6.18.2008
Miniature Soundtracks : Episode Six
Miniature Soundtracks is my small experiment in mp3 blogging. I'll be using a beloved image from my flickr photostream or favorites, reflect on it for a few sentences, and then give you a song that evokes the same feelings. If your photo or song is featured and you'd rather it not be, let me know and I'll take it down immediately.
When people leave, it's kind of exciting at first. It's like a wedding: you get the chance to express all of your emotions and be as cheesy as you want without being seen as a sap fest or corny or uncool. Leaving mix CDs are the best ones I've ever made. There's a tertiary goal of most mixes where, in addition to just sharing music or making someone happy or expressing some feelings, you're also trying to create a tie between you and something beautiful in the person's mind. It's a wonder to think that every time Freeman hears New Slang he thinks of me, and I'd like to think it's because I'm that beautiful, but really it's probably because I put it on the first mix tape I ever made for him, four years ago. When someone leaves, it's even better, because they are missing home and everything in it, hopefully yourself included, and the songs you hang them before they go are the closest thing they've got. You can make your own ghost self as beautiful as you want. When Rissa left the first time, I made her a CD that brought the waterworks on the greyhound. I think it's a good half of the reason why we're as close as we are now. The thing is, after the fun of getting to say "I love you" and hugging and mix CD giving and send offs and back pats wears off, someone is gone. And when they are the one person you want to see, you can't. Maybe they're coming back after awhile, and maybe it will be good for them, and maybe it will even be good for you. But they're gone -- gone! and all the songs in the world won't help much when you really want their face. Prepare yourself.
Unravel : Okkervil River [Bjork cover] from 'Sham Wedding / Hoax Funeral.
When people leave, it's kind of exciting at first. It's like a wedding: you get the chance to express all of your emotions and be as cheesy as you want without being seen as a sap fest or corny or uncool. Leaving mix CDs are the best ones I've ever made. There's a tertiary goal of most mixes where, in addition to just sharing music or making someone happy or expressing some feelings, you're also trying to create a tie between you and something beautiful in the person's mind. It's a wonder to think that every time Freeman hears New Slang he thinks of me, and I'd like to think it's because I'm that beautiful, but really it's probably because I put it on the first mix tape I ever made for him, four years ago. When someone leaves, it's even better, because they are missing home and everything in it, hopefully yourself included, and the songs you hang them before they go are the closest thing they've got. You can make your own ghost self as beautiful as you want. When Rissa left the first time, I made her a CD that brought the waterworks on the greyhound. I think it's a good half of the reason why we're as close as we are now. The thing is, after the fun of getting to say "I love you" and hugging and mix CD giving and send offs and back pats wears off, someone is gone. And when they are the one person you want to see, you can't. Maybe they're coming back after awhile, and maybe it will be good for them, and maybe it will even be good for you. But they're gone -- gone! and all the songs in the world won't help much when you really want their face. Prepare yourself.
Unravel : Okkervil River [Bjork cover] from 'Sham Wedding / Hoax Funeral.
Labels: miniaturesoundtracks, music
6.06.2008
Miniature Soundtracks : Episode Five
Miniature Soundtracks is my small experiment in mp3 blogging. I'll be using a beloved image from my flickr photostream or favorites, reflect on it for a few sentences, and then give you a song that evokes the same feelings. If your photo or song is featured and you'd rather it not be, let me know and I'll take it down immediately.
This is me. Sometimes when I'm alone and bored, I take pictures of myself. I don't think it is all that weird of a way to pass the time in and of itself -- it's just like looking at a mirror, but fancier! But because of the internet inviting us all to share more and more of our alone time with everyone else on the face of the planet, it has become pretty weird. I'm certainly not the only one, as a quick glance at flickr can reveal, but... still. It seems to be a symptom of a larger phenomenon of the control that 'social networking' gives us over our own image. I had an argument about this a few days ago in which I asserted that we exercise plenty of control over our persona in real life too, and the internet isn't really so different in this regard as people make it out to be. I think that's true. I don't think that trying to assert a charming, intelligent, attractive face on the internet is all that much more common or different from dressing well, choosing your words carefully, or cleaning your apartment before people come over IRL. That said, the internet -- especially lately -- does provide us with a particularly juicy chance to reinvent ourselves and to pick and choose the qualities and angles we reveal. But it's more complicated than that: the internet provides us with the opportunity to be 'alone' and to communicate and interact with other people, at the same time! I don't even think twice about sitting in front of my computer in my underwear and a t-shirt and some kind of weird food like an entire bowl full of broccoli or an ice cream container with a package of pecans dumped into it, all the while composing some kind of stunningly poetic list of the times and places I like to hear music so that my friends and crushes can marvel at my magic heart. Or LastFM!! You know that I'm listening to Alejandro Escovedo at my apartment at 5:34 in the morning! Why am I awake? Shit!
