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cross-posted from facebook. (i know, i’m a huge slacker these days.)
the rules per fb land: Think of 15 albums, that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life. Dug into your soul. Music that brought you to life when you heard it. FIGURATIVELY socked you in the gut, is what I mean.
here are mine, chronologically, sort of. (defining song from album in parentheses.)
Pearl Jam – Ten (Porch)
in junior high, i fell asleep to this album on high volume in my chunky headphones every night. i could program my discman in the pitch dark to play six songs, culminating in Release. for some reason, i’d always wake up during Garden, a little petrified from the darkness of the music and a little awed by the depth of it. this was the first album i fell teenage sloppy in love with.
Toad the Wet Sprocket – Fear (Something to Say)
this was the first cd i owned. my dad bought it for me for Christmas, and it was sort of his nod/wink to me that we could be on the same page. this was the album of my adolescent’s discontent. i’d listen to Something to Say (he drops hints but he won’t tell you what’s really on his mind / but you know if you look it’s easy to find) a thousand times, trying to figure out this one girl and why she was on my mind so much. i’d fall asleep to Pray the Gods, waking up during the dreamy round of angel voices at the end.
Tori Amos – Little Earthquakes (Tear in Your Hand)
my own revolution. i learned how to hear music when i heard this album. Katie Swingle played Silent All These Years on my stereo at home, and i was hypnotized for the next ten years. i could pull out every layer out of every song and play it alone in my head. i knew the harmonies and tended to like them more than the melody. my love affair with Tori grew stronger with the next three albums, but this was my gateway drug.
Violent Femmes – Add It Up (Kiss Off)
i drank in high school like a freshman fratboy, and this was the soundtrack of every illegal drop that went down my throat. this album went the way of my party nights–from a slow, slightly off-balance bus song to building sloppily and with many mistakes to the desperate end until you pass out during the loud, live stuff. there’s not a better alcohol poisoning anthem than “eight, eight, i forget what eight was for! nine, nine, nice, oh and i lost count!”
Dave Matthews Band – Under the Table and Dreaming (Satellite)
in high school, Dave Matthews somehow reassured me that better things were to come. i felt mature when i listened to it for some reason. maybe it was how so many uncool instruments–a fiddle with a saxophone?!–fit together so purposefully. it was what we listened to in Jason’s car, and Jason’s car was one of the only places i felt at home in that goddamned Wyoming town. every song had its place over the course of the day. Rhyme and Reason when we were escaping for lunch, Ants Marching on the way to soccer practice, #34 just before bed.
Miles Davis – Kind of Blue (the whole damn album)
at Wax Trax in Denver, i asked Jason to pick out two cds for me to buy. Kind of Blue, he told me, was essential. when i thought jazz, i thought that cheesy smooth jazz you heard in waiting rooms or on the local access channel. Miles assured me otherwise. i’d buy red wine because i knew we’d be listening to Miles at dinner. i’d lie on the couch at dusk with my eyes closed for the entire album and feel the light fading through the music. it might be my deserted island pick. maybe.
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i’ve somehow made it onto my grandpa’s email list. a few excerpts (without edits–italics are mine):
THIS MUSLIM ALIEN (Obama) HAS AN AGENDA THAT IS ENTIRELY UNPALATABLE AND I AM THOROUGHLY CONCERN THAT THE MASS MEDIA ARE PERPETUALLY COW-TOWING TO THIS UNABASHED KENYAN MESSIAH.
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Subject: The Patriot Microchip
The PATRIOT MICRO CHIP is intended to be implanted in terrorists. The implant is specifically designed to be installed in the forehead. When properly installed it will allow the implantee to speak to God.
It comes in various sizes:
–
this stuff scares me. i understand thoughtful dissent and sincere concern for the direction of the country, but i don’t really see these sorts of messages presenting any solutions beyond shouting “you’re wrong and i’m right!” (at best) or raw violence (at worst). i also don’t see any substantial reasoning to any of it. no logic, no research–just sheer emotion and fear.
i get fundamental differences in philosophy. i get how a small-government Republican who believes every person (rather than society as a whole) is responsible for their own well-being would think that the economic stimulus package going through Congress right now is completely misguided. and i get how a true-blue liberal who believes in creating opportunities for all people would have problems understanding why CEOs are compensated hundreds of millions of dollars when there are homeless people wandering the sidewalks outside the buildings where they work.
