Holy Jesus, Holy Rock & Roll

Let's jump into the wayback machine for a second.  Not the one you studiously avoid for fear of seeing your cached deadjournal entries from 2002. The other one.

It's 1995. I'm watching some of the videotapes my aunt brings home from working at Blockbuster. Some of them are collections of music videos that are wholly unrelated to one another. Weird Al Yankovic and MC Lyte come to mind.

I should note that at this point in my life, I have not yet been introduced to rock music. Hip-hop and R&B are all that's on my radar. (97.9 the Box. You know what's up, Houston.) I had five on it, though I doubt I knew was 'it' was at the time, but I did not (yet) smell like teen spirit.

So when I saw the video for Only Happy When It Rains, my whole life changed. I didn't know you could do that. I didn't know you could be that. Shirley Manson is wearing this tiny, girly dress with combat boots and fishnets. The boys have on nail polish and eyeliner. That music video changed me forever.

(And let's be real: it changed my concept of fashion forever, too. I haven't been without a pair of fishnets or bad bitch boots for many years now, and you couldn't pry my beloved eye makeup from the withered claws of my millennia-dead husk.)

What I learned was that I could be whoever I wanted. My parents, of course, generally had other ideas, but in the secret spaces of my mind and my journals, I could be anyone and do anything. I carried this with me through middle school, a miserable affair at a private Islamic school where my mom was the only non-Muslim around and that made me the odd one out. I nourished and grew it further in high school, where my group of lovable outcasts weren't really cast out, because our school was too small and our cliques all generally got along, but I was still weirder than all the weird kids, mixed-race and from a strict family that never gave me the freedom that a good kid like me deserved but never managed to earn.

Whoever I've been, she's always been as true and honest as she could be. I have very few, if any, regrets - I've made my mistakes, but I've learned from them as well as from those I didn't have to make but observed plenty of around me. I suck at some things, and I fail at some things, and circumstance has not always been kind to me, but I do not hesitate to say that I am exactly who I want to be.


The last time Garbage came to Texas, I was in high school, and though a dear friend bought me tickets, I was not permitted to go. I was, of course, crushed beyond explaining, and I don't really care to enumerate on that.

This time, another dear friend bought me a ticket because the tour coincided with my resigning from work. My health was at an all time low, but I knew that even though going to a show would be (and honestly, still is) a shortcut to a lot of pain for me, I could not pass up an opportunity that hadn't arisen for me in almost exactly ten years. However much I'd pay for it later, I would be there.

The show ended up being postponed because a band member had a family emergency. Admittedly, I was a bit relieved. Not about the emergency - I'd rather never have this opportunity than wish any negativity on anyone for my gain. But I was relieved to have a little time to wrestle my fucked-up body into submission.

The show is rescheduled for October 10, and I will be there. And even if I am in pain, nothing will hurt.

I got these tattoos as a reminder that I don't have to apologize for being a badass. That I don't have to answer to anybody but myself, so I'd better stay right. And most importantly, that that ten year old girl who dreamed of being beautiful and strong and free didn't get what she wished for. She got what she worked for.

So I'm gonna keep working, and if you see these legs at the show, come holler at me. Just don't judge me if I am the literal embodiment of every shaking-and-crying gif you've ever seen.


I'm still this thing you'll never doubt.


D

A Pensieve Post: Three First Kisses

"I sometimes find, and I am sure you know the feeling, that I simply have too many thoughts and memories crammed into my mind...One simply siphons the excess thoughts from one's mind, pours them into the basin, and examines them at one's leisure. It becomes easier to spot patterns and links, you understand, when they are in this form."
Albus Dumbledore

It's dark. Infectious, so-bad-it's-good dance music is being performed onstage and everyone's eyes are forward or swimming in plastic cups trying to drown out the ridiculousness of the band and the crowd. We were dancing and laughing, so we're out of breath and dizzy when we stumble off to what we think is a secluded corner of the club. A strange feeling washes over me, similar to the feeling a person gets as they're about to faint but more like my mind and body become acutely aware that this moment to come is important, the start of something. All the surrounding noise aggressively mutes out. My eyes tunnel into focusing on what's directly in front of me, your face, and amidst the darkness there are red splashes of light that paint across your features. Dark curls, impossibly dark eyes. That perfect nose. Rough jaw that my mouth grazed for too brief a moment earlier, right where it meets your neck at the pulse point. "That wasn't a real kiss." A challenge. "Show me a real kiss, then."