I digress.
A couple years back, I remember having a conversation with Sarah Go about how the pictures we like most of ourselves and the pictures our friends and family like most of us rarely overlap. The pictures where I think I look my best are, for the most part, decidedly not pictures that my momma would put in a frame. I'm grabbing at straws as to why this is, but I'm thinking that we don't see our own faces all that often when we're having any kind of real life experience: laughing, crying, arguing, or even listening. We see our faces in the mirror (or the digital camera viewfinder) and our brains are relatively free from outside experience in those moments. Your face when you're alone is the face you're used to, but your loved ones see you differently: they see you reacting to them (and the world in general). I'm not arguing that the picture above is 'fake'. It's me, just as real as laughing, dancing, or laying on the floor at the Texas Women's Conference with a hoodie scrunched over my face is me. But... I'm alone. This picture is like a tape recording of a tree falling in a forest with no one around to hear it. For better or for worse, the internets (and the cameras and the iphoto) encourage us to do with photos what people have been doing for centuries with words: communicate the impossible beauty and mystery of our solitary inner lives. Or, y'know, feel pretty.
Just Be Simple (acoustic) - Songs:Ohia from the Magnolia Electric Co. bonus disc.
This is me. Sometimes when I'm alone and bored, I take pictures of myself. I don't think it is all that weird of a way to pass the time in and of itself -- it's just like looking at a mirror, but fancier! But because of the internet inviting us all to share more and more of our alone time with everyone else on the face of the planet, it has become pretty weird. I'm certainly not the only one, as a quick glance at flickr can reveal, but... still. It seems to be a symptom of a larger phenomenon of the control that 'social networking' gives us over our own image. I had an argument about this a few days ago in which I asserted that we exercise plenty of control over our persona in real life too, and the internet isn't really so different in this regard as people make it out to be. I think that's true. I don't think that trying to assert a charming, intelligent, attractive face on the internet is all that much more common or different from dressing well, choosing your words carefully, or cleaning your apartment before people come over IRL. That said, the internet -- especially lately -- does provide us with a particularly juicy chance to reinvent ourselves and to pick and choose the qualities and angles we reveal. But it's more complicated than that: the internet provides us with the opportunity to be 'alone' and to communicate and interact with other people, at the same time! I don't even think twice about sitting in front of my computer in my underwear and a t-shirt and some kind of weird food like an entire bowl full of broccoli or an ice cream container with a package of pecans dumped into it, all the while composing some kind of stunningly poetic list of the times and places I like to hear music so that my friends and crushes can marvel at my magic heart. Or LastFM!! You know that I'm listening to Alejandro Escovedo at my apartment at 5:34 in the morning! Why am I awake? Shit!
I digress.
A couple years back, I remember having a conversation with Sarah Go about how the pictures we like most of ourselves and the pictures our friends and family like most of us rarely overlap. The pictures where I think I look my best are, for the most part, decidedly not pictures that my momma would put in a frame. I'm grabbing at straws as to why this is, but I'm thinking that we don't see our own faces all that often when we're having any kind of real life experience: laughing, crying, arguing, or even listening. We see our faces in the mirror (or the digital camera viewfinder) and our brains are relatively free from outside experience in those moments. Your face when you're alone is the face you're used to, but your loved ones see you differently: they see you reacting to them (and the world in general). I'm not arguing that the picture above is 'fake'. It's me, just as real as laughing, dancing, or laying on the floor at the Texas Women's Conference with a hoodie scrunched over my face is me. But... I'm alone. This picture is like a tape recording of a tree falling in a forest with no one around to hear it. For better or for worse, the internets (and the cameras and the iphoto) encourage us to do with photos what people have been doing for centuries with words: communicate the impossible beauty and mystery of our solitary inner lives. Or, y'know, feel pretty.
Just Be Simple (acoustic) - Songs:Ohia from the Magnolia Electric Co. bonus disc.
Labels: miniaturesoundtracks, music
6.02.2008
Miniature Soundtracks : Episode Four
Miniature Soundtracks is my small experiment in mp3 blogging. I'll be using a beloved image from my flickr photostream or favorites, reflect on it for a few sentences, and then give you a song that evokes the same feelings. If your photo or song is featured and you'd rather it not be, let me know and I'll take it down immediately.
