Hey kids. Do you ever have a craving for something but can't figure out what it is? My life feels like this lately; I'm needing something but I just decide what it is. Sometimes it turns out to be big things like seeing my parents again or finding a place in the world but other times it simple things, like cookies and good songs.
Yesterday I bought some cookies and today I listened to LCD Soundsystem's (James Murphy's) latest contribution Sound of Silver. This has been one of those albums that seems to find me right when I need it. Like a pet dog (or parrot, or hamster, or whatever you're into) it's there when I need it and not when I don't. I'm not always in the mood for this type of music, but today I was thirsty for it and I didn't even realize it until the album came up on my iTunes-o-matic.
The entire album is exceptional but there are two song's in particular that easily drill into me whenever they come up. "Someone Great" paints the picture of new-fatherhood in a way that I have never heard. In this quite hackneyed genre, I hold Ben Folds' "Still Fighting It" and "Someone Great" in the highest regard but while Folds' version always makes me think of my own father, LCD's leads me to picture myself becoming a father someday.
But that's a song for another day. I'm currently listening to "All My Friends" which directly follows "Someone Great" on the album. When I'm listening to this song, see all of the pictures of my friends on facebook flashing trough my head with the beat of the song. The piano is played in such a way that it evokes images of four or five friends playing it together; there are jumps in timing and it sounds awkward at first but as the song goes on you begin to get more comfortable with the imperfection and at the end you realize that the piano track could not have been more appropriate. Murphy adds more and more tracks (drums, bass, guitar, vocals) and it's like more and more friends are being added to the march.
"You spent the first five years trying to get with the plan
And the next five years trying to be with your friends again."
Some of my friends are abroad as well, some of them back at Skidmore, and some of them have moved to places unknown. When you're away from home for as long as I have been, you begin miss things and people you never thought you would. When you're 10,000 miles away from the people who make up your life, those relationships fall into perspective. I'm not sure if distance makes the heart grow fonder but now that I've been here for a couple months I can say from experience that distance makes the heart more clear. "If I could see all my friends tonight!"
2 comments:
I miss you.
mum said..
Oh I miss you and katherine, too, even though I had wonderful phone conversations with both of you just a bit ago.
I tried to send think of a way to have dad bring cookies to Insights and give them to the Australia folks to bring to you, but that didn't work. He wasn't on that bus, as we say, so the next thought I had to send you pie and ice cream was fleeting as well. Not to mention impractical.
Missing you, Toastie, makes me miss everyone else, too. It is strange to feel so out of place in spring in Vermont. The phoebe has built on top of the barn windo under the eaves, and the yellow finches are crazy at the thistle feeder. Those wonderful hummingbirds will be back by this weekend. I will put out the feeder today. And the tophie birds have been bak for ages. No nest in the sumac though.
Love that picture. Happy Wednesday.
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