And yeah everybody here's got somebody to lean on

So I have this crazy thing (save your breath, I'll beat you to the obligatory "...which one?!" ) about seeing a band/musician more than once. Really I've just always felt like it would either be trying to copy + paste a new experience over top of a past one or that it just couldn't live up to the original moment.

Short story long, my Sister & I just got back from Coldplay, the 2nd time we'd gotten to seen them together in 6 months, the rare occasion that I would go against one of my 'concert commandments' (though maybe it was alright as just about all my other's were broken, read on if you dare), the only others being for U2 (which was as much a guarantee of being greater the 2nd time as anything can be), Interpol (which, true to the 'commandment', fell well short of the 1st time) and my first ever indie band The Alkaline Trio on 3 separate occasions (which was great all 3 times for more than 3 separate reasons actually).

I bent the rules this time around for a few simple reasons:

1.) The wondrous Fiona Apple opened for them.
b.) It's Coldplay. Our generation's U2 (that is if you don't consider our generation's U2 to be...well...u2) and
3.) My Sister would be there. Enough just there to assume the risk.

Fiona Apple was just great. Not only was she in a flowered dress, but she played just as many things from the future as from the past. 'Paper Bag' was so very nice. When she wasn't firing off words into the settling crowd (the saddest thing just about, most people didn't even seem to care. To the point where she smiled slightly sarcastically and whispered "Coldplay is coming up next" to wild cheers) she was yelling away from the microphone and flailing about like she was caught in a hurricane. You can tell it is so therapeutic for her and that she cares so much. I was happy as a clam.

Then Coldplay. Then the sea of camera phones. Then the people darting back and forth in and out in front of you between songs. Then the off-beat/for just no reason at all clapping in unison. People leaving early to "beat traffic". All my favourites.

Yet...it didn't get to me. I mean I picked up on them around, but somehow they were brushed away just that suddenly, like a brief hiccup for a second in time. They played everything too wow, we nearly jumped when they played her 'X&Y', laughed at what Chris Martin would say between songs ("We can't bullshit our way around it...but for one night at least, let's all pretend that this one is from local Detroit legend....Johnny Cash" then acoustic 'Ring of Fire' cover) and were just as laughingly puzzled as ever as to why the video during 'Talk' just had to be a Bear in a zoo walking back + forth in a pen.

And it was wonderful. It didn't exceed our first time that summer. It walked hand-in-hand with it. It didn't make us forget the last time, rather remember it so much clearer and with added smiles. It was the same and also different. Just like making another trip to McDonald's afterwards, (jokingly our 'post Coldplay tradition'), I drove us from our first trip, and she drove us from the last one. Growing up... (sigh) I will always remember our pair of perfect concerts together with our band.

I just put on the headphones and performed 'Swallowed in the Sea' in front of the b-room mirror like it was me coming out for the encore... now that's something that falls short of the original.

Chances are I'll be gone by then

If anybody makes a mix cd for you and says there is no message or meaning hidden between the notes then that's just a baldheaded lie. I just don't believe it. There is always a subconscious (sometimes not so subconscious) plot to the selection and placement of those exact songs; whether or not it is a chronological path to 'I love you' or a dark plea for the shining deliverance of another or a secret key to unlock a door in your heart, I have never ever splattered random 'files' onto the proverbial canvas and reached for the sharpie.

So you might have guessed that I cleaned the lens of my metaphysical microscope for the first mix cd I've ever gotten. I've learned a lot. Through The Smiths, Chris Murray and Cat Power, the words between the lines/tracks really do seem to spell out ' (just) friends no matter how often we weave across each other's paths in life'. I'm happy with this.


RE: hey
Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2006 14:28:40 -0500

Justin What is your phone number? I am in New York call me.


Sincerely, Her


It seems like I have to accidentally watch films nowadays. Due to the fact that I can only allow myself to view the piece in it's entirety, I can never seem to allot the necessary time between pretending to study and other activities unless I do like tonight and just find something suddenly and just ride it to the end. In this case 'The Thomas Crown Affair' on the teevee. I've never seen it until 1 hour ago and I enjoyed it very much. I love the ambiguous 'paths' (word of the day?) the main characters took during the entire cat and mouse chase, so very clever. What really caught my eye also (besides how Brosnan's bowler hat tied the music and the action together so perfectly during the great un-theft scene at the end) was the Detective character and (spoilers ahead) his caring, been-hurt-badly-by-love-but-you-just-can't-quit attitude, especially at the end when he sort of goes off into the sunset without the girl but with his chin up. Very warm. Of course played by Dennis Leary. Go fig.

