Slide Out of Touch

Last Saturday I was sitting at a wooden table located on the second floor mezzanine of a house-cum-restobar packed in with around 50 people, listening to a couple of friends talking and somewhere mid-sip or mid-puff or mid-reaction I realized that most of the people I hang out with these days are people who are relatively new to me. This made me happy in that it's wonderful to make new friends--I'm very happy that turns out I'm not socially inept after all and that I'm slowly relearning how to relate to/with people again. 

But also, it made me kind of sad to realize that I don't know a lot of people who've known me a long time, anymore. Friendship is an elusive thing--you can wake up and suddenly be great friends with someone you barely talked to before and just as suddenly, you can find that you don't know someone you've known all your life, anymore; in the same breath, you can find yourself lacking the desire to reach out to someone or you can find yourself laden with the sudden desire to want to get to know someone, just because--things that have been a long time coming but which you didn't notice until it was "suddenly" there.

People slide out of touch and it usually happens without us noticing: a missed event, a holiday off with other people, an I'll Go Next Time mantra--and it's two years later, someone's getting married or leaving and you're on Facebook looking at pictures of them and wondering how've they been and thinking it's been so long and problematizing over whether or not you should text them, right before you click the tiny x on the right-hand screen and go do something else. Later in the day you start to ask yourself, why was it that we slid out of touch?

I'm not sure if I'm making any sense--I figure that maybe I don't have the right words to describe how it was I felt that night (and am beginning to feel again, now) but someone else does: The National's I Should Live In Salt seems to convey what I mean exactly.

Can you write it on a wall?

You should know me better than that.

There's no room to write it on,

You should know me better than that. 

Start to slide out of touch,

You should know me better than that.

Tell yourself it's only noise,

You should know me better than that. 

Learn to appreciate the void,

You should know me better than that.

Old Haunts

Lately, I've been thinking about the things that haunt us--songs that get stuck in our heads long after the actual track's stopped playing, scary scenes that keep us from sleep days after we've left the cinema or that tooth your tongue still looks for despite said tooth having been pulled out months ago.

 Last Monday, I was hanging out with my friend Ron and we were trying to remember his wifi password; after a couple of attempts, he was finally able to get it down just right. He told me that theoretically, our minds retain everything we encounter; but to be able to function properly, our conscious mind just puts everything in storage. If we wanted (or tried hard enough), we could dig it all up and recall almost anything. I learned this back during my majors, as well--certain information is there pretty much forever, all you need is the right trigger to pull it to the forefront of your mind.

The other night, I had a dream about an old friend of mine. I haven't talked to this person in years and in my dream, we were lying in a strawberry field, talking. Despite not having been in the presence of this person in years, in the dream the "friend" talked and laughed and joked around with "me" in a way I didn't even remember I remembered. 

How much is up there that we don't want to remember? How do we keep from having it jump out at us and "ruin everything"? A lot of the time, I suspect that there is no such thing as the freedom of choice--how can there be when we can't even control ourselves? How can we say that we choose this or that when we don't even know truly what it is we're basing our decisions on?

A lot of the time we use the present to justify the past--"if that didn't happen, this wouldn't have happened"--and more and more I'm starting to think that justification is a load of crap. Gaining one thing doesn't mitigate the loss of another because different things mean different things to us, in different ways. I don't think it'd be right to say that a baby being born makes someone else's death less grave. How do we mourn loss, then? How do we find redemption when the very fact that we are in a state of mourning for something or someone already means that we in fact, could not find redemption for that situation?

Beats me.

As I could not--cannot--come up with answers for these things that've been on my mind as of late, I instead decided to record a "duet" of sorts with one of my favorite bands, ever. This song's been haunting me too, recently so I decided to record an additional backing vocal to this awesome acoustic version of this I found online. Music (or art, in general) doesn't solve anything, but I find that it makes things bearable. And so we go on.

You said it was not inside my heart, it was.
You said it should tear a kid apart, it does.

