It's crazy what music can do to you. A Train song popped into my head earlier tonight, and I've been on YouTube, Vevo, and Metacafe all night as a result, looking up stuff from when I was 15-22 years old, songs that I haven't listened to in forever. As a result, my Facebook is flooded with links. But I don't mind.
I close my eyes and let the songs wash over me, Eve 6, Our Lady Peace, the Cranberries, etc. My body thins out, my hair lengthens, my chest shrinks, and my skin clears up a bit. The makeup shifts to silver eyeshadow and brown eyeliner, and the glasses vanish. I can taste Boone's Farm at the back of my throat, and I'm walking at night in the middle of nowhere, thinking of all the things I thought of back then. I can feel the heavy humid air of a Lake Michigan beach on my skin, and I know if I open my eyes and look down, my legs will be tanned, my toenails will be unpainted, and the frayed hems of a pair of cutoffs will hang pale against thighs browned from repeated sun exposure. My vision will be better.
In my memory, I walk across cool wet sand, and a lake laps at my toes...Sturgeon Bay? Little Traverse Bay? Duke Lake? Mullett Lake? I'm not sure. The moon is out, and there's silver streaking across the water, reaching for me, and part of me wants to chase it. Instead, I walk and think. I sit on the sand and light a cigarette, and people I miss move through my mind...Budz and J from high school, two of the few people I trusted enough to see me, who I was, not the depressed angsty poet front I tried so hard to put up. I hear the songs, "Think Twice" starts playing, and I feel this crushing need to have someone be like that with me, just once, just so I could know how it felt to be wanted so desperately that someone would fight for me like that. Not the center of someone's universe, but close to it. I can almost imagine myself as one of those girls, taller, thinner, bigger boobs, flatter ass, thinner legs, perfectly clear skin and blue eyes.
The music ends, and I snap back into my present day self, shaggy haired, pierced nose, purple-painted toenails and eyelids, tattooed, a little heavier, a little more cynical, and a lot wiser. Thankful I'm not a cookie-cutter video girl. Maybe I'm not model material, but I'm happy with what I've got, hazel eyes and good cheekbones, thick hair and eyelashes, skin that tans easily and a few dark brown black Irish freckles for decoration. Maybe life is more exciting for the unexceptional-looking girls - we can do more than the girls who have attention constantly focused on them for their looks. I can promise you that if I were standing next to some six foot tall blonde bombshell with double-D tits, you're gonna be focused on her rather than on the short girl with the red-brown hair and gauged ears, and while you're staring, I'm assessing you. It lets me stay one step ahead. I move quick because I have to to keep up. I rely on my brains because I can't on my looks. And when I sense someone's interested in how I look, I hide behind my glasses, profanity, and tendency toward snark. It's self defense coming from someone who doesn't know what else to do.
I talk to someone who was one of my dearest friends from my high school days, and it's always a little weird for me. We'd fallen out of touch for years. Then, out of the blue, I get an email, a reply to some stupid random forward I'd sent him months prior. We emailed and talked on the phone for six months before he came to visit family and we went to hang out. It was so disconcerting to walk into the bar and see him...I didn't realize until that moment that every time we'd talked on the phone, in my head, I was a freshman in high school again, with all the physical differences between me then and me now seeming like they just weren't there. So when I moved toward him, making sure that was really him - he looked different too - I glanced down for a minute and blinked rapidly, wondering where my oversized belly had gone, why was there no greasy peroxided hair hanging in my face, where did I learn to walk with this confidence like I was a queen...without realizing it, I'd adopted my cocky kitchen strut, the one I use at work to let new co-workers know I know what I'm doing, that I'm confident in my ability. I snapped back to the present, to who I was now, mother, cook excellente, moderate badass at life, until his arms went around me, and then, shit, I'm fourteen again.
Music and friends, they can take you back and transport you to different times in your life if you'll let them. Me, I always do. I enjoy the ride, especially when I've been having a rough week, or a whole month filled with failure like this past one has been. I take a ride back in time, and it reminds me how far I've come, and that if I could come this far, I can go farther still.
