luxemburger

A song that has become more meaningful to me since transitioning:

Inside A Boy - My Brightest Diamond

and in his eyes
are a thousand stars
on a dark sky

we are clouds
we are whispers
like fawns and shape-shifters
our edges can never be found out

The new Land of Talk EP came in the mail today. I'd forgotten it was on its way, so that was a pleasant surprise, to put it mildly. I don't want to call it a distraction, because that's not quite right, but there is something about the sound of her voice that makes me love myself more no matter what else is on my mind, and that's something I needed this afternoon.

Someone called her voice "amorous and charming" in a review I read today, and it is both of those things, but there's something else to it that I've always had a hard time trying to articulate. It hurts. It's beautiful, and it hurts. I don't know if that's any more comprehensive, but I feel like it's closer to the truth for me.

Three of the four songs are battling for my favorite, so here are two of them: May You Never and A Series of Small Flames

"She describes [her band] Land of Talk as a destructive Stevie Nicks/Blonde Redhead mutant, Will Oldham meets Sonic Youth, and as a PJ Harvey-meets-Crazy Horse type creature." (from here)

...this, this this this this this, is why I am in love with this woman, JFC. Time to turn out the lights and let myself become nothing more than the sum of Jezebel purring on my chest and the low, pretty thrum of the sound slowly making its way down my body.

I ended up at Kay's instead of the concert last night, intending just to stop by for a few minutes to give her music, but somehow that turned into sticking around until midnight, at which point I dragged myself home so Lora and I could drive to Sturbridge for the weekend.

I'll have more to say about that later, because whatever this is is precious, and everyone always laughs at me when I use that word, but for me there isn't another word for that conveys the same quiet, dazzled wonder that I'm referring to, and goddamnit I'm going to reclaim the word if it kills me.

Anyway. I listened to the songs I gave her in the car on our way here last night, and I'm struck rather deeply by just how much of myself I managed to put into them, in regards to how I feel about myself, my transition, my family, relationships in general, and this relationship in particular. It doesn't seem possible that my presence in them is not completely obvious, but then, of course it seems obvious to me, so I wonder if anyone else can hear it or if it is just me. Hmm.

( you are a circus clown, I've never laughed before: a mix )

Mmm.

I have no idea how behind the times I am on this, but Memory Tapes' Seek Magic is a dreamy, absolutely delightful album.

Also dreamy and delightful: that silly boy cat of mine, getting up on the back of the armchair while I stand near the dresser, hooking his claws into one of the cuffs of my sweater and tugging until I turn around, then launching himself up and wrapping his arms around my neck and nuzzling the top of his head all around my jawline.

I HAVE SPENT SO MUCH OF MY WEEKEND LISTENING TO THESE SONGS: Wretches by Hop Along.

I don't, I don't even know what to say about them, really, except that at parts they're way too loud for headphones and yet all I want to do is curl up and press my hands against my ears until they're all that I hear.

Omg, omg, omg, omg. Somebody else please download them and listen to "Second Name" and "Sally" and then come be tongue-tied and flailing with me so we can shudder and wave arms at each other while we discuss our favorite parts. I CAN'T PICK MINE, AND I NEED YOUR HELP.

ALTERNATIVELY (by which I mean, additionally): Top 5 songs that make you press your hands against your ears in the good way, go! It's been a few years since I asked that, omg.

Jesus Christ. I've watched this video at least a dozen times in the last 16 hours, and it's fucking making me cry.

Please, Mr. Postman by Hop Along, Queen Ansleis from David Senigo on Vimeo.

Fucking hell. I'm so fucking sick of feeling held in by money, anxiety, by fucking PTSD-esque breakdowns (of which I had two this week, two!), and just. Jesus Christ it's going to kill me if I never do anything that makes me feel as alive as that. If I don't do it soon.

( Other shit I want to be a part of. )

...I feel like I should mention somewhere that I uploaded Hop Along (formerly Hop Along, Queen Ansleis)'s first album for julietcetera yesterday and would totally be willing to share the link with any other interested parties. Also, she is really ridiculously gorgeous, holy crap.

List 10 musical artists you like, in no specific order (do this before reading the questions below). Really, don’t read the questions below until you pick your ten artists!!!