 · 

I never told you but we met a long time before this year. Your hair was long, your heart was not yet scarred and your feet were bare onstage in the bordertown dive bar where you were opening for the one-hit wonder band I was there to see. I was home from my first year of college, I had short hair and a lip ring and I forgot all about you after that night except for the hauntingly honest songs. When we met for the second time, it was Valentine's Day and we spent it together, heartbroken and telling secrets to almost strangers, sitting on the steps of a church. A sanctuary. I was laughing and you told me you loved my laugh so I couldn't stop; I took your hand to run across the street where we hugged goodbye before you were driven away. It was two weeks until I saw you again and another moonlit walk filled with conversation until you apologized for your lack of courage and I took your face in my hands and showed you mine.

 · 

You spent the entire evening sitting across from me looking dumbfounded, trying to keep up with me and all the confessions spilling from my lips. We don't know a thing about one another except the fact that we met when we were hurricanes of self-destruction: you were the life of the party, the man my ex hated out of envy, and our company's prom king and I was belligerent Tinker Bell, heartbroken over a lost boy, with a penchant for crying in photobooths. It's been two years since then and we're sitting across from each other in a prohibition-style saloon on the east side, you asking questions and me answering too fast and too deeply. You interject my rambling with surprisingly similar experiences and feelings, drawing the picture of everything I never dared to hope for in an ideal partner. A true southern gentleman, you walk me to my car and there's a moment of parallel synchronized randomness where we shuffle between a goodnight kiss and something awkward like an ass-out duck hug. I can't go out like that, I'm not known for missed opportunities. My hand finds the scruff of your neck, I go up on my toes and lean in and after it's done I'm driving home smiling when my phone lights up: "I think I'm glowing."

That Is The Ugliest Effing Starship I Have Ever Seen: An Open Love Letter To Spock

or,

Half The People In This Room Are Mad At Me, And The Other Half Only Like Me Because They Think I Pushed Somebody Out Of An Airlock, So That's Not Good

I have a great deal of Star Trek love. It's pretty difficult to enumerate without interpretive dance or at least some construction paper puppets, so I'm gonna leave it at that, but I do have to continue with a query. Do you ever think about how bitchy Spock is and just cackle inside your soul? I do. Probably more times a day than is truly necessary or healthy.

I just love that he has this persona of being all stoic and Vulcan, and the truth is, he shows his humanity all over the place, by being a mega bitch. Spock, I posit, is a green-blooded Mean Girl.

That's why Yeoman Rand's hair is a giant corncob. It's full of secrets.

Cite your source, I hear nobody yell. My source is how endlessly sassy he is. Uhura ain't the only one getting a little spicy up on that bridge. A few years ago, I sat Jenny down to assist me in my yet to be attained goal of watching every episode of every Trek to date. She had never seen more than the 2009 movie, being something of a scruffy-looking nerf herder. I dragged her to it, to her great titillation.

I'd only seen select Original Series episodes at this time. When I was growing up, Next Gen was the Trek of the day, and Voyager was what was on when I was starting to become conscious of plotlines and nuance. Tuvok was the Vulcan of my childhood, and dare I say - my heart. Let me not be mistaken. I am a great proponent of Spock. Just because he's a bitch don't mean I don't got love for him. But in those season one episodes I saw before my eyes not the more solemn, wise character I had expected. I saw a blue-eyeshadowed judgement machine. And I loved him.

Practically every time Spock is on screen, he is rolling his eyes at how dumb - if pretty - Kirk is. "Uhhhh, you can run around with all these space hoes, these intergalactic hussies, these green-skinned scarlet men and women, but everybody knowwwwwws who you come home to play 3D chess with, KIRK. So you can grease yoself alllll up with margarine and get yo shirt "accidentally" ripped up in "battle" even though we can all smell burnt polyester and your phaser needs to be charged six point three times as often as everybody else's. Everybody knows who you knockin' Starfleet regulation boots with."

That is paraphrased. And I might be projecting a tiny bit. I love him a great deal. I came for the logic smackdowns, and what I got was a beautiful miracle: bitchy logic smackdowns.

Bestill my two hearts.

What Do You Love About Music?

