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I could make a career of being blue
Half of the time I feel like I'm walking around speaking Entish. Not really speaking Entish, of course- I can't, for one, and I think I'd notice if I woke up one day speaking in Tolkien's tongues- and this is not a metaphor that would come to me organically, only my dreams last night involved, among other things, reading a song in The Two Towers I'm not sure actually exists, and that I don't remember enough of to be able to check whether or not it does without going through the book. Moral of the story is never to leave your copies of The Lord of the Rings anywhere you aren't, because you never know when you will have to verify the existence of a passage.
Point is, half of the time I feel like I'm speaking Entish, taking ages and ages to say something that is comprehensible to almost no one, if that, but that I couldn't translate even if I wanted to. If I were reading anything new I'd quote from it, but I haven't been reading anything new in a long time, I haven't been reading anything lately except Fellowship and a whole stack of Madeleine L'Engles I know by heart, and I don't know how to talk about anything.
The brother is out to prom and Arsenal play Blackburn later. The parents are out because they accompanied the brother to the talk and dinner Ateneo gives its Merit scholars (they got the Director's Listers' equivalent three years ago with me, so that's six meals total they've robbed the Ateneo of) and they decided to eat out at Eastwood. This time last year the brother was out to prom and Arsenal were due to play someone- you know, it might have been the horrific 4-4 Newcastle game, but I can't be sure- and I meant to watch but didn't wake up in time for and I'd just found A Severed Wasp in Book Sale, so maybe it's a seasonal absolute-nothing-and-attempts-to-fill-it-in-with-Madeleine-L'Engle thing? Anyway, since I don't feel like having my arms pulled out of their sockets by an overenthusiastic pit bull, I'm letting Ribbons out in front, and giving you all music while waiting for her to calm down.
This was originally meant for me and the general audience, and that's still whom the commentary was written for, but it is now dedicated to Guia. Just say the word, and so on. I feel like that's the only thing I ever say in times like these, but this time it's because you will always be much more of a reasonable adult that I am, and so I have to make the immature comments. Not, of course, that it is any less meant.
I Don't Want to Get Over You || The Magnetic Fields
I guess I could take a sleeping pill and sleep at will and not have to go through what I go through
I guess I should take Prozac, right, and just smile all night at somebody new
Someone not too bright but sweet and kind who would try to get you off my mind
I could leave this agony behind
Which is just what I'd do if I wanted to, but I don't want to get over you
69 Love Songs is, as they say, an album about love songs, which is not the same as an album about songs about love. It is alternately satirical and smart and vulnerability-generatingly honest, and this song hits so many of the points that endeared me to the whole compilation. Mostly it's the tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement of the utter ridiculousness of love and its associated vagaries, of how all the hyperbole suddenly becomes horrifyingly applicable, and how sometimes, okay, you need to be equally ridiculous and wallow, but you can be self-aware about it. Which. Um.
Go Places || The New Pornographers
Yes a heart will always go one step too far
This song is like the promise romcoms and fanfic make, like true love and high adventure maybe not existing anymore, if they ever did, but being the best thing in the world anyway, except for maybe cough drops.
Magpie to the Morning || Neko Case
Run an airtight mission, a Cousteau expedition
To find a diamond at the bottom of the drain
This makes me feel like early mornings and early evenings over old swamps of school soccer fields or northbound highways, when things are cool and grey. It's sleeping cities, loose-limbed, not touching the ground.
A Cautionary Song || The Decemberists
There's a place your mother goes when everybody else is soundly sleeping
I love the Decemberists. I love the Decemberists something crazy, only saying it entails confessing to being, depending on the audience, either a.) pretentious, b.) five years too late to the bandwagon, or c.) both. Their songs always remind me of lullabies, harmonious and soft and understated and open and harsh when the occasion warrants. This is sweet and unsettling in the manner of all old morality tales, with a countrylike beat that I love.
The Legionnaire's Lament || The Decemberists
Lord I don't know if I'll ever be back again
If A Cautionary Song was low-key sad and angry this is upbeat addictive sad and angry, looking to a home you can't go back to, to a home you can't really go back to even when you're standing right there, because no one gets to go home twice. (Resisting the urge to make a Cesc Fabregas comment here. Failing.)
Great Expectaions || The Gaslight Anthem
Her hair was raven and her heart was like a tomb
So I have a thing for upbeat sad songs and dealing with trusting people to stay.
The Dirty Glass || Dropkick Murphys
Well you bit off more than you could chew the first day you met me
Bitter furious codependent-relationship songs with zero attempts at self-righteous over-you apathy are my favorites. My absolute favorites.
Desolation Row || Bob Dylan
They're selling postcards of the hanging
They're painting the passports brown
People will tell you that Bob Dylan's magnum opus is Like a Rolling Stone. Do not believe them. It's this.
April Come She Will || Simon and Garfunkel
In case you haven't noticed, our theme for today, from the Ent metaphor right down to, well, every single one of my song choices, is melancholy and wistful longing and not getting things back. You lose your loves. It happens to the best of us. Doesn't mean it doesn't suck.
My parents used to play us Simon and Garfunkel songs in the car during our four-hour trips to and from Manila. If your parents never gave you Simon and Garfunkel as lullabies I can't help but think you missed out.
