Life in Song is a series which will likely never finish. It is not, as originally conceived, a span of my hundred favorite songs; rather, each post covers one song randomly selected from a list of those which immediately evoke a memory or other emotional response. Entries will likely be uncomfortably candid and melancholic, as they attempt to recount a song's personal significance and also its context in my psychotically detailed fantasy life.
Song: Mae - The Everglow
Thoughts: This song, and the whole album, is deeply collegiate, so it's coincidental that it came up today, as I've been recuperating from a strong dream of college this morning, featuring Billy and, more distressingly, Sally. The Everglow predates my love for her, as I was still transfixed by my high school idols (more on that with future Mae songs). The dream involved me forgetting lines and screwing up in a musical theater performance. Billy comforted without dulling the truth, and Victoria (and, curiously, Andrea [Mary's friend]) entered my room while I was alone, still the laughingstock of campus. Both were naked. It was both a consolation and a taunt. "Can I take a picture?" I asked. They refused. Victoria's breasts looked worse than I believe they would in reality.
Defining Era: 2005, spring.
Vital Lyric: "I think that we've got what it takes to get this heart to start beating again."
First Exposure: The title track to Mae's second album, which I discovered when Jay is Games covered the Flash game made to promote it. I'd heard earlier Mae songs, probably what prompted me to investigate, and was instantly taken with the album.
Prominent Memory: Jay is Games was a constant in the latter half of my freshman year, not merely as a tool of procrastination or unoccupied satiation but eventually a companion during generally bleak emotional periods. I've never been able to reunite with it since. It's difficult to pinpoint which Everglow songs were which nights, as the album was a caparison for a couple of weeks, but the title track vaguely covers all.
Alternate Memories: I remember walking down my home street, the path from the bus, on my way home. This memory could easily be fabricated. It would have had to occur in the early winter of 2006, during that year's museum internship. I was thinking about its place in the Night at H Street set, see below.
Fantasy: "The Everglow" isn't firmly within our song roster anymore, but for a moment it seemed crucial. A Night at H Street (or One Night in H Street) is the six or more hour special aired on a premium cable channel that launches Artist on Artist into mainstream consciousness. Our set becomes legendary. The encore is usually a combination of "The Buzz Kill," "The World You Love" (perhaps in the first set), and "Searching for a Former Clarity." For at least one day, I considered "The Everglow" for the big, blow-away number immediately preceding or following "Searching." This is now likely the position of "The World You Love," as I could never tease enough meaning into "Everglow"'s lyrics to give the big chorus as much impact.
Out of Ten: 5.4
Audiosurf Score: 116,956 (Nearby: 2, Global: 2)
Some Levity: Spring of 2005, then. Let's see. I can summon one which I need to save for another song. Instead, I'll retrieve one of my more cherished memories, a talk I gave in that semester's computer science class for which I was completely unprepared. I relied on humor and, maybe, charm instead and for once it worked. I impressed and was commended, was almost picaresque. I can remember one joke, a complaint about Frogger (having no actual computing insight, I talked about games on the Mac II) which I excused with the thought that, as it was made in the eighties, people weren't as highly evolved back then. Derivative, and I thought so at the time, but it went over.
Life in Song is a series which will likely never finish. It is not, as originally conceived, a span of my hundred favorite songs; rather, each post covers one song randomly selected from a list of those which immediately evoke a memory or other emotional response. Entries will likely be uncomfortably candid and melancholic, as they attempt to recount a song's personal significance and also its context in my psychotically detailed fantasy life.
Song: The Lonely Island - We Like Sportz
Thoughts: I certainly was not expecting this to come up. The sort of song that I would have skipped over were I trying to begin the Life in Song series, "We Like Sportz" is a comedy track propelled into personal meaning by a slew of excellent lines, a great video and fondness for its deadpan witticism shared by friends. I'd forgotten I'd put it on the list of eligible titles, but who am I to argue with the exhausted self that composed that list?
Defining Era: 2009, summer.
Vital Lyric: "I'm the other team captain and I choose you too."