“What do you love about music?”

“To begin with, everything.”


Ever seen the movie Waitress? Keri Russell is a pie master, struck by quirky pie recipe epiphanies throughout her day, such as “I Don’t Want Earl’s Baby Pie” (quiche with egg and brie cheese with a smoked ham center) and "Earl Murders Me Because I'm Having An Affair Pie" (smash blackberries and raspberries into a chocolate crust).

I am a playlist master. I have playlist epiphanies, and at any given time I am working on at least three playlists actively. And when my headphones aren’t in and my speakers are silent, I'm constantly playing an internal jukebox, elevator music for my thoughts. My life experiences, interactions with people, and the feelings that arise from those interactions become the coins triggering my track selection.

A song strikes me inside like lightning and I’m already thinking: a playlist for the one that got away, titled “Ojos Oscuros” after his dark eyes, filled with music that thrills you, like foreign tongues and telling secrets to strangers and close whispers. My heart gets broken over the phone and all I hear for days is “Phone Call,” by The Faint; that song becomes the first track to a playlist titled “Straight and To The Point: Resilience.” In the middle of a Doctor Who marathon, “Supermassive Black Hole” opens an episode and within minutes I’m halfway through a playlist to bash around the galaxy to (“Come Along, Pond: A TARDIS mix”).

You can expect many, many future playlist posts from me. This is just the first.

“What do you love about music?”

I quoted Almost Famous to pose this question to my twitter followers, and my buddy Cameron (Dettman, lead vocalist and lyricist for the Las Vegas band, Play for Keeps) replied: “the emotions associated with music. How there is a song for every single one.” Spotify has a neat messaging feature, where you can share songs with notes attached between friends. I think I once sent Cameron’s inbox 35 songs in a single night. Jeff Buckley for the heart, John Mayer for the mind, and B.B. King for the soul. And lots of 90’s pop music.

Duia loves music for “the grit of it. How when it's raw and real, it is the rawest and realest thing you've ever known.” Duia listened to a lot of Nirvana and Garbage as a teenager. We bonded over Fall Out Boy lyrics, an intense love for “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” by Iggy Pop and The Stooges, and a mutual soul boner for Jack White.


I love music because it helps me connect.  My brain thinks in tangents and I’m too honest, easily misunderstood and hard to keep up with. I can’t always rely on having the right words to say, but I always know the right song to express what I’m feeling. Third Eye Blind, The Format, Motion City Soundtrack- these are three of my favorite bands for the same reason: candid, passionate lyrics set to upbeat, infectious music. Honesty and reality with glitter sparkling on it.

“I get chills every time as I listen to the scatterbrain effect of deep love rooted in a human being desperate to explain the inexplicable,” wrote Brandon Roundtree, lyricist and lead vocalist of the band CONDITIONS, of the song “The Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot,” by Brand New.

You remember music that makes you feel, the same way you never forget the people who change you and your life. All those cries of love and longing that echo your own. Here are ten songs that echo mine.

Cries of Love and Longing

(click through to listen with Spotify)

“I Want You,” Elvis Costello and The Attractions

“A Case of You,” Joni Mitchell

“Shiver,” Coldplay

“In A Sentimental Mood,” Duke Ellington and John Coltrane

“I Can’t Get Next To You,” Al Green

“Knife,” Grizzly Bear

“Shameless,” Man Man

“Lover, You Should’ve Come Over,” Jeff Buckley

“Oh Comely,” Neutral Milk Hotel

“I Want You (She’s So Heavy),” The Beatles

"A Cry of Love in Several Parts"

I've had quite a few different living situations since I moved to Austin, but I have to admit that the one I look back on most fondly was about six months in.

I had only just found a (minimum wage) job, and I'd used up all of my savings, so I could no longer afford to live with my buddy from mortuary school. Jenny's solution was obvious: come stay with her in San Marcos.

I hadn't had the college experience. I briefly attended the University of Houston, but that is a distant, dim cry from living in a college apartment complex in a college town. We lived on ramen and 'wine product' (no Boone's for these classy broads - it was all about the Arbor Mist tea parties). We were poor - even poorer than we are now, which is impressive - and we were sad, but for the first time ever, I was experiencing the kind of freedom I'd only ever written, read, or dreamed about. We ran wild and free. This was as feral as I'd ever allowed myself to be.

