to riding your bike midday past the three-piece suits

is it strange that one of my life goals is still to sometime play Mark in a production of Rent? I REALIZE I AM A GIRL, I'm obviously fine with being a girl in real life...but any time I sing along with any of these songs I always take his part. without fail. and I would love to be in a production of that show at all, but can you really see me as any of the girls? I thought not.

sometimes I think I am tremendously weird.

I still can't believe it's fall again already.

love that dirty water (oh, boston you're my home)

(that's not from tonight, it's from last week. I tried to post it then and Blogger repeatedly lost its shit so I gave up.)

a glorious feeling -- walking down the street in the rain, soaking wet, in light shorts and a T-shirt, laughing at all the people huddled under umbrellas with their coats and hats, trying to get out of the way of nature.


there's something about a river - even if I'm in the middle of a city, which I am, I always have enough space if I can get near a river. "when you start separating the people from their rivers what have you got? bureaucracy!" - Jack Kerouac



and the flat and gray-blue Charles
leaves no doubt to where we are
city lights to the east and west
underneath this sky I'll rest

doesn't anybody drive brightly colored cars anymore?
I'm looking out the window onto the Massachusetts Turnpike and all I see is gray, black, white, gray, black, white, gray. and the occasional blue.
it's foggy and rainy as hell and I'd love to see a bright yellow car or two go by for once.

i put my itunes on shuffle and this is what happens

Mika, "Grace Kelly." summer. hanging out with my best friend. doing our best, most faaaabulous impressions of Mika doing his best impression of Freddie. dancing and shouting like absolute fools with the window open.

Joe Anderson and Jim Sturgess, "With a Little Help From My Friends". February. driving, parking, stopping, falling out of the car still singing, shambling across the parking lot shouting, falling over couches, throwing our arms around each other.

Joe Strummer, "Johnny Appleseed." June. driving from the Colorado mountains into the New Mexico desert, watching the horizon slowly flatten out, watching the land turn from gray to reddish brown, watching the road open up ahead of us.

The Clash, "Safe European Home." anytime. crashing out a song in the basement with my brother, my drummer, trying to strain and roughen my voice into an instrument capable of a respectable punk-rock shout, alternating lines at the end, stopping together in perfect unison.

Filter, "Take a Picture." February. a loss that meant a lot more to me than it logically should have, a boy from Edmonton getting on a plane to Atlanta, leaving his home in Pittsburgh forever.

Radiohead, "Jigsaw Falling Into Place." November. 6 AM, on the way in to school early for a journalism field trip, station 91.3 WYEP on the radio and a voice I only recognize as my beloved Thom Yorke as the song is fading out and my goosebumps are finally subsiding.

Smashing Pumpkins, "1979." October. the drive between Delmont, PA and Greensburg, PA, and a strange kind of peace that's eluded me for the last few weeks, somewhere between exhaustion and understanding (but closer to the former).

Green Day, "Jesus of Suburbia." February. a hotel room in Philadelphia with my new lyric booklet for American Idiot in front of me, studying, memorizing, absorbing, rewinding, replaying, turning up the volume, falling in love.

Simple Plan, "You Don't Mean Anything." September. saying "fuck self-consciousness" and enjoying the French Canadian boys I loved before I ever saw Max Talbot, rocking out like it's 2003 even though it's 2009 and I really should know better, except enjoying music should never be about knowing better.

U2, "Pride (in the Name of Love)". June. a mountain in Colorado with one of my best friends, a waterfall on the right, a cliff on the left, the most ridiculously perfect location for epic, echoing grandeur ever, looking down on the tops of tall trees.

Dropkick Murphys, "Fields of Athenry." July. the actual fields of Athenry, Ireland, on a fast train from Galway to Dublin, everyone around me either listening to or talking about U2, thinking about Oliver Cromwell and growing potatoes and rebellion and love.

seas would rise when I gave the word

I once heard somebody say they weren't sure why "Viva la Vida" was such a big hit song, because it was impossible to relate to.

in fact, I think it's the exact opposite. sure, literally, most of us probably haven't been removed from a throne where we once were king, but I know I heard it for the first time in my car last fall and was like "...fuck, really? Chris Martin is the one who gets me?" [not a Coldplay fan in general, sorry]

the song isn't about the monarchy in seventeenth-century France, for pete's sake. it's about being on top of the world and losing it. it's about thinking you know everything and realizing you don't. it's about losing something you'll never get back.

the best part is the bridge into the last chorus, the part that's not any actual words. because after you acknowledge everything you've just acknowledged in the rest of the song, you really need to just let it all out with one of those epic Bono-type wails. let it go.

i've got your letter, you've got my song.

the day I meet a boy who says Pinkerton is his favorite Weezer album - and that nothing after that was really that great - will be the day I fall completely and irrevocably in love.

seriously, I forgot how much I fucking love this album. I listened to it the whole way through at least once a week in junior high, and I could NOT be interrupted during that 34:32. I honestly feel like I'm violating tradition and propriety right now - it's light in this room and I'm doing something other than just listening to "Across the Sea". not okay.

Rivers, Rivers, Rivers. I will never understand how you can resign yourself to making this bullshit borderline-comedy..."music" you're putting out now. it's okay. I'll always love you anyway. (but you know why Pinkerton is so good? it's because he wasn't afraid to be vulnerable. it's because you can hear him pushing his voice on nearly every song, maybe a little afraid, but going ahead with it anyway. it's because he's being honest. and I don't think we've heard him do it again since.)

but seriously. if you've never heard this album, go and fucking buy it right now.