First Exposure: It took a while for Incredibad to find me. I don't recall feeling particularly indignant about The Lonely Island's mainstream popularity but I had become less enthusiastic about them than I had been in one collegiate period. 2009 is an unfortunately hazy year, as my surroundings were more homogeneous than any other, making it difficult to place at what point the dam broke between it and me. (I wouldn't pursue The Lonely Island with as much vigor as I had in 2006 until last year when "Jack Sparrow" reignited it all over again.)
Prominent Memory: Yes, in keeping with the flavor of Life in Song, it is certainly possible for me to ground such a silly song into my standard melancholy carping. No one I know appreciates the song, quoting it still to this day, as well as the other Guy 1 and Guy 2 videos, as much as Kevin. His AIM icon was, perhaps still is, a picture of Jorma's face in the music video and, at my behest, he made me one of Akiva's. Thus, I remember the night in the closing winter of 2009, where we fought, possibly over Lady Gaga (and why I was at fault for not liking her), or possibly something later, quite disastrously; in a way we hadn't for some years but would many times since. So stunned and distraught that our friendship had gone agley, I changed my AIM icon to what it remained until, well, today, if I'm not mistaken.
It is incidents like that which will forever keep him and I from having the 2 Guyz friendship I wish that we could.
Alternate Memories: This one is simple. Skyping with the chums, discussing Lonely Island, meaning that Jeremy was present. Without needing the slightest substantive provocation, I began to blast the song loud enough for my cohorts to hear it. I didn't keep it on too long, not too long, but I remember feeling acutely into the melody of the song at that moment. It stands out.
Fantasy: Like most Lonely Island videos, this one has its place on Kids in the Hall, my fantasy sketch comedy show, taking the name of the actual sketch comedy show from which relatively little content has been mentally appropriated. As this song is one in a series, it would appear on the second or third season. I would need further consideration to determine which of the Guys I would replace.
Out of Ten: 5.9
Audiosurf Score: 59,412 (Nearby: 2, Global: 7)
Some Levity: Difficult. Alternate Memories is fairly positive, considering that the conversation was with (as of now) sustained chums rather than with lost ones. Guess I'll travel to that mostly excellent visit I had with Paul and Amy in the summer of that year, the former of which played me a few of the CD's tracks that I hadn't heard; the latter of which became abruptly far too drunk one night of my stay, a night in which we'd earlier watched Dragonball Evolution for some damn reason, and collapsed miserably in the bathroom. The next morning, the first thing she said was "Man, that movie was so bad it made me throw up."
Life in Song is a series which will likely never finish. It is not, as originally conceived, a span of my hundred favorite songs; rather, each post covers one song randomly selected from a list of those which immediately evoke a memory or other emotional response. Entries will likely be uncomfortably candid and melancholic, as they attempt to recount a song's personal significance and also its context in my psychotically detailed fantasy life.
Song: Michael Penn - Walter Reed
Thoughts: This is the very first episode of Life in Song. I'd considered starting yesterday but chose not to for reasons of time. Additionally, just as finding the perfect song on my iPod with which to begin my walk in the morning is often a fifty-skip struggle, none of the songs that came up then were just right to be number one. Today, as though blessed, this song was the number drawn and I immediately knew it was the right place to begin.
Defining Era: 2007, winter.
Vital Lyric: "Tell me now what more do you need? Take me to Walter Reed tonight."
First Exposure: Home from college for the winter, I was able to catch up on the third season of House. This song plays at the end of "Fools for Love," which began the Michael Tritter arc. (It is also featured the medical mystery resolution of the two lovers actually being half-siblings, which struck me quite sadly that this was apparently devastating for them). Featuring a nice hook and somewhat ambiguous historical allusions, two things which will captivate me quite reliably, it transformed the otherwise dull scene of House's arrest into something that seemed fairly momentous.