Unlike many of my friends, I was not raised on the Beatles. My mom listened to Motown, to Elvis, to Led Zeppelin. It wasn't until this period of my life that I was exposed to much - or indeed really any - of their oeuvre. Obviously, I was impressed.

I was terribly in love at this time, the big number one. The one where you finally understand that, no, this has never happened to you before. So the first time I heard "I Want You (She's So Heavy)", I was awed.

Sometime thereafter, Jenny read to me from an article that mentioned how at the time of its release, some felt it a step backward in terms of quality. The song was repetitive, simplistic. It had only fourteen words.

That, I felt - and still feel - is the point. With only a handful of lyrics, the song expresses a common experience, a symptom of the human condition, an underlying ache that everyone has felt or will one day feel. The layering gives it weight; the burden we bear carrying this feeling. The distortion of the guitars represents our confusion. The song, like us when we are trapped in and by these emotions, feels like it will go on forever.

When I write, I tend toward being fairly concise. As I've gotten older and therefore done more of it, I've become less stingy with my words, though admittedly I am not exactly a literary libertine. It really resonated with me, how much one can express in just fourteen words.




Years later, I've found something that further speaks to me. Like the feeling of obsessive, covetous love, the song circles the same path, gathering intensity, becoming more frantic and frenetic, and - like the feeling, finally, finally comes to an abrupt,
unexpected
halt.

A Disclaimer of Happiness

In defense of belligerent Tinker Bell, Duia, you will recall that once upon a time our friendship should have been sponsored by Arbor Mist.

You will also remember Grandma Jenny’s Sweet Tea, and the night we drank it out of heads.

Do I need to mention the Halloween we were both captains, got hit on by Dhani Harrison’s Ghostbuster band, and you danced with a taco? No, I think I’ll save that story for another time. Let’s go back to 2008. Back to when we first met.

Before Duia and I collided, I was running. Recklessly, raucously, resiliently running. I had lost people who were important to me. They were my world, and the world turned its back on me.

Who’s your favorite superhero? Mine’s Wolverine. So when this baby was put in a corner, snikt snikt, I was all adamantium bones and regenerative healing.

And running. Forget therapy, give me a shot of whiskey and the open road. I was 21 and invincible, I took a roadtrip across the country with a Canadian girlfriend (she’s real, I swear) and drove the entire way. I flew to California twice in as many weeks. I partied with rockstars. I got my first tattoo. Back on the homefront, I had a torrid love affair with The Side Bar, where I kissed blondes and stole their hats. 

He proposed. I grabbed his hat and ran to the bar next door.

I don’t just meet people. I happen to people. I have been the catalyst in many people’s lives, changing them for better or for worse (that’s on them), but living life the way that I do inspires. There really isn’t anything to it, here’s the secret: stop living pretends. Stop talking about all your aspirations and instead go live up to them, simple as that.

Be the change you wish to see in the world, Gandhi said. Be the trouble you wish to see in the world, Joey Comeau said. Both powerful life instructions, but if I may add: consider being the beauty you wish to see in the world. A lovely lady described me once as Tinker Bell, tiny dancing through life and sprinkling glitter over everything in my path. People gravitate towards shiny things, and I live my life looking at broken glass like it’s beautiful because it glitters- everything shines to me. I seek the silver linings and potentials in everyone and everything I come across.

I’m also stubborn and contrary, no one can tie me down or make me do anything I don’t want to (or didn’t think up myself first). But I consider this a strength, because for many years I was too meek and insecure to satisfy my curiosities about life outside my bubble. I was surrounded by toxic influences who put me down for my eccentricities and made fun of me for the things I found joy in. These vampires are everywhere. Cast them into the light.

Consider this a disclaimer of happiness. It is so easy to choose a pessimistic outlook, to blame the world and its obstacles or your past and the skeletons there for your dissatisfaction and unhappiness. Evolve. Believe that you are built to be better than that, forgive yourself and move forward. Run towards happiness.

Happen to people.

Duia sure as hell happened to me.

And it was Duia who made me stop running from who I was, and set me chasing after who I could become.

Why We Can Never Go Back to Magnolia Cafe

Do you remember 2008? That year was a disgrace birthed from hell’s fetid bowels. At the time, I thought it was the worst of my life. I have since gained some insight.

