Every battle ends. (Except the Korean War.) One way or another, every conflict in the history of mankind has come, or will come, to some sort of conclusion. Some end in a spectacular clash, some end in a formal ceremony, and some just flicker and fade out of existence.
Some battles, people just get tired of fighting. Personally, I’m tired of trying to defend U2’s better days, but I’m going to try anyway. Continue reading
Yesterday, in the car. Driving to a friend’s party, in a far-flung part of town, trying to convince my guest that her oncoming migraine was nothing to be embarrassed about as I turned down the stereo, playing 12 Desperate Straight Lines. Your can’t control your brain, I tried to assure her. Everybody knows it. Other people have dealt with migraines, too. All I wanted was for her to feel better.
*******
Sometimes, a moment isn’t right for the moment. Sometimes, an album comes along and blows your mind with its specificity of emotions, which you know you needed before or will need later, but not then. Not that day.
Telekinesis’s 12 Desperate Straight Lines was one of those, a tremendous breakup album by a favorite local band, which happened to be released the day after the Valentine’s Day I nailed most of all, in the middle of my relationship that lasted longest. Even then, when I was sure our problems were minor and our future was bright, I knew at first listen that this was an album I’d return to if—nay, when—she broke my heart.
I did. Later.
The most heartbreaking song on it at first listen was the finale, “Gotta Get It Right Now,” a paean to the particular kind of neuroticism that I was just starting getting over, the early-to-mid-20s fear that you’re wasting your would-be wild years in a state of non-debauchery. I had finally come to grips with the idea that just because all the people I went to high school with were marrying and multiplying didn’t mean I had to do so as well, especially not yet. Four years earlier, the song would have felt like a lifeline, but instead, it felt like digging up an old Livejournal entry and facepalming.
But it had a bouncy beat, so there was that.
*******
Today, talking to the friend of a girl, in a bar where I’d never been, which had recently taken over the space of a bar where I’d been before, years ago, while getting over a different girl. Across the room, across the bar, was the boy she’d been dating, or maybe just fucking, for the last two months. On her wrist, a watch she’d stolen from him; on her face, a scowl she’d developed over his actions. She had feelings, she confessed, and worried that he didn’t, a fear exacerbated by the way he’d introduced her to another of his friends earlier in the afternoon. She fumed. She raged. We talked.
When she admitted her uncertainty at how to proceed, I advocated the now-or-never approach, giving her the kind of real talk I wished my friends would have been wise enough to give me when I was her age. Two months? He either has feelings or he doesn’t at this point, and if it’s the latter, that’s unlikely to change. It’ll hurt to walk away now, but that ache will likely grow with time.
Her face lit up as I told her this, as did that of her friend, sitting on the stool between us. That’s what all her girls had told her, she said, but she was relieved to hear it from a guy. I shrugged. Two blocks away, the city’s PrideFest raged. Gender identities, and the associated schools of thought, aren’t as rigid as they used to be.
We kept talking, right until I had to literally dash out the door, but the gist was this: You can’t control your heart, I told her. You can only choose how to react to it. And as I said my farewell before running away, all I wanted was for her to feel better.
“…though I will defend Semisonic,” I said, watching as she rolled her eyes and feigned a desire to leave. “I mean, that one song wasn’t good enough to deserve the success they had, but they had several other songs that were actually really good.” Continue reading
Some people get by on their looks. Others, their success, or their sparkling personalities.
For some of us, all we have is our wit. For us, there’s “Young Adult Friction.” Continue reading
I’ve neglected my duties for too long now. Continue reading
Sunday afternoon at Sasquatch, a long-dormant crush reignited in a few simple chords. Continue reading
At the moment this post goes live, I’ll be in the middle of nowhere, the middle of everything. Sasquatch. My seventh—2004, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014, and this year. Each more questionable a decision than the one before. Continue reading
I thought David Letterman was one of the funniest men alive years before I first watched him.
Last night, 11:45pm on a Saturday, tidying my condo with Bluetooth earbuds in, I discovered a pen. It had been hiding in the corner of one closet or another for more than a decade now, or so the inscription implied. Continue reading
“…but let’s talk about you for a minute,” Gareth Campesinos! offers on the first track of their third1 album. Ostensibly, he’s signaling a change of pace from the band’s previous output, the slow musical build to that point far less manic than fans had come to expect.
But if you listen carefully, you can hear Gareth’s tongue planted firmly in his cheek. Continue reading