Writing About Music: Carly Simon's Coming Around Again
[Feb. 23rd, 2007|01:49 pm]
This was the first song I ever really really loved. Consequently, Carly Simon's Greatest Hits was the first CD I ever owned. When I was about five I was totally obsessed with the song -- a lot like how I become obsessed with songs now and they just make me unexplainably happy. A huge welling up feeling in my chest. Its different than poetry: more like being in love and having first date jitters and sweaty palms and feeling so overwhelmed with something that you can't deal. It’s perhaps a sign of an anxiety disorder.
So I was five and in Caldor (which was like Wal-Mart) the first time I heard it, and its probably one of my most vivid memories of being a kid. I wanted to listen to it on single song repeat and memorize it and spin around with my hands out. If I knew how to read yet I would have poured over the liner notes.
My mom bought it for me at the record store next to the shoe store a few weeks later when I wouldn't stop talking about it. My grandmother was an AVON lady and bought me the Carly Simon "Live at Martha's Vineyard" video when it was sold through the catalogue. (Carly Simon is claustrophobic and can’t perform indoors with other people around. Almost all of her music videos after 1980 are performed outside, and she had stopped touring all together prior to the “Live at Martha’s Vineyard” performance, which is filled outside).
When I was a teenager and listening to the Pumpkins all the time my mom would say "you used to be such a nice girl, listening to Carly Simon and things like that..." Later when I started listening to Belle & Sebastian my mom was really excited. "Now, this is nice music, not angry,” she would say, and I would retort – bitterly, I may as well add - "mo-om, if you listened to the lyrics you would know that this is about lesbians, s/m, and suicide. God." This was roughly the same time that I came out, and got in trouble regularly for listening to Tori Amos and other female singer-songwriters, since they were considered to be angry-dyke music. When I was listening to Boys for Pele one evening when no one was home and – suddenly – everyone was home, my aunt complained that I was becoming a “man-hater” and she and my mother grilled me on whether or not I had acquired a “dyke tattoo.” Around the same time as this I borrowed all of my mom’s Beatles CDS for an extended period of time (read: I still have them) and this equally invoked her ire, despite the fact that the Beatles are perhaps the furthest thing from “angry-dyke” music I can think of. Sometimes you just can’t win.
Next Installation: How Elvis Costello and Melissa Ethridge Formed my Queer Identity (and, likely, part of my comfort with sex work).
Saturday mornings are always incredibly slow at work. I dont think I've had someone ask me an "important" or "serious" question in months, and it was months before that. There are a lot of people, but none of them need me, which is kinda a sobering experience and also kinda annoying. While I might complain on days when its uber-crazy here, I thrive on it much better than I thrive on... nothing. A great big canvas of raining nothing. (that being said, i still do think i would do best in always-something-but-nothing-life-threatening).
The phone just rang for the first time this morning for half a ring, and the person hung up. Score. So I'm listening to the Headlights and Of Montreal and not reading because I spent last night reading reading reading theory (erin, I made you photocopies of things cause I'm a great big nerd). and after work i go do milk club things and then go to the gym. this is my plan. its a good plan.
i recently learned that my body no longer likes it if i eat late. like, later than 8:30. i can't sleep, which makes me grouchy, which makes me grouchier the next day. i dont like to be around me when i'm like that, so i doubt that anyone else does, either.
tonight i had avocado and melted provolone on a bagel. i'm worried that that will not be sustaining, and that i'll wake up in the middle of the night grouchy. i need to relearn how to be vegetarian, because i've gotten stuck in an unhealthy rut which makes me feel gross and unhappy and like my body and i aren't on the same side.
ok. so a few months ago i was looking at donorschoose.org because i didn't want christmas presents, i wanted money to go to schools, cause i'm a geek like that. anyway, that didn't happen and i got christmas presents, but i did end up donating 20 bucks to a school in the east bay that was trying to get some books for their classroom. important, right? right. so today i go get the mail and theres a package of pictures of the kids reading the books and thank you letters from the kids with drawings, and a thank you letter from the teacher. dudes, it made me cry.
THIS IS THE SMARTEST THING EVER.
because if i cried, how much will the sympathetic 40 year old lady in west portal cry? i mean, this is absolutely genious -- someone will get their pictures, be all softhearted and go to look at the website to see if anyone else needs 20 bucks (LIKE I AM RIGHT NOW EVEN THOUGH I'M BROKE), tell their friends and show their friends the pictures, their friends will do it... its totally smart. its totally manipulative. it totally is catering to white liberals. its FUCKING GENIUS.
i'm at work, supposedly doing homework, but i'm grouchy and hungry. this isn't really a change from being home doing homework and being grouchy and hungry, except that at home i'm usually naked and under a blanket and at work i'm pretty obviously not. also, i was too wired on coffee yesterday to get the few hours of sleep i should have... this would be an accurate statement if by "few" i meant "more hours than god."
dudes. i'm out of it. heavy ro might suck for me tonight -- except for my new drink that i got at wildside of magners over ice with cranberry juice and a lime; holy shit, it makes everything better. i'm looking forward to it making everything better.
i thought i was just hallucinating, but the cafe is playing "anthems for a 17 year old girl," which means... well... i'm not.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1){kind=small}
xxxindie's journal