| words words words, and music |
[07 Dec 2007|04:14am] |
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I used to be able to write such beautiful words, such sweeping beautiful words that simply evoked so much meaning and significance. They meant something, they really did. Now all I can seemingly do is babble academic discourse, talk about what is and isn't clear, what may and may not be the case, what needs to be looked at more closely and what this stupid passage suggests, or seems to suggest. Seeming. I have to write a 600 word article right now, except it's not really an article, it's a sample column so that I can maybe hopefully get a music column next semester since I doubt I will get the assistant living & arts editor position, but it's already 4:16AM and I feel guilty about still not having finished my Shakespeare essay and I don't feel like doing this anymore, too much writing too much writing too much writing and still I cannot express myself, still these words fall short of capturing the truth and beauty bombs of youth and wonderful purity that explode around me, of really getting down to that feeling I get at the pit of my stomach when I'm in the best of moods and that heaving sharp ache I feel in the worst of them. What should I do for my faux-column? Expand the review of Grizzly Bear's new EP that I wrote for WSRN? Stretching something that's 150 words to 600 seems a bit daunting. Should I just use a concert review I wrote for The Phoenix in the past? Should I talk about a band? Do I even have anything to say? Really, I just want to sleep, I feel like I'm the only one awake right now and I cannot wait until this is over. Although I do like it more than last year, I'm worried that I'm kind of shafting my academics, I should probably work on smoking less pot and drinking less beer and wasting less time reading Pitchfork/BrooklynVegan/downloading music, or perhaps at least work on being more efficient when I sit down to do work. I HATE THE COMPUTER, it is my absolute worst enemy and the biggest deterrent to me accomplishing so many things that I always intend to and yet I'm so dependent on it, how absolutely terrible. Home home home, homeward bounddddd. Soon.
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| out of place |
[23 Sep 2007|11:37pm] |
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mood |
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 stressed |
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music |
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camera obscura |
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Quick fast study break; a break in mind thought process words, blank blinking words, scattered limbs and parting ribs. Am I smart enough to be here? Jeff pointed out that you always seem to be working, he said. I’d like to think that that’s because I work hard, study seriously, long hours of productive time ticking, wooden tables and flipping pages, but I couldn’t lie like that. I work hard because I’m less intelligent, less capable, less quick. Slow, slow, slow and still behind, my attention is distraction and all I can do is script an inner monologue that transmits itself across axons and neurons, receptors traveling but not really reaching their final destination. Please wait until the plane has come to a full stop before you unfasten your seat belts, is something the cool female voice of the airline captain never gets to say. I suppose I should run away and befriend Leslie Feist, because all I can seem to do is collect the moments and put them in my curial case, looking, watching, staring, examining, turning them over and reading context while I should be reading Kant. Most of the time, all I can think is that I should care more about being happy than anything else; life is too fleeting, too transitory, too ephemeral to worry about anything but being happy always always always and especially in the present, not in the imaginary future, not in the “real word” because I am convinced that this “real world” does not really ever exist anywhere but the movies. Those gosh darn movies and that life I could be living.
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| Dear Anna, |
[19 Aug 2007|01:49pm] |
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mood |
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 rejuvenated |
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music |
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wolf parade |
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Remember that that last thing is what you can't get-- nobody can get to that last thing, so don't kill yourself for not reaching it no matter who far you stretch out your arm or how fast your run tomorrow. Don't beat yourself up about it, but don't give up trying, either. Keep on living in hopes of catching it once and for all.
Don't fritter away the the endless hours of time you have to make something in front of the computer; go out and be what you believe in, do the things you're always wishing you would do, take that amorphous bubble of time and sculpt it into something you're proud of.
Don't be so hard on people, give them a chance. Give them more than one chance. You probably wouldn't even meet your own high standards, most of the time, and the people you hold up on that precarious pedestal are probably, upon closer inspection, not what you want them to be.
