second person narrative mode - christmas edition

Imagine you are a girl. (If you are actually a girl, this exercise will be much easier for you.) Now imagine you are not just any girl; you are an overweight, clumsy, awkward girl with a heart of gold. Imagine you have broken almost every rule enforced upon you by your parents in some misguided attempt to protect the honor of your friends and to uphold your own personal beliefs in being a friend to the friendless and living a strictly Carpe Diem life. you make poor choices, like staying out late because if you don't your friend might drive drunk or get involved with the wrong people; so you come home late and you get grounded. Imagine you find yourself entangled in these stupid scenarios over and over because you were raised to believe that your specific deity which you have chosen to worship rewards those who selflessly take care of those who can't or won't take care of themselves. Then imagine after several years, say 23 or so, of being constantly taken for granted, ignored or abused you start to question your motives. are you doing these things because you want to or because you're supposed to? Are you doing these things selflessly after all or are you assuming there is a reward? Are you supposed to expect the reward? Then maybe you have a crisis of faith here and there because ... you want that reward! you feel so guilty for wanting it and this causes so much anxiety and depression in you.

Now imagine you are seeking answers. Imagine the only way you know how to do this is a constant internal dialogue. You see everyone around you making life make sense with college degrees, husbands and wives, hobbies or sports, and with unquestionable religion. You see most everyone around you contented, calm and accepting. The only way you have found, however, to make anything make sense is to keep quiet and be alone and to escape into some music. Your headphones are your church. Your mix tapes are your religion. When the music stops, the confusion creeps in. You drown yourself in it, it is the only time your imagination runs free, there are no expectations and you dream wildly. it keeps you calm, it keeps you awake, it keeps you safe. you have no husband, you only have Bono. You have no degree, you have Peter Gabriel. You are not working a job you care about, but on the way to and from this job you get blast Jesus Christ Superstar at full volume and sing along. This somehow makes it all okay.

Sometimes when you are alone with your music, you are someone else. You are on stage. You are flawless and loved. You are thin and beautiful. Pretending you are someone you aren't becomes something you do so much it almost becomes who you are. you become an amalgamation of the pretend you and the real you. Then suddenly someone comes along, the right girl at the right time who encourages you to try and be both. why not? Dream out loud, be wild, be free, kick and sing! You may be in a stranger's bedroom at a house party and meet this girl and never think twice about it and then sometime down the road that moment becomes legend in the story of who you are together. Then one day you're sitting out on a patio of a coffee shop and this same girl decides to sit with you and you find yourself telling this practical stranger things about yourself you never said out loud before. Through a series of twists and turns, broken hearts, dead ends and towers falling, this girl becomes so much a part of yourself that you forget where she ends and you begin. You start to depend on her, to love her like family, to trust her input and opinions more than you trust your own. Her approval feels better than your parents'. You need too much sometimes and she kicks your ass in gear. you get stuck in a loop and she pulls you out. she watches you fly into the same closed window over and over again and she never judges you, she just waits until you learn your lesson. You love this girl. she is your best friend.

As you get older, it gets harder and harder to stand back up when you fall off the hypothetical horse. You feel so sure about something and it falls to pieces and you, therefore, fall to pieces. Your best friend will listen and nod and offer kind words and keep you moving. Sometimes the weight of the poor decisions and the heartbreak and the pain keep you in bed for days. Your body aches, your brain can't sit still, you walk aimlessly around the house for hours, heaving with sobs. Your best friend knows this about you, she is never cruel, she is never demanding, she is never condescending; she listens.

Somehow through the grace of your chosen deity, you suddenly find yourself becoming the person you always wanted to be. your body is cooperating and looking better, your self esteem is in tip-top shape, your mental imperfections are under control and your bills are being paid on time. and for this you suddenly start seeing those rewards you hoped would come. so then one day, you meet a man. This man takes you back to the girl you used to be before your best friend. this man reminds you of all the times when you were a kid and you just knew your chosen Deity would repay you for your kindnesses with just this type of person. The strength, beauty and goodness radiates from this man with such high intensity you want to just linger in it all day like a cat with a premium ray of sunshine. This one man represents everything you admire and respect in humanity, he represents everything you ever admired about yourself and your best friend in a beautifully bearded package. you can even see your mother and father in him, you can see such gentle kindness, such wild passion, big dreams that he will determinedly make come true, and most importantly you can see every reason in the world why you should be a better person because of him. You find yourself taking those final steps your best friend laid out for you and now through the strength and conviction of your love for this man, you are strong enough to take them. You feel justified and finally like a complete person, not just a collage of ideas. you feel whole. you finally feel better than the rest of the people who thought they had it figured out because you know the real secret; you solved the riddle of true love.

