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

Boys'R'Us Kid

I don't want to get up.
I'm a college age kid.
There's a million boys here
at my school that I can sleep with
from Alex to Steve and Cory and Ben
It's the warmest bed I'm in!
Give in!
I don't want to get up
'cause baby if I did
I couldn't stay here in my bed.

Yeah... this is the kind of stuff my brain comes up with on the days when I stare at the clock wondering how long I can wait before I actually have to get up.

Moments and sounds

Have you ever had moments of your life defined by certain songs? You can't hear that song without thinking about that point in your life or think of that moment without hearing that song in your head. Regardless of whether or not you heard the song at that time either.

When I read the book, Ender's Game, I inevitably think of the song White Flag. Of all the books I've read, this is one of the first ones where I really felt like I could connect with the character beyond the book. It's also one of the few where I've been able to read it more than once. Anyways, there's been a parallel in my mind between the protagonist Ender's life and the kind of never give up attitude Dido sings about in White Flag.

The song My World is forever linked in my mind to an incident that occurred my junior year of high school. As a member of what was essentially the Diversity Club at my school, together with a member of the GSA, I attended the 21st Annual RAP conference. I don't rightly remember what RAP stood for, but I'd hazard a guess at something along the lines of Reducing Adolescent Prejudice (Hey, I was right). Since there were only two of us attending, we bus-pooled with one of the other local high schools. Hand-picked by the vice principal, we were joined by I think it was 8 more students. I don't remember all but one's name. The only one I remember was this sophomore named Damien.

Anyways, we got to the conference at UW, and I remember that my school, because of our late registration and small size, didn't have our own folder. This has no bearing on the story at all, but it's one of those random bits of the experience that I remember, like in a dream, so I feel obligated to tell it. Like a game. So once we'd all settled down and gone to some of the seminars and workshops, we gathered for the keynote speaker.

My friend from the GSA, Kate and I sat together with the Puyallup HS students. And at one point Damien stood and walked down the row of seats. To get out into the aisle, he had to squeeze in front of Kate and I, so while he was squeezing, he stopped and shook his booty in front of Kate's face. Right at eye level. She was mortified. So, I *cough cough* took "matters" into my own hands so to speak.

Short version of this: I went to an anti-prejudice conference with some high schoolers and ended up groping one of them when he was shaking it in front of my friend. The funny thing is he didn't know it was me doing the groping.

Soon after this, I was listening to the radio when the MSI song came on. I think the association mostly began because of the lyric: "Everybody wants a piece of my ass." That and this song absolutely oozes a certain kind of cockiness. The exact kind of cockiness that would prompt someone to wave their ass in a girl's face. They're linked in my mind.

The point I think I'm trying to make with this post is to wonder, where does this link, this association come from?

In both cases I've described here, the song and event were not simultaneous, and yet in my mind they are inseparable. In general, I'm a more lyrically minded person, so I have to think that the words within the songs are what triggered these connections. Which brings me back to The Ticket That Exploded and Burroughs.

Words brought this to me. Words hold me here. But what of beyond that? A picture is worth a thousand words, so if I'm using the correct exchange rate, a picture is worth about 4 songs, give or take a chorus or two. What songs am I getting out of my life now?

The Filth strikes me as being grungy, with heavy, dark, metal sounds, but inspired with genius lyrics that will be constantly misinterpreted and ignored. The filth in me. In you. In us.

They're a macro/micro garbage squad "We're Garbagemen, Ned. We stop the world's back yard from stinking. How hard is that to understand?" It's more than that though. They are the agents of morality, policing the realms of decency, which in effect makes the Hand grim angels of a much darker god.