what i don’t get is the complete refusal of those on both ends of the spectrum to have a conversation. not an argument on CNN, but a discussion where each side hears out the experiences of the other. because that’s all our beliefs are–values shaped by how we’ve experienced the world. when you start to see people as a product of their experiences, you begin to see that there is no “wrong” or “right;” that there are simply different knowledge pools, more or less access to information, and more or less contact with people of different experiences.
i can’t get mad at a kid in Rock River, Wyoming for calling me a dyke when his only experiences of gay people has been what he’s seen on tv and what his homophobic father taught him. and i can’t get mad at a Yale student from Boston for calling a guy wearing Wranglers and a cowboy hat an ignorant redneck when that student’s only experience of cowboys has been what he’s seen on tv and what his Harvard dad taught him.
the best i can do is call people on their assumptions and snap judgments, and simply ask them, “what do you really know about that person? what do you know about what they’ve been through?”
and maybe that’s what i need to do with my grandpa’s emails. maybe i just need to ask him if he’s ever really considered where the “terrorists” are coming from. maybe i need to ask him what about Obama scares him so much.
or maybe i’m being naive (as so many people have told me many times). maybe i just need to delete the emails as soon as they come into my box and accept the fact that he’s never going to let loose his grip on what he so strongly believes is “right.”
i just wish we’d all stop and listen to each other once in awhile instead of constantly seeking out only those who agree with us and demonizing those who don’t.
i’ve lived through so many patches of weakness in my 30 years. through failures in (or total absence of) confidence, through white-knuckled clutching to fear, through blind spots in reasoning, through simple ignorance. i’ve lied and cheated. i’ve cried behind the locked bathroom door at work, and i’ve punched cinder-block walls. i’ve hurt and been hurt.
but i have not one ounce of regret for any of those moments. not for the two times i cheated on the people i loved. at the time, they were brief lapses of judgment, the succumbing to the thrill of someone else hotly pursuing me in a haze of alcohol and other clouds. in retrospect, though, it was my cowardly way of punctuating struggling relationships, my way of pushing through the dirt to the surface. i am so sorry for the pain i threw around so carelessly, but i wouldn’t do it differently if i could.
not for the times i was cheated on. it’s one thing to be devastated by betrayal, and it’s the next thing to realize that, had the relationship been open to honesty and trust going in two directions in the first place, things might have gone differently.
not for the months of insomnia that filled my nights with a blinding pulse and my days with ghosts. i broke it down a thousand ways, stalking its shadow across the pages of health magazines, through friends’ advice, inside slow songs, within meditation and finally to surrender. in that, i learned the difference between wasting time and paying better attention to empty time. which is when i started sleeping again.
i read recently that growth requires tension. it’s why we lift weights to build muscle. it’s why we tend to like the teachers who are toughest on us.
people always say, “if i knew then what i know now, i’d…” the thing is, we know what we know now because of what happened then. would it be worth losing that knowledge to go back and prevent the struggle?
i had a dream last night that Lauren and i had a little baby girl named Genevieve Phred with a “ph”. (the “ph” was a very emphatic point.) it was implied that i had actually given birth to Genny Phred, though i had no connection to that experience in the dream. at first, my family thought it was a boy, and my mom suggested i name him Steve Adam. and i thought, “wait a second…do you mean like Adam and Steve?” then we checked the baby’s hardware again, and discovered that Steve Adam would be inappropriate in more ways than one.
it’s no coincidence that i’m dreaming about baby-making. last night, my mom was giving me the “your dad and i are never going to have grandchildren, are we?” spiel she launches into once or twice a year, and for the first time i didn’t roll my eyes or dump the responsibility onto my heterosexual, married sister.
i turned 30 a month ago, and while the milestone hasn’t brought on any crisis of rushed adulthood and responsibility like so many people seemed to be hoping it would, it has brought into sharper focus the liabilities of my aging body. no, my hearing isn’t going and my eyesight seems to actually be holding steady at “really bad” (which is where it’s been since i was 22). i still run 5k three or four times a week, and i was playing soccer until a month ago. but my knees ache a lot of the time, and i just found out i have arthritis in my feet.
i’m beginning to realize that my body only has so much time to do the amazing things it was built to do. i played soccer for years, and i’m only now acknowledging that i was pretty good at it. but now my knees are telling me that if i’m going to be running a lot, it needs to be in a straight line at a steady pace. the feeling is moving upwards, mainly into my heart and head. it started with all the cuddle-time i had with my newborn nephew (Lauren’s sister’s son). then i started to notice all the children in my world, from inquisitive toddlers at the grocery store to the incredible young woman i mentor. i talk to my college roommate about her two children, and i find myself getting jealous.
