Amos Lee and James Morrison!
Today’s slow and calm and very comforting because many things.
→ Amos Lee. I listened to all three of his albums in almost three hours and that was some time well spent. After lunch, I went back to his first album and I digested everything, each and every line. Compared to his next two, Supply & Demand and Last Days At The Lodge, tracks in his first album were slower and more folksy. A very suitable windy Saturday companion.
I took the title of this blog entry from the words of one of the tracks, Bottom of the Barrel.
I also texted my friends because when I heard All My Friends, I had to laugh at how spot-on it was - or not. We’ll see, we will only update ourselves of goings-on ,in the flesh, on the day of my birthday. =) A few lines in the song went like this:
All my friends / Got broken wings /Never will you hear them asking why / The cage bird sings
All my friends / They know how to live / Oh so much sorrow / So much love to give
We’ll face the winds / And break the strongest of trees / Beckon for the sweet, soft, summer breeze
My favorite in the album is Colors. I read that it was used in one of House’s episodes in season two so you guessed it right, I looked for it! It was used at the end of Hunting (Stacy aka House’s true love (?)/ the one who got away (?) was still there, and he decided to keep Steve McQueen the rat as his pet). Cool.
My favorite lines among all songs there would go to Seen It All Before. I didn’t like its melody that much but I liked the following:
Go ahead baby / Run away again / Growing tired of chasing you
I can hear my heart pounding / Oh but I can’t decide
Stuck between the depths of my fears / And peaks of my pride
If you think it’s totally gone because I have not blogged about it, you’re wrong. I simply chose to be silent about it because it’s the adult thing to do and it’s slowly ebbing down anyway.
→ James Morrison. If you work with me everyday, you can confirm that his first album, Undiscovered, was the soundtrack of my 2008 (and late 2007); actually his songs and John Mayer’s. Anyway…
After Amos Lee, I listened to his new album Songs For You, Truths For Me and I also liked it. However, it’s not as good as Undiscovered. The carrier single, Broken Strings, which he sang with Nelly Furtado has become popular, and well, it’s for a reason. It was really heartwarming (but not as good as You Give Me Something hmmm?). Anyway, everything in the album is fine, no track is worth ignoring, at the very least. The melody of NothingEver Hurt Like You would make you remember Aretha Franklin’s Chain of Fools. Hahaha!
Of course I’m bound to find lines I can somehow relate to, and I conveniently found it in the track The Only Night:
I tried to reconcile / But it never made a difference
You could cut the atmosphere with a knife / It was so tense and cold
And every time I tried to get a little closer to you / You got further and further away from me
Until you faded into the distance / Yes you did / There was nothing I could do
If this is where we ended up / Then I refuse to be so hard on myself this time
You Make It Real is my favorite in the album, as in I liked everything about it. And why not, let me give you a glimpse:
And I am running to you baby / You are the only one who saves me
That’s why I’ve been missing you lately / ‘Cause you make it real for me
When my head is strong, but my heart is weak / I’m full of arrogance and uncertainty
When I can’t find the words, you teach my heart to speak / You make it real for me.
See, it poked my true desire to be saved, fiendishly concealed by my annoying Messiah complex!
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In a midst of our many points of misunderstanding last month, man-boy told me he hopes I am angry enough at the imagined him who I apparently had in my head all those times, but not angry enough to still recognize that the real him’s still there and hasn’t changed. I think I never addressed it directly as I spiraled down to another level of incoherent babbles in response to everything he said. As I look back at it now, maybe there was an imagined him, alright, someone I crafted because he was never really there, add the fact that I kept it too long until it burst, in little explosions, that brought chaos more than satisfaction.
So maybe I have been angry enough and now it’s over. What I’m thinking about lately is maybe what’s over is only my anger but the imagined him is still there. The one who I conveniently showered with affection and adoration because in truth, there was never a hand to hold nor a face to touch. I know we are close but are we, really? It’s like we’re close but we’re too far, and no, it’s not about the literal distance between us now.
I know there is something. I just cannot clearly define what it is after all that’s happened and everything involved in my dealings with the imagined him. I have only gone so far as realizing that he entrusted me with a few deep secrets and that he’s one of the few whom I feel comfortable silence with (assuming we’re sharing a literal space). For everything else, I may need to wait until he comes back, when I can look at him in the eye, and finally find out what’s really going on. If it turns out I heavily relied on this mold that I thought he was then I’ll move on and kill it. For sure, on his part, after a customary peck on the cheek and a tight hug where he’d make a snide side comment about crushing my breasts, I know he’s just going to tell me I’m crazy. He always does that. I’m now making a mental note to tell him that the crazy me is an imagined me. Hah. Payback time, unless he gives me a dozen reasons, and convinces me, it’s otherwise. =)