Hey, look, I can review music too!
That’s sort of a private joke, or a not-so-private joke. This won’t be a review, so much. Or it will be a review of my own kind and of my own making.
Today at work I had a musical uplift moment. I don’t know what else to call it. In some spells of life these moments – and not just in music – are dime a dozen. They buoy things along, create a sense of depth and resonance and connection. The world is plentiful and abuzz with meaning and magnificence.
And in some spells nothing happen at all, nothing whatsofuckingever. Even when you hang out on street corners looking for the connection, your hopeful epiphany. But it’s like using damp tinder for fire. And the more you look, or hope, the less there is anything there to be found.
So. Long story. Short. Work is currently what you would call the latter kind of spell. I don’t know why I bothered to listen to music but I did. I think it was to submerge myself in something. To use those little white ear phones as my do not disturb sign. I wasn’t expecting much; I knew not to look for it.
I was listening to M. Ward. And then he did Rave On. I guess you could say I have a residual Beach Boys thing going on (even though Beach Boys didn’t do Rave On, I think they should have). Beach Boys = happy. I wanted to call my second book Kokomo. This is fraught with a number of complications; chief amongst them is the fact that I haven’t actually got anywhere near finishing my second book. Secondary complications include the fact that getting the rights to just that one word might cost me more than I could ever earn in royalties alone.
I listened to M. Ward and a perceptible mood change took place. I say perceptible, but what I really mean is imperceptible to the world at large but noticeably perceptible to me. It’s not like I took my headphones off and brought joy to the world or anything. But maybe the temperature in the room did rise a notch or two, who knows.
Music is one of those things. I don’t know what it is. Okay, so I am married to a music freak, but if someone says to me yeah, I’m just not that into music I know that I will secretly look at them with my head on a bit of a slant and never have anything meaningful to do with them thereafter. To me, no feeling for music suggests a fundamentally bland soul. And I am not an especially judgemental person (unlike some I could name).
Not long after I listened to Rave On Si picked me up, we got fish and chips and I returned to work at the kitchen table. But it was tolerable work because I had saved the best until last, and I also had a glass of wine and fish and chips, which helped.
As a sidenote or segue into my next thought, maybe one day I will write a post about how I have been totally shortchanged on the mail front. All my mail comes with windows, unless it is something I have purchased from the biggest and most dangerous store of all – the internet.
[Simon, on the other hand, receives bundles of parcels every day. On days when there are no parcels he supposes that there must have been a customary courier bungle or that there’s a mail thief lurking in the neighbourhood.]
So, tonight, in one of the parcels that wasn’t for me was the Where the Wild Things Are soundtrack by Karen O and The Kids. I’m on my third go round and I will probably go back for a fourth, before returning to M. Ward and then capping the evening off with some of the Beach Boys’ mellower repertoire. It’s great! And there’s my review.
But before I slink off to be with the Beach Boys, I should probably say that my favourite song thus far is the cover of Daniel Johnston’s song Worried Shoes.
Paper lyrics against white and nothing else always seem a little bit lacking to me (probably something to do with the fact that they’ve been stripped of the music), but I am going to replicate these, anyway.
I am not much of a shoe shopper, but I do have a pair of worried shoes.
I took my lucky break and I broke it in two
Put on my worried shoes
My worried shoes
And my shoes took me so many miles and they never wore out
My worried shoes
My worried shoes
oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo
My worried shoes
I made a mistake and I never forgot
I tied knots in the laces of
My worried shoes
And with every step that I’d take I’d remember my mistake
As I marched further and further away
In my worried shoes
oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oo
My worried shoes
And my shoes took me down a crooked path
Away from all welcome mats
My worried shoes
And then one day I looked around and I found the sun shining down
And I took off my worried shoes
And the feet broke free
I didn’t need to wear
Then I knew the difference between worrying and caring
‘Cause I’ve got a lot of walking to do
And I don’t want to wear
My worried shoes
katyink 