Don't long for things that are gone; in retrospect, the past and those elusive things that remain out of your reach will always be idealized to abstract perfection. But if you look back to a time you remember with that fond goddamn look in your eyes, and I mean really look back, you'll remember how it wasn't all that great in the first place; on the contrary, it was quite goddamn horrible.
Remember that uncertainty is okay, remember how you hated all those people with five year plans who wouldn't let themselves live in the moment and find their passion. Don't be one of those people with five year plans. Don't worry about jobs and practicality and majors and money, don't be one of those people who forgets to appreciate the beauty of a liberal arts education because poetry is what keeps men alive and doctors and lawyers won't ever know the beauty of perfect symmetry in nature or the comfort of a green light across a stretch of endless water.
You aren't as horrible as you tell yourself you are so stop doing that. Perfection is robotic; perfection is for machinery, and you hate machines, you hate robots and you hate societal conditioning. You do not want to be fitter, happier, more productive. You want to accidentally trip over yourself and fall down a bunch of stairs in a way that's so comical it makes all the customers laugh because you aren't like them. There's nothing wrong with liking cheesecake and short hair, and if you were happy all the time and regualarly exercised at the gym, three days a week, then there woudln't be a single interesting thing about you-- but not one, solitary thing.
Let yourself be inspried. Do you believe in something beautiful? Then get up and be it. And don't you ever forget how much you love the semicolon.
( Choices )
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| this is what she said gets her through this |
[23 Jun 2007|01:22am] |
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mood |
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 listless |
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music |
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cat power |
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I wish I knew why I feel so lonely. I wish I knew what it is that I want, what it is I keep wishing for or what I keep missing. I wish I knew why I'm so bad with words lately, why they feel so clumsy and imprecise, why they feel so heavy and burdensome. And why I feel like I'm avoiding myself, constantlly searcing for distractions that don't leave room for reflection.
I feel different. Am I different. Have I changed? I remember old songs and rolodex through old memories, remembering the way things used to be. Like poker in physics and the very first concert I went to, and all those nights I spent alone in my room. I think about how I used to spend my time, the things I used to do, what everything was like. Things seem so different now, I seem so different now. But then I stare at old journal entries and even though most of the time my writing seems so juvenial and adolescant (like I'm a big grown up now, yeah right) the person behind the words seems so much the same. I have the same thoughts and concerns, the same feelings, the same ups and downs and highs and lows and soaring emotions that always seem so extreme, never settling on that imprecise balance. But when was the last time I listend to For Me This Is Heaven? When was the last time I went on a serious tirade about politics? When was the last time I really believed in something, saw the good in other people more than the bad, thought I could race down the street on a hot summer night without getting pulled over by the cops or saw the world through those rosey glasses that I took for granted, the ones that are shaped like giant hearts and are made for girls who are seven and three quarters.
I think the thing is, and here's the part that really scares me-- that I'm growing up into a serious adult. Like one who cares about having a job and worries about her major. One who starts to think about having enough money to afford things and loses faith in the power of politics to enact positive change. This is so stupid and I don't like it and I refuse to give in. I will not become one of those people, I just won't. I won't I won't I won't. My soul is mine and I will not sell it to some corporate robot and I will care about elections and art and beauty and love and books and ideas because ideas can change the world. "NO MATTER WHAT ANYBODY TELLS YOU, WORDS AND IDEAS CAN CHANGE THE WORLD." I need to not forget that there is so much more. I need to remember all those days that we spent in our heads.
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| summer goals: |
[23 May 2007|06:28pm] |
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 okay |
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music |
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ratatat |
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1. lose 10 pounds
2. get a job
3. go a lot of concerts to keep myself happy
4. learn italin
5. improve my spanish
6. finish anna karenina
7. read books by murakami
8. read all of the unread books on my bookshelf
9. re-read on the road
10. take lots of pictures
11. write more.
