Pied Piper Triumphant

I reached down to nervously clutch my purse. My hand furrowed down between chair and desk to find a lonely lunch bag. I caught myself and stared up at my Advisor. I had almost captured her lunch. "So..." she smiled and dragged one hand across her hair as she tapped and tapped the mouse. She turned her head to me. Her bangs stood out sideways from her head, a dangerous angle, sharp and satirical.

"Um...I don't know. Um..." We stopped for a moment as I fumbled through the papers upon my lap. I was so ashamed of the amounts of Ds and Fs and what-have-you's on my transcripts, but so proud of the memories that they produced. Every year of incompletes, save one, stood for this lovely, terrific life I led. Every F for a series of mornings, overslept or just delinquent...from what adventures? From stuffing students into my little blue car for seemingly pointless but truly amazing day excursions to St. Louis. To the family farm. To Denver, Colorado. To defunct Utopian communities dotting the Midwest. To shows in Chicago, Atlanta, Nashville, and New Orleans. To late night rock shows at the Nick. To laying about on rainy days discussing nothing but the weather while Red House Painters beat the din that marched my heart to it's adolescent sadness My only regret is time. That I am 31 and have so much math yet to learn.

"So? What do you think?" She had brushed her unwieldy bangs down. Her eyes peered through her slim glasses. Click. Click-click.

"Yes. I think that's great. Those classes sound perfect."

And with that...I became a student again. At last.

Múm "Sing Along" from Team G on Vimeo.

Mark-Paul and Me

Dear World,

Why is Jason Collett trying to be Bob Dylan for the first half of his newest album?



For the same reason that throughout Dan (Destroyer)Bejar's latest, Trouble in Dreams, he stumbles all topsy-turvy in the drunken shadow of David Bowie. Not that David Bowie's shadow is particularly drunk.


(I'm a terrible drunken ghost!) Maybe Dan Bejar just got it drunk so it would tell him all it's secrets.

I enjoyed Dan's last album, Destroyer's Rubies, so much more. Maybe because of the production seemed so much more...I don't know...lush? It was full of sound, full of landscape, a landscape full of color and texture and light. Trouble in Dreams just seems so bare. I need to give it a few more turns, I think.

Back to Jason. Idols in Exile was disjointed and jubilant. Each song had it's own unique subject drowned or enveloped within an intense emotion. Each was a glipse into a day in the life and no matter how bi-polar those days were, each one, each song, viewed on it's own was valid and beautiful in it's own way.

So the new record. The first half is so rolled up in the Dylan with rambling vocals and low-grade sound that it is actually incredibly boring. But the second half. Beauty.

Once when I worked in the record store in Illinois, there was a young man who often came in to buy records. He thought he was Mark-Paul Gosselaar (Zach from "Saved by the Bell") and had an obsession with Chris Farley. Once he bought the Dukes of Hazzard soundtrack and discovered when he arrived home and gave it a listen that it was not exactly the same as the TV show theme song. He kept calling me about it over and over and over. Each time he would call, he would watch the beginning of his videotaped episode of Dukes of Hazzard, watch it to listen to the theme song and take note of the rather large "Yeehaw" sound at the end and then listen to the record, which did not include the yeehaw... Each time I explained that although it is different on each recording, one would not change to accomodate the other at any time, no matter how many time he played them side by side. "How can I make them change, Sara?"



"Magic, Mark-Paul."I replied. (We called him Mark-Paul, even though his real name was Joseph.) (He truly believed that he was the actor.)

He called me fifteen times that night. The next day he brought the soundtrack in and exchanged it for another one, reasoning that it was defective. I let him do this two more times, reasoning with him each time that there was nothing defective about the actual recording and just because something is one way on TV, it don't mean that it's the same on CD. He finally gave up. He brought the Dukes of Hazzard soundtrack in to the store one last time and I told him that he could exchange it for another CD. After two hours of deliberating (with an ice cream break in the middle) he brought me the Poison Double Live CD set. "Mark-Paul, I told you that you could exchange it for something of equal value. That cd set is almost double the price."

"I know, Sara Miller. I know. I just want half of it."

1995

I'm on my guard, quiet and turned. I feel the breeze and the damp of the dawn float across the room, across the right side of my face. The left side is cradled in the warmth of my quilt, one eye closed, and all I can think of is the chatter of dry leaves…and the chill. But I keep watching, waiting. Waiting for the sound of the morning train, I’m waiting for a different sort of day to come.

I am weighted. I am weary. I am 17 years old and wondering if I'll ever stop feeling so alone. I keep listening to Glen Phillips' strange hollow tenor tell me of his every hope and disappointment and I nod my head in the dark. I understand. My adolescent heart is bedraggled. Its edges and outsides are as worn and frayed as the ancient, woven paper that covers the walls of this house.

High on a Riverbed

why try
when everything i do seems half right
how can i be satisfied
writing words from someone's else's lies

but sometimes i'm standing here
high on a riverbed
and light breaks through
everything feels good for a while
high on a riverbed

i see myself sometimes
vision is a mystery half blind
i wander through my life
wondering what i could be if i
if i

- Toad the Wet Sprocket, Pale

29!

For some reason, the George M. Cohan (Tin Pan Alley songster) songbook has been tumbling through my thoughts all morning. I turned the corner coming from the cafeteria during lunch fairly belting out "Soooo... loooong... Marrrrryyyy..." to a wide eyed gaggle of nurses. I smiled sheepishly and swirled the hem of my skirt as the elevator door opened. I jumped through the door and didn't look back. Sometimes I forget that my life isn't a musical.

Today is my Birthday. There are lots of suprises in store.

I'm so excited.