Minimally Eschew

Showing posts with label music. Show all posts

The gifts 22 has given me:

Two states, four homes, and a half a dozen fold out couches and futons where I’ve been able to rest my head for a day, a week, or a couple of months. Twenty-two has been a year of movement.
A blue notebook small enough to fit in my purse full of to-do lists with items that I’ve already done and doodles that left my fingers stained in ink.
Friendships with people from every corner of the country and from all around the world. Pen pals in South America and Facebook messages from Texas. People I can count on in every time zone and climate.
A pair of black knee high boots that have seen sun and rain and snow and sleet and obscenely dirty New York City streets. The toes have faded and peeled, and I’ve colored over them more than once with Sharpie markers.
A summer in Warwick where I learned that sometimes starting new is the best idea of all. A summer full of love and learning and adventure and discovery. Planning intense programs about Israel. Plunging toilets. Making friends and making memories. Starting terrified, ending satisfied.
Taylor Swift’s ‘22’ sung to me by at least a dozen different people.
A third grade Hebrew school classroom full of the funniest, strangest, most excitable kids I’ve ever met. Passover plagues charades and Aleph-Bet flashcard trivia contests. Sounding out prayers with letters we just learned and singing songs at the top of our lungs. A Saturday making sandwiches for a soup kitchen and a Friday service with a gospel choir. Laughter and love and lots of learning.
Confidence in my work. My writing. My editing. My photography. My organizing. My teaching skills. A feeling—at least some of the time-- that I know what I’m doing.
Dance parties. With friends, sometimes. By myself more often than I should admit. In cars and theatres. On tennis courts and in living rooms. Lyrics shouted loud and dance moves done without shame.
A seventh grade Hebrew school classroom full of loud boys making silly jokes and shy girls who are so smart that sometimes it scares me. Lessons about fair trade and homelessness and poverty and what the Jewish commitment to social justice really means. Seriousness when it’s needed. The wonderful joy I get to feel as I watch these kids think about things they have never thought about before.
More than my fair share of panic attacks.
Monday nights when I can’t be home, so I wander up and down 86th street until I can’t feel my fingers anymore. Time in Barnes and Noble- walking up and down the aisles and reading 15 books a chapter at a time, until the plots mix in my head and I can’t match the characters to their stories. Sometimes, , I’ll treat myself to a movie and some treats smuggled in from the drugstore next door using a purse large enough to hide anything I want. I’ll people watch for a while, near the subway stop. The commuters with their briefcases and the students with their overflowing backpacks. The parents navigating strollers through the busy city streets.
A haircut. Just one.
A hard drive full of Word documents. Some that I’ve sent out in to the world. Lots that I never will. Stories and essays and letters to no one. Bits of dialogue without any plot. Bits of plot without a story to make them work. Memories I had to write somewhere -- anywhere -- so I wouldn’t lose them to the failures of memories of time.
The best ice cream I’ve ever had, at a small shop overlooking the hills of upstate New York. A car ride to get there where we had to pull off to the side of the road because we were laughing too hard for anyone to be able to safely drive. Tears in my eyes and an ache in my chest from pure happiness.
A concert by my favorite band with one of my best friends. A chance to shout the lyrics to the song that has defined my life for half a decade as the band played it live and I jumped up and down on a floor sticky with alcohol, in a room full of people who understood how much that moment meant to me
Every emotion possible. Sometimes all at once.
A family who, as they have done every year, and I know will do in in all my years to come, has shown me nothing but love and acceptance, even and especially when I felt like I didn’t deserve it.

365 days. Not a day too many, not a day too few.

I’m just left of center in a six train car heading uptown that’s crowded enough that the bodies around me are keeping me more upright more than squeezing on to a handrail ever could. I’m wearing my headphones- some early 90’s relics I found buried in a backpack pocket that hadn’t been cleaned out in a few too many years. I have the music turned up loud. Loud enough that I can’t hear the words of the people around me even as I watch their lips move. Loud enough that it’s all I have to think about.

I close my eyes. Confident in the fact that I’m six subway stops from home. The train rocks back and forth beneath my feet. Not quite gently, but in a way that still feels soothing.