12. keep a (real) journal
13. stop being anti-social
14. spend less time on the compputer
15. finish knitting my scarf
16. learn to cook
17. sew clothes
18. learn to drive (and parallel park)
19. change my life
20. be happy with myself.
this just kind of came off the top of my head. oddly enough, i am homesick for school. which i guess is okay since i got rejected from columbia and waitlisted at swarthmore. i got into the university of chicago but i don't really think i'd rather go there than wellesley. well, "so it goes." i kind of feel like i'm retrogressing a little, and when i say that i mean that i kind of feel like my junior year in high school self again in some ways. which is okay with me, because i miss the way some things used to be.
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| the kids came from miles around to get messed up on the music |
[18 Apr 2007|12:45am] |
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mood |
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 restless |
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music |
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the hold steady |
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A few things.
1.
"What happened was, I got the idea in my head- and I could not get it out- that college was just one more dopey, inane place in the world dedicated to piling up treasure on earth and everything. I mean treasure is treasure, for heaven's sake. What's the difference whether the treasure is money, or property, or even culture, or even just plain knowledge? It all seemed like exactly the same thing to me, if you take off the wrapping- and it still does! Sometimes I think that knowledge- when it's knowledge for knowledge's sake, anyway- is the worst of all. The least excusable, certainly."
-- Franny & Zooey
I'm a tightly compressed little body of contradictions and conflicting desires and lots of uncertainties and wavering ideas and opinions that don't fit together and the springs inside my lungs and diaphragm and stomach and small intenstine are pressed together so tightly that soon they might just break.
2.
The Hold Steady is so fucking awesome and everyone should know that because There are nights when I think Sal Paradise was right, Boys and Girls in America have such a sad time together. This summer I want to re-read On the Road and I want to live On the Road, just drive through the mountains and across the lonely Midwest all the way to the shiny California coast. And if that doesn't happen then I just want to spend two months living in Barcelona, working at a cafe, enjoying the colors and textures and fabrics and the people and the buildings and the language and the beautiful sweet melodies of summer. ¡Qué vida sería! ¡Qué vida de tal belleza!
3.
I feel like I've wasted my first year at college trying to get out and now, I can never get it back.
4.
I don't know that one day I will have it all figured out. But right now the one thing that I do have is summer promises of Bright Eyes and The Faint and Wilco (!!!!) and The Noisettes and Architecture in Helsinki and Feist and Cat Power and Mirah and Grizzly Bear and The Hold Steady, and it's stil only April, so I know that if nothing else I will make sure that this summer is revoluntionary.
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| summer's gonna come, it's gonna cloud our eyes again |
[11 Apr 2007|12:54pm] |
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mood |
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 anxious |
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music |
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beirut |
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A group of professional people posed this question to a group of 4 to 8 year-olds, “What does love mean?” The answers they got were broader and deeper than anyone could have imagined.
“When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn’t bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That’s love.” Rebecca- age 8
“When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth.” Billy - age 4
“Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other.” Karl - age 5
“Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs.” Chrissy - age 6
“Love is what makes you smile when you’re tired.” Terri - age 4
“Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK.” Danny - age 7
“Love is when you kiss all the time. Then when you get tired of kissing, you still want to be together and you talk more. My Mommy and Daddy are like that. They look gross when they kiss” Emily - age 8
“Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.” Bobby - age 7
“If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate,” Nikka - age 6
“Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it everyday.” Noelle - age 7
“Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well.” Tommy - age 6
“Love is when Mommy gives Daddy the best piece of chicken.” Elaine-age 5
“Love is when Mommy sees Daddy smelly and sweaty and still says he is handsomer than Robert Redford.” Chris - age 7
“Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day.” Mary Ann - age 4
“I know my older sister loves me because she gives me all her old clothes and has to go out and buy new ones.” Lauren - age 4
“When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you.” Karen - age 7
“You really shouldn’t say ‘I love you’ unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget.” Jessica - age 8
And the final one:
Author and lecturer Leo Buscaglia once talked about a contest he was asked to judge. The purpose of the contest was to find the most caring child. The winner was a four year old child whose next door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife. Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman’s yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there. When his Mother asked what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy said, “Nothing, I just helped him cry”.
