Bands. Aids.

I need to stop listening to sad music. If there's one thing that makes me feel terrible, it's a song that makes me feel too much. The Weepies are that band for me as of late. Sometimes it's Wilco. Other times it's anything instrumental. Most of the time I feel a little bit like I'm not myself. Like there's a show or front I put up, and I'm sure it's strikingly obvious at times. And I don't know if it will ever go away. Is it weird to ask, will all of life be like this? There's one thing I do love, and it's when I can just exist, not think, and just be. Yet even that can be an act, because I'm forcing myself to just quit thinking. Most of the time I'd like to take a deep breath and start over.



Antarctica, The Weepies

Left behind everything I knew
All the colors but bone-white and sky-blue
Hit the continent running
Engines were humming just to break through

Antarctica, my only living relative
Antarctica, I can't wait anymore

Under ice there's a world moving slow
Carnelian stars and the bars down below
Serve only vodka and gin
I try to stay drunk so nobody knows

Antarctica, my only living relative
Antarctica, I can't wait anymore
I can't wait anymore

And then there's morning
Each one feels like the first one
Ah, morning, so clean, so pure
Nothing so clear, now that I'm here

When I get back to the city
Everything's cluttered and pretty
I won't regret my return
I'll just remember the wind and the snow
And the howling so loud
That it alone drowns out the inside of me

Antarctica, my only living relative
Antarctica, I can't wait anymore
I can't wait anymore
I can't wait anymore

Why do I love The Weepies so much?

 

I watch the sun go down, I watch the sun go down
Then I wander around, then I wander around
It's here then it's gone
Love doesn't last too long

I didn't even have time to get it straight in my mind
To catch up from behind, to see that I was blind
And I wish I was wrong
But love doesn't last too long

All you lovers in the dark can forget what I said
'Cause it still goes on in my heart
And it still goes on in my head

Rivers to the sea, rivers to the sea
How it is right now is how it's always gonna be
It's here then it's gone
Love doesn't last too long

I watch the sun go down, I watch the sun go down
Then I wander around
Then I wander around
Then I wander around

"Who am I?" "I don't know." "I guess I have a lot of things to ponder." -Derek Zoolander

“You don't know me at all.” –Ben Folds, featuring Regina Spektor, “You Don’t Know Me”

We all know what happens when we say things like, “ You don’t know me at all” to a counterpart—whether it’s a friendship where one’s Batman and the other’s Robin, or a parent to a child. The relationship is cut off and you start at scratch (or at least as much scratch as you can get). But what happens when you don’t know yourself at all? You can’t exactly sever all ties.

Ben Folds and Regina Spektor sang a duet on Fold’s semi-recent album Way to Normal (a route unknown all together), titled “You Don’t Know Me.” With a few small tricks of the piano, the melding of a man and woman’s poppy voices together, and rather depressing lyrics, a song was born. It’s actually sort of like The Weepies’ “Nobody Knows Me At All” from “Say I Am You,” but more about a sour relationship than a statement on repeat like The Weepies.

I was listening to both songs tonight. A friend sent me The Weepies tune earlier tonight, and last week Spektor dropped her follow-up album to hit-machine (though not her debut disc) “Begin to Hope.” The album, titled “Far,” plays sweetly, sometimes sadly, but mostly it’s just interesting. Sort of like this question I posed.

I’ve been thinking about the notion of Quarter-Life Crisis’s. Everyone’s heard of the pending Mid-Life Crisis, but it seems that everything is becoming fast forwarded, and now we’re stressing ourselves out earlier and earlier. This evening I was chatting with a friend from college about how I have these mini crises every day about life choices and the like. It got me to thinking about being 50 and wondering if I’d make the right choices. I guess I’m trying to get my crisis out of the way today, make the correct decisions now, so that I won’t have one comes the big five-oh. See, I can’t imagine being nearly done and thinking, “Well, what was the point? Was this the right path? Or just the path of least resistance?”

The only problem is that I don’t quite know what exactly I want to be doing. Leading me back to the serious issue of perhaps I don’t know myself (not necessarily a completely bad thing). We’ll see how this all pans out. I love that phrase, “It all comes out in the wash.” It makes me feel secure in my own strength, even though it’s meant to make people wary about telling lies.

