day 30 } and this is my heart
The idea - stolen from antistar_e - was to make a playlist of songs tied to specific memories, ships, stories, etc, the sort of fixed associations you accumulate over time. But you know me, I pretty much fail at specific. So what came out of my trying to do it is, rather, my favourite songs tied to my favourites tropes, maybe? Overarching themes that really pull at my heartstrings, and very much moored in my personal history? And then it still comes down to me loving a song or other to distraction. It's all very transcedental.
So, in case it's not immediately clear, fair warning: lots of me being incoherent (my verbs have run away!) yet verbose about music and ~feelings under the cut. Just a heads up. Also, photos and art are linked to their sources when I know them; a few photos are mine - like this one.
505
ARCTIC MONKEYS
♫
This starts very easy: long distance relationships. They have me at hello, always, always. Then, journeys, anywhere, whenever, nothing matters as long as you're going. Trains, preferably, cars, airplaines. And then going back. And going away, again, because the time is never right, time is never enough.
Stop and wait a sec
When you look at me like that my darling, what did you except
I'd probably still adore you with your hands around my neck,
or I did last time I checked
Not shy of a spark
A knife twist at the thought that I should fall short of the mark
Frightened by the bite though it's not harsher than the bark
Middle of adventure is such a perfect place to start
I'm going back to 505
if it's a seven hour flight or a 45-minute drive
In my imagination you're waiting lying on your side,
with your hands between your thighs and a smile
But I crumble completely when you cry
It seems like once again you've had to greet me with goodbye
I'm always just about to go and spoil a surprise,
Take my hands off of your eyes too soon
time to pretend
MGMT
♫
Skins, Tony and Sid and Michelle, but Tony and Sid especially. Growing up, growing to be old at 20. (And, like, everything that remotely relates to that - Dead Poet's Society, the begining of The Last King of Scotland and that one's a sucker punch, History Boys...) Unexplicably graceful things, bright lights, smiling and then smiling like you mean it. My time in Sweden, and cold air. I always feel myself in chill, dark, open spaces when I listen to this song, and a bit of a vertigo.
I'm feeling rough, I'm feeling raw I'm in the prime of my life
Let's make some music, make some money find some models for wives
I'll move to Paris, shoot some heroin, and fuck with the stars
You man the island and the cocaine and the elegant cars
Forget about our mothers and our friends
We're fated to pretend
I'll miss the playgrounds and the animals and digging up worms
I'll miss the comfort of my mother and the weight of the world
I'll miss my sister, miss my father, miss my dog and my home
Yeah, I'll miss the boredom and the freedom and the time spent alone
There's really nothing, nothing we can do
Love must be forgotten, life can always start up anew
a great big sled
THE KILLERS
♫
Christmas song! (Not really.) Girls being girls, and boys being boys, and the sheer overwhelming triumph of the infamous alive feeling, momentous but enduring, the feeling of your heart stretching to the limit. Goes well with snow. (OH SNAP)
This snowman is shaping up to be an 8, but not out of 10
The robots awake to find that they've been taped down
Wondering when they'll break through these chains
But little boys have action toys for brains
I'm living proof it can last a long time
Now the girls off the street are innocent and sweet, when they're all in bed
They got their make-up and dreams of wonderland sprinkled inside their heads
And soon they will change
I want to roll around like a kid in the snow
I want to re-learn what I already know
Just let me take flight
Dressed in red, through the night
On a great big sled
I want to wish you Merry Christmas
(Can't do that)
let's not shit ourselves (to love and be loved)
BRIGHT EYES
♫
Firstly. Frustrated, angsty lyrics to cheery, beatsy, understated, folky tunes (for crying out loud!) send me right up to the seventh heaven. No kidding. Secondly, lyric overload, another major turn-on, right there. Thematically, Bright Eyes are almost always about suicidal tendencies - the good kind, like in Wristcutters: A Love Story (it's a that love it or hate it kind of movie). Hence, this song's third gem: punchline.
