ANGST ANGST ANGST

Song of the Day: 'It Ain't Me Babe', Jesse Cook

How often do I chock up my emotions as the hormones and frivolity of simply being a teenager?

One more year and then that excuse becomes obsolete. What then? 'Because I'm so young/inexperienced/what have you'? 'Because I'm a woman'? Like THAT will be accepted. It would, however, be shot down as sexist.

So how come 'because I'm a teenager' is an acceptable excuse for reasoning away a person's emotionality? Why isn't THAT remark seen as offensive and ageist?

I know that a lot of what teenagers go through is more likely to be frivolous and short term, but that doesn't make their feelings any less real. They've never experienced life before, a lot of those feelings are still new to them. Not to mention they're still trying to figure themselves out. That's bed enough. But then the natural course of life demands that they take that time to figure everyone ELSE out too. Frankly, people are so batshit fucked up, I think a little teenage angst, personal turmoil and drama is understandable.

Honestly, our high school years are only put into perspective after we've lived for a while BEYOND high school. maybe we need to experience the life or death of adolescence so we're not so shellshocked when the big shit hits the fan later on.

I hate it when people try to illegitimize other people's feelings. YOU don't know, YOU'RE not them. Their feelings can be real and intense for hem, but you are not on the inside so you can't really know what's going on.

People are people, regardless of age. Feelings are feelings, regardless of age. Everyone feels emotions and everyone needs and deserves to be taken care of by those who love them. Not brushed off as something insignificant. It's like they're saying they are subhuman. Just because something isn't dramatic and crucial and life-altering for you doesn't mean it isn't for somebody else.

I know I've done it. I've made light of someone else's problems and feelings because they're oh so young. But I've also been doing it to myself as of late - and not seeing your own opinions and problems and feelings as valid and important has got to be unhealthy. It certainly can't be helping any development I may be undergoing BECAUSE I'm so young.

The really sad thing is I can't help feeling as I write this that it's nothing more than pent-up teenage angst.

'There's a meat market down the street
the boys and girls watch each other eat
when they really just wanna watch each other sleep.' - 'Dance Anthem of the 80s', Regina Spektor

ANGER, WILL ROBINSON

Song of the Day: ‘Funny the Way it Is’, Dave Matthews Band 

I don’t like being actively angry with people.

Which isn’t to say I haven’t done it. I’ve yelled and screamed and physically fought, been passive aggressive, even ranted loudly and repetitively to uninvolved third parties.

But usually - or at least more and more as of late - I like to take some time to think about it. To figure out what the problem is and find a way to address it without being overly accusatory and still getting my point across the first time around.

I don’t like addressing the problem right away, because that usually leads to me saying the first thing that pops into my head, which is rude and spiteful, more often than not.

Which is why it’s excruciatingly hard for me when people don’t extend me the same courtesy.

When they ignore me and expect me to know what the problem is, even though I wasn’t aware there was one in the first place.

When they send passive aggressive text messages or Facebook posts.

When they tell everyone but ME, and then everyone and their mother gives me nasty looks and talk about me behind my back and hate me.

...Okay, that last one hasn’t really happened (that I’m aware of), but still. They’re all from the same vein.

Furthermore, when I know or think someone’s mad at me, I get shaky. I get scared. I get this gross feeling in my stomach. My face flushes and stays hot and red. My throat gets smaller and it’s a little harder to breathe. I stop talking and have a hard time not crying.

I feel like I’ve done something mortifyingly offensive and wasn’t aware, and if the person even bothers to tell me I won’t get the chance to explain myself and try to fix the problem.

So, yeah. There’s some all around suckage whenever someone’s mad at me.

Not that anyone is particularly happy when someone’s angry with them... but still. It’s painful. 

‘All my doubts that fill my head are skidding up and down again
up and down and ‘round again, down and up and ‘round again. - ‘Crystal Ball’, P!nk

Funny the Way it Is

Lying in the park on a beautiful day,
Sunshine in the grass, and the children play.
Siren's passing, fire engine red,
Someone's house is burning down on a day like this?

The evening comes and we're hanging out,
On the front step, and a car rolls by with the windows rolled down,
And that war song is playing, "why can't we be friends?"
Someone iss screaming and crying in the apartment upstairs

Funny the way it is, if you think about it
Somebody's going hungry and someone else is eating out
Funny the way it is, not right or wrong
Somebody's heart is broken and it becomes your favorite song

The way your mouth feels in your lovers kiss
Like a pretty bird on a breeze or water to a fish
A bomb blast brings a building crashing to the floor
You can hear the laughter, while the children play "war"

Funny the way it is, if you think about it
One kid walks 10 miles to school, another's dropping out
Funny the way it is, not right or wrong
On a soldier's last breath his baby's being born

Standing on a bridge, watch the water passing under me
It must've been much harder when there was no bridge, just water
Now the world is small. Remember how it used to be,
With mountains and oceans and winters and rivers and stars?

Watch the sky, the jet planes, so far out of my reach
Is there someone up there looking down on me?
Boy chase a bird, so close but every time
He'll never catch her, but he can't stop trying

Funny the way it is, if you think about it
One kid walks 10 miles to school, another's dropping out
Funny the way it is, not right or wrong
On a soldier's last breath his baby's being born
Funny the way it is, nor right or wrong
Somebody's broken heart becomes your favorite song
Funny the way it is, if you think about it
A kid walks 10 miles to school, another's dropping out.

