10 posts tagged “music”
I'll be the grapes fermented,
Bottled and served with the table set in my finest suit
Like a perfect gentlemen
I'll be the fire escape that's bolted to the ancient brick
Where you will sit and contemplate your day
I'll be the waterwings that save you if you start drowning
In an open tap when your judgement's on the brink
I'll be the phonograph that plays your favorite
Albums back as you're lying there drifting off to sleep
I'll be the platform shoes and undo what heredity's done to you
You won't have to strain to look into my eyes
I'll be your winter coat buttoned and zipped straight to the throat
With the collar up so you won't catch a cold
I want to take you far from the cynics in this town
And kiss you on the mouth
We'll cut our bodies free from the tethers of this scene,
Start a brand new colony
Where everything will change,
We'll give ourselves new names (identities erased)
The sun will heat the grounds
Under our bare feet in this brand new colony
Everything will change
- The Postal Service
I bought an exercise bike, second hand, over the weekend. Sorry Farah, I didn't want to wait until late June -- I am having a meltdown and I need to detox, like, now. Now we have a treadmill (which I despise) and an exercise bike in the house. I was telling my mother, we should start our own gym right here and charge our neighbours to use the two machines, maybe $5 an hour? Then they can get a massage on the negative-ion-generating mattress that my parents just bought, and that could help recoup the massive amount of money they spent on it. And maybe we could put the juicer to use to, you know, make juice to sell to our patrons. But like all other business ideas I have ever thought of, this one won't come to anything. Mainly because it's probably illegal? I'm not sure, and I'm too lazy to find out. Actually that's the main reason why my ideas never come to fruition.
I just realised on the bus today I'm probably going to have (another) nervous breakdown when I reach 40. Zen is just not on the horizon.
A Justin Timberlake song made me exclaim "Oh my God!" out loud just now, because of the lyrics:
Woke up this morning
Heard the TV saying something
About disaster in the world and
It made me wonder where I'm going
There's so much darkness in the world
But I see beauty left in you girl
At the third line I immediately thought of the tsunami and I thought this was going to be an attempt at social consciousness but then the sixth line hit me. Fuck, man.
Yeah I'm listening to FutureSex/LoveSounds. I can't tear myself away from What Goes Around Comes Around.
A few weeks ago my mum said, "Why don't we go to Phuket?" I said, "No no nononono," because after Langkawi, you know, I realised beach holidays are not meant to be taken with my family. So I went to the Tiger Airways website, checked out the promotions and said, "What about Darwin instead?" and my mother said, "Your father says we shouldn't go to white people's country, they'll be racist towards us and treat us badly." Then today after working out I caught a bit of a travel programme on Arts Central and it was featuring Cappadocia, so I said, "It's Turkey. When are we ever going to Turkey?" She said, "Start saving money."
I said, "I have money."
She said, "How much would it cost?"
I said, "We could always set ourselves a budget. The only definitely expensive thing is the flight, the rest we can budget."
She said, "But with places like these we have to go with a tour group, we can't go by ourselves."
I said, "Why not?! I went to Cambodia without a tour group, I planned everything!"
She said, "Cambodia's different, it's easier to go by yourself. But you can't do that with Turkey."
I spluttered in disbelief as I wondered how to explain in the most succinct manner that a second world economy at the threshold of the European Union cannot be much more difficult to navigate than a third world Southeast Asian country fresh out of a civil war.
While I was doing that, she said, "Also your father says we should go with a tour group because the Turks will be arrogant and won't treat us nicely."
I said, "Hah? What? No! Why?!"
She said, "You know how Arab people are arrogant."
I said, "They're not Arabs!"
She said, "They're Turks."
I said, "Yes, and no country in the world is entirely arrogant!"
Ok so anyway the point of this is: I don't know how my mother lives with my father. He hates everyone. Everyone.
Quote found on the wonderful Internet:
I found out about bands before they were cool before finding out about bands before they were cool was cool.
I had just downloaded a few Camera Obscura songs the day before leaving for Cambodia. I really liked them a lot, and for the next week, one song in particular kept playing in my head. I sang it out loud several times, complete with terribly cute hand movements that the Russian was too uncool to appreciate.
