Their Satanic Majesties.

A Eulogy, To One of the Only Things I Have Left From Back Then

When I was fifteen I was asked out by the captain of my high school’s football team.

I didn’t care much, didn’t kiss him even. Went red-faced nonetheless.

15 year old girls, we do things like this.

But I? I was in love.

My high school had a mezzanine in a library full of winding, yellowing dog-eared pages and the smell of text that’s lived longer than any of us within it. Who can honestly say that they don’t love that smell, want to suck it up into a jar and wear it every day, the smell of knowledge so much older and greater than oneself?

I couldn’t keep it then, and I can’t now. So I went there (every day), sat there, and put on Definitely Maybe. I still, some days, wish I had it in a bottle somewhere.

I still, some days, wish I had the sandwiches my mother lovingly made me that back then were carelessly, terribly thrown into garbage bins prior to entering that place.

15 year old girls, we do things like this. Was there any part of my head that wasn’t, in some way or another, sad and sick?

Probably not, but someone, something, else loved me anyways.

And so I put on my headphones, and put on Definitely Maybe.

Supersonic. That solo. Blew my mind and gave me heaven. Every. Single. Fucking Time. Fifteen years old, no place to go. It gave me everywhere to go then (and still, now).

Then, when I was nineteen, there was D’You Know What I Mean. Taking me through 06:17 train rides, had me standing purposeful and thin and in a black pea coat that looked exactly as I meant it to, as I wanted it to (and still, now).

She’s Electric when dancing in my childhood home’s backyard, in faded grey track shorts and frizzed out summer hair, reflecting Californian sun for the first time, electric under my skin and swinging a little white dog, dying, round ‘til neither of us could take another breath or breathe, breathe, breathe out and drown in the staccato joy of strums and sound.

Hey Now! was highway car trips through West Virginian mountains and Carolinian plains that had alligators in their ditches. Scared us all.

Morning Glory, and I’m calling home from neon sign lit South Beach payphones on calling cards with my brother holding the receiver while I talk into it, afraid of the spit that others have left on it, afraid of anyone finding the three stale menthols I’ve hidden in a CD case in my motel room drawer, as if I lived there and had made a life there for the four night stay.

Some Might Say, my first driving test. I failed.

Listen Up in a car, driving home from early morning dreams in coffee shop windows, knowing that I really, really don’t mind being on my own and feeling it so deep throughout my bones when he sang it, too.

And I can’t say what it was about that album, those songs, that took me everywhere I needed to go in my head, but it did. It did at fifteen, and it did at every year I’ve been in between.

And now, at twenty four years old, it’s all over and, in another sense, just beginning.

I don’t feel like anyone could really ever understand what it is that I feel for those songs because, in a certain sense, they can’t. They’ll never hear the sunrises and being still drunk at work with Champagne Supernova, they’ll never feel the 3 a.m. Yonge Street walks alone of Cast No Shadow, or smell that library, full of sagacity and future, with the whole glorious fifty one minutes of Definitely Maybe.

And then one day, the makers, they’re gone. Like everything, every moment, every one of us in time.

That’s okay, though. That part of me is too.

But if I ever need to go back? They know, and I know, where to find me.

Friday Fun.

This week did not start out on the best of notes to say the least. A Friday and Saturday of unbridled, dangerously enjoyable debauchery resulted in me showing up at my soul-sucking gray hell of a Major Depressive Episode-inducing cubicle on Monday morning without the following items (or, for that matter, a clue as to what in the fucking fuck I am doing with my life):

- iPhone. Lost somewhere between Saturday night's fourteen trillion overpriced cab rides and the creepiest after-hours I've ever had the pleasure of curling up on a couch and chain-smoking in at 4 a.m. A few very nice young Irishmen sporting mohawks - who may or may not have been involved in illegal activity - attempted to help me look for it in said after-hours, but it was not found and I woke up at some ungodly hour the next day bemoaning my existence as a result. Never before did I know how utterly lost and helpless I would feel without a fucking gadget. Eww, am I technologically dependent or what?

- Contact lenses. Somehow I managed to rip one in half while it was still in my eye, which I discovered around the same time that I began bemoaning my iPhone-less life on Sunday. This really smart move of mine left me with no choice but to place an order for a new pair, impatiently wait for them to arrive (a.k.a. bombard the bitchy optometrist's secretary with demanding phone calls every six hours), and wear my broken, horrendously ugly glasses in the interim, lest my blindness wind me up in the middle of an intersection or something equally life-threatening/dumb.

- My dignity. This one I'm not going to get into for obvious reasons. But yeah, it might have gone missing there for a couple of days, I won't deny it.

Alas. To paraphrase the hottest Beatle (Mr. George Harrison), all things must pass indeed, and that they have...

I got my eyes back, I bought a new iPhone, and I have been having a seriously excellent run of good hair days. Tonight brings about a massive and expertly planned (by me, obvi) birthday throwdown for my amazing roommate, and tomorrow the weather is apparently going to be conducive to going outdoors with, like, bare legs and stuff. And did I mention that I also acquired the sickest pair of red, polka-dotted, heart-shaped Lolita sunglasses courtesy of my other wonderful roommate? And that the really nice Australian girl who works at the hostel I live across the street from has offered my roommates and I an open invitation to the delicious free pancake breakfast they make every morning? I'm fairly certain she's a lesbian and I'm also fairly certain that she's attempting to convert my hetero ass, but regardless. Yes, yes and yes.

One more thing to be happy about on this beautiful day: Kasabian are back on form after that trainwreck that was 'Empire'. Having heard 'Underdog' and this one that follows (which is accompanied by the coolest music video I've seen in years...take note, Primal Scream), I expect 'West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum' will be my glorious soundtrack to my glorious Summer Oh-Nine.
Enjoy.

Kasabian - Vlad the Impaler from Kasabian on Vimeo.



P.S. Expect the Shame Sprial that is my life to continue upon its usual course as of early next week, but let happy be happy for now, aiight?

What dreaming used to be.

Played out (and still oh-so true)

"I always tell the girls: never take it seriously. If you never take it
seriously, you never get hurt. You never get hurt, you always have fun.

...And if you ever get lonely, you just go to the record store and visit
your friends."

Words from Almost Famous' Miss Penny Lane and the sky of unrelenting sunshine make all of this past week's nonsense feel pretty alright on this gorgeous Friday afternoon. And a photo of my favourite record store friend, of course, thrown in for good measure.

I'm not that social, just a good drinker.

There's nothing like a Friday afternoon with nothing but time and unlimited internet access on your hands.

I considered doing some work on that thing that might one day turn into a book or something like it, but opted to instead do something that takes far less focus and creative energy, as I'm sorely, dearly lacking both at the moment. Perhaps once Sunday's big move is over I'll be able to finish one of the numerous half-done projects I currently have going, but until then here's a smattering of songs (in no particular order) which have soundtracked a February that I can't even begin to try to explain. Enjoy.


SeeqPod - Playable Search