a sense of joy and then a panic

"Blindfold" - Curve

Now I remember two days that mean a lot to me
I remember the two days when every hour was a minute
And every minute was a lifetime and the ocean was a sea
And you dragged me into the mountains with a flimsy guarantee
The stronger the man, the stronger the woman
If it ended now, would you be willing?
See how it feels for me - do you believe in me?

"Blinding" - Florence + the Machine

No more dreaming of the dead as if death itself was undone
No more calling like a crow for a boy, for a body in the garden
No more dreaming like a girl so in love, so in love
No more dreaming like a girl so in love with the wrong world

"Blindfold" - Morcheeba

Spring has gone
And summer keeps on coming on
I'm so glad to have you
And it's getting worse
I'm so mad to love you
And your evil curse

"Blind" - Michael Gira

Please don't ask me a question
It'd just be misunderstood
And if you could step inside me you'd feel what hatred brings
And if you saw with my eyes you'd see what self-deception means
I was younger once and I created a lie
And though my body was strong
I was self-deluded, confident and blind

"Blindsided" - Bon Iver

I'm not really like this
I'm probably plightless
Would you really rush out?
Would you really rush out for me now?

"Blindness" - Metric

What it is and where it stops nobody knows
You gave me a battle I never chose
I was the one with the world at my feet
Got us a battle, leave it up to me

-- side note: Can I just be Emily Haines?  Check out her fucking sunglasses in this "Help, I'm Alive" video.  

All I can do is fight, even if I know you're right.
Pretty fingers holding fast - maybe it's your violent past?
All you can do is hide - God bless the darkness of the night.

... and still living like a 4 dollar vic.



It's been a day of near-misses, travel-wise (almost missed my train back from Bandung to Jakarta, because I left my phone at my "Tante Marjie"'s house... then, thought that I was leaving Jakarta for Bangkok/L.A. Tuesday afternoon, when really I am leaving tomorrow afternoon).  Natnari "Whan" Sihawong is officially my patron saint of travel, for forcing me to realize the correct date. Also, I can now pack a suitcase at record speed.

But: I have come to realize, just in time, that things could be a lot worse, in all aspects of my life.  So, that's a pretty good thing to realize for one's birthday, right?  And I declare that this coming year of my life will be tahun vivere pericoloso.  The year of living dangerously, as Sukarno says.  ~Ambiguities Galore~  And in the meantime...

Last year I read this sweet little article on Jezebel, "How Tragic Kingdom Saved My Life," about the writer's therapeutic "relationship" with the No Doubt album, and I remember thinking, hmm, I'm so obsessed with carving albums up into patchwork playlists (and leave the dregs behind!) that I don't really have any especially meaningful albums.  I think that's started to change a little - I can't imagine carving up The XX (The XX) or Loveless (My Bloody Valentine) because they're like 40-minute songs - and now I have discovered The Birthday Massacre's fourth album, Pins and Needles. 

The Birthday Massacre is one of my guilty pleasure bands - they're so ridiculously Hot Topic with their Goth!-Alice-in-Wonderland aesthetic that they seem kind of embarrassing for a 24-year-old pre-professional - and I can't say they're musical geniuses by any stretch.  I would not have discovered them had it not been for Pandora, which suggested to me "Lovers' End" and "Happy Birthday" off Violet.  Today Pandora suggested "Two Hearts" off Pins and Needles and I was instantly in love:



Obviously I was particularly drawn to the lyrics: "Two hearts beating, one beats the other while the other just looks away."  Yesterday I admitted in therapy that I'm attracted to people that seem damaged - instead of wholesome, normal, well-adjusted, generally sane, like they could go live in a little box made of ticky-tacky and be satisfied - because I see myself as damaged and dangerous, and at least if they're already messed up, I won't feel so guilty about the inevitable damage I will do.  This is what I was thinking about while dancing (painfully sober) at a bar/club in Farragut North on St. Patrick's Day (the song I declared to be "my song": a techno remix of "Somebody That You Used To Know.").  My friend Alicia was ecstatic as we left because she hadn't gone clubbing in a while - whereas I went to Pure and The Bank in Vegas this past weekend, and besides which I feel no great difference between a silver-glitzy club and a bar with a dance floor, so there is zero novelty for me - and I just ended up feeling claustrophobic and anxious to get home, which is I guess what happens when I go clubbing sober. 