There isn’t much music I have saved on my phone. This whole commuting-by-public-transit-in-a-major-city thing is kind of new to me. A couple Regina Spektor songs. Some mix cd’s I made for myself and a few more sent to me by friends. Every single Laura Marling song, and of course—of course—The Wombats. I’ve written a time or five about my love affair with their song ‘Let’s Dance to Joy Division’ but it bears repeating—that songs means so much to me. I could listen to it forever (or you know, on repeat for literally weeks at a time…) and never get tired of it.

I’ve got the kind of anxiety where going places can be so overwhelming that I just stop doing anything together. The people, the crowds, the noise—I get a sensory overload and break down. So I’ve been doing a horrible job of exploring New York. A terrible job, really. I know that there is so much to see and discover in this city—and I haven’t really taken advantage of much of it at all.

So this week I did something big.

I bought a concert ticket. Well, I bought two, actually. But even if I can’t find a friend to go with me I’m going to see The Wombats play in January. I’m going to head to Brooklyn on a Monday night, and brave the crowds and the noise. I’m going to scream along to ‘Let’s Dance to Joy Division’ when they play it live. I’m going to let myself feel all of my emotions in that moment. The love, the fear, the pure adrenaline.

It might not seem like much. It’s something people do all the time. But I’m scared. And I’m excited.

And I’m so happy.

A couple weeks ago, while I was sitting at work, I sent a text to my friend Brandon. It was maybe 3 pm, and I’d been sitting at the desk all day, staring at excel files to the point where my eyes hurt and my head hurt from straining my eyes. There are lots of things I love about Brandon, but one of my favorite things about him is his excellent taste in music.

I might have dressed up like
an Ipod playing
'Let's Dance to Joy Division'
for Halloween.
Maybe.

So I asked Brandon to send me some music. Something I could listen to while I was trapped at my desk, staring at data until the numbers started to blend together and my eyelids start to droop. And man, did he deliver.

A good thing to know about my relationship to music is that if I am listening to a song, there is a 75% chance it is the song ‘Let’s Dance to Joy Division’ by the Wombats. My obsession with that song is no secret, I’ve written about it a few times, and it’s become a joke among my friends. I love that song, but sometimes I need something else. Something different.

Which is why it was so funny when I got a link from Brandon to a playlist titled “Songs Other Than Let’s Dance to Joy Division.” The tags on the playlist, for just a little more laughter, are “not the wombats” and “let’s dance to other bands.”

It’s a great playlist. It blends together all kinds of music that shouldn’t make sense together but somehow seems to flow. I think I can safely say it’s the first time I’ve ever heard a transition from Joni Mitchell to Weezer. I love it.

It’s been nice to have something to listen to while I work. I’m at a desk 9-5, and I need distractions to keep my brain from leaking out of my ears. So I’ve been discovering new music again, something I haven’t done in a while. I think I’ve listened to every song Paperwhite has put out at least 5 times each in the past week alone. I’ve been rediscovering some old favorites. I’ve been listening to ‘Let’s Dance to Joy Division’ plenty.

The great cover for a great mix

I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts too. This American Life, has turned out to be just as good for time at work as it is for long car rides with my dad. With 8 hours a day in the office, I’ve been making a real headway in to the archives. Their list of stories told entirely in one location has been a particular favorite. Hound Tall only has three episodes so far, but each of them is great. You Made It Weird has been running for years, but I’ve only just discovered it, which means I’ve got plenty of episodes to catch up on. I think by now everyone knows that Serial is incredible, but I can only listen to it early in the morning or I’ll have creepy murder nightmares.

On the subway rides to and from work I’ve been devouring new books, reading on the kindle app on my phone. I finally finished Geek Love by Katherine Dunn, which was terrifying and incredible. It’s the weirdest book I’ve ever read about carnival performers—which is a weird topic to begin with. Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist was a delight on every single page.

It’s good to immerse myself in new things again. I’ve been in a weird media drought lately—kind of stagnant in the things I’ve been experiencing. Re-reading the same books, listening to the same song, watching and rewatching the same shows.

It’s fun to discover new things. It’s fun to get excited about things again.

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The Gifts of Twenty-Two

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Songs Other Than Let's Dance To Joy Division