like a record baby

songs that accompany me on the subway - because I always forget to recharge my ipod

For the longest time I couldn't stop singing "Copacabana." I like to blame JS for this knowing full well that I was the one who chose to step into this trap. It is in fact a sad song. Be not fooled by the catchy magic of the Mannilow the song is about passion murder and an inconsolable loss of love.

And then it was "Under the Boardwalk." A homeless guy on the subway was playing two chords that are not in this song singing a jumble of lyrics from the song with a made up a melody. It occurred to me that he probably didn't know any other chords because he sang the lyrics to another song with another made up melody to those two chords. He had a lovely velvety voice. Someone should teach him a few Seal covers.

And then it was "Swandive." Because EO is going through a painful breakup and his take on it is that you can take the feeling of falling and turn it into a Swandive. "just spread them wings and feel the breeze and smile on the way." Reading it makes my stomach drop. It is a level of openess that I do not know if I will ever reach. And the recklessness in Ani's song wrenches at my guts in much the same way. (I have said it differently in my own life. Probably even in this damn blog. That a broken heart will heal back. It is your choice as to whether it heals back closed and tight or bigger and more open. But of course for my part the theory is a long way from the practice.)

And then it was " 6"1' " On the subway platform I asked myself if it took a city like Chicago to bring forth Liz Phair. I wondered to myself if there were future indie queens in NYC who were mixing their own girlysounds. Maybe every other woman on the train is Manhattan's answer to Liz Phair. I owe Ms. Phair a cycle of songs about vibrators and microwaveable foods. (Does it count that I sang about vibrators on tour?)

And then it was The Shins "So Says I" the song has a crowded mouthful of words tripping over each other rushed pushed feeling to it that makes my feel my heartbeat faster in my throat. I think of it in the mornings crowding into and spilling off the train to get from A to B.


red dye revolt

At the local laundromat half the dryers and most of the washing machines are broken. Some of the broken ones do not have signs on them. The only indicator that there is something wrong is that the attendant will yell at you when you try to load your clothes in them.

Some of the machines only run hot water. Which I discovered only after starting a load of darks. Lucky I sort dark from light as the two red shirts in there would have made for a lifetime of pink button down shirts. The water was the color of Hawaiian Punch through every cycle. I was saved from a classic rookie laundry mishap. Still, some of my underwear have an odd pinky cast to them now.


summer in a glass

Had my first mojito on Friday. It was as N had described it: summer in a glass. Fruity, sweet, and cooling. Since I moved to Brooklyn I can count on my left hand the number of days I have gone without having a drink. This situation is the opposite of many of my friends who on leaving grad school exclaimed that they drank so much less than they used did in grad school.

Drinking in grad school always being associated with the misery of poverty, repeated failure, an environment where a cloud of guilt hands over you because the work is never done and you are always being evaluated on one level or another. *sigh* Those were good times. (You think I jest when I say that. But lately when I think of grad school it calls to mind what Steve Dunne says in the movie "Singles" -"we had good times and we had bad times, but we had times. ")

"We had times." Amen to that.

So yeah, I've been drinking. Not with great abandon but with a constancy that probably wears at my liver and teases apart the tangle of neural spaghetti in my head. Perhaps for the better. Things have always been a bit scrambled up there and a little cell death might clear things up. Allow for a bit of judicious pruning. Who knows.

It might just be that regular work will drive a girl to drink.


a rose by any other name is rebranding

I overheard a conversation in the office about how "40 is the new 30." On my 35th birthday AG called to let me know that "30 is the new 20." I have heard that "Orange is the new pink." In case you were wondering, "I am the new you."


the reason I started this post

I wish the term "straight edge" had come into the common parlance when I was a teenager. I could have declared myself to be straight edge as opposed to being that cheerful dork who didn't drink, smoke or take mind altering substances.