High Violet

Album cover via The National

I know this is a couple of years late and those of you who listen to The National might be wondering why I'm only posting about this now, but well--I like obsessing about things in turn. And when it comes to my favorite artists sometimes I'll delay gratification and keep myself from listening to an album and obsess over an older album for a couple of months before getting to the goodies. I'm the kind of person who can be very intensive about musical obsessions (search for Tegan & Sara on this blog and you'll know what I mean)--I like to know every word to every song and I really like soaking in records. I pay attention to the order of the tracks and the punctuation of the lyrics and small things like that. So yeah. I'm kinda a "slow listener" when faced with a discography, I guess.

For the past year and a half, I've been listening to nothing but their Alligator album which is great as well (if you're interested, please check it out--they don't disappoint).

And for a couple of weeks before I downloaded High Violet, I'd gotten back into singing along to their first album (The National). Anywho, I think there are two kinds of bands--those that get better with time and those that you appreciate for their "older hits". The National is definitely the former. This is the best album of theirs I've listened to (EPs included. Everything is spot-on: the lyrics, the melodies, the rhythm. My goodness. Favorite tracks include: Bloodbuzz Ohio, Conversation 16, Anyone's Ghost and Sorrow. 

My favorite lines is definitely from Conversation 16: 

Live on coffee and flowers,

Try not to wonder what the weather will be.

If any of you give this a listen/have given this a listen, please let me know what you think/what you're favorite songs are! :D

Music | Music for May

Because I commute (as my friend Ina likes to put it) eeeeverywhere, frequently updated playlists are a must. :) And I just thought that I'd share a couple of these tunes with you, in case you're looking for a couple of music recommendations. Also, if you've got any recommendations for me leave a comment below--anonymous comments are enabled, worry not--and I'll give it a listen. :)

So yeah, here are 5 songs that I haven't been able to get enough:

1. Secret Meeting by The National

This is from their Alligator album. I love this song because it epitomizes Matt Berninger's ability to make sarcasm sexy. "I'm sorry I missed you--I had a secret meeting in the basement of my brain," I won't say much about this, give it a listen.

2. Tarred, Feathered & Scarlet Lettered by Taylor Locke & The Roughs

So, while I am a huge Rooney fan, I'm also definitely a big fan of the two solo efforts from the band's oh-so-talented members. This is one of them. For those who might not know, Taylor Locke is the guitarist for Rooney as well as the front man for The Roughs (as you can probably tell from their name). This is my favorite song off of Marathon, their second effort. 

YouTube only has their live performance, but you can listen to more music on their MySpace page or go see how you can get your hands on their album (worth it) on their official site.

3. Second Chances by Robert (Carmine) Schwartzman

Robert is the vocalist of Rooney and this is from his solo project, Double Capricorn. (I must say I love that title--I, along with a bilion others, am a capricorn me'self) This track is so catchy; I could listen to it all day. Also, as you can expect from an R Schwartzman song, the arrangement and melodies are right on the dot. Go see more of him on his official site. Also, if you want to check out the short film ad Gia Coppola did for Wren, it's below--Robert did the scoring for that, which was a wonderful surprise for me, as I loved the music on that (which is what had me looking for who scored it in the first place). Anyway, watch below!

4. Behold the Hurricane by The Horrible Crowes

I think I've written enough about this on this blog--from the genius of Brian Fallon & Ian Perkins. Their album Elsie is definitely goes on my best records of all time list. Also, a bit of trivia: Joseph Mawle, the guy in this video plays Benjen Stark on Game of Thrones. :D Go give it a listen. ;)

5. In Case of Fire by Sandwich

This is the only album of theirs that I own, actually. They played on campus my senior year of Highschool and so it's very nostalgic, listening to Five On The Floor. This track and Goodnight, January definitely take the cake for me: a showcase of Mr. Marasigan's talents as a lyricists. 

"A manual role in this fantastic, never-ending change of setting, manic-static."