Well, the animals laugh from the dark of the wilderness
A baby cries hard in an apartment complex
As I pass in a car buried under the influence
The city's driving me out of my mind
I’ve seen a child, he's caught in the sad trap of gravity
He falls from the lowest branch of the apple tree
And lands in the grass and weeps for his dignity
Next time he will not aim so high
Yeah, next time, neither will I
I stood dropping a coin into the pit of a well
And I would throw my whole billfold if I thought it would help
With all these wishes I make, I should buy something real
At least a telephone to call home
Well, my teachers, they built this retaining wall memory
All those multiple choices I answered so quickly
And got my grades back and forgot just as easily,
but at least I got an A, so I don't have them to blame
I should stop pointing fingers; reserve my judgment
Of all those public action figures, the cowboy presidents
So loud behind the bullhorn, so proud they can't admit
When they've made a mistake
While poison ink spews from a speechwriter's pen
He knows he don't have to say it, so it, it don't bother him
Honesty, Accuracy is just Popular Opinion
And the approval rate's high, and so someone's gonna die
Well, ABC, NBC, CBS bullshit
They give us fact or fiction? I guess an even split
And each new act of war is tonight's entertainment
We're still the pawns in their game
As they take eye for an eye until no one can see
We must stumble blindly forward, repeating history
Well, I guess we all fit into your slogan on that fast food marquee:
Red blooded, White skinned, oh and the Blues
Oh and the blues, I got the blues, that's me!
whistle for the choir
THE FRATELLIS
♫
The strong, independent girl trope/thing. Summer/Seth, a bit. 500 Days of Summer, as well. Elizabethtown. Oh, Sweet Home Alabama, just a touch. The first date from The Notebook. Confused and incoherent hope, with a good helping of intoxication on the side and helpless sincerity shining through. Empty dark streets, preferably wet asphalt, gleaming, and lights diffused and starlike. And dancing. (And that time I turned down a perfectly nice guy who was tall, red-haired, and casually gentlemanly because I'm the kind of girl who cannot do casual while she dreams big and impossible.)
Well it's a big big city and it's always the same
Can never be too pretty, tell me your name
Is it out of line if I were simply bold and say "Would you be mine?"
Because I may be a beggar and you may be the queen
I know I maybe on a downer, but I'm still ready to dream
Now it's 3 o'clock, the time is just the time it takes for you to talk
So if you're lonely why'd you say your not lonely
Oh your a silly girl, I know, I heard it so
It's just like you to come and go
You know me, no you don't even know me
Your so sweet to try, oh my, you caught my eye
A girl like you's just irresistible
song to say goodbye
PLACEBO
♫
This song is a great mood inspiration for my ahem original fiction that's never being written. Generally, anyone brilliant, breathtaking, sharp as a tack - self-destructing. Think House, in the show's best, most perceptive, abstract moments. Closer, from a certain angle. Howl, if you give the story a darker twist - that would kinda be Light. In a very protège-moi de mes désirs kind of love story.
You are one of God's mistakes
You crying, tragic waste of skin
I'm well aware of how it aches
And you still won't let me in
Now I'm breaking down your door
To try and save your swollen face
Though I don't like you anymore
You lying, trying waste of space
Before our innocence was lost
You were always one of those
Blessed with lucky sevens
And the voice that made me cry
My oh my
You were mother nature's son
Someone to whom I could relate
Your needle and your damage done
Remains a sordid twist of fate
Now I'm trying to wake you up
To pull you from the liquid sky
Cause if I don't we'll both end up
With just your song to say goodbye
come out of the shade
THE PERISHERS
♫
Spring song! (Very, very much.) Bravery, affinity, trust - trust most of all. Reminds me of Jace/Clary and Clary/Simon a bit; Jacob/Bella in a sort of AU where Bella is not mentally compromised by dazzle, and anything that has a genuine friendship-that's-better-than-love potential. And sunny, breezy, damp days when the still bare trees ooze green luster and it feels like a gulp of water in a desert.
Was it love, or just something that reminded me of
Something that felt a lot like, but wasn't, love
Just friends, friends then, until the end
You know I still pretend, just friends
Take a step and come out of the shade
I can tell you're no longer afraid
I'm helpless without your warming smile
Take a step and come out in the sun
I can tell it's already begun
I'm helpless without your warming smile
think i wanna die
SOMEONE STILL LOVES YOU BORIS YELTSIN
♫
See above about angsty/upbeat songs. Vague images of Draco Veritas (all of Cassandra Claire's trilogy, really) and all the deliciously real, non-canon pairings of it, Ginny and Blaise and Draco and Harry and it's not a torch, it's a bloody bonfire. (And then, lately, it's Posner, and maybe even Amy Pond.) But more centrally, it's my bloody anthem, this song, and the burning, the heady exhilaration laced with self-consciousness that encompasses my emotional spectrum in its ridiculous entirety. Also, this band's name will never not be cool.