1. Electrelane
2. Joanna Newsom
3. Sleater-Kinney
4. Kaki King
5. Tegan & Sara
6. Florence + The Machine
7. Portishead
8. Julie Doiron
9. Land of Talk
10. Cat Power

( Questions and answers! )

...also, the party was GREAT. But I got like three hours of sleep and then worked for eight hours and now I'm too worn out to update about, like, actual life things, haha. :P

Okay, so, the new T&S album: it's SO GOOD.

Buy it if you get the chance, but I'm going to go ahead and upload it anyway. (ninjascrabbit uploaded it for me first, so really I am just passing along the favor.)

Sainthood -- Tegan & Sara

I am pretty sure it's my favorite of their albums. It sounds more cohesive than they usually do. (I wonder if that's because they made a point of writing in the same space this time around.) Anyway, I actually like all of the songs, but so far my favorites are "Don't Rush", "Red Belt", "The Cure", and "The Ocean".

Enjoy!

I have been listening to a crapload of Florence + The Machine and Tegan & Sara the last couple of days, and I've been contemplating uploading a few songs (the new T&S album is SO GOOD), but then just now I was listening to a remix of "Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)" and I realized that Florence's voice reminds me so, so much of the vocalist on this song I listened to like a billion times when I was a freshman in high school, and so I am uploading that song instead!

Broken Bridge - Daughter Darling

Mmm. Piano-driven trip-hop! The lyrics are kind of corny, but the beat is so nice and her voice is frigging incredible. Ugh. I think this is the first time I've listened to this song in years, and it's still so good. ♥

Also, apparently I really do want to go on a date sometime soon, because I responded to another Craigslist ad last night.

...and AUGH. I am going to face it: I can either be intense and be awesome, or I can not be intense and not be awesome. THERE IS LITTLE ROOM FOR COMPROMISE.

( Five and a half things. )

...I'm not expecting a response, because that's the frame of mind I'm in lately, but I'm pretty sure I'd want to at least be friends with the person if I got a response like that. Although who am I kidding, given the chance I'd totally hit that.

Hahaha, which reminds me of the conversation I took part in yesterday in which my (pervy older brother of a) supervisor, my friend Jill and I were talking about what it would be like to have clones of certain people (such as... my friend Jill!) and I made some comment about how awesome it would be to have multiple Marshalls and my supervisor said the comment was like something right out of Dinosaur Comics.

Man. How easy is it to picture myself in that final panel with two little lines coming off my face? "WHO AM I KIDDING?" "I WOULD TOTALLY HIT THAT."

*is secretly a dinosaur*

(Also, Where The Wild Things Are was pretty good, but I was annoyed by the people behind us who talked the entire time. Also also, there were a couple of really scary moments before the movie began where we weren't sure Lora was going to get there in time for us not to have to pass up our wonderful place in line, because she was the one who bought the tickets earlier in the week, but then she came and we didn't have to give up our spot and it was beautiful. MLIA.)

( Nnngh. Paget Brewster singing. )

...*full body shudder*

Also, I love how utterly awesome she seems to be as a person. It's nice to appreciate an actress and the character she plays simultaneously, albeit in a separate manner.

And speaking of her character, for some reason the other day I thought of Emily as a small-town mechanic, all, like, butched out in a white t-shirt and tight-fitting men's jeans with, like, oil smudges on her clothes. And her hands. And her face. Nnngh.

And now I just keep picturing the scene where she meets JJ for the first time in this universe: she would have been under a car, and she would have slid out and gotten off the creeper, wiping her hands on a handkerchief that would have been tucked into her back pocket. And she'd walk across the floor of the garage kinda slowly, taking her time, because it's her place, because she loves it. Because she appreciates a job well done, and part of appreciating that is appreciating the way it feels to cross the floor. And then she'd see JJ and she'd take her in, but JJ wouldn't be able to read her because she's the kind of person who plays her cards close to the vest as a rule, and JJ would momentarily forget why she was there, because the sight of Emily would totally take everything out of her brain for a single, rather strangely world-stopping second, and then she'd remember, "Oh, right, I'm at a garage, because I need work done on my car," and they'd proceed with their introductions as if nothing had happened, and of course nothing really would have happened, but it'd have been the start of something, and they'd both sort of know that, even if it didn't really make any sense at the time.