I do my best to keep things in perspective, even in the moment. Though that is often a taller order than I can sum up, I do think effort matters. So even though death and destruction rained down unto me that year and it only got worse in those to come, some really amazing people happened to me as well.

One of my closest friends once told me that she’d been ruined for relationships because she was always going to be waiting for the Doctor to grab her hand and tell her to run. That’s pretty much what meeting Jenny was like, and this is the story of why we can never go back to Magnolia Cafe.

After attending the first and only hardcore show I’d ever been to with a group of friends, I went along with said ragtag gang of degenerates to our ultimate Austin hotspot: The Side Bar.

Now, this place is the shit. The strength of their drinks serves a practical purpose: you have to douse yourself into a stupor because no matter how pure and kind a person you are in your little unicorn heart, your brain is in serious danger of just shorting out from Ultra-Judgment Overload caused by an eternal parade of terrible facial hair and unwashed Austinites trying to out-fug one another as a badge of ultimate coolness. I mean all of this warmly. There’s Al Green on the jukebox and if you get there early enough, the bartenders let you help them pick what’ll play on the TVs. It’s always something bizarre, in my experience. So don’t get me wrong, this is a sacred and beloved haven. It, like this city, bewilders, perplexes, and sometimes even delights me. 

The reason Jenny became so irascibly drunk on Malibu and Coke (the old signature drink) is because mixed drinks at Side Bar are only roughly seven percent mix and almost all drink. There is an urbandictionary entry for ‘sidebar pour’, and countless Austin residents have fallen prey to a dirt-cheap glass or five of jet fuel, so we can hardly blame her. She’s about no-foot-nothin’ in heels, so once it’s saturated into her, there’s nowhere for it to be channeled but belligerence. Jenny’s sort of like Tinker Bell. She’s so small she only has room for one (drunk) feeling at a time. So when that feeling is feisty, and - spoiler alert: it invariably is, things get interesting. 

This adventure occurred before I actually lived in Austin. I’d never been to Magnolia, a well-known local establishment, but luckily I had the foresight to request an outdoor table. (Foresight is my blood type.) It’s worth mentioning that though in our current universe and timeline, I am one of the only people who can talk to an irrational little drunk forest sprite, this was not the case then. I was barely allowed to make eye contact lest it be perceived as a threat and I befall a terrible (if tiny) smiting. 

So we sit outside, per my suggestion, and I am next to another new friend I have made (and fallen immediately, desperately, and horribly in love with). Can you imagine trying to kick some game at a fine blonde while four feet eleven of sassy drunk bitch is yelling FUCK YOU I DON’T NEED WATER and making long-distance calls to Canada a few seats down? I’m trying to have a civilized meal and make some googly eyes, but Jenny has other ideas. 

Have you ever tried to lay the mack down while your future BFF is retching at the other end of the table, teetering precariously forward on her chair? It’s fairly challenging to keep one’s eyes bedroomy when your new homechick is plummeting grill-first into a vom-moat she created for herself on the outdoor deck of a restaurant. 

More challenging than even that, though, is hiding one’s bewilderment when she proceeds to do it a second time. 

This is one of those incredible moments in my life during which I am simultaneously the most amused I have ever been... and the most horrified. We all know that pretty much nobody who has ever worked at a restaurant gets paid enough to have to clean up some drunk asshole’s puke. We were not the first unruly group of ne’er-do-wells to descend upon this establishment like a plague, I know. This place is open 24 hours. These people see the scourge of our decadent society on a daily basis. So on the one hand: I virulently do not want to be a part of the pestilence. But on the other: this drunk hussy just puked and fell in it. Twice. 

The non-drunk among us (myself and the aforementioned fine blonde I am trying to zap with rays from my ultra high-powered Flirt-a-Tron 6000) offer to clean up, but we are of course rebuffed, so instead we write and illustrate a thank you/OH MY GOD WE ARE SO SORRY note to affix to our bill and personally tip as heavily as we can afford to and still make the trek back to our home cities. 

I didn’t see Jenny again for a couple of months after that, and a couple of months is plenty of time for one’s life to fall completely to shit. But the next time I did, we grabbed each other’s hand and started running. We haven’t really stopped since. 

(We also drew facial hair, unibrows, and song lyrics on each other with eyeliner, but that’s a story for another day.)