Rissa and Braedyn, from Rissa's flickr
Moms that I know have a lot to live up to, because my mom is a singularly spectacular human being who imbues everyone she meets with her infectious love and kindness, patience, creativity, and awe. I was the luckiest girl in the world and most people can't compare. But I lived with another mom -- and kiddo -- for the past two years, up until a couple months ago, and she has managed to exceed my expectations every single day I have known her. As it turns out, Rissa's son is the luckiest person I know, tied with myself. His mom pours an unreal amount of unselfish love his way and remains beautiful and funny and sharp and smart and interesting in the process, setting the best possible example for adulthood that a boy could have. She's lucky too, because Braedyn is an exceptional small person who is equally excited to talk to anyone who walks into his world about anything from The Karate Kid to scorpions. Watching them together sometimes will make you insufferably jealous because they have a bond that is so far above and beyond what most of us experience in our every day lives. It's complex, sure, but at the same time it isn't. It's the kind of bond that defines the word family -- more broadly than just blood, because they're both in mine. Together, they're an unstoppable example of the beauty of the relationships you don't have to question. Unconditional is the word I'm looking for.
Entry Way Song - Bright Eyes from the Amos House compilation.
Rissa and Braedyn, from Rissa's flickr
Moms that I know have a lot to live up to, because my mom is a singularly spectacular human being who imbues everyone she meets with her infectious love and kindness, patience, creativity, and awe. I was the luckiest girl in the world and most people can't compare. But I lived with another mom -- and kiddo -- for the past two years, up until a couple months ago, and she has managed to exceed my expectations every single day I have known her. As it turns out, Rissa's son is the luckiest person I know, tied with myself. His mom pours an unreal amount of unselfish love his way and remains beautiful and funny and sharp and smart and interesting in the process, setting the best possible example for adulthood that a boy could have. She's lucky too, because Braedyn is an exceptional small person who is equally excited to talk to anyone who walks into his world about anything from The Karate Kid to scorpions. Watching them together sometimes will make you insufferably jealous because they have a bond that is so far above and beyond what most of us experience in our every day lives. It's complex, sure, but at the same time it isn't. It's the kind of bond that defines the word family -- more broadly than just blood, because they're both in mine. Together, they're an unstoppable example of the beauty of the relationships you don't have to question. Unconditional is the word I'm looking for.
Entry Way Song - Bright Eyes from the Amos House compilation.
Labels: love, lovedones, miniaturesoundtracks, music
5.29.2008
Miniature Soundtracks : Episode Four
Miniature Soundtracks is my small experiment in mp3 blogging. I'll be using a beloved image from my flickr photostream or favorites, reflect on it for a few sentences, and then give you a song that evokes the same feelings. If your photo or song is featured and you'd rather it not be, let me know and I'll take it down immediately.
Special Other People's Memories Edition! Mandy and Jen and I ("Another Day, Another Man") visited Uncommon Objects on South Congress on Memorial Day (in between mimosas at South Congress Cafe and swimming at Jen's apartment). Some of the sellers have bins and baskets of old greying mystery photographs for sale for 50 cents or a dollar. I've pawed through them and picked a few out every time I've ever been over the last decade, amassing probably about a hundred of these heartbreaking gems over the years. Once I spent a couple hundred dollars at the store -- mostly on pictures, plus three volumes of a mennonite girl's diary from the 1940s. Oops. The most beautiful and special displaced artifacts need a loving home and I can't ignore their call. Here are four from that most recent trip and the songs I want you to listen to while you stare at them and imagine the lives that surrounded these moments.
Sipping On The Sweet Nectar : Jens Lekman from Night Falls Over Kortedala
Sun Giant : Fleet Foxes from the Sun Giant EP
Bird : Jana Hunter from There's No Home
Wildflowers : Tom Petty from Wildflowers
Special Other People's Memories Edition! Mandy and Jen and I ("Another Day, Another Man") visited Uncommon Objects on South Congress on Memorial Day (in between mimosas at South Congress Cafe and swimming at Jen's apartment). Some of the sellers have bins and baskets of old greying mystery photographs for sale for 50 cents or a dollar. I've pawed through them and picked a few out every time I've ever been over the last decade, amassing probably about a hundred of these heartbreaking gems over the years. Once I spent a couple hundred dollars at the store -- mostly on pictures, plus three volumes of a mennonite girl's diary from the 1940s. Oops. The most beautiful and special displaced artifacts need a loving home and I can't ignore their call. Here are four from that most recent trip and the songs I want you to listen to while you stare at them and imagine the lives that surrounded these moments.