i think i’m becoming that cliche, and i don’t mind.
the clock is ticking, and it’s freaking Lauren out. “Genevieve Phred is a cool name,” she said a little nervously after i told her about my dream. she’s not ready, and she’s told me so. it’s something we’ll have to keep talking about, something we’ll keep on the list after getting married and buying a house. the five-to-ten-year plan.
in the meantime, though, i’ll continue to believe that the piece on Sunday Morning about surrogate mothers was on this morning as my own personal, albeit sideways, reminder. and i’m going to hang onto Genny Phred, but probably not Steve Adam.
which means change! hope! and financial opportunism!
are you one of the lucky few thousand who actually got a ticket? did the Inauguration Committee actually pick you after you made your donation of $25 or more and told your inspirational story?
preserve your memories of this historic event in this hand-made, heavy-duty license plate photo album.
or maybe you’re one of the less lucky but still fortunate who will be enjoying the inauguration festivities cramped in a 1′x1′ space on the National Mall.
you can use this album to display all the shots you get of people’s heads clouded over by the fog of visible breath in the cold along with your indecipherable photos of the big screen simulcasting the swearing-in.
you’re going to need an album. it’ll be a really cool experience in retrospect.
i’ve spent the last days of 2008 writing countless thank you cards, handwritten in slow cursive. to the folks who made me family without question, who baked me a birthday cake when there was so much other cooking to do, who sent thoughtful congratulations when we got engaged.
to the strangers who spent hours stuffing thick tube socks with deodorent, soap and new underwear for those who usually don’t have those simple things, to a family who came to the shelter on Christmas to give new sweaters and undershirts instead of giving presents to each other, to kids who made homefries for people who were at the shelter on Christmas Day.
to the family i spent my first 18 years with and am finally just getting to know and who are finally getting to know me.
i have one more to send out. not in my somewhat sloppy script, but in the all lower-case you’re used to reading: thanks to every single person who has stopped by to read over the past year.
i just finished reading Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hahn, and he describes what is, to him, “the most essential practice of peace”:
“Do not think the knowledge you presently possess is changeless, absolute truth. Avoid being narrow-minded and bound to present views. Learn and practice nonattachment from views in order to be open to receive others’ viewpoints.”
thank you for all your comments, in disagreement or affirmation, in loving praise or raw anger. each of you has given me the opportunity to rethink my words, to take in new information and open my head and heart to your experiences of the world. i’m slowly learning that compassion is more important than white-knuckling onto any opinion, and you are all constantly reminding me of that.
we all have so many differences, but i still believe people mostly want to do good by others. there’s no good reason to believe otherwise.
thank you all for an amazing year. see you tomorrow.
Brian Kinney infamously said, “there are only two kinds of straight people in the world: the ones who hate you to your face and the ones who hate you behind your back.”
(bear with me here–i’ll soon be turning a corner.)
it’s the quote that keeps popping up in my head the more same-sex marriage remains an out issue. the more i hear about the Proposition 8 protests. the more Lauren and i talk about what kind of wedding we want (a big to-do where uncomfortable family members there by obligation spend the entire ceremony squirming, or eloping so that no one–including us–has to deal with awkward feelings). and the more we think about some of our family members’ reactions to our engagement.
it’ll sound dramatic, but sometimes it just feels like the whole world is against us, even if they’re pretending not to be. to be fair, there have been some hold-the-phone-away-from-the-ear squeals (thanks, Mere) and a few tears (love you, Kari). but usually when there is support, it is a pause and then a muster, and finally a cautious “congratulations.” and often there’s just tolerance, a measured “if that’s what makes you happy” or “are you allowed to do that?” and sometimes there’s a lot less than that.
no one knows what to do with us. not even our gay friends who sort of just nod their heads, wondering what exactly “engaged” means.
i feel like an outcast. it’s not the first time, of course. when i came out, many of my high school friends stopped calling, and much of my family kept a safe distance away until they figured out how to deal with it. but in retrospect, i’m fine with all that. these days, i keep saying over and over again that everyone in my life has had to do their own coming-out. they’ve had to sort out their feelings and rewrite parts of their rule books. many of them are still tiptoeing through minefields of Bible verses and cultural stereotypes and fears around appropriate manliness or femininity. just like i’m still dealing with my fear of going to hell or confusion around the word “choice.”
our engagement has sped up and amplified this process for all of us. it has forced us out of the comfortable static of mere tolerance that had grown up like weeds all over our lives. and i’m finally realizing that those weeds are keeping a lot of beautiful things from growing.