So anyway, Pins and Needles.  Is very listenable, to start with, and has TBM's trademark sound, which I cannot describe as anything other than like, deathpop, although wikipedia calls it synthrock (they say that about almost everything I like, though).  They are named after Clive Barker's Imajica, which tells you something.  They go with Jack Off Jill/Scarling and Kidneythieves in  my head-catalog.  And this album in particular sort of perfectly describes the contrasting elements in my life - the high-pitched pop of everyday tasks and my "upwardly mobile" trajectory and my happenin' friends and contacts, vs. my melancholy, downward-sloping heartbreak.  And the words.  Even the title Pins and Needles pretty much accurately describes my existence. 

From "In The Dark": "I'm in the dark, I'm alone around you.  I've never been here before, nobody here to get me through."

From "Always": "Repeating words until they're true: it slows the breathing.  Pretend they never came from you: it kills the feeling.  I'm not what you want:  you said what I never could."

From "Pale": "I'm looking at a face, a pointed chin towards the sky in arrogance./  Imitation, a fabrication, a pretty fake, but counterfeit, an empty carcass behind the artist, is there a trait of innocence?/ And much to our dismay, they're ignorant.  The more that we make up, the more it fits./  This doesn't feel right, feels like everything's further away.  Dead as the nightlife.  Hindsight, watching another mistake.  We never feel right."

From "Control":  "Two-faced, too poised to shed a tear/ A new trend: indifference."

From "Shallow Grave": "She was always good for nothing when the good broke bad.  All she's got to lose is everything she never has.  Every back turned to her./  She never fooled us because she could never fool herself."

From "Sideways": "How can you criticize when you're not here to compromise?  Words fade as time goes by without you."

From "Midnight": "I can't decide which one of us will leave here alive.  Your fingers breaking as I place them over mine.  The only thing I need is time to change your mind, I said./ I can't decide which one of us is dreaming tonight.  I'm just a shadow in the light you leave behind.  The only thing I need is time to change your mind, I said./  It's always darker at the end of every answer, like a finger down the back of your throat."

From "Pins and Needles": "It's been so long, feels like pins and needles in my heart.  So long, I can feel it tearing me apart./ It's always a nightmare, it's never a dream."

From "Sleepwalking": "Wait, dear, the time is getting late here.  I'm all washed up and graced with feigned applause, dressed in a cheap facade.  I'm looking for a place I'll never see again.  A night turns to a day, a street I've never walked on.  I was never here, just a faint reflection.  A day turns to a month, a second of affection./  Faking, there's nothing here worth taking.  Just my reflection fading on the wall, not the fairest one of all."

From "Secret": "I woke up as I waited.  Bleeding slow, there was no way to make all this blow over, so I started writing the ending.  I said too much.  And you just kept on pretending for both of us.  I could never speak anyway.  What you wanted to hear, I couldn't convey./  All the days that I've counted, you'll never know."

I don't know if Pins and Needles will save my life, but it certainly gives my inner turmoil some voice.  It's alienation in a busy city, it's walking back to the metro at 2 a.m. alone, it's being "pre-professional" at all in this city of berserker networking, it's the pure sadness of unrequited love, it's the chase.

Also, I'm totally going to write a story based on Germany's so-called "recognition" of the Principality of Sealand. Google that shit. Micronations. And I think I will call it "The Democratic Peace."

I think the first lyrics I knew - before even the Spice Girls - were to Les Miserables and Evita.  I think both were my dad's purchases.  He was strangely into political musicals.  We went to see Madonna's Evita movie as a family when I was about ten, and my mother and I cried during "You Must Love Me" - we asked my dad why he didn't cry, and he said that he had already cried by himself years ago when he saw it on Broadway in London.  And of course, there was his obsession with The Return of Martin Guerre.  Oddly I think my mother is more an expert on things like the Mahabharata (her summary: "everyone dies"), as she's danced that. 

He was strange.  It's the most random things I remember.  Most of it my mother's second-hand memories, stories she's told me, like him getting lost on one of those loopy highways in his VW Beetle. 

The first CD I asked my father to buy for me was the soundtrack to The Lion King. 

Sometimes listening to these soundtracks soothes me.  Les Miserables reminds me of what I believe in.  When my mother first met my father and learned he was a political scientist, she was skeptical, and asked about his views.  He said, "saya demokrat sejati," which means, roughly, "I am a sincere, honest-to-God believer in democracy."  Sejati means something incomparable in English - it implies a noble loyalty to an idea or a cause.  It's comparable to semper fi. 

"The answer to that question [how the Vietnam War transpired] begins with a basic intellectual approach which views foreign policy as a lifeless, bloodless set of abstractions.  "Nations," "interests," "influence," "prestige" - all are disembodied and dehumanized terms which encourage easy inattention to the real people whose lives our decisions affect or even end."
- Anthony Lake (someone I really look up to) and Roger Morris; "The Human Reality of Realpolitik"

I got it from this article: "Bystanders to Genocide", by Samantha Power.  You should really read it.

