Hitting the same note
Posted Friday, January 13, 2006 @ 12:06 AM
[As part of an experiment, you can listen to this entry read aloud, but only if you listen to "Oh Mandy" simultaneously, because that will make me feel less silly. Discover what my 1AM voice sounds like at your own risk.]
Recently, I've been watching a lot of the Four-eyed Monsters video podcast. And by "a lot" I mean playing the same four episodes (especially the trailer) over and over again. I am one of those people who, when I like something, I saturate myself in it, especially when it comes to music. When I find the right mood—when the right song hits me—I try to live in that moment as long as possible. My favorite thing about driving alone is the ability to listen to a song on repeat without the need to justify it to anyone. I love driving alone.
The trailer hits me right where it hurts. With a good song, a quirky relationship, the search for self, and the struggle with what art is and how it relates to a person's life, anyone can have my attention. For once, I'm glad Audioscrobbler refuses to work with iTunes; were it properly installed, you'd see just how much I mean that part about listening to songs over and over again.
With college applications nearly behind me, it suddenly feels like everything is in front of me. Like, with highschool pushing to an end, and with the uncertainty of the future pushing back, I'm forced to take each step entirely within the present. Nothing has been decided; Emory still hasn't contacted me (the "beginning of January" ended several days ago, and still no letter), and the spring stretches before me like a long morning in bed. My life, this week, is a limbo of empty study halls and peeks inside the gaping mouth of the mailbox.
Mark and I were named co-editors of our school's literary magazine, Cadence. I spend lunch watching podcasts and TV shows on Matt's video iPod, study halls checking email and writing, classes thinking about poetry or reading aloud to Carolyn. We are going to Atlanta on Monday to see the Gee's Bend exhibit and get lost in IKEA. Mo Rocca will be in town next weekend, and I think I'm going to miss a concert by Kaki King in Atlanta. But for the first time I feel like, despite the impatience and bitterness we all express while wandering aimlessly through the hallways and classrooms at school, highschool is beginning its Hollywood ending. An extra study hall makes all the difference.
I think Four-eyed Monsters speaks so loudly to me right now because I am swept up by my own ideals regarding college and my life with some boy whom I've yet to meet, and my future and how it will relate to Art. I have this sense of the feeling that will hit me with the applause at my senior reading, or walking across the stage at graduation. I suddenly feel more aware of the emotion that will come with seeing my bedroom full of cardboard boxes.
And I've been thinking, too about all the places I will be this summer. Tracing the edge of a stone wall along the canals of Venice. Atop the Eiffel Tower (twice). Somewhere in Germany baffled by the English-like sounds of the language. In the mountains of Switzerland. Back in my Aunt-in-law's dining room having aperitif. Watching my sister get married. On the road, driving to wherever school is.
I feel like all of this will be less like a long chapter ending, and more like the end of a book that you've lived in night after night, and it's suddenly over even though you knew the end was coming—had read the last paragraph long before knowing the characters—and it leaves you with only the blank page that follows the last period. The possibility of more to the story, only someone's stopped writing it, and you've no choice but to move on to a new book.
Welcome to the past, bucko. You're swimming through the archive of rocket-fish.org. If this isn't where you were headed, I suggest you get out of here while there's still time.
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it's refreshing to read something smart with feelings and not pretentious. it seems you have a lot of talent for writing. Somehow it matches the mood of your photographs too. hard to explain but both seems so natural and full of life...with out trick or gimmicks...maybe a touch of innocence?
13 Jan 2006, 11:24 AM.
This made me cry. Mainly because this is so incredibly beautiful, your emotions leap out of the page and you speak to everyone without attempting to do so. I have officially fallen in love with this audio post.
29 Mar 2006, 4:40 PM.