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| but it's hard to stay mad when there's so much beauty in the world |
[05 Mar 2007|11:02pm] |
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mood |
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okay |
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music |
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the quiet of the library is beautiful too. |
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It was one of those days when it's a minute away from snowing and there's this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it. And this bag was, like, dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. And that's the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and... this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video's a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember... and I need to remember... Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it, like my heart's going to cave in.
Whenever I feel sad or lonely or just really bad about things, I remember the way the sun was shining over Lake Waban that one Tuesday morning and how I got to enjoy it from that couch in the library that's more comfortable than my bed, and how my Spanish teacher cried on our last day of high school because emotions are that powerful and that one time, that one preciously heartbreaking moment when I was crying on his couch and he took off his shirt so that I could use it as a tissue to dry my leaking eyes.
There is just so much beauty in the world. And there is just something so beautifully and tragically poetic about those moments, the ones when we feel sad and lonely and insecure and dejected and all the whole sepctrum of emotions that goes along with those moments. They are so, so beautiful too.
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| if i was young, i'd flee this town |
[22 Feb 2007|10:28pm] |
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mood |
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 content |
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music |
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beirut |
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I am so incredibly shy and socially awkward but I kind of like it that way.
Well, not really.
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| so i guess i pretty much am a snob |
[21 Feb 2007|11:31am] |
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mood |
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 good |
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music |
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tokyo police club |
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I love when Franny tells Lane that she's sick of just liking people, and that she wishes she could meet somebody she could respect because it's true and I wish I could do the same. I just wish I could someone at this school (my professors aside) who I could respect.
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| it's time for something great |
[15 Feb 2007|12:30am] |
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mood |
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 tired |
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music |
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thom yorke |
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Economics is the soul-destroying work of the devil. I am so, so convinced. It just reduces the whole wide world to these itty bitty graphs and dotted lines and intersecting points. THE MAN is keeping me down, and economics is certainly the doing of THE MAN.
It as occured to me that I really only like the things that are considered "useless" in the notorious, so-called "real world." If I had it my way I'd be an art history & philosophy major, or just live the life of an almost famous music journalist.
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| there are nights when i think that sal palardise was right |
[06 Feb 2007|07:00pm] |
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mood |
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shy |
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music |
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razorlight |
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There is an elusive something I am chasing—something like wet rainy nights and fading taillights and yellow taxicabs in frozen city lights, and late night intellectual discussions that spiral into unbridled idealism. It is sitting in a coffee shop with my chin resting on my right knee, my body folded over a tiny table scribbling something beautiful on a wrinkled cream notepad, enveloped in scholarship and passion and academic intensity. It is a kind of poise, a confidence from knowing about Goya and Schoenberg, from reading Kant and Cervantes, from studying global climate change and brain dynamics. It is an image of myself as thinker, a visionary, an innovator, an academic, a college student, a chic and cultured New Yorker.
I am so hard to please.
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| The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool |
[23 Jan 2007|10:22pm] |
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mood |
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anxious |
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music |
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devendra banhart |
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I wish I were poetic and could write something beautiful.
I never thought I'd be writing college application essays again, yet here I am. Cursing the blinking cursor. Already feeling defeated and inadequate and already nervous with uncertainty.
I don't even know what I want anymore.
ON A HAPPIER NOTE, I love knitting because it makes me feel like an old lady and that's just the kind of person I am.
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| fitter, happier, more productive. |
[20 Jan 2007|12:52pm] |
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mood |
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upset |
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music |
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radiohead |
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Is anyone actually surprised? Or still there? Maybe?
It has occured to that the words I used to write were so airy and beautiful and fantastically idealistic but now they are stodgy and official-souding and college paper-y. The steel boot that is college expository writing has declared it's victory over me but I will not be conquered so easily!
In other news, things don't change and I'm still overly emotional and unable to cope with well pretty much everything.