The other night I tried to explain my love for "screaming girls" in music to my mother.  I concluded it was something about valkyries and battle cries - how my favorite mood is "battle-mode", heavy adrenaline and blood rush.  She said, "But you don't actually want war, right?"  And I said, "No, no, I'm belligerent about peace.  Love and peace or else."  And then I realize that I like my username after all. 

oh, I'm a good person, don't wanna fight with no one
but you piss me off.

I really like Bleed Like Me. 

I just turned away from a beggar when somebody grabbed my shoulder outside the bowling lane bar that stands between the grocery store and my apartment, and I was thinking, shit, they're getting more aggressive.  I tried to keep walking but the "excuse me!"s got louder and I thought, what, does this guy actually need help with directions?  I turned around.  He was slightly brown, with slightly off-color black hair, the kind of half-Mediterranean, pseudo-Arabic look that anyone who knows me should know is one of my types.  Holding a bottle of beer and a cigarette. 

"Do you speak English?"  Earnest, smiling. 

"Yeah..."  I pulled one earbud from my ear and became suddenly conscious that I was listening to "Hotel".  It's on my "boys will be boys" playlist.  It's a cynical playlist, but on my way to the post shop I was going through Hole, so it's not as bad as it could have been. 

"Oh, good, listen, can you sign my t-shirt?"  He thrust a red pen at me.   It would stand out against all the messages in black on turquoise. 

"Uh, why?"

"Cuz we're having this contest, to see who can get the most signatures."  It was loud inside the bar, even though it's 4:45 in the afternoon. 

"Sure..." I took the pen and stabbed myself with it while trying to open it and carry my box of oatmeal that the check-out nerd had not even asked if I wanted a bag for, instead insisting that I show him the contents of my purse and not even bothering to help pick up the change i dropped in my efforts to show him the bag while holding my wallet, the receipt, and the box of oatmeal - he bothered me.  He looked like Napoleon Dynamite.  The point is, now there's a red blur on my index finger.  It almost looks intentional. 

"So what's your name?"

"Nadia."

"Ah, and where're you from?"

"The U.S."

"Whereabouts?"

"New York."  I hesitated, because I'm not really from New York. 

"Can't place it - oh, in the northeast, right, in the northeast?"  I'm glad I said New York.  He would have had trouble placing Nebraska. 

"Yeah, in the northeast.  Where should I sign?"

"Oh, anywhere, anywhere you want.  Just sign your name and a message, or whatever you want, doesn't matter." 

I signed his shoulder, in red ink, and I didn't remember until later that you're not supposed to sign your name in red ink - it means bad luck or death or some kind of doom.  I thought about a message.  I asked him where he was from, and he said "Here".  Melbourne?  Melbourne. Damn and I was hoping for something more exotic.  I didn't write a message.  What the hell would I have written?  I gave the pen back to him. 

"Well, good luck with the competition."  I walked away.

"Say, Nadia, what are you up to?"

I looked back over my shoulder and shook the box of oatmeal - packets or sachets, pick your English.  There were people coming up behind him, Asian couples in sunglasses and straight hair, the kind of trendy folk who fit the cars that are always parked along Little Lonsdale - black clean cars with novelty leather.  I thought about it.  There's a slew of things I could have said.  I could have walked back toward him.  I've had "Reasons to be Beautiful" on repeat, on my own playlist, called in my trademark sarcasm, "stronger, faster, better".  He was smiling at me, but now that I think about it, I can't remember what he looks like.  I keep mixing him up with the other one, you know, the one I'm in love with.  "Grocery shopping." 

"Ah, need some uh, need some fiber?  Are you okay?"

"Oh yeah, I just need breakfast."

He looked at his watch and laughed.  "This time of day?"  Oh what, I thought, you're drinking beer before sundown. 

"Yup."

"You're doin' alright, you're doin' alright." 

I replaced the earbud and resumed listening to "Hotel", and I went home, and nobody stopped me again.  I saw sad people on the tram heading for places with names the Australian government stole from the Aboriginal people.  On my way to the grocery store, a couple excitedly walked between two paused taxi cabs and into a stream of traffic, and nearly died.  The girl covered her face and ran back onto the curb with the taxi drivers laughing at her and the car that almost ran her over, a father with his little girls with their palms against the glass, speeding past, the father probably cursing like my father would have been.  I don't know where the couple went, because they hurried back the other way down Swanston Street, the boy chasing the girl.  I guess they didn't need to go to QV after all. 