Think I wanna die if you don't stay
Drop dead in place, you can forget it
Carry a torch for days
I'm gonna let it burn
Left in a disguise for the faraway
Traveled all alone through boring meadows
While I sat at home
Wishing we could elope
Will you ever know what you do to me?
I'm on my broken knees, no end of sorrow
Sorry if that's twee but it's tomorrow's hope
tell me i'm wrong
ESCOBAR
♫
This song is the anthem of what my father (the astrologist) calls the long distance conductor type, plus terminal introversion. And that special moment when you realize, for the first time, that freedom means something entirely different than it seems to.
It's not easy being friends
It's even harder being lovers
Flags waving, it's the end
I've built a shelter under my covers
Tell me I'm wrong, but I feel so free
And so small at the same time
from your favourite sky
I AM KLOOT
♫
Lovely, lovely guitar here. This song is something very Salinger, off-handedly existential, subtly contemplative, not surprising, really, the lyrics being what they are - one flowing question. It makes me think of non-judgemental relationships between people with inherently contrasting personalities and backgrounds. Of self-awareness, of mutual awareness, of mysticism and the rejection of mysticism. So, yeah, puts me into a very out-there state of mind. Oh, and the clipped, laconic irony is exquisite. (Maybe a tiny little bit Cassie/Sid in their purest moments? Like when she says "I'll love you forever. That's the problem.")
Do you dare take a breath?
Do you dream of a tragic death?
I know you do
Do you wail, do you weep?
Do you sing yourself to sleep?
You delicate flower
You were born, forced from joy
You're every girl and boy
You know you are, you know you are
And you dress like a dame
And you burn on a catholic flame
By the hours, by the hours
And so what is love? And who am I
To dare to pull the stars from your favourite sky?
on the radio
REGINA SPEKTOR
♫
It's a song about a song, people. HOW NEAT IS THAT. And I love November Rain, as you've probably guessed. This song speaks more eloquently than I ever could, and I sign under every word.
This is how it works
You're young until you're not
You love until you don't
You try until you can't
You laugh until you cry
You cry until you laugh
And everyone must breathe
Until their dying breath
No, this is how it works
You peer inside yourself
You take the things you like
And try to love the things you took
And then you take that love you made
And stick it into some
Someone else's heart
Pumping someone else's blood
And walking arm in arm
You hope it don't get harmed
But even if it does
You'll just do it all again
frozen
TEGAN & SARA
♫
Summer, blue pools, newly mown lawns. Cold hands, cold feet, pale cheeks. Cold whimsical girls with the superpower of not taking bullshit from anyone. Easily my favourite song of T&S. And, you know, "Your hands are cold", and finally, finally, finally.
It looks a lot worse than it seems
But you know, baby, that's just me
When you're done whining
And taking things back
I'll be there, as always, feet submerged
And probably frozen
We can only hope that I'll be frozen
Enough of that, as if I care
As if I need to know, like I was there
But if I was, you just call my name, call my name
And I'll be there
so beautiful
PETE MURRAY
♫
One day, this song was just there, and I was in the long, long process of coming to terms with breaking up for the first time, and it killed me dead. Over time, it has come to mean comfort, even, and the sort of serenity that comes with the realization that you will simply never forget that person. So now it's also for everything that is beautiful but broken, and watching somebody from afar, and changes that you can't define but that subtly mold you into a new shape. In fact, for the longest time, I wilfully misheard the line "You have changed so much that I don't know [if I can call you and tell you I care]" to mean You have changed so much about me that I don't yet realize. Because I think that often happens when you're in love (and, admittedly, young): before you even start to consciously contemplate altering your life to fit them in, your subconscious compromises with itself to fit you into that love.