(I think I like AUs in this fandom because the character traits that I find so compelling in the Emily/JJ ship are the same traits that make it nearly impossible for me to see any way in which they'd actually get together while they're both on the team. And I think it'd be wildly OOC if either one of them left for the sake of the relationship, plus that would ruin a large part of what I love so much about them, which is super tied into how much they care about their jobs, so. AUs it is.)

Speaking of AUs, I frigging love lysachan's Emily-as-a-ranch-hand AU, Keeper of the Winds. I haven't been able to get it out of my head since I read it a couple of weeks ago. I keep thinking about it and about Electrelane's On Parade at the same time, even though the genre of the song doesn't really fit. Considering the song's also my current "let's have ridiculously hot sex in an intensely flirtatious manner" song, this is only (only!) the best news. Mmmph.

(A description, from here: “On Parade,” the first single from The Power Out (and, incidentally, the song whose lyrics contribute the album's title) is a moody, erotic strut of a beat inspired by The Well of Loneliness, Radclyffe Hall's scandalous novel (well, it was in 1928) on the love that dare not speak its name.)

It also includes the lines "I wanna see her. I wanna see her. I wanna see her on her horses," and "I bet I'd like your underwear," so. Queer queer queer queer queer! ...and it gets me so hot I genuinely do not know what to do with myself.

...Speaking of things that get me so hot I genuinely do not know what to do with myself, Jesus Christ, Emily Prentiss strutting around in slow motion on my television. I'm going to fucking die if you keep doing that. ffdjslkfajsdfkadsjf. &EMILYPRENTISS;

I don't know if everyone will be able to see this or if only people who are friends with me on FB will be able to see this, but Jack recorded the most adorable video message ever for me yesterday. He's the best brofriend a queer little trans boy like me could even ask for, awwwww. *draws sparkly hearts*

Mmmph. I am sore. Lora, Laura, Annie and I went hiking on Saturday, and then Laura and I went back and did it again last night. I wish we'd gotten into hiking earlier in the year - pretty soon it'll be dark too early for us to go after work, but for now it's nice.

Spent Saturday night and all day Sunday in Sturbridge with Lora. I was really scared for a while right after we stopped dating, that her family wouldn't want me around as much, but her mom told me last weekend that they're expecting me for both the holidays this year (which is good, because I have nowhere else to go!), and Lora's aunt invited me to their extended family's pre-Thanksgiving get-together, and I was there this weekend, obviously. Lora's mom also told one of her work friends who was over for dinner Saturday night that she has three kids now, not just Michael and Lora. So. Having a functional family is good.

( I think I mentioned I had some dark moods early in the weekend. It's the season for that, I guess. )

Anyway. We cope. I responded to a girl's ad on Craigslist the other morning; I don't think she's going to respond, because she's a gold-star lesbian and I'm, well, not a lady, but! The point is that in my response, I ended up writing that blah blah blah laying things out and although being involved with me in whatever capacity would be complicated blah blah blah, I think I have a lot to offer someone. And then I stopped and looked at what I'd written and I was like, "Yeah! I do! That's so true!" and then I pointed and laughed at the final paragraph of that post I made the other day and it felt really, really stupid. Yep. It did.

(Also, one of these links is for the We Were Promised Jetpacks album I've been waiting forever and a day for, courtesy of Loraface. The other is for the New Moon soundtrack, so. Yeah. Good stuff. I haven't had a chance to listen to the soundtrack yet, but it's got what appears to be an amazing tracklist. And the We Were Promised Jetpacks cd is AWESOME, by which I mean it's melancholic, joyful Scottish indie pop-rock, by which I mean it's AWESOME, so. Download it. ♥)

day 01 | a song

My favorite new trick when I want to listen to music I don't already have is to type the name of the artist (or song or album) + .rar (or .zip) into Google. Oversimple? Perhaps. But I downloaded seven albums just this weekend that I wouldn't have found otherwise!

So, anyway. I've been going through one of my vivid dream periods again, which means things have been sort of fuzzy for me for the last few days. It's hard for me to shake out of the dreams, even when I'm awake. I don't know. It's strange, but I'm used to this happening by now.

