you're like a rain cloud

magick ~ ryan adams & the cardinals

"what goes around,
comes around."

west of the south dream side

grey carpet and burgundy pillows,
strewn around without concern,
all of it inviting, invisible permission,
to crash into each other,
feet to head, head to feet.

will you teach me to make a lemon meringue pie?
to make magic with an old 50's sewing machine?
how to forget the way his sweater felt,
the tiny balled up threads still clinging to my hair?

my face burrowed into him,
wind blur stung tears,
bottle of red wine,
half buried in the sand,
hand in hand, hand in hand,
make the picture frame crack, stop, dismount.

pull back the nylon shower curtain shame and
mismatched shapes, sighs,
you can't see me if i keep turning, leaping, jumping.

another five pills and my eyes begin to dilate,
the blackness take me over the west faerie bridge,
to the southside, girl, to the southside wind.

and you were there,
and you, and you,
all in this alice in oz and her seven horned dwarves,
weave it all in my veins, in the blood, in my soul,
these are dreams that wake the dead.

and i lie back on pillows,
let my thoughts fall careless in a slip and slide
pattern,
the water spurting out between my legs,
across a green summer grass stain.

you help me forget where the lines are drawn.

tie yourself to me

rid of me ~ pj harvey

"yeah, you're not rid of me
yeah, you're not rid of me
i'll make you lick my injuries
i'm gonna twist your head off, see

till you say don't you wish you never never met her."

this has always been one of those songs that cause me to let my eyes flutter shut, and my imagination travel into unknown realms of storytelling. the song plays at being muse to my writing, and i see a plot unfold within the steady bassline, the sensual, albeit slightly disturbing lyrics, and the building rhythm and melody that just takes you over. it feels like seduction, like desperation, like raw wanting.

kate schatz felt the same way, and i cannot recommend the result enough, in 33 1/3: pj harvey: ride of me. here is her description:

There’s a thing that happens:

You love an album. You get into it—listening over and over, taking in every sound, beat, shift, and phrase. You sing along, memorize the silence between each song. You absorb it, you feel it.

And it gets into you.

A great album tells a story, whether explicit and linear or subtle and discrete. And when you love that album, when it’s gotten inside and you know the characters, landscapes, lyrics, and rhythms, there’s another thing that happens: it becomes yours. You own it, you have a relationship with it. You know each other. It’s your music, they’re your stories—you become free to put meaning here, add interpretation there, decide exactly what it’s all about, then change your mind with each listen. It’s mutual and consensual and very, very private.

And then sometimes you make it public. The album’s narrative begets new narratives and you want to share that somehow, let these expanded possibilities be known. A declaration of adoration, a kind of self-serving homage. Maybe it takes the form of a cover song, freely or closely interpreted. Or the written word: a critical essay, a trenchant article, a dissertation.
But you’re not a musician or a critic—you’re a fiction writer who loves music, who loves stories. The potential within each song, each lyric. And there’s one album that stands out, that you can’t shake, that you find as fascinating now as you did when it came out, in 1993, and you were a swoony day-dreamy teenager mesmerized by the music’s anger, its beauty, its dark and twisted humor. Raw guitars, crashing drums, love-wrecked lyrics telling stories of betrayal, revenge, isolation, sex. The seduction, the violence, those moans and howls. That voice. It was a whole other world.

You love what PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me did then, what it still does, what it can do. So you embark on an experiment. You reenter it, once again listening over and over, sometimes just one song on repeat for hours. You get into it and it gets right back into you. Characters, lyrics, and landscapes. Moods and tones and those feelings. You begin writing. With each song, to each song, from each song. Around and near and under and then, at some point, it takes a shape. Characters emerge. These two women. These woods. Chapters like songs, book like an album. It becomes a new story, years of listening spiraled out into new words and meanings.

This is the book. It’s not about Rid of Me—it’s because of it.

thank you, jenn, for sending it to me.

look like its happened again

i see you, you see me (video) ~ the magic numbers

"i never wanted to love you, but that's ok
i always knew that you'd leave me anyway
but darling when i see you, i see me

i asked the boys if they'd let me go out and play
they always said that you'd hurt me anyway
but darling when i see you, i see me

its alright i never thought i'd fall in love again
its alright i look to you as my only friend
its alright i never thought that i could feel this something
rising, rising in my veins."

fires are burning outside, and the santa ana's are making my throat dry. part of me wants to just crawl back under the duvet and sleep the day away; perhaps dream of you.

the other part of me can smell the coffee brewing, and the music is seeping through my headphones as i stretch and wipe my eyes. suppose morning is here, and this is the last day before my vacation. there are things to do, and lists to cross-off, and traffic to sit in (while hopefully singing along loudly to a turned up stereo, albeit the blown out speaker on the left).

and we can always daydream, can't we?

part of me wants to escape into this video though. grab a camera and capture a different day. anyone care to come along?

i got a bad desire

"at night i wake up with the sheets soaking wet,
and a freight train running through the middle of my head.
only you can cool my desire.
i'm on fire."

my current love of springsteen covers, and my new love for this band, is bringing a tired smile to the end of a monday.

it's just me, and i'm playing this rock and roll thing

august & everything after (live) ~ counting crows
august & everything after (live, video) ~ counting crows

