georgia on my mind? forgive me, it's my last week of class

While contemplating my possible future in an all-girl Beatles cover band (where I would, of course, be George - I've even been told I play guitar like him, which is not exactly the highest compliment a guitarist can be paid, but I'll take it), I realized that my name could totally be shortened to Georgia if I so desired. I tried to go by Georgie for about a week once in first grade, and I seem to remember that this was because of a girl in the Nancy Drew books I was reading named George. It didn't take.

It's kind of weird that I never, ever think of myself by my given name, and I don't think anybody else does either. I don't even think about it, aside from when I'm preparing on the first day of a new class to say "I go by Annie." I still have to take my time signing my full name on checks because that big unwieldy cursive G just doesn't come naturally. I have an A-name. I've always had an A-name. I kind of forget I'm Georgianne most of the time. But if I ever need a pen name or a clever alter ego I might just fall back on Georgia.

because my roommates are doing important things and I can't turn on the Sox game and interrupt them.

a brief list of mostly-semi-epic things I want to do in my life, in no particular order:

1. run the Boston Marathon (which is going on outside my window, zooomg)
2. go to Base Camp of Mount Everest
3. go to a Yankees-Sox game in New York in Sox stuff (I'd need someone to go with me, as I like being alive)
4. go to an NHL playoff game
5. play an actual gig with a band/play songs I/my band has written in said gig
6. meet Chuck Klosterman
7. party with Max Talbot
8. drive from an East Coast state to a West Coast state
9. go to Australia
10. live in Ireland for at least a few months
11. go to Spain and the Czech Republic and maybe France if I can be bothered
12. go to Montreal
13. write and publish a book
14. drive to somewhere I've never been before and sleep there for the night, unplanned
15. become fluent in another language.

america.

"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and the crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, reexamine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."
- Uncle Walt

yeah, sorry for being insufferable.

every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

the sky is
seamlessly blue-gray
rippling over dark Cambridge
splashing down into the Charles
where it meets the highway

I am
on a fifth floor that feels more like a basement
parsing the writings
of a sweaty-toothed madman
and his heirs
willing or unwilling

I remember
clouds overseas, over seas
that broke up against the easternmost wall of my continent
and an island at the end of the world
where kids with soccer nets in their damp front yards
grew food in walled-off Cromwellian soil
and went to the mainland when they needed the twentieth century.

this sky is
heavy and low as in Ireland
as at the foggy tip of the English emperor's reign
old New England in muted color
and Dickensian quiet beauty
miles away.

and when i say devil, i mean the manifestation of doubt.

yeah I know, I have a renewed musical obsession and won't shut up, I'M SORRY. but:

words in Ted Leo songs I have had to look up in the dictionary:
- ossify (to become rigid or inflexible in habits, attitudes, opinions, etc.)
- apostasy (a total desertion of or departure from one's religion, principles, party, cause, etc.)
- fungible (being of such nature or kind as to be freely exchangeable or replaceable, in whole or in part, for another of like nature or kind.)
- abjure (to renounce or give up under oath)

...and others I can't remember right now. question: do you know what is more awesome/hotter than a punk boy with a good vocabulary? answer: NOTHING. nnnghgadsjfajskdfasdf.

cambridge common, 2 PM, 4/14/10

Old red brick and new gray stone
monuments and cherry trees stand alone
Christmas lights still wink in the trees
tangled in winter, now set free
by the midday sun, the Cambridge breeze
the miracles in the new green leaves

As I walk on to Harvard Square
The clash of years, it meets me there
the Oxford streets, the anytown stores
the singer standing in the door

and seven nations pass me by
underneath a perfect sky
If I should stay here for the night
I think I'd wake to see the light

everything loosened by the sun
I move easily on along
through wide streets and blue skies
through the people's town with the sun in my eyes

if I should stay here for tonight
I think I'd wake to see the light


[it's stupid how pretty Boston is sometimes. what a city. also, cheers to Ted Leo for inspiration for the "Harvard Square" line - he writes the best songs about Boston, I'm just trying to catch up.]

so I asked a Mr. Mellor how to get to where one's going...

it turns out most of the musicians I love dearly have tremendous hero-worship crushes on Joe Strummer, the most notable one right now being Mr. Ted Leo. guys, if you don't listen to him, you SHOULD. and if you have never seen him live, YOU REALLY SHOULD. dude has so much energy, it's essentially impossible not to dance and jump and basically have a fantastic time while he's playing. I saw him by himself at this teeny little venue at my school in September and fell in love (and met him! he's wicked nice and apologized for being all sweaty when my friend and I sort of hugged him, ahaha). saw him again on Saturday night with his full band and had a big stupid grin on my face the entire time.

I'm not going to ramble on about songs and setlists because nobody but me listens to him anyway. but I attempted to post videos because this man is a) talented, b) hilarious, c) brilliant and d) adorable, to be quite honest, and it really comes across best when you see him sing, but alas, my internet connection starts going berserk every time I try to upload videos, so, FAIL. you'll just have to take my word for it.

also, during "Ballad of the Sin Eater," which I did not get a decent video of because I'm an idiot, he did a legitimately awesome Joe Strummer/Johnny Rotten-crazy-spastic-mad-frontman...thing. he put down the guitar and was just all over the place with the mike stand going crazy. it was awesome. my words do not do Ted Leo justice. GO SEE HIM. LOVE HIM.