Always || Panic! At the Disco
I'm the light blinking at the end of the road
Blink back to let me know
Sometimes you need sappy love songs. I can't explain it away even if I wanted to- and have I wanted to. The words have stopped happening and I'm just sitting here banging them out without knowing if they mean anything, like someone's hypothetical monkey sitting at a hypothetical typewriter, and so the best thing that happened is not so great after all, and sometimes you need sappy love songs, okay? Okay.
Download the whole thing here.
Point is, half of the time I feel like I'm speaking Entish, taking ages and ages to say something that is comprehensible to almost no one, if that, but that I couldn't translate even if I wanted to. If I were reading anything new I'd quote from it, but I haven't been reading anything new in a long time, I haven't been reading anything lately except Fellowship and a whole stack of Madeleine L'Engles I know by heart, and I don't know how to talk about anything.
The brother is out to prom and Arsenal play Blackburn later. The parents are out because they accompanied the brother to the talk and dinner Ateneo gives its Merit scholars (they got the Director's Listers' equivalent three years ago with me, so that's six meals total they've robbed the Ateneo of) and they decided to eat out at Eastwood. This time last year the brother was out to prom and Arsenal were due to play someone- you know, it might have been the horrific 4-4 Newcastle game, but I can't be sure- and I meant to watch but didn't wake up in time for and I'd just found A Severed Wasp in Book Sale, so maybe it's a seasonal absolute-nothing-and-attempts-to-fill-it-in-with-Madeleine-L'Engle thing? Anyway, since I don't feel like having my arms pulled out of their sockets by an overenthusiastic pit bull, I'm letting Ribbons out in front, and giving you all music while waiting for her to calm down.
This was originally meant for me and the general audience, and that's still whom the commentary was written for, but it is now dedicated to Guia. Just say the word, and so on. I feel like that's the only thing I ever say in times like these, but this time it's because you will always be much more of a reasonable adult that I am, and so I have to make the immature comments. Not, of course, that it is any less meant.
I Don't Want to Get Over You || The Magnetic Fields
I guess I could take a sleeping pill and sleep at will and not have to go through what I go through
I guess I should take Prozac, right, and just smile all night at somebody new
Someone not too bright but sweet and kind who would try to get you off my mind
I could leave this agony behind
Which is just what I'd do if I wanted to, but I don't want to get over you
69 Love Songs is, as they say, an album about love songs, which is not the same as an album about songs about love. It is alternately satirical and smart and vulnerability-generatingly honest, and this song hits so many of the points that endeared me to the whole compilation. Mostly it's the tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement of the utter ridiculousness of love and its associated vagaries, of how all the hyperbole suddenly becomes horrifyingly applicable, and how sometimes, okay, you need to be equally ridiculous and wallow, but you can be self-aware about it. Which. Um.
Go Places || The New Pornographers
Yes a heart will always go one step too far
This song is like the promise romcoms and fanfic make, like true love and high adventure maybe not existing anymore, if they ever did, but being the best thing in the world anyway, except for maybe cough drops.
Magpie to the Morning || Neko Case
Run an airtight mission, a Cousteau expedition
To find a diamond at the bottom of the drain
This makes me feel like early mornings and early evenings over old swamps of school soccer fields or northbound highways, when things are cool and grey. It's sleeping cities, loose-limbed, not touching the ground.
A Cautionary Song || The Decemberists
There's a place your mother goes when everybody else is soundly sleeping
I love the Decemberists. I love the Decemberists something crazy, only saying it entails confessing to being, depending on the audience, either a.) pretentious, b.) five years too late to the bandwagon, or c.) both. Their songs always remind me of lullabies, harmonious and soft and understated and open and harsh when the occasion warrants. This is sweet and unsettling in the manner of all old morality tales, with a countrylike beat that I love.
The Legionnaire's Lament || The Decemberists
Lord I don't know if I'll ever be back again
If A Cautionary Song was low-key sad and angry this is upbeat addictive sad and angry, looking to a home you can't go back to, to a home you can't really go back to even when you're standing right there, because no one gets to go home twice. (Resisting the urge to make a Cesc Fabregas comment here. Failing.)
Great Expectaions || The Gaslight Anthem
Her hair was raven and her heart was like a tomb
So I have a thing for upbeat sad songs and dealing with trusting people to stay.
The Dirty Glass || Dropkick Murphys
Well you bit off more than you could chew the first day you met me
Bitter furious codependent-relationship songs with zero attempts at self-righteous over-you apathy are my favorites. My absolute favorites.
Desolation Row || Bob Dylan
They're selling postcards of the hanging
They're painting the passports brown
People will tell you that Bob Dylan's magnum opus is Like a Rolling Stone. Do not believe them. It's this.
April Come She Will || Simon and Garfunkel
In case you haven't noticed, our theme for today, from the Ent metaphor right down to, well, every single one of my song choices, is melancholy and wistful longing and not getting things back. You lose your loves. It happens to the best of us. Doesn't mean it doesn't suck.
My parents used to play us Simon and Garfunkel songs in the car during our four-hour trips to and from Manila. If your parents never gave you Simon and Garfunkel as lullabies I can't help but think you missed out.
Always || Panic! At the Disco
I'm the light blinking at the end of the road
Blink back to let me know
Sometimes you need sappy love songs. I can't explain it away even if I wanted to- and have I wanted to. The words have stopped happening and I'm just sitting here banging them out without knowing if they mean anything, like someone's hypothetical monkey sitting at a hypothetical typewriter, and so the best thing that happened is not so great after all, and sometimes you need sappy love songs, okay? Okay.
Download the whole thing here.