Sipping On The Sweet Nectar : Jens Lekman from Night Falls Over Kortedala
Sun Giant : Fleet Foxes from the Sun Giant EP
Bird : Jana Hunter from There's No Home
Wildflowers : Tom Petty from Wildflowers
Labels: miniaturesoundtracks, music
5.26.2008
Miniature Soundtracks : Episode Three
Miniature Soundtracks is my small experiment in mp3 blogging. I'll be using a beloved image from my flickr photostream or favorites, reflect on it for a few sentences, and then give you a song that evokes the same feelings. If your photo or song is featured and you'd rather it not be, let me know and I'll take it down immediately.
Matthew, by me. March 15, 2005 (was it that long ago? really?)
There are photos. Rare ones. That capture a second you remember so perfectly that it's time travel to look at them. The smell and the feeling in your heart and the music you listened to that day, the way your cat acted, the way it was at the airport, and later walking across the town lake bridge, and later still playing pool in a dark place. The sun and the gate of the apartment and the tiny sidewalk in front of it. It's even weirder when a person is like that, where just looking at them brings on a wave of senses and feelings and sounds so intense that you feel like you're drowning in it just to see them. It's weirder still when a person does that to you right at first, when you barely know them, when you've ended up at their apartment and you're stepping on their feet dancing to Sigur Ros. Then a week later you're on a bus crying over a Prince song and everything has been rearranged. The world feels like a tetris cube in and after those precious moments. You just turned a corner you didn't know was there. Suddenly, there's a whole side of red! And then, the moment or the week or the person is gone and you flip the cube over and realize the other side isn't matching at all, and you have to start over again.
When those times happen, you lose your sense of time and space but grab on tightly to everything else in the world -- the wooden attic, the shoulders, the way the words sound like 'it's you' even though they're actually in a foreign language, the people outside and the memories wrapped up in them, the tiny pieces of skin you're biting off of the inside of your lower lip. I posed Matt for this picture and it was a time when I knew as I was pressing the shutter that it would be this beautiful, because I knew it was one of those days and Matthew is one of those people. Before the picture was ever developed in a darkroom, it was stamped behind my eyelids forever. Sometimes, still, when the world is dark and cold and scary, I can close my eyes and be right there, right then. And that, my loves, is forever.
Sometimes In Snows In April : Prince from Parade
Matthew, by me. March 15, 2005 (was it that long ago? really?)
There are photos. Rare ones. That capture a second you remember so perfectly that it's time travel to look at them. The smell and the feeling in your heart and the music you listened to that day, the way your cat acted, the way it was at the airport, and later walking across the town lake bridge, and later still playing pool in a dark place. The sun and the gate of the apartment and the tiny sidewalk in front of it. It's even weirder when a person is like that, where just looking at them brings on a wave of senses and feelings and sounds so intense that you feel like you're drowning in it just to see them. It's weirder still when a person does that to you right at first, when you barely know them, when you've ended up at their apartment and you're stepping on their feet dancing to Sigur Ros. Then a week later you're on a bus crying over a Prince song and everything has been rearranged. The world feels like a tetris cube in and after those precious moments. You just turned a corner you didn't know was there. Suddenly, there's a whole side of red! And then, the moment or the week or the person is gone and you flip the cube over and realize the other side isn't matching at all, and you have to start over again.
When those times happen, you lose your sense of time and space but grab on tightly to everything else in the world -- the wooden attic, the shoulders, the way the words sound like 'it's you' even though they're actually in a foreign language, the people outside and the memories wrapped up in them, the tiny pieces of skin you're biting off of the inside of your lower lip. I posed Matt for this picture and it was a time when I knew as I was pressing the shutter that it would be this beautiful, because I knew it was one of those days and Matthew is one of those people. Before the picture was ever developed in a darkroom, it was stamped behind my eyelids forever. Sometimes, still, when the world is dark and cold and scary, I can close my eyes and be right there, right then. And that, my loves, is forever.
Sometimes In Snows In April : Prince from Parade
Labels: love, lovedones, miniaturesoundtracks, music
5.23.2008
Miniature Soundtracks : Episode Two
Miniature Soundtracks is my small experiment in mp3 blogging. I'll be using a beloved image from my flickr photostream or favorites, reflect on it for a few sentences, and then give you a song that evokes the same feelings. If your photo or song is featured and you'd rather it not be, let me know and I'll take it down immediately.
Photo by reallycrumby, whose photostream is beautiful and worth looking at before you read on.