One of the things I find myself doing when I'm going through one of these periods is latching onto certain songs. This time it's an Electrelane song off their 2004 album The Power Out, which is fitting since trying to describe the way Electrelane makes me feel has often been just as impossible as trying to describe the way my dreams do.

Anyway. I think The Power Out might almost surpass their 2007 album No Shouts, No Calls for me, which is saying a lot, for those of you who've heard me flail over No Shouts, No Calls for the last two years. Literary references! Foreign languages! Sounding like a queer female cross between Joy Division and The Cure but... not! Complete and total lack of regard for anything other than the music! The music! And this song in particular just manages to fill me with... I don't even know, but I have never, ever, ever heard a 16th-century Spanish sonnet sung with such abandon, and I'm betting nobody else has either.


Oh Sombra! - Electrelane

Como aquel que en soñar gusto recibe,
su gusto procediendo de locura,
así el imaginar con su figuravanamente su gozo en mí concibe.


Otro bien en mí, triste, no se escribe,
si no es aquel que en mi pensar procura;
de cuanto ha sido hecho en mi ventura
lo sólo imaginado es lo que vive.


Teme mi corazón de ir adelante,
viendo estar su dolor puesto en celada;
y así revuelve atrás en un instante


a contemplar su gloria ya pasada.
¡Oh sombra de remedio inconstante,
ser en mí lo mejor lo que no es nada!


( Despite the fact that my Spanish is so limited I had no idea what was being sung, the lyrics are strangely apt. )

...AUGH. ELECTRELANE. I'd tell you to knock it off, but you're already on indefinite hiatus and I wouldn't mean it, and sometimes I think I'm even more upset about you being gone than I am about S-K and then I get upset because who said I was allowed to care about a band more than S-K? DAMMIT, ELECTRELANE. THIS IS NOT OKAY.

My dad sent one of my baby pictures along with his birthday card this year.



I was like, "Oh, that's cute."

And then I read the back.



Now I keep reading the back and laughing out loud. This is why I'm not even going to say anything about the fact that my dad wrote the word "daughter" all over the place on his card. He's too fucking adorable for me to even care right now.

(Note: I am, indeed, sitting on a set of train tracks, seemingly unattended. And yes, I do appear to be eating a rock. Additionally, this is exactly how much hair I had for the first three years of my life.)

( Odds and ends. Lots of them. )

And in the meantime, oh my god, I re-discovered how much I love the song Someday by Over the Rhine and, well, to quote Jenny Jenkins, I just wanna fuck 'til I become an astronaut... when I listen to that song.

and if you need my attention
be bizarre
feel free to
ignore convention
it's alright
and if it's a matter of permission
you can do me harm
I wouldn't miss it
I wouldn't miss it
for the world

Seriously, seriously, tell me you don't want somebody to bend you over the nearest, well, anything that's near when you listen to that song.

( Also, um, here, have a bunch of pictures. )

THE END.

Summary: my life, it is the crazy. And there's still a lot I didn't really get to, but this will have to do for now. God, when did my life become such a very full thing?

I am not here. I am not really posting.

But if I were here? If I were posting?

I'd probably say something about how bothered I am by the smalltownness of the social scene around here sometimes and how it gets in the way of my voyeuristic musical tendencies, because there are such fucking incredible musicians around here, making all of this intensely beautiful, personal music, and I can't listen to half of it because I feel like a fucking creep because I either know the people involved or I know somebody else who knows them or whatever... and it makes me feel too self-conscious to lose myself in something that someone so socially and geographically close to me made, even if nobody else knows I'm doing it, because even though it'd be the music I was losing myself in, and not the person/people making it, sometimes it's hard for my brain to really separate the two, and so it's better if I don't know the person/people at all, because then it'd never be a problem if I were kind of half in love with them because of the songs they play! Because I wouldn't know them! But this area's too weirdly interconnected for me to have that distance, and I end up ignoring a lot of good shit sometimes, because I don't know how to handle being so close and having my heroes be normal people I'm not allowed to get obsessed with. Fuck.

...but I'm not saying any of that, because I'm not actually posting tonight. Tonight's a listening night. I want to hear what other people have to say.