So, dear friend of mine, who made me promise never to publish his name on my blog, thank you. You frustrate the shit out of me on occasion with the way you fall out of touch, but only for a second, till I remember that the only person who never lets me down is me, and that you always get back in touch again at some point. The randomness adds a bit of zest to the routine of daily life, which is cool, and it's always good hanging up the phone with you, stretching my limbs out from whatever cramped position I've been sitting in, and realizing that no matter how much I've changed in the last fifteen years, there must still be some good left in me, otherwise we wouldn't still be talking. Love ya, man.
Friday, April 22, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011
Day 14 (music: DJ Psycho)
Day 14: A hero that has let you down. (letter)
Seriously, I got nothing. My heroes are culinary-related, so short of, say, Grant Achatz shutting down Alinea and opening a TGIFriday's in its location, it's incredibly hard for me to be let down by one. I tend to put stock in people in my actual life, and not people I don't know. Corey was one of my heroes, but he never let me down, and it would be impossible for him to do so now, because he passed away when I was 5 months pregnant with Matthew. If I think of something, I'll come back and edit this entry.
Seriously, I got nothing. My heroes are culinary-related, so short of, say, Grant Achatz shutting down Alinea and opening a TGIFriday's in its location, it's incredibly hard for me to be let down by one. I tend to put stock in people in my actual life, and not people I don't know. Corey was one of my heroes, but he never let me down, and it would be impossible for him to do so now, because he passed away when I was 5 months pregnant with Matthew. If I think of something, I'll come back and edit this entry.
Day 13 (music: Flogging Molly)
Day 13: A band or artist that has gotten you through some tough ass days. (write a letter.)
Dear Flogging Molly,
Where can I begin?
My kid brother first introduced me to your music when Drunken Lullabies was released. I'd grown up listening to Silly Wizard, Dougie MacLean, Sinead O'Connor, and the Cranberries, and had always been in love with Irish melodies - call it genetic influence if you will. I'm part Irish, and I originally started dying my hair red in an attempt to look even more so. I'm not sure if it worked, but it looked good, so with the exception of a flirtation with the blue-black hair color that Feria puts out, it's been red for, oh, twelve years now. It's naturally dark reddish brown, but I've got that pale freckly Northern European skin, and it was just too dark for my complexion. But I digress.
When "Rebels of the Sacred Heart" started playing, it was like I simultaneously saw giant inspirational flash-bulbs go off and had the wind knocked out of me. It's incredible how music can affect you, isn't it? I loved punk, and I loved Irish...to combine the two? Amazing.
My copy of Drunken Lullabies was stolen five separate times before I finally ripped it to my computer and copied it to my mp3 player so that I wouldn't have to go without. When "Within a Mile From Home" was released, I did the same.
It was playing in my head the first time I had sex with my boyfriend/domestic partner/life partner/father of my kids/whatever you want to call him. It was playing for real the night our older son was conceived. I listen to it on my way to whatever cooking job I have - it gets me psyched up for a shift, so I can rock the line like a superstar. I listened to it while I was in labor.
When my grandpa died, I went for a drive up to the store, so as not to freak out my two small sons with my tears. I plugged in my iPhone, put the iPod on randomize, and the first song that came up was "Whistles the Wind." I parked at the store and listened to it on repeat while I cried. I listened to it probably fifty times, back to back, while we were headed downstate for the memorial.
When my brother Scotty passed, I made a playlist of songs that made me think of him, both songs I liked and songs he liked, and a few songs I wanted to be true. The top of them was "If I Ever Leave This World Alive." I wanted to think that he was back and sitting on the floor next to me while I stared blankly into space trying to wrap my mind around the fact that he was gone. It's been eight weeks and I'm still listening to it, and trying to convince myself that, had the inspiration been mine, I would have written the following verse about myself:
"She says, 'I'm okay, I'm all right
though you have gone from my life.
You said that it would -
now everything should be all right.
Yes, we'll be all right."
What draws me in the most with your music, though, is pretty simple. Passion calls to passion. Your passion and your love of what you do is so clearly on display throughout each and every song. I'm a passionate person, especially with food, which is what I do - I'm a cook. I've actually been accused of being too passionate before - is there such a thing? I discussed this with a facebook friend (and real life friend of my boyfriend's, although I'd like to consider him a friend of mine too and wish I knew him a little better, because he seems pretty bad ass), and he agrees with me that no, passion is good.
