The secret life of knees: a musical history

Yesterday, the moon was wet again with tomorrow’s rain. We sat down by the windowpanes, where the roof ledge met the edge of the sky smudged an inky blue. The kid opened a mouth stuffed with grape leaves and this is what came out: “Do you know that feeling, that feeling? Hey where were you last night? I looked for you at the show. Anyway sometimes you just want to consume massive massive amounts of speed, just smoke that shit up until you roll over and never have to go back to sleep again. You know?” Today, I mean the day before today, it being 3:47 today, was our anniversary. Last year at 3:47 am we were on edge (of course) at a different ledge, and the air was damp and fragrant from us digging up and turning over the soil all day. My choice was turnips, or parsnips, or parsley, any hardy tuber or herb, to guard against the elements, who knows what could really happen around here I reasoned. The kid’s reasoning was of another species altogether, to be exact, the cruelest most difficult thing to cultivate. We had started planting together to kick our habits, and one year two different cities later we were still here, sharing dark unsweetened coffee on a September morning. The kid was addicted to speed, I was addicted to the kid. Planting, being together low to the ground, crouched on our respective knobby knees, speaking little between the moist and soothing rows, was a friendly way to stay friends. Since I probably wasn’t going to stay through the summer, not with all the white blood cells bursting apart their cell walls, stupid macrophages, I decided to try and remember everything good that had ever happened to me. But somehow, through weird ugly strokes of fate, everything good was inevitably intertwined with something bad in my mind. Like the kid, the kid was great. The kid was undoubtedly one of the best things to happen upon me in my life, ever.

Yet when I think about it (the whole experience of knowing the kid, that is) the most vivid memory I have is of bright hazy sunlight, the wonderful kind endorsed by Berkeley CA 361 out of 364 days a year, filtered through my hair, and damp summer grass smell oozing into my nostrils mixing with my mucous as I lay face down on the lawn in front of doe circulation and cried and cried. Only what is most vivid and the reason I can even remember sunshine and snot in my nose is listening to the fourth song off the Amelie soundtrack over and over again while I cried, since I couldn’t cry at all without listening to something. And Yann Tierson’s Amelie, well, I had just discovered it that summer, two or three or whatever number of years after it came out and an entire winter after Walker kept playing at the vegan straightedge house, saying how it reminded him of that moment from drinking when you are on your tiptoes and the world is shiny and smooth, that moment right before you fall. He is exactly right of course, straight edge as he is.

That disgustingly cold winter I spent shivering outside the steps of Idaho street chain-smoking menthols in the rain, however, I couldn’t listen to anything except Coldplay’s the Scientist and Mirah’s Cold Cold Water and the Microphones the Glow album to try and fall asleep just like every other heartbroken girl and boy, across America, including the kid. Haven’t we all dreamed along with the opening bars that the person, whoever it was, would float up to you saying well I’ve come up to meet you to tell you I’m sorry you don’t know how lovely you are…But now we are ashamed of having loved and lost over Coldplay, please! I thought if I ever heard another screeching weasel song again I would crush myself into a ball and die. And in the daytime when I wasn’t forced to stand outside on my stoop smoking Kools I spent all my time haunting the darkest warehouses Oakland had to offer, sweating my way through set after set of the fleshies and sexy and patrick’s band and other shit to dance your aggression out to. Sometimes I hung out with Emily and Dylan and adam and even got peter and to go to spam once and met jon and Patrick and Corbett. But mostly, I snuck in and out like greased lightning when the night fell silent, stealing home to smoke cigarettes with my walkman on my chilly stoop. Winter is a horrible thing. That has nothing to do with the kid. The kid is about the summer, and its fruits, and I guess a little bit about the winter too. I just can’t remember very many things very well anymore. Thus the fury to record.

Levi-Strauss said that the very first act of writing, from its very beginning, was an act of violence. So too is the very first act of rememberance. Perhaps things past should be left cold and dead as they are, and they would be, had it not been for the advent of music. Like my slim recollection of being seventeen and living at my father’s house with my stepmother and half sister in Taipei Taiwan attending Christian missionary high school revolve around a Hole cassette tape, Miss World, and washing dishes. My family thought I was crazy for singing so loud and yelling Take Everything! Everything! Everything…I didn’t even notice that they were there, alive and breathing my air. Such are the ways of teenagers. Ten years later I crouch upon another sill contemplating the efficacy of inducing massive quantities of the finest that southern California meth labs have to offer. It’s hard to get that shit around here you know, so hard that really, if we were really smart about things then our only efficacious and logical option would be to sell it and get rich and run away back to California so we could smoke it again for cheap, obviously. Now that’s a plan. Maybe I could even save up enough money to buy a new camera. The old one had been so used up that its soul had run out. People had been coming out garish and ugly, even the kid. But I had stopped taking accurate photographs of the kid a while ago, maybe a couple of months, and it was noticeable to both me and the kid. I don't know why, why I lost it in front of my lens, can't see clearly in front or behind any piece of glass except the one I want to shove up my left nostril! Even this, this ecriture, so badly written, ending with a copeout quote of bright eyes lyrics. the kid doesn't really listen to bright eyes though so its okay, there wont be any residual lingering self-loathing and pain inflicted by connor oberst and the city of omaha nebraska, not like the way it was in brooklyn or oakland or berkeley or adeline street which I passed by everyday on my home from the ashby bart peering into the windows of the lookout offices. Ususally Erin bratmobile would wave, or Justin was there interning, and later Daniel. I'm glad I remember those.

Spent a day dreaming of dying in ____, the olive green of life had turned to ash. And I felt I was on fire with the things I could have told you, I just assumed that you’d eventually would ask, and I wouldn’t have to bring up my so badly broken heart and all those months of just wanting to sleep. Spring it did come slowly and I guess it did its part. My heart has thawed and continues to beat. And I went to ____ the birthplace of the summer and watched the ocean dance under the moon. There was a girl I knew there, one more potential lover, and I guess that something’s gotta happen soon. Cuz I know I can’t keep living in this dead and dying dream as I walked along the beach and drank with her. I thought about my true love the one I really need with eyes that burned so bright they make me pure. They make me pure, they make me pure, I long to be with you.

so...in the tradition of the namesake, the new-old saddest songs of all time!
(don't worry, its coming soon, but fleetwood mac's landslide is definitely one of them)
and the above song duh and listen the snow is falling by galaxie 500 um bjork & thom yorke i've seen it all from the dancer in the dark sountrack the ergs country skronk for some reason makes me incredibly heartachingly-breakingly sad (lew erg sounds like a cross between sean tollferson of tullycraft and nick palatucci of readyville) oasis slide away the moore brothers moleslica yann tierson amelie st song four spiritualized angel sigh blur country sad ballad man bob dylan you belong to me pasty cline cover rolling stones angie john lennon jealous guy vic chestnutt i'm through 50 cent 21 questions and fifteen, all of it, all of it fifteen, but especially the cover of sweet valentine.