you start a project. you are on step-whatever of your never ending-step-plan to become the best you that you can possibly be by actually doing something you set out to do; you start writing. it may not be the best written thing out there, but it is yours. and with every new thing that is written, you feel more and more confident. you feel that empty vessel that was meant to hold your pride all along start to fill. you are writing for three people. yourself, your best friend and your true love; the only three people in the world you trust with your life and most importantly, your heart. you make a decision to dedicate songs to the people you love the most as a Christmas present as a part of this writing project. From day one you start to realize the two hardest entries will be for these two people. It takes you months to make a decision and as soon as you make it, you realize it was the wrong one. Imagine this: you have to stand at the graves of your grandparents. You have to look into the faces of the people who share your blood. You have to spend Christmas Eve alone and lost. You have to hear the right song at the right moment, you have to read just the right poem at the right time and you have to have just the right dream during the right nap to know the answer...

There is no one song for your best friend. There is no one song for the love of your life. They are your songs; they are every song. These two, these two random people your chosen Deity has chosen to set before you that he or she gave you to love more than life itself, they are your soundtrack. They ARE the music.



no two silly people have ever been so loved xxx

Montell Jordan - This Is How We Do It

As noted in the previous entry, one of the things my best friends would think to criticize me the worst for is my inexplicable tendency to assume people are somehow "better than me." It's ironic to me now that the two heavy hitters, the two people i feel the most intimidated by, the two girls I have thought for the longest were way too cool to be friends with me, are a) posted back to back and b) two of my best friends; Samara and now Courtney.

Courtney is one of, if not *the* most beautiful, girls i know in real life. I met her, as it appears to me now the more and more posts I am dedicating to my friends like this, at Cup a Joe. Cup a Joe, I have always said, is like homeroom; The place we meet before the action starts. Home base. Where all great ideas are born and then come to die, slowly and honorably to be brought up again years later over drinks and much laughter at outlandishness. The dreams bourne at Cup a Joe rarely ever make it out the door. This is a haven for crazies and daydreamers; lieabouts and homeless artists; trust fund babies and recovering alcoholics . I got my drivers license and Cup a Joe was the first place I came, journal and headphones in hand. I am 33 1/2. I am now sitting in Cup a Joe, writing this blog post. There has never been a time when i did not know or love this place. It's no longer a smoking establishment, but we huddle outside in the winter and laze around sweating in the summer. I met Courtney (aka "Cote d'Azur" or just "Cote") through friends of friends of friends. I can't even remember the exact time or circumstance, I just remember suddenly she was a part of my life.

Every lesbian i know has been in love with Courtney at one point or another. This statement should be given a significant amount of weight, as i know a significant amount of lesbians. I don't know what it is about me and gay people... I'm not sure if it's my innate need to surround myself with those who are repressed or judged unfairly or my constant draw to the underdogs? maybe because i was a theater major or maybe I'm just really fabulous? Whatever the reason, I probably have 3 or 4 close straight friends. Courtney is one of these inexplicably straight ones. I think there would be a major blowup, basically a WWIII of the Raleigh lesbians if Cote ever switched teams, they would murder each other over this girl. Every man Courtney has dated has been the luckiest man in the world. She is now dating Tony, probably the only guy she has ever dated that i would have dated. Tony is fabulous, and by proxy as determined by the above statement; the luckiest guy in the world.

Courtney is one of those people who, no matter how well you think you know her, you just don't. there is so much depth, complexity and energy churning at all times inside her brain and in her heart, so much so that i'm not sure she even knows from one moment to the next who she is. One moment she is a photographer, the next she is a psychologist. A rollergirl, a goth vixen, a pilates fanatic,a book nerd, a vicious card shark, a waitress, a ghetto fabulous gangsta queen, a down home country girl... sometimes she glows with such power and confidence it is blinding and sometimes the darkness in her consumes the room. she is a dynamo, she is a supernova, she is a force to be reckoned with. You will never have a short chat with Courtney, you will always have a full conversation. you will never walk away not knowing exactly what she is thinking and how she is feeling. She is spontaneous, wild, hilarious and humble. like most of us at the ole coffee shoppe, she has the dream-out-loud disease. however, what sets Courtney apart from the rest of us, much like Samara, she made it happen. and she keeps making it happen. she keeps getting more and more degrees and following more and more dreams and travel itineraries.

One of my favorite Courtney memories is driving with her to the Gay Pride Parade in Durham in 2009. (literally no straight friends. seriously.) Along the way I was hitting random on the iPod and came across this song and she and I had middle school dance flashbacks and decided to rock out any and all mid 90s r&b and hip-hop I had. Which we did. I would have never have expected Courtney to know every word, and of course she did. Then she told me crazy stories about high school and I just remember thinking, you know... as long as i have known this girl and as long as I will probably know her, which is forever I hope, I will never know all there is to know about her. Every time I hang out with her, I figure something else out and I am crying I am laughing so hard. Everyone needs a Courtney in their life, If you don't have one, I feel really bad for you, because she is spectacular.



cote and I at the borough, being in love, as per yooshe.