Prominent Memory: I had had an online romance with Flower since the summer of 2006. She was at that point and possibly still the most attractive woman I'd conned into undressing for me, while lying about my weight and identity. That December, learning I'd returned to New York, she was insistent that we finally meet. I resisted at first. She wanted me to come on the thirtieth, claiming she was lonely, being sexually explicit, threatening that I would no longer see her on camera if I didn't. I caved, but it was too late by then. We agreed I'd come the next day, the thirty-first, the last day of the year. She was having a New Year's Eve party that night, but I could arrive, make love and leave before then.
She was staying alone in her father's apartment in the Battery Park Ritz-Carlton (half-hotel, half-apartment building). I spent the subway ride staring at my reflection in the opposite window, trying to convince myself that I wasn't too fat, that my hair wasn't too unkempt and haphazardly dyed, that my clothes weren't too poor. Thinking it totally sensible that she could grok me in person as she had over the Internet. Disembarking in a section of Manhattan to which I'd never before been, I considered trying to buy condoms at a Rite Aid, but was running late and lost.
"What a way to conclude 2006," I thought, wondering if everything could really work out.
I found the building hours after I should have. She was becoming frustrated waiting for me. The door man let me in. I still believe he thought I was a drug dealer, on account of my appearance and the brevity of my stay. I did not belong there. The apartment was the greatest I've ever entered, worth millions of dollars, window-walls overlooking the water south of Manhattan. This changed everything from that point of my life onward.
We sat. I felt the sexual tremors of imminence. She was not outwardly disgusted with me, but she didn't initiate anything either. Then, so quickly, the first of her friends arrived. I will never be convinced that she didn't have some silent way to signal them, once she saw me. They were courteous; they offered me marijuana, which I declined with the persistent lie that a friend and I had a contest to see who could stay sober longest. That sounded plausible to me, at the time. I left. I went home.
I listened to "Walter Reed," affixing my pain and turmoil to it. Days later I pressed her until she admitted that she found me unattractive. We never spoke much after that. Our differing interpretations of the events caused a rift between me and Kate. I skipped work (having just begun my internship two days prior), prompting my stepmother to grow enraged and complain that she needed space, and other things. I relayed her ranting to anyone I could reach on AIM, none of whom should have been told. It was a mistake. Later, in the gap of time before our first show, I sat on a bench with Leo and told him how much I love songs that allude to history, despite my lack of historical knowledge. It must have been apparent that I was bothered. He asked and I stayed coy. It was a good moment.
To grouse: I feel that this memory may set an inaccurate precedent for the Life in Song series. I believe very few will actually have such relatively meaningful stories. More will just be the soundtrack to my depression in various rooms.
Alternate Memories: "Walter Reed" came up twice more. Once, the drive home from college. ("All I want to die is hide, it's graduation day.") Of course, it wasn't meant to be the drive home, it was meant to be the drive to Philadelphia, but that's another story. I believe I chose it manually before shuffling the rest. "There's nothing here worth saving," the song said, reflecting on how fleeting I saw college by its end. Then, years later, I began the move to California with this song. I don't know if I chose it. I thought I would play music, but we switched to comedy and podcasts immediately afterward. My father asked about the aforementioned lyric. Of course it was intentional. The song was funereal then, as I looked back at my home for what has remained the final time.
Fantasy: While not a showstopper, "Walter Reed" is a reliable weapon in fantasy band Artist on Artist's arsenal. Its use of historical and military references make it characteristic of my more painful lyrics. Probably early-mid tenure at H Street, retired and used sparingly in later years.
Out of Ten: 8.3
Audiosurf Score: 58,553 (Nearby: 1, Global: 5)
Some Levity: I bet this space will be the hardest of any to fill. Let's see: "Walter Reed" led me to look up its namesake and his hospitals on Wikipedia. For some reason, he came up in conversation during my internship. I was able to note his influence in treating yellow fever, or something. Criminy, who brought up the person, seemed dubious - I think he had a different concept of Reed. That's not the levity. The levity is the time, at the same job, I sat on the couch as I did often and one of the other employees didn't realize that my arm was between his and the armrest, and failed to realize it for a long moment as it slowly downed on everyone that he had embraced me in this minor way. Barton commented something to the effect of: "When ten seconds lasts a lifetime."