and as i write this, i’m starting to realize that all of this is a good thing.
i’m finally seeing that all the protests happening around the country are calls for pulling the weeds to see what else can grow. it’s not about two kinds of straight people, it’s about all of us together, part of the same process. it’s about being myself completely and without fear. it’s about discussion and listening and confronting not with hate but with compassion.
as i pull myself away from the cynicism of Brian Kinney, i come back to the same place i find myself with every issue of inequality in all forms: hate is the simple answer, the quickest, most thoughtless way to get from one place to another. the real explanation is based in a simple lack of knowledge, a misunderstanding. that misunderstanding is sometimes manifest in a hateful way (or a ballot measure), but its real base is in ignorance, willful or not.
before i came out and, later, before i announced my engagement, my friends and family were operating on the knowledge and experiences they had at hand. but then i served up a new set of facts and they served me up a new set of reactions, and it has taken all of us awhile to incorporate those facts and experiences into our lives and beliefs. but we’re slowly doing it.
i forgot to mention before that when i told my mom about my engagement, she asked how she could help with the planning. when i told my grandma, she said that she saw that Lauren and I were right from the start. ten years ago when i came out, i couldn’t have dreamed of such reactions.
that’s why we have to keep coming out. that’s why we have to protest, peacefully but forcefully. that’s why we have to hold hands on the street and keep announcing our engagement regardless of the reaction, because the process slows and eventually stops when we go into hiding. but we have to be careful to study the reactions from a loving perspective, to encourage questions and give honest answers.
we must summon the courage to be ourselves completely and honestly and let everyone around us do the same, until we are all looking each other in the eye and having the same discussion.
only then will we start to see real change.
This is the first day of my life
I swear I was born right in the doorway
I went out in the rain suddenly everything changed
They’re spreading blankets on the beach
i think we started writing our vows at Lucy that night. yes, i was pretty alcohol hazy, but a certain kind of light cuts through any fog. driving home from the club that night, i told Marla, “it’s weird–i think i really like her.” and then i took another gulp from the water jug i had planted in the back seat–to get a jumpstart on the hangover fight.
Yours is the first face that I saw
I think I was blind before I met you
Now I don’t know where I am
I don’t know where I’ve been
But I know where I want to go
i first told you i loved you on an October morning. you were on your sickbed and it had been raining for a week straight. you looked only a little surprised. we both suspected the love thing a long time ago. before holding hands through Wooster Square. even before the shy shoulder touches at the movies. the words just formalized the feeling.
in the beginning, you’d come over to my house late on summer weeknights and we’d cuddle on the porch couch, looking at the stars over the New Haven skyline, long past our bedtimes. i started bringing a change of clothes to your house. good-byes were impossible.
we drove our friends crazy. we’d go to the clubs and cuddle in the corner all night as the lights flashed and the music drowned everything else out. we’d go to cook-outs and share a hamburger, a soda, a piece of cake. we called it “the bubble,” and we lived there for a long time.
And so I thought I’d let you know
That these things take forever
I especially am slow
But I realize that I need you
And I wondered if I could come home
we don’t live in the bubble anymore (we wouldn’t have any friends left if we did). we traded it in for a spacious apartment, laundry on Sundays and grocery shopping. we try to cook meals, with mixed results, and we joined a bowling league, also with mixed results. we halve the bills and share a savings account.
you leave me to my meditation and i leave you to your spinning. you let me watch baseball at night, and i let you watch the news in the morning. when we disagree, we say it out loud. and on the rare occasion that we hurt each other, we both end up crying in each others’ arms.
we live our life. together.
Remember the time you drove all night
Just to meet me in the morning
And I thought it was strange you said everything changed
You felt as if you’d just woke up
And you said “this is the first day of my life
I’m glad I didn’t die before I met you
But now I don’t care I could go anywhere with you
And I’d probably be happy”
so getting married isn’t monumental. it’s where we go next. it’s just saying it out loud to the rest of the world.
which is scary. when i told my grandpa, he said “whatever” and handed the phone to my grandma. and many people asked, “what does that mean, exactly?” or “who’s going to be the man?”
but my sister squealed then almost cried then asked, “do i get to be the best man?” your mom said, “we could have it in our yard!” and Wendy offered to cater the engagement party.
but regardless of what date we set or what ring we choose, it will just be a continuation of what has already been so good for so long.
–
when i told my grandma, i said that it just felt right from the beginning. and she said, “yes, we all saw it, too.”
i love you, fiancee pants.
[First Day Of My Life - Bright Eyes]