Cocteau Twins - Iceblink Luck

I am a Cancer. More specifically, I am a Cancer/Leo cusp. This cusp is known as the “cusp of oscillation” … You get the best of both signs: Cancer’s sensitivity; the moon, water, kindness, attraction to home/silence/quietness… then Leo’s wildness; the sun, fire, attention seeking/confidence/strength. It all makes for a hugely delicious clusterfuck of fun and moodiness. I tell people I’m a nice bunch of girls and that I am ruled by opposites. There is no gray area in my life; all or nothing. I use astrology as a tool to understand life, a subject I am constantly probing. I cannot ever remember a time when I was not soul seeking on some existential/transcendental/religious/psychological level. I recently found my little diary I kept from ages 8 to 14 in my parents’ attic… It is full of love declarations and soul seeking. Sound familiar? I am nothing, but if consistent. Astrology is one of those little tools I pick apart, like self help books, the bible, meditation, daydreaming, etc… to figure out who I am, who you are, why we are here, why we are friends, why we connect, why I love you, etc. I like to think this is a great asset; the constant questioning, the constant self-review; but there are times when it becomes hyper-criticism and I am cruel to myself. Standards for explanation and understanding are set too high and I fail to find answers that others seem so easily to see… what is love? How do you find a partner and make it stick? How do you find your life’s purpose? What is your life’s purpose? How do accept and stay satisfied with the choices you’ve made?

It almost seems irresponsible to me to not consider astrology a piece of the puzzle. Take for example: My closest friends and greatest lovers have all been Libras… Their balance and rationale evens out my moods and recklessness. The majority of my family (mom, brother and niece) are Pisces (the one sign that eludes me, their depth is somehow beyond my own and they are just too damn good at hiding it!) This song reminds me of the one Pisces in my life whom I didn’t automatically adopt, but who inadvertently became a major part of my life… Samara.

The first time I remember meeting Samara, I was so jealous I could spit nails. I was with Rob Roy at my coffee shop and she stopped by the table to say hello to him. They were old friends. She was so beautiful and unique looking and tall and cool; there was no way I could compete with a girl like that.

Backstepping to that hyper-criticism bit, one of the things I've never understood or been able to explain away about myself is one of the worst things about me. It is the thing my best friend points out to me constantly... I have this inner voice that tells me that I am not good/cool enough to be friends with certain people or to date certain men. This is obviously a self-esteem shortfall and depending on my mood I will either aggressively deny it or sadly nod my head "yes." Samara was always one of those Raleigh elite, way-too-cool kids that I never assumed I would be friends with. Then somehow, the way life likes to do, I was proven wrong. Samara and Jeannine (best friend) were friends all along. As I became closer to Jeannine, Samara came as like, a package deal. Eventually, somehow, we started hanging out on our own. Strange coincidences cemented our die hard friendship... We both started dating Brits. Hers was in London, mine in Liverpool. Throughout all this drama, (we both were engaged to these fellas at one point, neither of us actually marrying. well, at the time. Samara and hers eventually did marry, much later down the road...) we became sounding boards, shoulders, coffee buddies, cheerleaders and eventually close and dear friends.

Samara has that gorgeous Pisces trait that I am seethingly jealous of... follow through. Most Pisces have the "dream out loud disease", in fact it was Samara who either coined that phrase or was a major part of its conception... She wanted to live in California, she did it. She wanted to go to beauty school, done. Nursing school? done. Pisces are so good at letting their dreams run wild, but then figuring out how to just.... do that shit! Get the gumption and go! I still find myself hung up on the "wouldn't it be cool if?...." and staring off into space for 2 hours, then being entirely too lazy to break out of my comfortable routine. Samara is never afraid to just take a chance... why not?

Samara and I have spent the last ten years or so pulling each other out of pity party pits. Never judging each other for that need to just, sit at the kitchen table sipping whiskey and cry your heart out on a sunday afternoon. we have listened to each other weep, bitch, moan, gloat, brag, love, hate and dream dream dream! I have never been afraid to tell Samara exactly what i was feeling because i know on that precious Piscean level, there is no emotion that isn't okay or justifiable. She exists on a level where emotional/personal justice and lioness-protecting-her-cubs ferocious loyalty is not questioned, it is just done. I cannot tell you how much i appreciate this fact about her. She would not hesitate to do anything for those who love her best. I absolutely cannot wait to see her as a mother, because I think this is where these amazing attributes of hers will shine. When I hang out with Samara, I never forget to thank God that I have her in my life, I am really lucky to know her, love her and have her on my side.

Samara is one of the handful of people whose musical tastes I trust. I remember on of the first mix cds she ever made me, which was actually a CDR overloaded with mp3s that my car at the time would play, this song was one of the firsts on the list. It was a song I had known for a very long time, but for whatever reason, it became the ethereally beautiful aural representation of my too-cool friend. I think Cocteau Twins, I think Samara. I hear Elizabeth Fraser's voice, I hear Samara.


(samara & i, totally sober i'm sure, in front of ye olde jackpot. xoxo)

a break from regularly scheduled programming

My top ten albums of 2010

A gift to all my friends who didn’t get individual song dedications. (more are coming before xmas, don't worry!)

This is my personal list of albums that rocked my world in 2010. This list isn’t necessarily built upon popularity, sales, merit, integrity, talent or professional opinion. These are just the albums that got the most playtimes on my ipod and the shows I went to and enjoyed the most this year.


10) Vampire Weekend – Contra
It’s entirely possible that it is just not cool to like Vampire Weekend anymore. Especially now with the awkward use of the song “holiday” in the car commercial, but I played this album a lot this past year. It made me happy when I was down and it made me wiggle when I was wiggly. It is a fun album. It was a fun show.


9) The Dead Weather – Sea of Cowards
Not a song on this album that I didn’t fantasize I was singing. If I could start any band, I would go back in time and I would be Alison Mosshart and I would be in the Dead Weather. There are a million and one things I love about this band. Barring the fact that I am somehow madly in love with Jack White (don’t judge, he is heaven on earth to me,) I honestly really like this album and I want to be in a band just like this.


8) Javelin – No Más
Had the privilege of seeing these guys twice this past year, the second time saw an impromptu stagecrash party at King’s. This album is a massive amount of fun, if you are in the mood for it.


7) Glasser – Ring
Mind. Blown. Another one of those bands/sounds I wish I was a part of or knew how to do. This is opposite end of the spectrum from Dead Weather, but I can’t listen to this album without imagining I AM this album. When I get lost and put myself into the sound, that’s when I know an album or an artist has really got me hooked.


6) Gauntlet Hair – (Miscellaneous 7” releases… I dunno.)
This is a wildcard. There are no actual album releases for Gauntlet Hair. They are on the Forest Family label (along with Cults) which was founded by members of Gorilla vs. Bear (see over on the right at the blogroll for a link to GvB). Mp3s have leaked out one at a time and each one blows my mind harder and harder. Nothing I have ever heard sounds anything like these guys. I haven’t been able to see them live yet, but I am dying to do so. I can never listen to one of their songs once; they always get put on perpetual loop. I deafen myself constantly with these guys. (click image for a few downloads!)


5) Caribou – Swim
For as much “electronica” music as I listen to, as I peep over this list, I am seeing a really eclectic list… Caribou is probably the only group I would classify as straight electronic, maybe Javelin, but I would almost put them as hip-hop or something. Caribou is science. Caribou is amazing. Probably one of my top 5 shows of the year.


4) Erykah Badu – New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh
My goddess. My hero. Erykah Badu is all that is good and glorious on the earth. Her music has defined me and saved me more times than I can count. This album was so good I bought the actual CD. Window seat made me cry so hard first time I heard it. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve felt exactly what she describes.


3) Future Islands - In Evening Air
A newer obsession, but maybe only because I got to see them play live so many times this year and the crowds that love Future Islands MAKE you love Future Islands. Sam is beyond description, he is a firestorm of amazing.


2) Gray Young – staysail
How much have I talked about Gray Young in real life or on facebook to my friends? They are probably sick of it. If Gray Young is playing, I am there. After months of a close friend whose musical opinions I trust implicitly (which is VERY RARE, trust me) telling me how much I would love these guys, suddenly Hopscotch rolled around and GY happened to be the first band on the first night that I saw. And within moments I realized 2 things: I see the lead singer guy almost every day at my lunchtime coffee shop – funny! We have sat across from each other, headphoned and ignoring the world, about a million times. That is appropriate and a good sign, such kindredish behavior can only result in something I would like… and then yes. I very much like. I have told my friends that when I see GY play live it’s like I got in a time machine and went back to witness the rebirth of U2 if they were born in like… Portland or something. These guys kicked off a very healthy and robust Post-Rock obsession for me. The more EITH, Caspian, or El Ten Eleven I listen to and love, the more I thank Gray Young for blowing my mind. This album and subsequently every show I have seen of theirs this year has been the best show ever. I finally, recently after a show at kings and a shot of Jamesons, broke "the Fourth Wall" and hugged the crap out of Dan, the bassist, and gushed about how much i love them. He probably thinks I am nuts now. Or a massive drunk. Either way... Gray Young is amazing. Go See Gray Young!


1) Menomena – Mines
This was a hard decision. But I ultimately went with not so much the album I rocked out the hardest to (staysail) or the album I danced my ass off the most to (in Evening Air) or felt the most obligated to worship (New Amerykah) as my number one… I went with the album that broke my heart and spoke my language so hard I almost wanted to sue for copyright infringement of my inner dialogue. Mines, from beginning to end, is so completely fantastic and raw. When I finally got to see them live this year, everything I had heard about how staggeringly perfect their live performances could be was proven to be true; flawless and outlandish. Sometimes the right song can hit you in the right way and it changes you forever. If you don’t understand this sentiment, you are certainly reading the wrong blog. When Menomena played “Dirty Cartoons” live, I wept openly. I have only cried at U2 and Morrissey shows; this phenomenon has now lifted Menomena into the upper echelon of bands I respect and adore. Make me cry live, I love you forever. Menomena made me their bitch that night.

Darude - Sandstorm

After returning from "college" when i was 18, I fell into a routine of rebellion against my parents. Anything and everything i could think to do to break their rules. I had been at school, on my own, and had to come back home. I didn't want to be there, they didn't really want me there. But this was way before i had my respectful moment of enlightenment, before i really understood that they were just people who really just wanted to get some sleep and didn't want strangers in their house breaking shit and stealing stuff. so what did i do? stayed out to ungodly/unsafe hours for an 18/19 year old girl and made really poor decisions. Looking back on it now, I didn't really make any huge mistakes. I never drank at the time, maybe took a hit or two off a bong, but very rarely, definitely wasn't having sex because i was probably my biggest and most unattractive at the time... I was mostly running around seeking any sort of distraction from the burning and ever present "WHO AM I?" question (still looking, if anyone has any hints, btw,) and looking for anything to make sense in the midst of my recklessly propellant panic disorder.

In the midst of this 5 or 6 year haze, a haze i have thought so many times to document and have only succeeded in getting down a few blog and journal entries (because it is so bizarre, bewildering and painful to remember and mostly so far removed from who i am now,) I managed to find and retain some of the very best friends of my life. We would go to house parties and IHOPs and concerts. We would mostly drive around and listen to music and eat donuts and and get lost in doing absolutely nothing. Eventually everyone coupled off, found their direction in life and went back to school or got jobs, or just ... grew up. Don't mean to give a spoiler alert here, but hey, spoiler alert... I have done none of these things. I am still the one at the coffee shop all day, going to house parties and concerts and never settling on a philosophy, career, degree, routine or partner. Sometimes I feel like i dodged a bullet because I don't have to pay for day care or I'm not roped into a single career forever because that's all my education says i can do. I'm not stuck with the same one man I will resent and regret forever. Mostly I feel forgotten, overlooked, and pigeonholed... Despite all the drastic changes in my mind and body in the past few years I am almost certain I will forever be the fat girl who loved a little too hard and made terrible decisions. My wish and assumption is that there are still a handful of people who knew me then and have watched me grow and still love me, regardless. These people who adopted me and became my surrogate sisters and brothers, who I feel certain secretly watch my back and would take maybe not a bullet for me, but a punch or two.

One such person i met back in these dark days was actually someone I reconnected with from high school days... Lesley was a few years my junior and I remember her as the wild child across the gym in homeroom. Then she came to my senior prom with my friend Pete, and wound up at the after party that night. I just remember her fearlessness. I remember being jealous of it; I remember being catty and bitter about it... I remembered her for years after i graduated and then seemingly out of nowhere, she came back into my life.

Rob and I had gotten to a final bow (part I) of our relationship. I finally grew the tiniest set of balls and started granting myself a modicum of a social life. I had for a year or more, basically confined myself to the house hiding from life and from him. This, as i have learned, is pretty typical behavior of women in abusive relationships. This wasn't something he enforced in our dynamic, it was some warped decision i had made on my own. It had something to do with feeling like i was setting a good example... If i didn't go out, there was no reason he should. If i didn't drink, he shouldn't need to, etc... The guilt i carried with me for the next 10 or so years was the reason i never let myself drink. This is my theory, anyway. When I had finally gotten to the point where i was trying to stand up to him, is when things got the most destructive and violent. I had cowered in the corner for so long that when I finally stood up a little, was when shit really started hitting the fan... and the doors and the bed and the ceiling... I want to reiterate one fact however... Rob did not "keep me prisoner" or trap me into that relationship. It was my own stubborn need to "fix" him... I've honestly gone through enough therapy to understand everything that happened and have forgiven both him and myself, implicitly.

I honestly will never forget this day. and it's something I think about all the time, I have mentioned before how i am so good at appreciating miniature moments of simplicity... this was one such moment that I honestly don't think I've ever talked about it, and if i mentioned it to Lesley she probably wouldn't remember it... I had made an announcement to Rob that i was going out for the night. I just wanted to go to the coffee shop and write and read and be outside for a bit. I hadn't been in months, maybe a year or more... Rob, of course, had to come with me. (I even remember what I was wearing, a white v-neck undershirt of my father's.) I took a sketchbook and sat on the patio at Mission Valley while Rob sat in the car drinking beers, waiting for me; I had a time limit. Then, from nowhere, I look up and there is Lesley... Just as beautiful, friendly and open as she ever was. She and a handful of her friends sat with me and we chatted for a while and I was eventually invited to some house party or some night out with the crew. I agreed and we exchanged numbers. I went out with her and the people that would become my closest new friends. It was probably within the week that I finally stood up to Rob for the last time and things ended. I finally felt remembered, I felt like someone wanted me around. After 2 or more years of hiding in the bathroom and giving everything, including blood, to a person who was so enraptured with their own disease i almost ceased existing, it was such a relief to just... get outside.

I never told her this, and I don't know why and I am glad i get the chance to do so now...

Lesley, of all the people that I barely managed to hang onto throughout that time in my life, including my own family, for whatever reason, you were the one that got through to me. you were the one that gave me the strength to break free. you saved my life. I have ALWAYS credited you with that, and my love for you is so strong i don't even know how to tell you because even here, even now, 10 years later, I am fighting back tears... If you hadn't remembered me, taken a chance on talking to me; making me remember that i deserved friends and that i might still have a cool/fun person inside of me; i might still be in that place. I might have lost me completely.

There have been times I have backtracked. Times when the sorrow, pain and self-disappointment is so strong I find myself once again looking to terrible choices to numb it away or find an excuse to sit in denial and break promises. god knows why I do half of what I do, and I know I have spent my entire lifetime trying to figure out why, but you were the one person who has known me from the beginning of who i was, from that awkward goofy high school kid, to who i am now, and you have never stopped loving me or believing in the best of me. you have forgiven me for stupid mistakes and my spontaneous flakiness, you have encouraged me to take chances and dance like a wild woman. you introduced me to basically everyone i know now. you have the greatest heart and the biggest brain of almost anyone i think i know. I have so much respect for you, I sometimes feel like I want to hide things from you to keep from disappointing you, almost the way i do with my family, and for that i am sorry. I know we aren't close the way we used to be and time marches on, etc, etc... But i hope you know that I know how lucky i am to know you and have you in my life. you are my hero, you saved my life and i love you.

The reason i chose this song to represent Lesley is because I've never heard it and not thought about her, first of all. And also, I love the irony that when we became our closest, through the Raleigh Goth scene, there wasn't a Monday for many, many years we weren't at Legends and I would just love when she would convince Joey to play this song and I got to watch her do the swoop & twirl Goth dance to Darude! I remember very vividly the first time she played it for me in her creepy little basement apartment and her excitement of how much she liked it... so ironic and amazing!

Passion Pit - Sleepyhead

Most people have really good practical and useful skills. I have mentioned it before; the things I am good at aren’t tangible or useful in an everyday sense. I am really good at being in love, for example. I am infinitely patient in traffic jams. I am kind to strangers. One thing I seem to always think I should ad to my resume one day is “Master of Gratitude.” I am so thankful all day, every day for the beautiful gifts this life and God have given me. I don’t want to take this to a religious level, but it’s hard to say the word “gratitude” and not think about faith, about feeling like you have to say that “thank you” to something or someone. I am a Christian, yes. But more often than not I find myself sending out ambiguous thanks out into the unknown. If it’s God or Karma or Grace or my own ego who knows... Whatever it is that prompted this very nice thing or person or experience to happen. I am Queen of acknowledging impermanence, singular miraculous moments, beauty, truth, and love. I know way too well how quickly it can all be taken away, so it is my all day every day mission to be grateful the gift of every second of my life. This sometimes comes across as manic and wild, this sometimes comes across as …nice? It’s a delicate balancing act.

There are certain songs, which while although not profoundly affecting my life in some deeply significant way, that when I hear them, I always remember to thank God or who/whatever for the things that make me smile when I hear them. This song, while not a song that has a deeper meaning or possessing lyrics which touch my life in a meaningful way, makes me think of a certain friend whom I shared so many life changing moments veiled as seemingly insignificant happenings with which will always remind me how lucky I am to have him in my life.

My friend Andrew (aka Roo) has somehow become one of the people I most respect and admire in the whole world. I’ve known him a very long time, and I don’t think either one of us would deny there was some awkward competitiveness or tension between us when we first started hanging out. Both being so free spirited, opinionated and arts minded, I think we may have clashed some in the beginning. We were both in this strange ‘trying to figure out who we are’ mode, which for him meant finding his place in society as a gay man and for me meant trying to find a way to be okay who I am, in general. (I still struggle, of course!) Then somewhere along the way we realized we were both hanging out at the coffee shop on Wednesdays, doing the Independent crossword. I can’t even really tell you the timeline of events, but over the years, Wednesdays have become one of my favorite days of the week. I get the crossword and I get Roo time. We trade music, gossip, crossword clues, day dreams, boy stories… As the world seems to keep coupling up and fading out, there is me and there is Roo and we are trudging ahead doing our own things, being amazing, and using every possible outlet; musically, artistically, poetically, prosaically, physically, to express ourselves…. Never making excuses, never accepting criticism harshly, never hesitating to make something beautiful out of nothing.

Not only is Roo my weekend warrior buddy, (we are the ones on the dance floor first, we always make the dance party happen,) and someone I would call my aesthetic soul mate; but there are so many little things about him that make him one of my very besties… to name a few; his job is his passion. There are so few people I know personally who work in the non-profit sector who truly love and work hard at their jobs. Over the years, hearing the stories and ideas that come from this group of folks, I am consistently amazed that I have a friend with such a noble and what I consider an almost romantic job; it’s absolutely the kind of work Jesus would high-five us for. It’s taking a soup kitchen-esque kind of help and bumping it up 1,000 notches.

There have been very few people who have been able to sit me down and say “you are being an asshole, stop.” Or “you are being obsessive, I will not have this conversation with you anymore.” Or “this is why you are wrong” or even more importantly “this is why you are great.” Roo has said these things to me on many occasions and he has become one of the only persons on the planet that I trust to tell me the truth sometimes. My other best friends have never hesitated to tell me the truth, but as women we have that little fine line we don’t cross. Also women tend to emphasize kindness and won’t be harsh with me, the way I definitely need sometimes. I respect Roo so much because he will kick my ass sometimes. Hard. And I definitely need it.

As I stated above, Roo is my weekend warrior partner. You will be hard pressed to find a weekend night where we aren’t at some bar, making a dance party happen. Or someone’s fabulous front porch, talking crazy and being flamboyant. Or maybe in someone’s back yard at a bonfire… mostly, we are at that same wild bar, swigging cheap beers, scoping out boys and dancing like crazy people. This song, when it first came out, was a song I knew instantly would be a song Roo would love. I took off running with it to him. (aka I think I emailed him?) While it did get overplayed and overhyped to death, there was a window of a few months where it was pure magic. Now that the flood has died down a little and it’s not being played nonstop and hyped to death, this song can pop up at the bar and bring the house down all over again. When I hear this song, I get this memory in my head of Roo, jumping in circles with me at Neptune’s, and we’re fist-pumping like wild people. I will always smile and think of Roo when I hear this song.

In honor of my dear friend Roo this holiday season, please donate your time, money, prayers to the Alliance of AIDS Services - Carolina.

Radiohead - Karma Police

Long ago, before I became this pinnacle of sanity you have now grown to know and love, I “dropped my basket.” I had succumbed completely to my then undiagnosed Panic disorder completely and turned my life and adrenal glands over to a drug called Effexor. This drug, while you are on it, seems to be a kind of miracle drug. Nothing switches, no wild uncontrollable thoughts about death, no racing heart and sweaty palms in otherwise safe situations; synthetic calm after years of self-torture and exhaustion. However, there was a downside or two to this “miracle drug”. My serotonin levels eventually became so evenly leveled that my brain tricked me into believing that I had no consequences what-so-ever; I was like a blank sheet of paper. I wasn’t high, I wasn’t low, and I wasn’t anything but a poor decision maker with no shoes on. I got laid off, I didn’t care. I lost my fiancé, I didn’t care. I had to move home with my parents… whatever. I didn’t wear shoes for a year or two… who cares?

Somewhere in the midst of this haze, as I found myself every day at the same damn coffee shop, doing puzzles and chain smoking, I met a girl who would become my anchor and partner in crime; Anne, who has affectionately become known as “N’abney” through a manipulated pronunciation of her first and last names. I had known her barely a heartbeat when she walked across the street and bought me a crossword puzzle dictionary from the used book store. It was love at first nerd. What followed was a then several month progression of Anne and me clinging to each other throughout our follies and downfalls. I was losing grip on life in general, Anne was lost and trying to finish school. All we knew to do was to smoke drugs and go wild and have earth shattering conversations while we bawled our eyes out in our cars.

Eventually, everything came to a head. My family was slowly cutting me off in every way. I had no money and my dad took away my cell phone first, and then my car. Anne saved the day by letting me borrow her early 80s beige town & country, affectionately known as the “Nazgul”, for the screeching death sounds it made due to its lack of power steering. My friends, one by one, took me aside and said “get your shit together or we can’t be friends anymore.” (This is a testament to how evil SSRI’s, especially Effexor, are when not properly administered or monitored.) My friends gave me an intervention over a medication my doctors intentionally put me on. Then the last straw… my health insurance granted me as a severance from my last job ran out. My parents refused to pay for the then $120/mo prescription, as there was no generic, and I literally went completely cold turkey off Effexor. You can do a quick Google search and see how dangerous and wrong and terrible this experience was for me.

