can't forget the time or place

this is still one of my favorite playlists I've ever made:

1. "El Scorcho," Weezer
2. "Love You Madly," Cake
3. "Piazza, New York Catcher," Belle and Sebastian
4. "Desire," U2
5. "I Want To Hold Your Hand," The Beatles
6. "I Want To Tell You," The Beatles
7. "I Will Dare," the Replacements
8. "I've Just Seen a Face," Jim Sturgess
9. "Don't Let Me Down," Dana Fuchs and Martin Luther McCoy
10. "California Dreamin'," The Mamas and the Papas
11. "Elevation," U2
12. "Love Today," Mika
13. "Anyone Else But You," the Moldy Peaches
14. "Seasons of Love," Rent


-- July 2008. Washington, DC. in honor of a kid who knew all the same obscure Beatles songs I did, sang Johnny Cash with me at the Vietnam War Memorial, had a man-crush on Bono, was so involved with musicals that I'm still not 100% certain he was straight (boy knew all the words to "Seasons of Love" before I did), and in the end, went home to Los Angeles.

you were a child, crawling on your knees toward it

haha, so. a good friend of mine just reconnected, via Facebook, with this kid we went to camp with...six years ago? has it really only been six years this summer? were we that old? (that young?) he was a cute kid when he was thirteen, anyway. now he's still sort of cute but he looks like kind of a...I don't know the word. kind of potentially tiresome? but maybe not, maybe profile pictures aren't anything to go on, haha. he's a sophomore at IUP, anyway. crazy shit.

I still have the little blue journal at home I took to camp that year, man. that was a good year. I wrote letters back and forth for a couple months after I came home with this kid named Jack from Ohio. we wrote a comic strip together. then it turned out we both sucked at correspondence, and he sent me something like a year later that I kept meaning to respond to and...didn't. fuck, I still feel bad about that sometimes. Jack was a nice kid.

swapping one addiction for another

my soc professor went on a rant about people who are overly zealous and think they know everything about religion one way or another being asshats. it was awesome.


we got over the witches in Salem, MA
we moved on and understood facts of the day
we know what you're saying is simply not true
we've proven we're right about all your gods, too

weird but true: the last time I loved somebody I thought I had a legitimate chance with was over two years ago. (that's not counting the time when the situation might have turned out differently had both of us lived in the same state - strange summer happenings, you know.)
maybe this is why the thought of having a chance scares me out of my mind.

"going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world"

mainly for my own reference, books I have read for the first time in the last year (ish) and thoroughly enjoyed (not including the ones I just sort of liked):

- heart of darkness, joseph conrad (yes, really)
- the things they carried, tim o'brien
- a portrait of the artist as a young man, james joyce (again, yes, really)
- downtown owl, chuck klosterman
- foxfire, joyce carol oates
- state by state: a panoramic portrait of america - various authors, an essay on each state and it's fucking awesome, okay
- heart of a dog, mikhail bulgakov
- wonder boys, michael chabon
- on the road, jack kerouac
- moneyball, michael lewis
- white teeth, zadie smith
- the mysteries of pittsburgh, michael chabon
- eating the dinosaur, chuck klosterman

currently in progress: the dharma bums, jack kerouac, and the mysteries of pittsburgh again because I felt like restarting it yesterday. like i need to miss pittsburgh more. why is nothing capitalized in this post? i don't knoooooooooooow. also, i reread killing yourself to live and love is a mixtape alternately pretty much every time i'm between books. loooove.

"there is not even silence in the mountains, but dry sterile thunder without rain"

so I'm trying to write a paper on The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot (which I'm enjoying probably more than any normal person should) and I kind of want to write about the common themes it shares with Quadrophenia. kdjfasdfasjdfhaskdf why must I be like this?

seriously though. it's mainly the last section of the poem/the last song on the album, and both have this recurring motif of water and rain bringing life, and this sudden climactic thunderstorm at the end - here:

"And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain"

- the waste land, section five: "what the thunder said"

"Only love
Can bring the rain
That makes you yearn to the sky
Only love
Can bring the rain
That falls like tears from on high

Love, reign o'er me

On the dry and dusty road
The nights we spend apart alone
I need to get back home to cool cool rain
I can't sleep and I lay and I think
The night is hot and black as ink
Oh God, I need a drink of cool, cool rain"

- "love, reign o'er me"

well, now Blogger won't let me get out of italics, which is a pain. but do you see? I wonder if Pete Townshend knew he was evoking one of the most famous works of epic modernist poetry when he wrote this shit.

XD

at her request, here is Sam and her compatriot Robbie Poet (or maybe Robbie, Poet? I couldn't be quite sure). the people you meet sitting on sketchy-ass couches in the alleys of Warren, Ohio.

this irish fool's got a great big heart, keeps coming back into the ring

what a fucking show.

I'll be honest, up to the end, it could have been a little better. they played so much stuff from The Warrior's Code, which in itself isn't that bad but it was...pretty much all the songs I always skip on that album, haha. same with The Meanest of Times - I would have looooved to hear "Famous for Nothing" or "God Willing" but, alas.
but then they did "The Dirty Glass," with Stephanie Dougherty, the girl who sings it with them on the album, at which point I lost my fucking mind. BEST EVER, OH MY ACTUAL LORD. I want to be her.