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| THE GIVING TREE |
[29 May 2006|01:53am] |
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mood |
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good |
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music |
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wolf parade |
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Once there was a giving tree who loved a little boy.
And everyday the boy would come to play
Swinging from the branches, sleeping in the shade
Laughing all the summer’s hours away.
And so they love,
Oh, the tree was happy.
Oh, the tree was glad.
But soon the boy grew older and one day he came and said,
"Can you give me some money, tree, to buy something I’ve found?"
"I have no money," said the tree, "Just apples, twigs and leaves."
"But you can take my apples, boy, and sell them in the town."
And so he did and
Oh, the tree was happy.
Oh, the tree was glad.
But soon again the boy came back and he said to the tree,
"I’m now a man and I must have a house that’s all my home."
"I can’t give you a house" he said, "The forest is my house."
"But you may cut my branches off and build yourself a home"
And so he did.
Oh, the tree was happy.
Oh, the tree was glad.
And time went by and the boy came back with sadness in his eyes.
"My life has turned so cold," he says, "and I need sunny days."
"I’ve nothing but my trunk," he says, "But you can cut it down
And build yourself a boat and sail away."
And so he did and
Oh, the tree was happy.
Oh, the tree was glad.
And after years the boy came back, both of them were old.
"I really cannot help you if you ask for another gift."
"I’m nothing but an old stump now. I’m sorry but I’ve nothing more to give"
"I do not need very much now, just a quiet place to rest,"
The boy, he whispered, with a weary smile.
"Well", said the tree, "An old stump is still good for that."
"Come, boy", he said, "Sit down, sit down and rest a while."
And so he did and
Oh, the trees was happy.
Oh, the tree was glad.
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| one, two, three, four! |
[18 May 2006|05:44pm] |
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mood |
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 discontent |
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music |
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tilly and the wall |
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I feel like my life is sincerely missing that elusive something. Happiness is wonderfully fleeting, like the way the music overhwhelms me with the greatest tidalwave of joy and then rescinds back into the vast expanse of ocean, returning the shoreline to its colorless ebb and flow. This is the only thing that still fills my heart with joy:
The stomping guitar, it was shooting out stars
it all went to my heart,
yeah some rainbows in the dark
I feel love and loneliness with equal intensity.
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| prom dresses. |
[30 Apr 2006|02:42pm] |
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mood |
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tired |
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music |
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tilly and the wall |
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I NEED HELP PICKING A PROM DRESS!
I bought three, I can only keep one. So you guys all get to help me choose. Which one do you like best?
( Read more... )
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| my mind is filled with radio cures |
[14 Apr 2006|01:26pm] |
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mood |
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 lonely |
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music |
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wilco |
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The worst feeling in the entire world is when you feel devestatingly lonely and you don't even know why nor do you have a real reason to feel this way. It's terrible and frustrating and godawful and absolutely miserable because you just don't know what to do with yourself. I just feel so distant and detached. Last night I was convinced that I wanted to go to a party and drink, I don't even know why. Not that I did, I just really wanted to. I think I just feel like I missed out one the whole "high school experience" and I guess I regret it a bit, or maybe I don't, I don't really know what I miss or what I wish I had. I just felt like being surrounded by a big group of people, do you ever feel like that? So that you don't have any time to remember that you're not happy like them with lots of friends and parties and feelings of invincibility. I have never felt invincible in my whole goddamn life, and now if that's not missing out I don't know what is.
People think I'm really pretentious and condescending, but really it's just that I'm kind of shy and socially awkward.
A very wonderful boy just called to tell me that he's at 7/11 and they were playing Kelly Clarkson before so he thought of me. He asked if I wanted him to bring me a Big Gulp, and I said okay. I feel terrible for all those questions and doubts in my head but I just can't help that I feel lonely and wonder. I'm sure I'll be happy and giddy with smiles soon enough, but right now I just feel like I want to leave this town for a while and meet lots of new and interesting people who are fun and intelligent and exciting and wonderful. Just for some change.
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dizzyhearts's journal
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