Anyway, I'm horrible at writing letters to people I don't know, so I'll wrap this up. I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you for music that has soared with me to my highest of heights, and comforted me at my rock bottom lows. Thank you and please keep doing what you do.
Truly,
Megan
Dear Flogging Molly,
Where can I begin?
My kid brother first introduced me to your music when Drunken Lullabies was released. I'd grown up listening to Silly Wizard, Dougie MacLean, Sinead O'Connor, and the Cranberries, and had always been in love with Irish melodies - call it genetic influence if you will. I'm part Irish, and I originally started dying my hair red in an attempt to look even more so. I'm not sure if it worked, but it looked good, so with the exception of a flirtation with the blue-black hair color that Feria puts out, it's been red for, oh, twelve years now. It's naturally dark reddish brown, but I've got that pale freckly Northern European skin, and it was just too dark for my complexion. But I digress.
When "Rebels of the Sacred Heart" started playing, it was like I simultaneously saw giant inspirational flash-bulbs go off and had the wind knocked out of me. It's incredible how music can affect you, isn't it? I loved punk, and I loved Irish...to combine the two? Amazing.
My copy of Drunken Lullabies was stolen five separate times before I finally ripped it to my computer and copied it to my mp3 player so that I wouldn't have to go without. When "Within a Mile From Home" was released, I did the same.
It was playing in my head the first time I had sex with my boyfriend/domestic partner/life partner/father of my kids/whatever you want to call him. It was playing for real the night our older son was conceived. I listen to it on my way to whatever cooking job I have - it gets me psyched up for a shift, so I can rock the line like a superstar. I listened to it while I was in labor.
When my grandpa died, I went for a drive up to the store, so as not to freak out my two small sons with my tears. I plugged in my iPhone, put the iPod on randomize, and the first song that came up was "Whistles the Wind." I parked at the store and listened to it on repeat while I cried. I listened to it probably fifty times, back to back, while we were headed downstate for the memorial.
When my brother Scotty passed, I made a playlist of songs that made me think of him, both songs I liked and songs he liked, and a few songs I wanted to be true. The top of them was "If I Ever Leave This World Alive." I wanted to think that he was back and sitting on the floor next to me while I stared blankly into space trying to wrap my mind around the fact that he was gone. It's been eight weeks and I'm still listening to it, and trying to convince myself that, had the inspiration been mine, I would have written the following verse about myself:
"She says, 'I'm okay, I'm all right
though you have gone from my life.
You said that it would -
now everything should be all right.
Yes, we'll be all right."
What draws me in the most with your music, though, is pretty simple. Passion calls to passion. Your passion and your love of what you do is so clearly on display throughout each and every song. I'm a passionate person, especially with food, which is what I do - I'm a cook. I've actually been accused of being too passionate before - is there such a thing? I discussed this with a facebook friend (and real life friend of my boyfriend's, although I'd like to consider him a friend of mine too and wish I knew him a little better, because he seems pretty bad ass), and he agrees with me that no, passion is good.
Anyway, I'm horrible at writing letters to people I don't know, so I'll wrap this up. I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you for music that has soared with me to my highest of heights, and comforted me at my rock bottom lows. Thank you and please keep doing what you do.
Truly,
Megan
Day 12 (music: Rancid)
Note: Sorry for the extended absence. I was having depression and rage issues. I'm back. <3
Day 12: Something I never get compliments on.
Okay, I've honestly been thinking about this for a week, and came up with nothing. So I posted the question to facebook, and I'll just post the replies here.
Dad: Your generous nature.
Allie: You are who you are, and your comfortable with yourself, and not afraid to act like yourself. your real, not many people can say that about themselves.
Uncle Phil: You are Life loving,kind,pretty,determi
Day 12: Something I never get compliments on.
Okay, I've honestly been thinking about this for a week, and came up with nothing. So I posted the question to facebook, and I'll just post the replies here.
Dad: Your generous nature.
Allie: You are who you are, and your comfortable with yourself, and not afraid to act like yourself. your real, not many people can say that about themselves.
Uncle Phil: You are Life loving,kind,pretty,determi
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