“When I was a child everybody smiled, nobody knows me at all/ Very late at night and in the morning light, nobody knows me at all.” –The Weepies. “Nobody Knows Me At All”

Readjusting Revitalization

The Weepies, "World Spins Madly On"
Woke up and wished that I was dead
With an aching in my head
I lay motionless in bed
I thought of you and where you'd gone
and let the world spin madly on

Everything that I said I'd do
Like make the world brand new
And take the time for you
I just got lost and slept right through the dawn
And the world spins madly on

I let the day go by
I always say goodbye
I watch the stars from my window sill
The whole world is moving and I'm standing still

Woke up and wished that I was dead
With an aching in my head
I lay motionless in bed
The night is here and the day is gone
And the world spins madly on

I thought of you and where you'd gone
And the world spins madly on.

This time of year usually has me in its grasp. It usually has me feeling fresh, renewed, ready for the next best thing. Spring. All this talk of college graduation has me struggling though. I already did all that. I was revitalized — this time last year. But what about this time this year — now? It seems the world is spinning madly on without me.

I find that I am so fickle in these life choices I'm failing each day at making.

During mass yesterday Father McGovern talked about competition. He spoke of how we compare ourselves to everyone, our friends, our family, our schoolmates. It's the way of capitalism, I suppose. But he made the genuine point that we should not only abstain from doing that, but instead take our talents, gifts, etc. and use them not for our own glory, but for God's. Sort of a "the first becomes last and the last becomes first" deal. I mean, I've always thought about that as a given. I've always wanted to do my best. The only thing I never thought of was the notion that all my life I've viewed the concept of "My Best" as in comparison to others. As if I could not possibly have achieved my best without beating Jimmy, Johnny and Jenny.

Now more than ever I am realizing certain qualities about myself that seem to be coming out more often. I am an extremely jealous person, and that is not good. Listening to The Weepies wallow in the idea that the world is spinning madly on without us had me feeling like I wasn't just jealous that others are moving on in this world, but that they get to. For some reason or another, and I suppose I'll figure it out soon enough, I am feeling held back. I never thought of myself as a person who was afraid, but now I am. I need that sense of revitalization that abounded throughout me as commencement approached last year.

Becoming renewed to me always meant becoming something new. What I didn't quite catch was the "re" part. Meaning, being made new again, taking our old self and reworking it to be new, not getting rid of the old, just adjusting. I need an adjustment. I just don't know how yet.

I don't give a damn, I'm happy as a clam

"Nobody Knows Me At All"
from The Weepies.

When I was a child everybody smiled, nobody knows me at all
Very late at night and in the morning light, nobody knows me at all

Now I got lots of friends, yes, but then again, nobody knows me at all
Kids and a wife, it's a beautiful life, nobody knows me at all

And oh when the lights are low
Oh with someone I don't know

I don't give a damn, I'm happy as a clam, nobody knows me at all
Ah, what can you do? There's nobody like you. Nobody knows me at all

I know how you feel, no secrets to reveal, nobody knows me at all
Very late at night and in the morning light, nobody knows me at all
Nobody knows me, nobody knows me, nobody knows me at all

February 14 came, went and this song makes me tear.

Gray, quiet and tired and mean
Picking at a worried seam
I try to make you mad at me over the phone.
Red eyes and fire and signs
I'm taken by a nursery rhyme
I want to make a ray of sunshine and never leave home

No amount of coffee, no amount of crying
No amount of whiskey, no amount of wine
No, nothing else will do
I've gotta have you, I've gotta have you.

The road gets cold, there's no spring in the middle this year
I'm the new chicken clucking open hearts and ears
Oh, such a prima donna, sorry for myself
But green, it is also summer
And I won't be warm till I'm lying in your arms

I see it all through a telescope: guitar, suitcase, and a warm coat
Lying in the back of the blue boat, humming a tune...

-the weepies, "gotta have you."

oh come on. this is too perfect.

titled: why you gotta leave me hanging weather channel?














seriously. i don't know how this happened. but it's too perfect. too. perfect.