And all the clothes that you wear
And the colors in your hair
Shouldn't change you
Now you tell me why it's so
You're bigger than mighty Joe
(At least you think so)
God my fingers burn
Now when I think of touching your hair
You have changed so much that I don't know
If I can call you and tell you I care
And I would love to bring you down
Plant your feet back on the ground
Now the scene that you're in
And the people that you been with
Just get to me
But you think I'm not as cool
As you are so beautiful
Well who you fooling?
Well I'm here to tell you, babe
The game you're in is just a game
So damn pretentious
two tongues
THE SWELL SEASON
♫
In my experience, most everybody has a Hamlet inside. The introversive types have a very clean-cut, large Hamlet inside. And I could develop this spectacularly muddled metaphor to the ends of the world and beyond, because I could talk about the wonderfulness that is Hansard's lyrics forever, and I would, if I didn't like to circle around the point so much and still come out this side of nonsense. Um. I think it's really hot talking in between kisses?
But it's not just this, it's everything
You're so hard to reach
And impossible to really read
When your talking with
Two tongues in your mouth
And I wish you'd quit this muttering
Beneath your breath, it's killing me
You've not said nothing yet
Who's talking now?
Well I guess I'm starting to doubt
Are we lost here? Are you keeping count?
Are you just gonna let me down?
Well your heart's not in it
It's everywhere, it's plain to see
You're still wondering what's underneath
You're so curious, it's two strikes and you're out
And I'm tiring of this attitude
How you fall to pieces like you do
I can't believe you're still talking
With two tongues in your mouth
After all we've been around
three wishes
THE PIERCES
♫
This is the break-up song of all break-up songs, yeah? It's just so utterly human, the three wishes thing to start with, and how it is never enough, and how that settling feeling of dread is all-consuming. Closer is a a glorious example; but there are millions more; of all shapes and sizes, of this eternal trap of wanting.
You only want three wishes:
One to fly the heavens
One to swim like fishes
You want never bitter
And all delicious
And a clean conscience
And all it's blisses
You want one true lover with a thousand kisses
You want soft and gentle and never vicious
And then one you're saving for a rainy day
If your lover ever takes her love away
play crack the sky
BRAND NEW
♫
A completely disarming song to me, faintly flavoured of pure, distilled ideas of Little Mermaid and Titanic, everything about drowning and dying, and the immutable strength of water. Oh, also, I'll Never Be Young Again by D. de Maurier, that is the kind of utterly beautiful, momentous story where there is actual, beautifully written shipwreck in both literal and metaphorical senses. Unlike my other favourite books, I've never reread it, but instead, keep always in my memory, as if the memory of the story itself was mine. Musically, I die for the canon that happens around 3:30. And lyrically, the metaphors, they are gorgeously arresting.
Your tongue is a rudder.
It steers the whole ship.
Sends your words past your lips
Or keeps them safe behind your teeth
But the wrong words will strand you
Come off course while you sleep
Sweep your boat out to sea
Or dashed to bits on the reef
The vessel groans
The ocean pressures its frame
To the port I see the lighthouse
Through the sleet and the rain
And I wish for one more day to give my
Love and repay debts
But the morning finds our bodies washed up thirty miles west
monologue
SHE WANTS REVENGE
♫
This song is so many things! I think I kept discovering new nuances in it for months. But the image that lately settled itself over this song is the revelation scene from Bulgakov's Master and Margarita, last chapter, when all is said and done, and the solstice is over, and all illusions fade, and it's time to go. I'll just quote the relevant passage at you:
Ночь начала закрывать черным платком леса и луга, ночь зажигала печальные огонечки где-то далеко внизу, теперь уже неинтересные и ненужные ни Маргарите, ни мастеру, чужие огоньки. Ночь обгоняла кавалькаду, сеялась на нее сверху и выбрасывала то там, то тут в загрустившем небе белые пятнышки звезд.
Ночь густела, летела рядом, хватала скачущих за плащи и, содрав их с плеч, разоблачала обманы. И когда Маргарита, обдуваемая прохладным ветром, открывала глаза, она видела, как меняется облик всех летящих к своей цели. Когда же навстречу им из-за края леса начала выходить багровая и полная луна, все обманы исчезли, свалилась в болото, утонула в туманах колдовская нестойкая одежда.