Tori Amos did a cover of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana, and some people rail against her for it - in particular, that she removes the contrast of quiet and loud that the original version had.  And while I admit that's true, I think her version still has the significant addition of merely being sung by a female.  I have to admit that I feel much more like I can relate to the song - like it's my song - when I hear her version (although Nirvana's version, and especially the video, will always live in my heart too.  Every time I went to a pep rally in high school I thought of this song).  It's sort of like Tori Amos allows all the girls in high school an angsty voice too. 

I'm worse at what I do best
and for this gift, I feel blessed

I really like it when she sings that part.  I remember that in high school*.  Although I wish she included this verse from the original, because that's really what high school was for me:

and I forget just what it takes
and yet I guess it makes me smile
I found it hard, it's hard to find,
oh well, whatever, nevermind

It's my favorite verse.  Girls are angsty in high school too - sometimes I think teachers, parents, musicians, YA writers, forget that.  They think that if girls are angsty it's about eating disorders or dropout boyfriends or pregnancy or fallouts with cliques.  None of these things happened to me.  But usually, for a girl to be angsty in high school, she needs to have something serious go wrong, something really to cry about.  She can't mope about the very fact and essence of high school, which is exactly what "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and other grunge rock allows boys to do.  Boys get to be cynical, hate high school's feedlot-like attributes, hate teachers not because of the assignments they give but because of their subliminal messages, hate the authority high that administrators and teachers get, hate the draconian rules not because they want to break them but because they exist at all, hate the cliques not because they've been bullied but because cliques represent an ugly, idiotic hatred ("the blind idiot god", as Lovecraft calls Azathoth) that must be stood against on principle alone.  All of that.  Girls don't really get to do it.  I think it's because many people think high school girls are superficial and materialistic, as well as simple, creatures, too busy trying to find a boyfriend or get perfect As to think about what's really going on deeper down.  And to be fair this is true of many teenage girls, but not all of them. 

Yeah, that's what the populars in my high school (or preps, as I call them) were like: "the blind idiot god Azathoth, Lord of All Things, encircled by his flopping horde of mindless and amorphous dancers, and lulled by the thin monotonous piping of a demoniac flute held in nameless paws" (Lovecraft; The Haunter of the Dark).  The smart nerds destined for Math Day and Princeton were more like the Great Old Ones and Cthulhu: "When the stars were right, they could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, they could not live. But although they no longer lived, they would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in their great city of R'lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for them" (Old Castro).  I, by the way, was neither, but these are the two categories many think highschool students fall into - the popular preps who are only temporarily admired before they become mediocre adults, or the less popular but exceedingly intelligent nerds who are destined to become CEOs of IBM, of Google, of Lehman Bros., even.  The preps live happily ever after because they don't know any better, and so do the nerds, who accomplish "real success".  There are a lot of kids that fall between the two extremes, but I don't know a lot of fiction that realizes this. 

There are the Hounds of Tindalos, "lean and athirst", always searching madly for a taste of humanity and life. 
There are the Dholes and Bholes, long and goo-covered worms who "cannot be seen because they creep only in the dark".
There's Fthaggua and the fire vampires, who gain "energy and knowledge from the intelligent creatures they slay".
There's the Hunting Horrors, whose "forms are said to continually shift and change, twitching and writhing, so that it is hard to view them."
Then there's the dying Great Race of Yith, "setting up exchanges with the minds of other planets, and of exploring their pasts and futures."
The Yuggs, who "sometimes bestow great wealth to humans in exchange for their cooperation and for regular sacrifices."
The Many-Angled Ones "have a dastardly plan to impose rigid geometric order on the whole universe, essentially reducing it to clockwork."
And the Nightgaunts, who while having "a vaguely human shape, but are thin", "are unintelligent (having no language or culture)." 

My point is... high school's a diverse experience.  It's rather monstrous, but it's diverse.

* I refer to my own high school experience in an old-rich suburb of the Great Plains.  It is by no means assumed to be universal.

this song is dedicated to my parents.

"Fortunate Son" - Creedence Clearwater Revival

Some folks are born made to wave the flag,
ooh, they're red white and blue
and when the band plays "hail to the chief"
ooh, they point the cannon at you, lord

Well, it ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no senator's son
it ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no fortunate one

Some folks are born silver spoon in hand
lord don't they help themselves
but when the taxman comes to the door
lord the house looks like a rummage sale

Well it ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no millionaire's son
it ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no fortunate one

Some folks inherit star-spangled eyes
ooh they send you down to war
and when you ask them, how much should we give?
ooh they only answer "more, more, more"

well it ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no military son
it ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no fortunate one
it ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no fortunate son