Well since I got back home, everytime I hear it, I'm brought back to Cambodia. No place in particular, just a general feeling of being back in a poky hostel room trying not to think of the toilet, in a dark café sipping bubble tea, in the longest and dustiest bus ride of my life and tramping across vast ancient temples all at the same time.
I love it when songs do that, but while I want to replay this song over and over again so I can keep being transported back to where the wats are, I'm also afraid that playing it too much will make the time machine effect wear off.
Hang in there, girlfriend.
Am I the only one who feels like I don't have enough hours in a day?
Oh, that's right, I am. The rest of you are busy gloating about how unemployed or free you are.
So I was just sitting here at my computer, listening to This American Life and minding my own business, when my iTunes suddenly connects to a shared music server, and the next thing I know I have access to someone else's playlist. Someone who has the same music taste as I do, and twice as many songs.
I have no idea who this person is, is it my neighbour? She has Coldplay, Franz Ferdinand, The Libertines, The Cardigans, Beck, The Beatles, Arctic Monkeys, Maximo Park, The Strokes, Sufjan Stevens, Tori Amos, Travis, Radiohead, Postal Service, Oasis, etc etc -- a lot of the stuff I have.
And she has tons of stuff that I've been meaning to check out: Bright Eyes, Camera Obscura, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, The Pretenders, local and regional bands like Electrico, Furniture and The Great Spy Experiment and she has the complete collection of Rufus Wainwright and The Perishers, which I have been wanting for months!
I know it's none of my brothers, they listen to heavy metal bullshit. And I know it's a girl, because her podcasts are all from Vogue.com. Or maybe it's a he. A gay dude in my building...
And the playlist is called "I feel you". Dodgy, I know, (and yes, she has a lot of emo crap on the list) but I feel like a character in an indie film who finds her soulmate in some ethereal, vague way, and then as the plot develops realises she's a lesbian after all. This might be the start of something, people!
I hope she's enjoying my Regina Spektor and The Decemberists, whoever she is. If only there was a way I could talk to her.
There I was in uniform,
Looking at the art teacher
I was just a girl then;
Never have I loved since then
He was not that much older than I was
He had taken our class to the Metropolitan Museum
He asked us what our favourite work of art was,
But never could I tell it was him
Oh, I wish I could tell him
Oh, I wish I could have told him
I looked at the Rubens and Rembrandts
I liked the John Singer Sargents
He told me he liked Turner
Never have I turned since then
No, never have I turned to any other man
All this having been said,
I married an executive company head
All this having been done, a Turner - I own one
Here I am in this uniformish, pantsuit sort of thing,
Thinking of the art teacher
I was just a girl then;
Never have I loved since then
No, never have I loved any other man
-- The Art Teacher, Rufus Wainwright
There's something about this song, the melody, lyrics and his voice combined, that really moves me.
The past few days I've been missing Bangkok quite a bit, I'm not sure why.
I don't know about you guys who were there too, but everytime I hear a Maximo Park song I'm transported right back to the concrete concert field in Muang Thong Thani, wandering around in circles between gigs looking at dirty farangs and eating rock festival food. In Thailand that would be Dunkin' Donuts and tung hoon salad with chicken sausage.
And so I am pleased and excited to no end that I'm going to Cambodia with my friends soon. Sure, it's the Angkor Wat and killing fields, not eight bands and endless jumping, but it's going to be just as magic, if not more so. Good things happen when you go in large numbers to foreign lands. I can't wait. I'd start buying travel supplies now if it weren't three months away.
I did 40 minutes of yoga today after many months of not exercising. Now my elbows feel like they're not strong enough to hold on to the flesh on my arms, my head's all a-swirling and my legs don't feel made for walking. So weak. So flabby. What a state of disrepair I'm in.
Well at least I'm happy. Happy like this song --
Sometimes I get so hungry
I think about pie all day.
Just a little whipped cream
And honey, I'm on my way.
And a piece of the pecan pie
And you, that's all I want.
Just a piece of pecan pie.
And all I want is you.
-- sung by this man:
