listen to me, oh no

this has happened to you before, right? you click a link or watch a video expecting to last a minute before scoffing and closing the window. or maybe, on the one day of the week you decide you'll give the radio a shot, you listen to a song and at the end, the DJ comes on and announces that you've spent the past few minutes listening to "generic song of the hour" by train. ah, train is such a great band, the DJ says, there are so many good train songs to choose from. the problem then isn't that the DJ clearly has questionable taste in music, rather, you thought the train song was a tune by the black crowes (of whom you have dearly fond memories & utmost respect), and you find yourself weeping a little and wondering what happened to your ears.

or, you know, not.

so i clicked on a link and watched a video and the first time through i thought, well, that's all right, thinking i could go without it until i woke up in the middle of the night with this song in my head. that's not my name. that's not my name. that's not my....suddenly i want to wear short dresses and feathers in my hair and make a movie of myself jumping on a trampoline and kicking blithely at balloons. actually, it's kind of a brilliant song, if you listen closely. whether or not i have the ting tings to thank for that, or whomever does their production, is hard to say.

the ting tings: "that's not my name;" we started nothing, 2008

mathematics

1980 - 1948= 32. equals, older than i am now. equals, the first birth of two. a plan executed according to the schematic, a baby turning midway between north and south, an impossible number of miles from home. still, an accidental penultimate.

1984 - 1948= 36. equals, a gift from god. equals, the second of two and final, the first would draw eyeglasses and mustaches over pictures of the second, not knowing that photos are hard to replace. the second small, an accident, welcomed, more familiar than the first.

2006 - 1948= 58. equals, an even number. add to get an unlucky odd. multiply to get a fat round, some say a pinnacle. some say the height of one's demise. divide, a number of little consequence, the loneliest number, with a sticky remainder refusing to budge.

2009 - 1948= 61. equals, three years gone. equals, hard ground and, decomposition within, and, last rights, and the weight of time blistering forward, the only true juggernaut in a world of sifting grays and blurred lines. the only final thing. the only thing we all have to contend with.

2006 - 1980= 26. equals, if you make it another year, you might make it the rest of the way. equals, an unknown voice qualifying a barely known quantity, oh, you are so young to suffer such a loss. add, a year of life hardly remembered because there would be so many more to come, subtract to find the same, divide, arrive at a magic number. a man and a woman had a little baby. multiply, find a dozen. half a day, times two.

2009 - 1980= 29. a strange thing to say, twenty-nine, words sharp, a guillotine blade wavering. how many nights; how long before i realize the heaving and gasping and tears happened in the landscape of a dream, before i understand my mind in sleep goes where i will not let it while awake; in the morning, the mirror reveals more crust in the corner of my eyes than normal.

november 21, 2006, i called to say happy birthday. her voice was high and clotted with sick. oh, my dear, she said, thank you.

foiled attempts

i was going to post about this article i read. i read the article because my boss gave it to me to read, because we were thinking of signing this guy up at mission control...the article really pissed me off, and i had a lot to say about it; then today my boss says, by the way, that guy accepted our offer. now i can't mention the guy's name, or anything about him, really, in effort to keep my employment.

so, that's not going to work out.

and then the other day i heard this fascinating piece on npr about the immediacy in our current existence; the reporter-girl had a boyfriend who would answer his phone at 2 a.m. you know what happens at 2 a.m.? mostly sex, or bad things. and the boyfriend is also a reporter, or somesuch, and is very plugged in and a news addict, and everyone was generally upset by the blackberry that was never more than an inch out of reach, the whole situation was most highly disagreeable. like americans particularly do in the face of change, they planned to rally against this invasion of the instant. which means this person, or group of people, as i understood it, was (or, were) going to set the clock back to 1985--no cell phones, or computers (not the household variety, anyway), or even CDs or, gasp, digital television. they would write letters and make long distance phone calls to each other over landlines. mon dieu! there was something charming about all of it, really, because i feel the same way much of the time; i was thinking the other day: how are children taught handwriting these days? my own handwriting is atrocious, but it wasn't for lack of trying. are pens going to go the way of flint arrowheads? somewhere on the far edge of town, a ball-point pen factory will become a historical site, all roped off and clean for the visiting masses, "look, jimmy, that's where they used to put the ink in the pens. remember how i told you about those?"

all of this to say, i fucking can't find the story on npr's website. i have searched for two days. my interest was piqued because i really want to start writing letters again, and slow down in earnest; i like being plugged in, what i don't like is feeling that i need to be. did anyone else hear that story? can you at least remember what program it was part of? 'twas around 6:30 pm on tuesday.

given that i'm out of ideas, and that it's cold and wet outside, i am going to watch criminal minds and try to use the force to cook my dinner.

play me out, mos.

short, gray and old

some weeks ago, i was thinking about henry rollins. i don't know why, exactly. i wouldn't call myself a fan of his--i was never into black flag, or even the rollins band; i mean, i found "liar" intriguing by but for the same reason as everyone else--this (seemingly) huger than huge guy yelling into the camera using words i knew, yet in a style i couldn't really connect with. the neural path i followed to get to henry was probably something like this: i'm single --> i'm tired of being single --> i wonder if i'll be single forever --> if i were not single, who would i be with -->henry rollins is pretty cute, what about that guy? then i fell asleep.

a while after that a friend mentioned that henry rollins was doing a stint on the show sons of anarchy, which i don't watch, but i was interested enough to pursue the possibility. on a listless saturday afternoon, i spiraled into an awful youtube black hole of henry rollins. you know those days, when you get stuck on something and you can't control yourself, so you end up wasting 2 hours, you even read the godawful comments posted after some of the videos. i watched henry talk and talk and talk, because that's what he does. at the end, everything was still the same, but i hated the internet a little bit more.

this isn't really about henry rollins, though. it seems wrong to have an opinion about someone who has endless opinions coming out of his mouth-hole. my youtube black hole led me to a google vortex, in which i read about henry's tattoos "very old and very cool, just like me," he says. can't argue with that) and henry's appearances on various random television shows, and then, finally, there was this:

“I hate writing. I just wish I could stop but I can’t...The better you get at it, the harder it is, because it’s less time that you bullshit yourself. I’ve met a handful of writers and they’re pretty miserable people. Because they know that the beast is sitting in the room saying, ‘come on. You know you’ve been playing around with your friends long enough. Back to class.’"

and then i was kind of like, holy shit wtf omg. people think writers are miserable because it's their job--a choice, really, which is worse--to simultaneously recognize all the ills in the world and all the beauty in the world and somehow mush those things together, seamlessly, so people will ask: how did you do that? that doesn't make a writer miserable. writers are miserable because we cannot stop what we do, even when we want to. when we're sitting in front of the computer with 5,000 words that were months in the coming, the cutting and pasting, the agonizing, the reordering, the napping-instead-of-writing and feeling like a shithead about it even though no one else is keeping track. it's like being pissed because you want to stop breathing but you can't, your body won't let you. how foolish. you get a taste of fresh air, the kind you get only after a rain--someone read your piece, and they liked it, and they're going to put it somewhere where other people can see it, and you don't think: now i can rest. you think: now, i have to do something else.





p.s.: watch the video linked to on the first "talk." it's pretty funny.

like a picture of a sunny day

oh, hello blog. and hello three people who read my blog. i kind of missed this. sitting here when i should be doing all sorts of things; instead, i feel some unfounded pressure to finish this post, and the next one, and the next one. until all i do is blog for free.

i did finish a story though. goal, completed. and the newest edition of monday night is finished, and you should get one, or at least stop by the website and read it: www.mondaynightlit.com

the story: needs work. i'll get there. what else can be done? here's something that's been kicking around in my ears, lately:

"modern girl," sleater-kinney; the woods, 2005

notes from an ungrateful fan (or, in which i try to intellectualize my dislike of pearl jam's newest album)

few people like to put themselves in boxes. now, maybe more than ever, definitions are useless; it seems like we're almost trying to outdo each other with the number of personality conditions we acquire. ok. i'm a laissez-faire kinda gal. just don't try to wrap me up in your polyamorous spree. but i like definitions. i like knowing i'm female even though us fems got the raw deal. i like knowing i'm african-american (which is different than black-american), i like that men piss me off and confuse me to no end but i love the way they smell, and i fucking love pearl jam. i might start filling that in as the "other" option on forms and surveys. name: nana k. birthdate: septemeber. sex: female. race: pearl jam fan.

i was eleven when i first heard "jeremy." i won't presume to say i recall the first time i ever heard it, though i think it involves the backseat of my mother's old car on a long stretch of empty road and being interested in something outside myself for first time in a long time, so much so that i stared at the radio wishing i could hear it again. those first aggressive, ominous notes shook my spinal cord, like the first line of a novel that promises to suck out your soul, yeah, you fucking call me ishmael, bitch.

i'm twenty-nine now. besides the core aspects about myself, a lot of my external existence has changed, i.e., those things i chose to take on. this morning, i realized that it'll be a long time before i willingly purchase and wear another pair of pants--this from a girl who would kick and scream at the slightest glimpse of the frills and lace of a sunday dress. i thought i would be married by now. i'm not. i thought i'd have more money. i don't. i thought i'd have to call my mother and beg her to come out of retirement from wherever she was vacationing to help me take care of my kids. won't happen. i live in california. i'm still wondering how that happened. but, in the midst of all that, i have remained a pearl jam fan. that's ten studio albums, myriad side projects, an assload of bootlegs, both the official kind and otherwise, a tattoo, some DVDs (the official kind and otherwise) a few thousand dollars on the fan club, show tickets, plane tickets, gas, hotel rooms, and, oh, there was this. i was as obsessed as your favorite fanboy or girl and the evidence to prove it is littered throughout my life. but i don't wear flannel anymore. when i paint my fingernails black, it's more as a joke than anything else. i sometimes hate my parent, but for different reasons than my angst-riddled teenaged self did. i'm ashamed to admit this, but much of the three-chord, despondent rock-n-roll i used to listen to annoys me when it catches me off guard. which doesn't mean i don't continue to love that music, it just doesn't color my life as much as it used to. my ears have grown as i have. and that's ok.

somewhere after no code, i started to wonder if pearl jam would ever disappoint me. would something like that even be humanly possible? at that point, even i was surprised; friends, whose interest had taken a nosedive after vs., would ask how i could still like pearl jam and i had no concrete answer. i would sputter out a response about the band still being good and ohmygod you should see them live. but the short answer was this: they put out incredible music. i loved what i heard. what other reason is there? my love was serious, as immediate as the at first sight bullshit they sell you in operas and romantic comedies. i would hear singles on the radio and the inside of my heart would vibrate. when yield finally came out, that time period probably being the peak of my insane fandom, i cried when i heard in hiding (see prev. post) for the first time. i remember that moment clearly. i was guiding my little nissan up the winding road that lead to our housing development in delaware; the distinct odor of the piles of manure crowding around the mushroom houses infiltrated the air vents. i leaned forward to turn the stereo up. then i sat in my driveway and wished, as often happened, that i could hear it again.

that was the year i ditched my college orientation to see pearl jam in philadelphia. this year, i had to talk myself into spending the $200+ to buy a plane ticket to see them in the same city, allegedly for four shows, though i only have tickets for two. i pre-ordered the new album, certainly, about 4 days before it was released. i wasn't even expecting it to arrive this week--in the past, i would've rearranged my schedule so i could go to the record store first thing in the morning and i'd rip off the plastic on the way to my car, rabidly hungry for ear candy. i found the new album wedged into my mailbox on monday and currently my favorite part about it are the baby photos in the back (hey, does anyone know who's who?).

having had almost twenty (gah!) years to think about it, what i appreciated about pearl jam was, and, ok, is, how they teetered on the edge of popularity. frat boys love them and so do little black girls from the suburbs. they're angry and yet uplifting, poetic both in lyric and music, intimidating and attractive. they experimented, but did it well, and i wanted that challenge--how the music sort of stared me in the face like an eager lover and said, "this is totally different than last time. are you ready?" and i was. i always was. people would tell me they listened to an album one time, and then put it right back on the shelf next to the others, never to pick it up again. i'd be horrified. people would say, "this song sucks," and i want to pop them in the mouth. recently, while i was griping about pearl jam's latest effort & how every song i heard made me all the more dubious, a friend said, " i like anything the band does. even when they're bad, it's like a chanukah gift from grandma - it comes from the heart." that's how i felt about everything before this album. er...the one before last. and maybe the one before that one? no, actually, i quite like riot act. and i even like binaural, and i like the strange and wonderful art piece that is no code, and i especially love yield because i can listen to it straight through without thinking, "oh, this one is so much better live--i can't listen to it." what i've realized, though, is that most pearl jam fans don't like these albums in their entirety. it seems that most pearl jam fans want ten. they want the upswing of "betterman" and the do-do-do-do-do-do-dooooo of "black." they want the raw speed of "go," and the misery shrouded in an uplifting melody that is "elderly woman behind the counter in a small town." and i want all those things too, but i also want the way the bass sounds like a horn in "all those yesterdays," and i want the strangeness of "help help," and the stop-start of "big wave."

i had to ask a friend if my ears were broken, since i'm completely unable to hear what other folks are hearing, since it seems everyone else in the world is rabid for this album. i had to ask if, maybe because i know 4 guitar chords that i can't really put together, i was missing something due to lack of musical prowess and understanding. i had to ask myself: am i too cynical to handle an un-cynical pearl jam album? there's something about backspacer that's too easy. it's too fun, it's too straightforward. the lyrics are too rhyme-y, the general mood of the songs is too catchy. my banana pudding isn't fucking banana-y enough, damnit. this type of album something i expect from a band that's already established itself as fun and obvious, not pearl jam, who probably killed off 1/3 of their fanbase with vitalogy. which isn't to say i'm going to throw it out with my next trash dump. i appreciate this album, it's as skillful and brilliant as ever but i don't want to hear it a million times over, and make everyone i know do the same. and i miss that feeling.

i think the going opinion is that the band has been weird and been punky and been hardcore and this is a return to basics, good old rock-n-roll. even the band is of the opinion that this 10th effort is remarkable in all aspects. i say, to hell with basics. if i want basics i'll put on this album and clean my house and then turn it off and never think of it again until my bathtub starts to get dingy.

even now i'm asking myself why i've spent so much time and so many words on these ponderings. so consider this: besides my immediate family, pearl jam as a band, have been in my life longer than most of my good friends, than most of the men i've been involved with, most of the jobs i've had. at my best and worst, there was pearl jam. highest and lowest, past and present, all those opposing forces. you get the drift. to actively dislike something they've done is a big deal. for me, anyway. i'm getting tired of hoping that the next one will be better. or maybe pearl jam is tired of me.

nothing better to do on a monday night

peeking out from behind the blog curtain to announce issue 8 of monday night. in this issue:

Conor Allen
Ching-In Chen
Jenny Drai
Samantha Giles
Vivien Jones
Pete Knight
David W. Landrum
justin mcelfresh
David M. Morini
Mark Stevens
Rebecca Stonehill
Sharon Zetter

you can read everything online; you old fashioned-types can order a print copy here.

i was flattered to be asked to work on monday night with rob, sharon, and jess, and i'm looking forward to the start of the reading period. for now. until i get crushed by the electronic weight of submissions. because i don't spend enough time pushing the no button at my regular job.

but you should send something in, anyway.

here's what my life is like these days (music starts around 25 seconds in):