"you look into her eyes and it's more than your heart will allow
in august and everything after, you get a little less than you expected, somehow..."

and when autumn comes i feel warmer somehow, more alive, and i feel things so deep that my eyes are perpetually tearing. but i cry at everything, every emotion that hits me. some tears are not sad, some tears are the realization that you are falling, like the leaves, just hoping that you'll be caught, and held

and in august and everything after, sometimes when i think hard, close my damp eyes, i believe in wishes, and in you.

i want to find a better place

"the words you never cared to say,
'i want to start a family',
i'm tired of all the people i'm seeing through.
the same idea;
it makes me wonder why i'm here.

watch me now,
try."

when you have found the things you want, and the place you want to be, how long do you wait for it to happen? can you just sit back and wish, when it may take forever? what do you do if what you want is near impossible? or if the timing is just not now?

how do you quell the desire to say, watch me now...try...

steal my records

come pick me up (live) ~ ryan adams & the cardinals
come pick me up (album version, video) ~ ryan adams
come pick me up (live, letterman, video) ~ ryan adams & the cardinals

"i wish you would
come pick me up
take me out
fuck me up
steal my records
screw all my friends behind my back
with a smile on your face
and then do it again

i wish you would."

you are my sweetest downfall

keep art alive; art by joshua petker
samson (video) ~ regina spektor
samson ~ regina spektor

five minutes in and i feel the collision of desire and death; that cling to you sticky sense that it all leads to an ending of a beginning. all those tucked away reckless notions of self-destruction they peek their dyed heads out to whisper at you; fabricating the realm of fuckwits and faerie tales. want a piece of dark chocolate to go with your next beautiful mistep in judgement? tripping and falling with daisy chains wrapped about each ankle; you pull me along into a trance of indecision. die on the vine, and coerce my skin to wake up. again.

what about me

accidental babies (live, video) ~ damien rice
accidental babies ~ damien rice

"and i know i make you cry,
and i know sometimes you want to die
but do you really feel alive
without me?"

today the music is speaking to me
carrying me off to an embrace of melody
the trigger-gun reaction of emotive lyrical flash-floods
with every song that shuffles towards me
i am gifted something impossible to turn from
or ignore

today i feel the music sweeping through me
lilting, luscious, lush
as i try to wash clean a grey day
a grey mood
a grey me

this one right here plays in the shape of my memory case
causing me to realize that music is so fluid
so full of pieces and words and feelings
often the turn of phrases laden with things i wish i could speak aloud
to you
or to anyone
really
all things left unsaid seem to melt right into the next track

everyone i meet becomes part of the pages of my life
every song i take the time to memorize
and sing along with
becomes the soundtrack behind the images that pass as a day

and some of these i keep for good
so that i can go back
re-read
put on repeat
turn back open the liner notes and have that moment
when a line i heard in my head
is different
and redirects the way i see things now

this afternoon could become
the side of the tape i will rewind
and play
again and again
until the neighbors bang on the wall in pleas and agony
begging to never play that fucking song again

and i wonder now through stinging eyes
how the stories will hold up in the end

will i sit with my grandchildren tugging at my sleeve
holding the hand of the love i take there with me
and will i read to them from the lines on my hands
show them the flickering images of a life
that will still play behind my half closed eyes
will i still remember the refrain before the last verse
of all those remembered melodies

maybe you will be there next to me
laughing
mock at what a sentimental thing i've become
while inside you smile
because we all cherish the stories shared
of our own existence

perhaps you will correct my additions
and enhancements
add in the erased letters that i choose to forget
whisper that the truth does not need painting over
with glitter
or exaggerated pause

but they all know that sometimes
that is just how i am
and anyway
colour changes everything
just like the contents of a song

you and i, we're two of a kind

just another (video) ~ pete yorn

"i love to wear my work inside of my head,
i can’t complain,
but you should never react the way you did,
i feel your time.

you were lying wide awake in the garden,
trying to get over your stardom,
and i could never see you depart us
and you’re my baby…"

one of my all-time favorite songwriters is leonard cohen, if not my very most favorite ever. those who know me well know what his songs mean to me, and how particular songs of his have become interwoven into the very fabric of who i am. i know for certain that his music and lyrics, especially his lyrics, have fastened themselves so deeply into my soul that they filter and flutter out into the way i write, the stories i craft, and even in the way i express things such as love, loss, and wishes.

yorn wrote this song after hearing jeff buckley's cover of leonard cohen's song 'hallelujah', and was inspired to craft one of my favorite songs of his, just another. you can hear it in the first guitar chord strums, but you can also feel it in the meanings between the words, and in the way the melody and verse weave in and out of each other. the stories behind the songs, the muses and landscapes that move an artist, and the way the song becomes its own to the listener (my own stories to this song, they evolve, they flow, and definitely exist) are some of the reasons music means so much to me.

all of it fits back into my long-held belief that art begets art, and that music is the oxygen to nearly everything we create. i know, for me, everything i write has music infused and intertwined in every word and phrase. music is forever my muse, my solace, and my inspiration. i know it seeps into the way i feel, the way i love, the way i let go, and the way i express everything.

and this morning, for many reasons, this song...well it feels like everything to me.