...I wish I could remember how the fuck I got into the Dropkick Murphys, because it happened back when the only good music I listened to was Green Day, the White Stripes, Fountains of Wayne, and the Beatles. spring/summer 2005. I know I stumbled across them somehow, listened to Blackout (still my favorite album of theirs) at Barnes and Noble, and adopted them. but I have no idea what prompted it. sheer serendipitous wonderfulness, I suppose.

and then they came barging back into my life last summer, and they couldn't have timed it better. I think I needed a straightforward, no-bullshit band in my life. no flowery lyrics, no poetics and vague metaphors to get tripped up in, just loud, fast, honest songs.

anyway. so the show's going reasonably well, and then I happen to get onstage again, like I did when I saw them in June, only this time my camera battery doesn't die. AND I ACTUALLY GET A PICTURE OF ME AND AL BARR, WHOM I LOVE MORE THAN ABOUT 99.99999999999999% OF THE WORLD.

er, wait, I'm a moron with only half my head in the picture, let's give that another go.

sorry about my face. but dude, how many other bands even do that? just let people run free and wild onstage in huge gangs to yell "KISS ME I'M SHITFACED"? not bloody many, I will tell you. I fucking love these boys.

there will be growth in the spring.

the last month and a half in Boston has been like some weird half-waking dream. I can't believe it's been so long since I was last here at the airport; it feels like I've hardly done anything in the time I've been back, even though I've really done quite a bit.

I've spent a lot of time alone with my own brain, for better or worse. I've had some of my most fun weekends yet in college, and some of the most depressing. I almost went out to a beach at the end of the train line at night, alone, in the dark, till I got scared and turned around three stops away. I've started to see a couple different ways the next four years could go, and I still haven't decided which one to pursue. I've realized it's always going to be hard for me to make real friends as easily as most people do. and I hope I know enough now to make the last month and a half of this semester better than the first month and a half has been.

also, everyone should listen to this song: "Departure Arrival" by Mischief Brew. download it. I'll send it to you. whatever. listen to it.

a romantic, is it me for a moment?

"Brighton is a fantastic place. The sea is so gorgeous you want to jump into it and sink."

I had an epiphany last night. people have been on about tattoos a lot lately, and I haven't been able to think of a single bloody thing I'd want to write on my body, until now. I don't know where I'd want it or what exactly I'd want it to look like, but this is what I'd want:

love, reign o'er me.

these streets will make you feel brand new

I keep having the urge to make entire epic posts of just song lyrics. so I'm giving in.

"what do we have for entertainment?
cops kicking gypsies on the pavement
now the news, snap to attention
lunar landing of the dentists' convention
Italian mobster shoots a lobster
seafood restaurant gets out of hand
a car in the fridge, a fridge in the car
what cowboys do in TV land
you lot! [wot?]
don't stop, give it all you got...
don't you ever stop long enough to start?
take your car outta that gear"

"Dirty old river
must you keep rolling,
flowing into the night
People so busy
make me feel dizzy
taxi light shines so bright.

But I don't feel afraid
as long as I gaze at Waterloo Sunset
I am in paradise
Every day I look at the world from my window
chilly, chilly is the evening time
Waterloo Sunset's fine"

[fact: I often look out my window and listen to this song]

"we've come so far, we've been so wasted
it's written all over our faces
we are the last call and it's so pathetic"


"why bother? it's gonna hurt me
gonna kill when you desert me
this happened to me twice before
it won't happen to me anymore"


"I took a look around, I believe in hand-me downs
the treasures that we found when we were brand new
now that we're old and worn
a little ripped and torn
one day we'll be reborn
one day I will meet you right back here"


"I've been wasted
Pills and alcohol
And I've been chasing
Down the pool halls

Then I drank the water
From a hurricane
And I set a fire
Just to see the flame

I just want to see the light
And I don't want to lose my sight
Well I just want to see the light
And I need to know what's worth the fight"


"as I was walking through a life one morning
the sun was out, the air was warm but oh,
I was cold
though I must have looked a half a person
to tell the tale in my own version
it was only then that I felt whole
do you believe in something beautiful?
then get up and be it."


"one hand in the air for the big city
street lights, big dreams all lookin' pretty
no place in the world that can compare"


"here, with all the pleasures of the first world
laid out before us 
who are we to break down?"


"Only love
Can make it rain
The way the beach is kissed by the sea
Only love
Can make it rain
Like the sweat of lovers
Laying in the fields.
love, reign o'er me
love, reign o'er me"



"this is a call to all my past resignations:
it's been too long."

if you can name all of those songs, or even a few, you're my favorite.

you used to be all right - what happened?

yo bitchezzzzz.

I made a Flickr and I'm doing a 365-photos-in-365-days thing. not that I'm any great photographer, but hopefully doing this will make me better? and I'm all for record-keeping-type things, so, here we are. posting them on Tumblr too, probably. I felt I should share this.

also, I am listening to Jay-Z vs. Radiohead mashups and they're fucking awesome.