Standing on a bridge, watch the water passing under me
It must've been much harder when there was no bridge, just water
Now the world is small. Remember how it used to be,
With mountains and oceans and winters and rivers and stars?

- 'Funny the Way it Is', Dave Matthews Band

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAbMnMWHTvY

Orange Peelings

Song of the Day - ‘A Man Walks Down the Street’, Paul Simon 

Have you ever listened to a song, looked up the lyrics, and then realized you had been singing them wrong ever since you first heard them?

I do this all the time.

And not just little things like mixing up prepositions of proper nouns, legit mistranslations of entire lyrics.

The most notorious example would have to be when I was eight or nine and, as my parents are awesome, we were listening to Neil Diamond in the car. The song ‘Cherry, Cherry’ came on and as we got to the chorus, I exploded out from the back seat, ‘SHE’S GOT THE WET BABOOBY, CHERRY’.

My dad and sister turned from the front seat giving me a look of wonder and burst out laughing.

Turns out the lyrics are ‘she’s got the way to move me, Cherry’.

Whatever.

I don’t really know what went through my head to think those were the right lyrics, I just sang what I heard.

The way every middle schooler in the US sang their own version of ‘Dragostea Din Tei’ by O-Zone - also known as the ‘Numa Numa’ song. You just sing what you hear and hope you’re close.

I recently found out that the song lyrics to a song with which I had previously been infatuated were not as I thought they were.

For whatever reason, it didn’t register to me that the lyrics I had in my head made very little sense. I just thought there was a depth of wisdom and sentiment that I simply didn’t understand, and chocked it up to creativity and artistic license.

But now that I know what the right words are, I find myself shaking my head at my own folly. Really, how could I be so silly?

Though when I really think about it, I DO come by it honestly. Whenever I play the intro to ‘More than a Feeling’, if my dad’s in the vicinity he’ll yell out ‘IT’S MORE THAN ORANGE PEEEELIIIIIIIINGS’.

And yes, he is quite aware what the actual words are. He just revels in being a dork.

When I was younger, one of my favorite songs for my parents to sing while I was trying to fall asleep was ‘Goodnight Irene’. It was soft and full of lullabyness, simple enough that even my devotedly tone-deaf mother could sing it and almost always stay in tune. 

Years later I looked up the lyrics and found out that the one right before the chorus - one my parents never refrained from singing to me - was ‘sometimes I take a great notion / to jump in the river and drown’.

Whenever I hear or sing the song myself, it never strikes me that the person singing is contemplating suicide. I always remember my personal context of the song, of calm and sleepy and backrub and love. I guess the mysticism and love of my parents’ serenade managed to fog up the line’s literal meaning for me.

One of my favorite memories is when my dad would sing me to sleep. A favorite of his and mine was ‘You Can Call Me Al’ by Paul Simon, but my sister and I had dubbed it ‘A Man Walks Down the Street’. We had hand motions and he’d sing the percussion parts as well as all the words, and he sang it the same way every single time. It’s the way I sing it when I’m not listening to the actual song. Though sometimes I throw in the flute solo for good measure.

Well, this turned real personal and sentimental real fast.

On a brighter note, the sun is shining, the door is open wide and I can hear the Music of Outside - loud birds, buzzing bugs that run into our front window, wind blowing the wind chime, the occasional car, and what sounds like someone weed-whacking. My dogs are passed out on the floor, my mother likewise in her chair draped in the kitty cat blanket. Funnily enough, all of them are facing towards the open door in their respective subconscious stupors, like flowers follow the arc of the sun.

I love summer. 

‘You say you want a resolution,

well, you know

we all want to change the chord.’ - Emma’s version of ‘Revolution’ by the Beatles

I Want, I Want, I Want.

Song of the Day: 'Jonah', Guster

I want to be an extreme.

I want to be the best at something. And no, I’m not trying to make a Pokémon reference.

I want to be so extraordinarily in love with something that it is part of my definition when you look me up in the dictionary.

I want to be so amazing at something that my friends and family think of me whenever they see that something. If that makes any sense.

I want to be noteworthy.

I want to be remembered.

I want to be known.

I want to be loved.

And it sucks to be thinking all of these things when I know there are people who have it harder and have less and want and need actual things that are concrete and tangible and don’t just long for ideas and the abstract like I do.

Especially when I have a lot of the concrete and tangible things that so many people lack.

But the things I tend to remember, the things that stick with me, aren’t the tangible things I have, like a roof and food and money and a university.

They’re not even the abstract things I have like friendship and fun and love.

They’re the things I don’t have.

I have an album on my computer of pictures I’ve found scouring the internet and this album is entitled ‘wonders’.

In this album I have 597 pictures of places I want to go and things I want to see.

This album is set as my background and changes everything minute and they are a constant reminder of the things I don’t have and the places I’ve never been and the things I have yet to see and do.

And at this point in time they are also a reminder of my own selfishness. I have an album of pictures that I don’t see as the wonders and beauty of the world. I see them as painful reminders of what I lack.

When did we become so selfish?

When did we lose the ability to cherish and appreciate all that we have and replace it with longing for what we don’t?

I have amazing friends.

I am blessed to have a wonderful family that I not only love but like.

I have hardships and obstacles as any one else does, but I blow those out of proportion by conveniently forgetting all the things I DO have that make life wonderful.

And I think I need to stop doing that.

'Something that I want

something that I tell myself I need

something that I want

and I need everything I see.' - 'Something That I Want', Grace Potter (Tangled)