That one time I had a song written about me.

Spring Quarter 2010 Sophomore Year of College

He was kind of tall. Almost gangly, but you wouldn't know it for the way he stooped and hid behind the shyness of his voice. We'd had a class together the previous quarter, Parasites, but nobody knew he was there. He was a guest with a host, a ghost.

Maybe three of us in the entire class noticed him in the back corner. Even for the online assignments on a social networking site called plurk, he was scarce. His posts, few and far between as they were, were regularly and systematically erased because the most successful parasite (or houseguest) leaves its host with no traces that it was there.

I was drawn to him. I could feel the red thread of fate unraveling the slack necessary to pull us together. 

So I crossed the gap. I read and commented on his posts. I made eye contact as direct eye contact as I could when he walked past. I invited him to share a meal with me.

"So I ate beside [Teddy] today. He's a quiet, awkward soul and underestimates the power he has within himself. I'm so drawn to that. He offered to teach me guitar, but then immediately said he wasn't very good. I asked, and he's played for 10 years."  - Excerpt from personal journal, March 10, 2010

I suppose it helped that at the time he was hopelessly infatuated with one of the two other people in class who'd taken the time and energy to notice him, my friend Kai. We went together to watch her perform at the Naked Truth on Stereotypes.

We got to know each other. We became friends.

When he graduated after winter quarter, I stopped seeing him as much. He was still in town but lived far beyond even my walking prowess. Still, we kept in touch; exchanging emails and continuing an impossibly long conversation thread on plurk.

Late in March, he sent me an mp3 file via email. There was no caption, no commentary. The only way it related to the conversation we'd been having was that at the time I had just started an Independent Study Project (blogged about and mostly contained here) on a postmodern examination of music and society. Just 912 kilobytes, the song was a cover of "Holland, 1945" by Neutral Milk Hotel.

The quality was crap, recorded with a webcam on a shitty computer. But despite that, it was beautiful and powerful. It bit more low key and folksy single-man-with-guitar than the original.

"You have a completely different kind of energy when you're singing than you do talking in person. The closest I can think of to describe it is to compare it to the feeling I get when I'm dancing. Everything else drops away. There's just me and the music and - and it's like making love, by which I mean creating love. I dunno, it's not really something you can put into words. If you have any other music recorded and feel so willing, I would love to hear it." -Excerpt from personal correspondence March 22, 2010

 This was soon followed by two songs he'd written for past loves, a cover of Daniel Johnston and a song he wrote for/about me.



Three minutes fourteen seconds about me dancing.

Danny you dance all through the room.
Danny you dance like nobody's looking at you
And it's beautiful. And it's beautiful.
And it's beautiful.
Danny your hands move where you want them to
Danny you know this what all of us want to do
Because it's beautiful. Because it's beautiful.
Because it's beautiful.
Though it's beautiful.
Though it's beautiful.
It's beautiful.

The lyrics are so simple and drawn out so much in the song. I listen to this, and I want to live up to it. I want to be that beautiful by forgetting about the world for just a few minutes and dancing.

In a later email he told me how I was one of the only friends he'd made in college, which I found sad and beautiful at the same time.

***

We still talk occasionally. Exchanging emails and catching up. About two months ago, I joined him in partaking of conveyor sushi with his girlfriend. We don't talk as often as we should and if he got that job in Portland is now quite a bit less easier for me to find than when he was in Bellingham. 

At the idea of him writing a song about me I'm touched and a mite flabbergasted. It seems... strange somehow to realize yourself as a muse, as inspiration, the uncanny feeling of a writer being written about.

You can listen to the song on my tumblr: http://acelessthan3.tumblr.com/post/27448822390

Hide yo kids, hide you shame

C'mon Bellingham, I expect better of you.

The number of "hide yo kids, hide yo wife" references I'm seeing on Facebook and other social media after this afternoon's attempted armed robbery is disgusting.



The references are tacky and socially inept. Funny (and catchy) as it is, the original "Bed Intruder Song" video was objectifying and appropriative of a culture and place most of us can never even dream of seeing in person. We're in Bellingham, people, which by virtue of being a college town directly translates to "privilege central" at least in the areas in question. The scenarios between this situation where a young man was assaulted in broad daylight and those presented courtesy of Autotune the News video aren't analogous at all.

As a fairly progressive area, I thought we could be a little more socially conscious. kthnxbai

Freshman Fifteen: College Health

I for one firmly believe in the Freshman Fifteen. I went in weighing something like 170 lbs and am now somewhere closer to 155. I blame the dancing twice a week, and the Nerfing on Saturdays and running back and forth from one end of campus to the other several times a day. Oh, and the dining hall food. Having a regular, hearty breakfast in the morning and then eating mostly the vegetarian options for every other meal will get to you.

Going to college does not mean you have to gain weight, if anything it's an excuse to be in the best shape of your life. Cold hard facts say that this is right around when our metabolisms start slowing down, meaning we don't burn as many calories as we did while we were going through that growth spurt called puberty, but just because you aren't some hot-blooded young thing anymore doesn't mean you can't look like it.

For most, the college lifestyle is pretty laid back. You have at the very most four classes a day, many of which get planned so you can sleep in until noon and then the rest of your time to study… or not. When your college has full on gym facilities rivaling that of many YMCAs, why not put them to use, you're already paying for them.



Losing weight rather than gaining it when you head off to college is about more than just going to the Rec center once a week though, you have to maintain an active lifestyle and eat a healthy diet, just like you would if you were out in the real world. Pizza, as convenient and tasty (not to mention cheap) as it can be, isn't going to help you if you have it every night and despite the name, Beer Pong is not an active sport.

Get out there, and get involved. Dance clubs almost always need more men in their ranks, and I'm sure you can find some people willing to play Ultimate Frisbee with you on a nice day. Or you can do like I did and let out your frustrations of the week by running around an empty lecture hall shooting at your friends with foam darts. There's always more going on than you'd expect at a college, and if not, by all means, start something.

But I'm starting to sound like one of those guides that well-meaning parents get as graduation presents for incoming freshman.

Ew.

I won't deny that those things have some value if you've lived a sheltered life or suddenly lose all common sense by moving what's hopefully a minimum 2 hour's drive away from home (no offense to all those still living at home, but isn't the point of going away to college to go away?), but they're so generic and authoritative I'm sickened by the thought of them, like one of those crappy, summer, road trip comedies that Hollywood seems to come out with every year. There's only so many ways you can tell people not to do dumb shit before you have to let them learn the hard way.

What I've learned from college:

1. I am a teacher's favorite student because I'm personable and intelligent with good comprehension and retention of ideas, but because of this I never learned good study habits in high school and so am unwilling or unmotivated to apply myself to the course work unless it suits my mood.
2. College students never really grew up:
   
   
   
   
   
3. Sit at the front of the room on exams days. You'll get the exam that much quicker than your peers, and sometimes half a minute makes a big difference.
4. The more unorthodox the name of an English class, the more likely it is to be engaging and maybe even fun. Compare Nanotexts to Intro to American Literature. You know exactly what you're getting yourself into in the latter, but the first one just might surprise you.
5. You know a class has real world applications when you start noticing it in your everyday life , and analyzing movies the way you analyzed books does not count.
6. You can learn anything on the internet.
7. Your pet will miss you as much if not more than you miss the rest of your family.