Digression/point of post: one of the things I do the best and I know I do a lot is give people nicknames. Whether that nickname is something you did once that was silly or just a ridiculous mispronunciation of your name; everyone at one point or another gets a nickname from me. Some people have more than one. It’s an endearing thing I do; it means I care enough about you or something. I have only been the recipient of a nickname that stuck once, and that was from N’abney… One night in the midst of all this haze, Anne, while driving around with another of my long time best friends, Bart, called and sang the entirety of this song, all the while substituting my name in place of “Karma”. I had, at one point, had a few friends that would sing Culture Club’s “KARLA Chameleon” to me in the halls at school, but it never really caught on. Some people outside of the N’abney inner sanctum still call me “karla police” now. Piggybacking off the nickname, I once had a brilliant idea to start a cable access show where I would dress as a cop, walk around NCSU’s brickyard and stop kids listening to headphones and ask what they were listening to. If what they said did not please me, I would “arrest” them and make them listen to some Joy Division or the Buzzcocks or something. This idea, as all great ideas that rise from the haze of marijuana smoke, never came to fruition, not unlike the great “cheese as currency” debate of ’03.

I have never heard Karma Police without thinking of N’abs. I somehow have more “in jokes” with N’abney than just about anyone else in my whole life. That girl has saved my life so many times I can’t even count anymore….

N’abney & Karla Police = burning the 80s… 4ever! xoxox

Bob Dylan - Desolation Row

I’ve never been a huge Bob Dylan fan. Well, a Bob Dylan fan, in general. In any capacity. I never had a strong opinion one way or the other. His music was always just there; background noise. Something to ignore like Musak or that nondescript coworker you pass every day in the hall and nod to, but you never really learn their name. That was me and Mr. Zimmerman. We had a very “you don’t interfere with me and I won’t bug you” relationship. Honestly the majority of my experience was when he would randomly pop up on a radio station; I would hear myself mentally professing, “Wow. Who is a Bob Dylan fan? Who listens to this man sing and gets really psyched about this voice?”

I eventually found myself working with a woman from Australia who was a wild Dylan fan; to the point where she would follow him around like the Grateful Dead. Literally would take vacation time to go see him. And she was an otherwise amazing woman and was my best friend in the office despite the fact she was in her late 50s and I was in my mid-20s at the time. She would bring me graham cracker “sandwiches” filled with butter and encouraged a healthy vegemite addiction. I haven’t worked with her in forever, but through the miracle of facebook, I’ve gotten back in touch with her and her daughter, who was also a very close friend.

I don’t even remember when it happened, definitely in the past 5 or 6 years, as that is the time I have worked at my current job, of which I have eventually found myself listening to an internet radio station called Radioparadise. Good mix of world, eclectic, standard rock, 80s and alt-country, etc. One day this song pops up. I was about halfway through this almost 12 minute song, barely paying attention when the line “Her profession’s her religion / Her sin is her lifelessness” and I hear myself saying “hold up now - what?” and I got to googling.

By the way… This is my all day/everyday. When I am otherwise “working” at my job, I am most likely playing professional music critic in my head. I do a lot of previewing via other blogs of songs (see the blogroll to the right over there to see where I get the majority of these songs) and when I’m not in the mood to troll blogs, I play radioparadise. For the first few years I listened to RP, I would keep a notepad beside my computer that was basically a list of songs or artists to download (as well as a notepad for a list of songs I want to write posts about). I found a great many artists who have become main staples of my musical diet through this website. And once in a while, I’d almost say once or twice or 40 times a day, a band will come on the radio and I find myself thinking “hmmm where is Cake from? Where did David Byrne go to college? What is the meaning of this Eels song? Why is Elbow so amazing?” so I have to sit online and read Wikipedia articles or band sites for a while. Long digression short; I Google. A lot.

This song comes on, these lyrics hit me, and I get online and find out more about this song. The supposed Steinbeck connection (Cannery Row?) and the Duluth hangings… and I finally had my light bulb moment with Dylan. This is the song that made me go “Ohhhhh… Okay. Bob Dylan. Gotcha.... Depth!”

Not that I am in any way, shape or form a "big Dylan fan", now. I still don’t even own a single album, just a handful of songs I’ve grabbed here and there, but I don’t ignore him anymore. And I feel it is entirely irresponsible of me to not at least acknowledge WHY people are Bob Dylan fans without dismissing him completely.


This song reminds me that I can be wrong and opinions can change. I never thought I would like any Dylan song. I also never thought I would like mushrooms. Who knew?


PS - I am now stuck listening to Elbow all day. I tricked myself. People... Listen to Elbow. seriously.