Oh, if I could make sense of it all!

I think I'm nearly ready to keep record of how many down and out days suddenly bloom a glorious day in the same calendar week. Am I the only person this happens to?

I treated Saturday night like indoor recess. Store meeting bright + early at the lover-ly 7:00 AM hour stacked ever so neatly atop my 10-6 shift. A seemingly dull end to the weekend that brought us the madness of Tom's birthday (and the legend born of a party suddenly ended in the wee hours of the morning due to the fury of one man over the now famous magic cards floating in the fish tank).

Pulling the warmth and the darkness over me and taking the requisite 1-2 hours unlocking my head, suddenly I was thinking about Her. I say 'Her' in a religious sense only because Love is my religion and because She gave me a definition to those words: 'Religion', 'Love', 'Beauty' & 'Life'. While only being a brief love interest in the relationship sense, She remains a guardian angel walking the earth; just like a lighthouse from the past that guides me through the future.

She travels as if on a breeze; to Europe and across the Americas, calling home where she lay her hat. I have not seen her in over a year. Lying in bed it was apparent that a glowing '2:00 A.M.' from an alarm clock was not going to quiet what I suddenly had to do. It was as if the planets had aligned in the form of believing I had the words to do it and the courage to create it without pulling out the plug halfway through. I switched on the light and the computer and I wrote. I let the letters flow through the blood in my heart to my fingers to the keyboard, winding all my feelings about the person She was and the person I was because of Her. The hours melted away.

I thanked her for helping a kid find his voice and that, "while my mother had given me life, you had taught me how to live." Towards where I felt like it was ending, I suddenly realized that there was not supposed to be a return flight from where this was going. That her path into the stars was a different one from my own and that fate may not be bringing us together ever again. I would almost say that she just then added a pure definition to a 5th word of my vocabulary: 'bittersweet'. All the belief and hope that She helped me to discover was to be what carried on from Her into each day ahead. I think about Her always.

I don't know what the future holds but I am glad that involves friends like Her. And you all. And Ms. Hagle, my first ever Valentine. Say what you will of the 'Hallmark Holiday' etc.-ness of Valentine's Day, but it is sometimes a very fun excuse to gather those you care for together and share a warm moment. I was invited down to Detroit's outdoor skating rink by her, and joining one of my best friends Nick and skating with her (and occasionally falling with/for her while trying to land that 'lift-her-in-the-air-effortlessly' Olympic maneuver), I felt that hope in another. I made her this box from materials I bought at the craft shoppe, painted it red and white and gave her her own pair of pink snowpants. She made me a cd! No one has ever made me a mixed cd before, decorated with hearts of different colors and the doodled tracklist on the sleeve. I'll have to talk about this later it's too much to capture in just a sentence honestly. I stood there alone after it was over, watching my breath fade into the Detroit night. I had belief.

Really got me dancin', // dancin' in my head now baby

It's funny to me how many of the 168 hours in a Mon-Sun I spend doing all the things that I dislike instead of the things I really would enjoy doing so that I can apparently be set up in some future where I can afford the time and money to do the things I probably will be too numb to desire.

Sometimes it really gets to the point where I either melt any want of stretch myself into another direction or simply burn the candle down so far that I just wrap up in the covers and hide.

'Sleepin' is givin' in // So lift those heavy eyelids' I know I know.

It gets to the point where I don't allow myself to be immersed in a film or new music for fear that I should be plugged into the textbooks instead, and the stress of trying to focus any free energy outside of work or external/internal dramas completely into school seems to make me more creative in rationalizing any way possible to dodge the pages. It almost seems that the only set patterns I have going are for the things I don't want to do.

I really think I have mono. I have been crawling through the last few days somehow, despite actually sleeping and eating well. It's like I have a hole in me somewhere and I'm deflating.

How I enjoy watching these men+women figure skating performances at the Olympics! It is just the most amazing thing that two people can be so graceful and delicate and powerful and create something so grand. It hurts like a sliver in the heart whenever someone stumbles on one of those twirling jumps. I always end up turning the channel after the skate because I know I will get angry seeing anyone disregard what they just wondrously presented.

Do you want to take a chance on maybe finding some sweet romance with me baby? // Well come on

I'm ready to wear something that someone I love gave me as a simple gesture that they care about me; something that I'd never thought to even try to look at with a straight face otherwise. A homemade sweater adorned with a duck. A beaded necklace. A bright and shiny ring. I'd wear it proudly.