Wish You Were Here.

I've never been big into classic rock. I can safely say that I refrain from listening to it almost always. But, tonight, on my drive home from rehearsal I flipped on the ole FM, and tuned into 93.1 XRT, and Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" was playing. I always associated bands like Pink Floyd, The Grateful Dead, and Led Zeppelin with a certain sort of person. The kids in high school who listened to those bands (and a slew of others, ranging from MOE to Dave Matthews Band) were all exactly the same — wannabees in tie-dye t-shirts, frayed jeans or baggy khakis, and the desire to live out That 70s Show in 2000. I imagined their fathers, stuck in jobs they disliked — but too good to leave because of the money and the need to support a family on the North Shore — having a pivotal moment of man-to-man-ness where father bends down on one knee with his son beside him, blows dust off a record, and then proceeds to play it, trying to gain some semblance of the man he hoped he'd be.

I typecast this crowd like nobodies business. I'm guessing now my hippy-slacker schoolmates all work in insurance or banking, and of course do karaoke every now and again, always picking from the same 5 songs, which inevitably include Bruce Springsteen's "Glory Days."

For now though, I'll revel in the fact that this song is actually quite good. It's brutal honesty made me feel sad and human.



"Wish You Were Here"
So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from Hell,
Blue skys from pain.
Can you tell a green field
From a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?

And did they get you to trade
Your heros for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange
A walk on part in the war
For a lead role in a cage?

How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls
Swimming in a fish bowl,
Year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have we found?
The same old fears.
Wish you were here

diggin and tearin.

"And we can do the zarathustra
We can do the broken fist
We can tear down all the borders
Or abbreviate the list
And when finally the finish line
Emerges from the mist we'll sound
A soft alarm"

-clap your hands say yeah

Listen to Me

things. but not 25. that's a lot of things. some might say too many.

1. sometimes when i mouth lyrics to songs you can hear me sort of actually singing with it.
2. i think drinking a glass or two of wine at home alone is standard.
3. i have five pillows, but i dont use them when i sleep, save for one, which i put over my head.
4. my over head light went out last week and i have no way to change it because my ceilings are very high, and i am very short.
5. a good friend's mom once approached me asking if i was still eating. that was weird because i've always been about the same size.
6. losing jewelry kills me. i hate it. no one likes it. but i still think about the earring i lost at camp birch knoll — the one that fell out when i was playing my tennis racket like a guitar to a matchbox 20 tune in the summer of 1997.
7. it took me 19 years to get macked on. but i was still a teenager, so whew.
8. i've been reading atlas shrugged since august. and im ashamed to say i haven't finished it yet. ugh.
9. i stole a necklace from Joy Time, my preschool, on accident, but kept it because i didn't know how to explain it was just an accident. since no one noticed, i figured i could get away with it. my thievery lives on, though, as in my preschool pictures, im sporting that very necklace.
10. periodically i will say things like, "isn't it great that we can do whatever we want?" and people don't get it. but we really can. i mean, there are consequences, or whatever, but if i want to i can do it.

scratch that. real guilty pleasures. not even guilty.

guilty pleasure.

katy perry. "You think I'm funny when I tell the punch line wrong"

shrugging.

"Later, when they told her that Ellis Wyatt had vanished, leaving nothing behind but a board he had nailed to a post at the foot of the hill, when she looked at his handwriting on the board, she felt as if she had almost known that these would be the words:

'I am leaving it as I found it. Take over. It's yours.'"

-End of Non-Contradiction, Part I, Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand.

Five Things I Love.

1. when guys refer to girls they think are pretty as "adorable"
2. being a stickler about spelling, but lax about punctuation
3. that my brother kevin gave me the la dodgers teddy bear he won
4. revisiting my old favorite songs
5. feeling ready
6. my green j.crew hoodie
7. italics
8. rearranging furniture
9. gaelic music