ~ ‘I’m A Sinner’ – Summer 2012

{Note: The Madonna Timeline is an ongoing feature, where I put the iPod on shuffle, and write a little anecdote on whatever was going on in my life when that Madonna song was released and/or came to prominence in my mind.}

Like the sun, like the light, like a flame
Like the storm I burn through everything
Like a bomb in the night, Like a train
Thundering through the hills, Let it rain…
I’m a sinner, I like it that way…

Another highlight off Madonna’s most recent album ‘MDNA‘, this is the joyously unrepentant ‘I’m A Sinner’. It’s got the guitar-heavy William Orbit touches that made the ‘Ray of Light’ album such an organic, grounded experience, and some cheeky religious references to give it a classic Madonna edge. It’s also a fun sing-a-long, and one of the more merry bits of the MDNA Tour. In that performance, she mashes it up with an unlikely B-side, ‘Cyberraga’, in a genius melding that must be seen to be believed.

All the boys, all the boys and girls
Wanna be like us tonight
All the boys, all the boys and girls
Ride the magic bus tonight
I’m a sinner, I’m a sinner,
I’m a sinner, I like it that way
I’m a sinner, I’m a sinner,
I’m a sinner, I like it that way…
Like a moon with no light of my own
Search the sky for a place to call home
I woke up with my head in the fire
Get my kicks when I’m walking the wire
I’m a sinner, I like it that way…
All the boys, all the boys and girls
Wanna be like us tonight
All the boys, all the boys and girls
Ride the magic bus tonight
I’m a sinner, I’m a sinner,
I’m a sinner, I like it that way
I’m a sinner, I’m a sinner,
I’m a sinner, I like it that way…

For my part, this song was one of the first I danced to with my niece and nephew. They were two at the time, but already bouncing about and parading around the dining room. They won’t remember that, but I will.

Outside, the summer day shifted the shadow of the house over the lawn. The red wagon in which I’d pull them around the block sat waiting for the next ride. Inside, the carpet was soft against our bare feet, and we were dancing to Madonna. I was their silly Uncle, acting like a kid again, and it was like a dream and a prayer and the innocence of childhood all over again.

Hail Mary, full of grace
Get down on your knees and pray
Jesus Christ, hanging on the cross
Died for our sins, it’s such a loss
Saint Christopher, found my way
I’ll be coming home one day
Saint Sebastian, don’t you cry
Let those poison arrows fly…
Saint Anthony, lost and found
Thomas Aquinas, stand your ground
All the saints and holy men
Catch me before I sin again.

We were supposedly born with original sin thrust upon us, erased only with the magic of baptism, but how soon we soil ourselves again. One can’t get through childhood without getting a little dirty. For some of us, it’s more than a little. But dancing with a couple of two-year-olds, even at my ripe old age, I feel clean again, and pure, and I can say that I’m a sinner, that we’re all sinners, and revel in it with no shame.

My niece and nephew don’t yet know or care about sin. Their only concerns are that I can bring them around in their wagon, or dance like a lunatic in the dining room, or read them a story when they tire out. The worst atrocities they can commit are a few thrown toys and the occasional temper tantrum, but nothing that rises to anything remotely sinful.

That miraculous live version…

I’m a sinner, I’m a sinner,
I’m a sinner, I like it that way
I’m a sinner, I’m a sinner,
I’m a sinner, I like it that way
You’re a sinner, you’re a sinner
You’re a sinner, you like it that way
We’re all sinners, we’re all sinners
We’re all sinners
Song #99: ‘I’m A Sinner’ ~ Summer 2012
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