I collect ephemera. Every time I look inside a drawer, empty a purse, or check the pockets of my laundry, I come across scraps of paper representing laughter, sadness, and secrets. I have boxes full of birthday cards, photographs, notes, ripped-out journal entries, pieces of poems, letters, post-it notes, and crappy sketches spanning the entirety of my twenty-five years. It's strange when a part of your life closes and there are still physical manifestations of it falling into your hands every time you open anything. It's as though you're reading a book that's filled up your brain and as you turn the page, it explodes in your hand, showering you with confetti. There are so many pieces that you could never hope to collect them all in one handful and you don't even try. Sometimes you find pieces and try to remember what the ending you were waiting for was. Years later, you'll walk past the place where it happened and find a single scrap and unfold it to find the final word, and it will all start to make some sense.
The Things That Bind You : Rock Plaza Central from The World Was Hell To Us
Photo by reallycrumby, whose photostream is beautiful and worth looking at before you read on.
I collect ephemera. Every time I look inside a drawer, empty a purse, or check the pockets of my laundry, I come across scraps of paper representing laughter, sadness, and secrets. I have boxes full of birthday cards, photographs, notes, ripped-out journal entries, pieces of poems, letters, post-it notes, and crappy sketches spanning the entirety of my twenty-five years. It's strange when a part of your life closes and there are still physical manifestations of it falling into your hands every time you open anything. It's as though you're reading a book that's filled up your brain and as you turn the page, it explodes in your hand, showering you with confetti. There are so many pieces that you could never hope to collect them all in one handful and you don't even try. Sometimes you find pieces and try to remember what the ending you were waiting for was. Years later, you'll walk past the place where it happened and find a single scrap and unfold it to find the final word, and it will all start to make some sense.
The Things That Bind You : Rock Plaza Central from The World Was Hell To Us
Labels: miniaturesoundtracks, music
5.21.2008
Miniature Soundtracks : Episode One
While I'm in the mood to spend some time with this blog, I'm going to try an experiment in mp3 blogging. A couple times a week, I'll be reflecting an image I like -- probably from my flickr photostream or my flickr favorites -- and choosing a song I think you'll like to match it. Make sense? Let's try.
I was seventeen, Isaac was nineteen. We met at a grocery store where Isaac worked and where I bought strawberry popsicles as a lame excuse to talk to him. It's a movie theater now and sometimes I go there and walk by the counter where I would stall and flirt for months, before Theresa made my first move for me and invited him over for s'mores. After the night of our first kiss, he came over and told me he didn't want to see me romantically anymore and then a thunderstorm blew through and I laid in the front yard of my dad's house getting soaked to the bone. Theresa and Jerry were there and the four of us made tea in the kitchen and waited out the storm. I didn't see Isaac for a couple months after that night. Later, he told me that when we kissed he felt like I was attacking him. Then the night he walked back into my life, he and Rhymi and I stayed up until the middle of the night assaulting eachother with wet white chalk. We were together for more than three years after that. He hated this particular photo, which I kept in a frame by my bed for most of our relationship and a long time afterwards. I love it because he looks so alive that when I stare at it for more than a second, I get the distinct feeling that Isaac's nineteen year old self is going to jump out of the photo, take me by the hand, turn back time, and make everything simple again.
Kiss : Scout Niblett from This Fool Can Die Now
I was seventeen, Isaac was nineteen. We met at a grocery store where Isaac worked and where I bought strawberry popsicles as a lame excuse to talk to him. It's a movie theater now and sometimes I go there and walk by the counter where I would stall and flirt for months, before Theresa made my first move for me and invited him over for s'mores. After the night of our first kiss, he came over and told me he didn't want to see me romantically anymore and then a thunderstorm blew through and I laid in the front yard of my dad's house getting soaked to the bone. Theresa and Jerry were there and the four of us made tea in the kitchen and waited out the storm. I didn't see Isaac for a couple months after that night. Later, he told me that when we kissed he felt like I was attacking him. Then the night he walked back into my life, he and Rhymi and I stayed up until the middle of the night assaulting eachother with wet white chalk. We were together for more than three years after that. He hated this particular photo, which I kept in a frame by my bed for most of our relationship and a long time afterwards. I love it because he looks so alive that when I stare at it for more than a second, I get the distinct feeling that Isaac's nineteen year old self is going to jump out of the photo, take me by the hand, turn back time, and make everything simple again.
Kiss : Scout Niblett from This Fool Can Die Now
Labels: love, lovedones, miniaturesoundtracks, music
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