And if I were posting, I'd also probably reluctantly link to this MySpace profile, particularly to the song entitled "Return of the Mammoth Beast", and then I'd point out that the lyrics to said song are posted in one of her recent blog entries on the same page, and I'd probably make some sort of oblique reference to this at least partially inspiring the rant I totally didn't make two paragraphs above.

Yep. Good thing I'm not posting tonight.

A few odds and ends.

1. ( Songs that are momentarily meaningful. )

2. ( I don't usually write about this, because it's so lovely I don't know what to say. )

3. ( Sometimes I just need to remember the things that I write. )

4. ( Zach is going to be in Illinois three times in the next five months and I'm not going to see him once. )

Yep. All right. Back to reading more of Beth Ann Fennelly's poetry now.

This is going around again, I guess.

Post anon and tell me:
1. One secret.
2. One compliment.
3. One non-compliment.
4. One love note, but it does not have to be for me.
5. Lyrics to a song.
6. How old you are.
7. How long we've been friends.
8. And a hint to who you are.

One of the things I love about anonymemes is seeing how many responses remain consistent over the years and how many of them change.

Also, special note to cup_o_jo: I've been writing a bit and this song is striking me as very Dylan-esque today. In emotion, if not sound.

A single-item list covering multiple subtopics in a semi-subsequent order of relation

1.) I e-mailed Alex a copy of Shoulders by Kickball with the following file description:

"tell me the lyrics from 1:20 to 2:20 and the subsequent explosing(?!) of noise doesn't make your heart BURST open in joy, because it really really really makes mine."

1a.) And then I ended up going into this weird tangent about how all of Kickball's songs have this weird, queer aesthetic to me. And I don't mean that they sound like a band made of queer musicians, or that they play music that queers stereotypically like, it's not that at all.

I don't even know if I can really put it into the words I'd like, but this is what I said :

"I'm not sure what it is... they're not queer, as far as I know, but a) I feel like the singer uses his voice in really typically feminine ways b) the bass is really loose but you can also tell the bassist knows what he's doing, so there's this like deliberate kind of presentation about it and then c) the drummer is a girl, which is unusual... especially for the girl drummer to be the only girl in an otherwise male band."

So basically I feel like there are these odd, queer sort of details about the band and the way they perform their roles that is very similar to the way queer people, myself included, shape/perform our identities in our daily lives.

...does that make sense to anyone but me?


1b.) The first line in that section from 1:20 to 2:20 that I originally mentioned says, "Tattoo the great bear on my arm; lead me to danger, but not to harm" and I've always loved that so much. I made it my Facebook status half an hour ago and cup_o_jo commented about how badass a bear tattoo would be, which made me think about how I always imagine there's an armored bear on my right forearm, as a companion to The Cowgirl on the left. (Which made me realize how I take it for granted that other people a) know I'm picturing a tattoo on that side and b) know what tattoo I'm picturing.) Which made me want to go looking for pictures of Iorek Byrnison, which led to this amazing find:



(omg so fucking cute. tell me that's not the cutest thing you've ever seen.)


1c.) Heading back to the original topic, which was the fact that the song makes me feel so. fucking. alive. every time I hear that one section I keep mentioning... what are things that make all of you feel that way?

Last Time - Jenny Jenkins

I don't know how to describe this song, other than to say that she sort of sounds like Mirah, but with a quiet little ukeleke instead of a guitar, and that the lyrics make me smile and want to cry at the same time.

I know I tend to go all superlative when it comes to music, but this song is worth listening to. And because I think it's so pretty, I am going to share all of the words instead of just the usual excerpt.

we made love for hours
my bed on the floor
you said it's the last time
you don't want any more

( you lent me that CD / now you want it back )

Hey, so, it's my half-birthday. Who wants to celebrate?

Ask me a question about any or each of the following: friends, sex, music, drugs, love, or LiveJournal. No matter how rude, sexual, or confidential. Then post this in your journal and see what questions you get asked.

Also, free totally free to randomly say nice things about me. (If you're so inclined.) Just because... it's been an ucky sort of day.

P.S. It's Cold - Smoosh

I'm just afraid
That I'm never ever gonna make it
To the end where I'm supposed to be
But I am trying so hard to go
And I, I don't know how

You can hold me tight
'Cause it's cold at night

Because it is cold at night. And because it fills me with love.