So, I have had all these f*#%ing orders to blog... which, while I am flattered that people not only read this drivel, but want to read this drivel, is a small pain in the ass, because now I am thinking "be interesting" so I blog less.
To all of you who found out I changed my major to Art here and not in person, *deep sigh* I am sorry.
I turned 22 yesterday. Last weekend I got talks from both Todd and Parkhurst about how when you start reaching your mid to upper twenties the whole "being single thing" is not such a big deal. Which was really cool actually. Tonight Earl and I both wanted to throw up when "Kate and Leopold" was playing in third lobby. We both have been pretty strung out about love lately. My most recent quote about love is: "Falling in love is just an excuse to get intimately annoyed with a person."
Don't get me wrong, I very much believe in love, falling in love, being in love, but the cold hard truth of the matter is people don't step out of fantasies and into your life free of hang ups and smelling good. It just doesn't happen. A friend of mine looked at me tonight and said: "I take it by the way you are talking that you've been in love." I don't know if that sort of thing can be legitimated, but it doesn't really matter. Love is not something you can just plug into a logical theorem and make sense of. It makes you dumb at best (a dumb we all yearn for again) and makes you want to disembowel yourself at worst.
I've been listening to a lot of PJ Harvey, Tori Amos, Smashing Pumpkins and Tom Waits lately. They keep me jaded and hopeful.
PJ just put out a new album called Uh Huh Her. It's amazing. She renovates herself on each album, and is still her. She recently had (maybe still, but details are sketch, as it should be) a relationship with Vincent Gallo, of Buffelo 66 fame. Her album has all the ins and outs of relationship havoc on it: "I love him," "I am afraid of commitment," "You're my euphoria," "I can't live without you, but I guess I am gonna have to, huh?" etc. Check out: "Shame," "Slow Drug," and "Desperate Kingdom of Love."
Song that keeps me jaded: Sheela-Na-Gig (from Dry)
Song that keeps me hopeful: This is Love (from Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea)
Song that's a little bit of both: The Dancer (from To Bring You My Love)
Tori, who is like, my power animal... or my astrological sign... or some such something, is putting out an album in February called The Beekeeper . I read over some of the lyrics and am excited. She was really guarded on her last album, Scarlett's Walk, and Strange Little Girls was covers, so this may be her first "true" album since To Venus and Back.
Jaded: Hotel (from From the Choirgirl Hotel)
Hopeful: Lust (from To Venus and Back)
Both: Horses (from Boys for Pele)
Smashing Pumpkins... mainly I have discovered Adore. Tonight at dinner I declared that since I find his lyrics so [explative deleted] sexy, I would marry him and bare his fetus looking children... not really, but almost.
lovely girl you're the beauty in my world
without you there aren't reasons left to find
...
drinking mercury
to the mystery of all that you should ever seek to find
lovely girl you're the murder in my world
dressing coffins for the souls I've left behind
I just realized that's what he is singing on "Ava Adore" the other night, and it blew me away.
Jaded: Bodies (from Mellon Collie and Infinite Sadness: Starlight to Twilight
Hopeful: Rhinoceros (from Gish)
Both: Daphne Descends (from Adore)
Tom, Tommy, Tom, Tom, Tom, Tom. I really like this man. His sense of humor just blows me away. I stumbled accross this great site that has a ton of his quotes from over the years. My favorites tend to be about his wife, Kathleen.
From: "Tom Waits: Waits And Double Measures". Smash Hits magazine by Johnny Black. March 18, 1981
"There's a favourite scene in gangster movies where the private dick is standing at the bar with the bad guy and the bartender slips him a note with his double brandy. "Look out kid, he's got a gun," it says. I had a similar experience when the phone rang an hour before I left my house and Waits' press officer nonchalantly told me, "You know he just got married?". "TOM WAITS? MARRIED?". "Yes. Last month, to a script analyst at 20th Century Fox." Waits' version of how it happened is more appealing. "Kathleen was living in a convent, studying to be a nun. I met her when they let her out for a party on New Year's Eve. She left the Lord for me."
From: "A Q&A about Mule Variations".MSO: Rip Rense. January/ April 1999
TW (1999): Get behind the mule. . .can be whatever you want it to mean. We all have to get up in the morning and go to work. Kathleen says, "I didn't marry a man. I married a mule." And I've been going through a lot of changes. That's where Mule Variations came from.
What did she mean by that?
TW: I'm stubborn.
jaded: Hoist That Rag (from Real Gone)
hopeful: Jersey Girl (from Heartattack and Vine)
both: Hold On (from Mule Variations)
On the hopeful front, I started sketching again for the first time since I was about 15. I wanted nothing more than to go to art school back then. I didn't think I could go to Covenant because they didn't have an art major. Interesting to be where I am now. I also started writing some again. I know I am at a healthier place emotionally when my creative juices are flowing.
Tonight Rivendell surprised me by taking me out to dinner. Jose gave the most beautiful prayer I think I have ever experienced about myself. He thanked God for my friendship and for my dreams, for where I have been and where I hope to go. This semester has been such a struggle for me spiritually; hearing him pray was like a balm. I do have great and simple hope for the future, for life, and for some sort of mind-blowing love.