---
Night laid its black cloth over forest and meadow, night lit a scattering of sad little lights far away below, lights that for Margarita and the master were now meaningless and alien. Night overtook the cavalcade, spread itself over them from above and began to seed the lowering sky with white specks of stars. Night thickened, flew alongside, seized the riders' cloaks and pulling them from their shoulders, unmasked their disguises. When Margarita opened her eyes in the freshening wind she saw the features of all the galloping riders change, and when a full, purple moon rose towards them over the edge of a forest, all deception vanished and fell away into the marsh beneath as their magical, trumpery clothing faded into the mist.
This is the time of night when the moonlight shines down
And we can reveal who we truly are
Within the darkest most depraved of joys
If your afraid to say
But you'd like to try
Just give me the safe word and take your hand
And smack me in the mouth, my love
the fear
LILY ALLEN
♫
It's scary, okay? Politics, and society, and the poshness that surrounds us at school, and vanity, and god, the compulsive consumerism, and where will it become clear?
I want to be rich and I want lots of money
I don’t care about clever, I don’t care about funny
I want loads of clothes and fuckloads of diamonds
I heard people die while they are trying to find them
I am a weapon of massive consumption
And it's not my fault it’s how I’m programed to function
I’ll look at the sun and I’ll look in the mirror
I’m on the right track, yeah I’m on to a winner
Forget about guns and forget ammunition
Cause I’m killing them all on my own little mission
Now I’m not a saint but I’m not a sinner
Now everything's cool as long as I’m getting thinner
I don’t know what’s right and what’s real anymore
I don’t know how I’m meant to feel anymore
When do you think it will all become clear?
‘Cause I’m being taken over by the fear
cathedrals
JUMP LITTLE CHILDREN
♫
Beautiful, beautiful song. It tugs at my heartstrings, it warms the cockles of my heart, it wraps me in a soft warm blanket, it does all this and more. It makes me think of standing in front of the Notre Dame de Paris for the first time, endless sky above it, because you can only look at it craning your head back a lot from this distance, and it makes you go very still. And then, think of standing on the pedestrian bridge facing Our Saviour's cathedral in Moscow, the white enormity of it glorious in the rays of the sun setting behind it, and it's as if you're flying. And then the Domkyrkan, the cathedral in Uppsala, like a bonfire amid the city covered in snow, sharp spires burning, and the Lady Chapel of the Westminster Abbey, exquisite, and the Marble Church in Copenhagen, springing at you suddenly in the closely-built streets of the inner city, and the ruins of a church in a Catar castle in the Pyrenees, open to the winds now, exposed stone and sunlit earth, free, and the immutable fixture of St Pauls' dome over the City of London, defiant of the glass scyscrapers. I could go on and on and on. Maybe it is naive, but I believe in beauty, and if that's not enough to give those buildings sanctity, I believe in the memory of stone, and I believe in something bigger, oh, something ineffable, that crosses borders and continents, and leaves you with a feeling of awe as uplifting as the sun.
In the shadows of tall buildings
The architecture is slowly peeling
Marble statues and glass dividers
Someone is watching all of the outsiders
The line moves slowly through the numbered gate
Past the mosaic of the head of state
In the shadows of tall buildings
Of open arches endlessly kneeling
Sonic landscapes, echoing vistas
Someone is listening from a safe distance
The line moves slowly into a fading light
A final moment in the dead of night
In the cathedrals of New York and Rome
There is a feeling that you should just go home
And spend a lifetime finding out just where that is
such great heights
THE POSTAL SERVICE
♫
This song had me from the first phrase. I remember playing it on repeat on my old samsung mp3-player that only held 512MB (ha!) and insisting that my friends listen to it this. very. second, in the middle of a lecture hall. I heard this song before I heard Death Cab. I heard this song before a lot of things, and it reminds me largely of my freshman year, and in my freshman year, I was a minor hurricane and halfway in love with a guy who argued with me in French (it was a debate club =P), wore sailorstriped shirts and smoked a pipe, and I was decadently and deliciously depressed through most of it - largely due to the fact that the guy of my dreams was busy falling in love with someone else in a whole different country. This song is the one that warranted a "my soundtrack" tag on this journal. It's soaringly, illuminatingly perfect. ♥
I am thinking it's a sign
that the freckles in our eyes are mirror images
and when we kiss they're perfectly aligned
And I have to speculate
that God himself did make
us into corresponding shapes
like puzzle pieces from the clay