I spent the morning doing a written interpretation of the lovely Gillian's natal chart for her birthday (which is today! Happy Birthday again!), something I'd never done before. It took a pretty long time but it was really interesting and I learned a lot. I'm seriously continually blown away with how relevant astrology can be to self discovery, and also by how MUCH there is to learn about it. I'm constantly learning new things, it's like a constantly renewing Self-Help book. I can't believe it's already 2:30!
There's not too much to report here, other than my developing pretty serious PUPPP a week or so ago. I was going to write a long, tongue in cheek write up about it here but honestly it's just way too excruciating at this moment for me to laugh at, heh.
Somehow I've managed to experience just about every notoriously unlucky thing that could possibly happen to me during pregnancy, have you noticed that? I must be working off an extraordinary amount of karma here, so I'm trying to take it in stride. I'm buying the little boy a t-shirt from ragebaby.com that says "Sent From the Future to Clean This Mess Up" because at this point, after how difficult and trying this entire pregnancy has been, I'll be really, really surprised if he isn't actually the real life John Connor.
"Sorry about the 6 months of all-day puking, the 4 months of almost complete immobility, the flirting with gestational diabetes, the terrifying weight gain, the relentless insomnia and now the insanity-inducing rash, Mom. Although surely my inevitable saving of all humanity must be of some comfort."
Would that make me some semblance of Sarah Connor, then? Because for the record, that's a position I'm more than comfortable with.
Anyone who tells you that pregnancy is a completely beautiful and ethereal experience from start to finish is just flat out lying. The baby himself is awesome, but just about everything about the process of GROWING him is unpleasant. Feeling him moving around is neat, yes, but it's much less neat when he's moving around so much that he wakes me up at 4am and won't let me go back to sleep. This is the third day in a row, almost like he's on a very specific "messing with Mom" schedule that revolves around a.) waking me up at insane hours of the night doing jumping jacks in the womb and b.) refusing to move when other people who want to feel him kicking touch me, only to resume his cosmic dancing once they give up. I wish he spoke English, or I spoke his language, so I could ask him what he is DOING in there. Did you lose your keys, little baby? I promise they aren't between any of my ribs, so you can really stop prodding around in there, really.
Also, the rest of the world apparently already knew about this and didn't tell me, but CocoRosie released the first single from their next album, forthcoming in 2009, called "God Has a Voice, She Speaks Through Me." It took a few listens to grow on me, but I'm digging the new direction they're taking. Apparently folk artists from places like Madagascar and Reunion Island have been contributing to the record. According to Touch & Go, "CocoRosie is currently working on the follow up to their last full-length, The Adventures Of Ghosthorse & Stillborn, slated for release in 2009. This new work will continue in the vein of God Has A Voice..., exploring spiritual dance music, driven by oceanic and apocalyptic themes." I can't wait! Touch & Go is streaming the tune here if you feel like betraying the almighty Pitchfork and making up your own mind about it.
I've been wanting to write about the apocalyptic themes I've been seeing in SO MUCH music lately in general, but I'm way too exhausted right now to get into it as deeply as I want to. Has anyone else noticed it, though? Have you all heard that new Portishead single, "Machine Gun," as a quick example? It's like there's just something floating in on the air, getting into people's bodies, turning their minds toward a new order. It excites and terrifies me at the same time.
Speaking of CocoRosie, if you haven't already seen any of the performance CocoRosie did with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam last month, it's liable to blow your mind. The clip of "Black Rainbow" is my favorite:
Holy hell, little baby, please SETTLE! I know it's cramped in there, but I'm new at this, dude. Is it food? Is it breakfast you want? Can we negotiate?
Of course it was a disaster. The unbearable, dearest secret has always been a disaster. The danger when we try to leave. Going over and over afterward what we should have done instead of what we did. But for those short times we seemed to be alive. Misled, misused, lied to and cheated, certainly. Still, for that little while, we visited our possible life.
Once upon a time (or sometime in the year 2000, whichever intro you prefer) to celebrate the one year anniversary of our friendship, my friend Matt mailed me a copy of Tara Jane O'Neil's first solo record "Peregrine." Unbeknownst to me, it was the start of the longest lasting, most personally fulfilling musical love affair I've ever been a part of. Since then Tara Jane O'Neil's music has grown with me. Over the last eight incredibly formative years of my life, it's followed me from being an 18 year old girl, terrified and on the brink of everything, to a 26 year old woman, trying to preserve her individuality beneath both motherhood and adulthood.
"Peregrine" was one of the only albums I listened to during the summer I first lived in New York. I didn't know anyone there aside from Daniel, and at that point I even just barely knew him. I was (graciously) hundreds of miles away from everything and everyone I'd ever known, and my move there was one of the first and biggest steps I took toward solidifying my individuality. I distanced myself from two toxic, addicting romantic relationships, left my incredibly close-knit family for the first time in my life, and just literally disappeared. I took the time to recreate myself- a town where no one knows you is the perfect place to let yourself be the person you always wanted to be. I lived in a big house with seven strangers in downtown Rochester, paying $150 a month plus utilities. I had a Walkman then (remember those?) that I'd won out of one of those grab-it machines in an arcade years earlier- it was translucent blue plastic and covered in stickers. I'd walk around downtown Rochester daily, during it's summer which is more like spring anywhere else, listening to a taped copy of "Peregrine" and taking in my new surroundings. I'd walk to the library, down to Park Avenue where all the college kids hung out, up and down various Monroe County streets where even the book stores had bars over the windows, and the soundtrack was always the same. I even listened to the album at night as I was falling asleep- to this day the opening notes of "A City In the North" put me right back in that old attic room at night with the one window open to let the summer breeze in. It was a personality-forming time for me, my coming of age movie. In spite of the fact that my decision to move there was completely impulsive and I was equally as likely to have landed flat on my face, it turned out to be a time of intense positivity and constant reinforcement of my personal strength. I'll always remember those years fondly, as they were some of the best of my life, but especially that first summer. All of the uncertainty mixed with my naivety and enthusiastic anticipation for an unknown future was nothing short of magical. The dreamy, floating, meditative tone of the entire album meshed perfectly with my state of mind at the time. So much so that during a show at Hampshire College in 2006, when she attempted "Sunday Song" as her closer, my stomach knotted up so tightly and nostalgically that I thought I would throw up until I just gave it up and cried.
As I got older I continued to buy up every new release that TJO put out. I have every EP, every hand colored 7 inch, every strange overseas compilation, there are pieces of her art hanging in my house- anytime she released something new, I got my hands on it. Everyone has at least one band or artist like that, I think. Regardless of how my tastes changed (even when I was listening to essentially nothing but old 50's prom music) TJO remained a constant. It always seemed like as I grew and changed as a person, she was growing and changing as an artist as well, so that every new record (regardless of what was happening in my life during the time of it's release) somehow resonated with me. I won't go step by step through every album and contrast it with what was happening to me at the time, but trust me when I say her albums were always either a solace, a celebration, or some combination of the two. In all my life there has never been a musician who's touched me in as many ways as Tara Jane O'Neil has, and I say that without hesitation.
I try to catch her live every time she comes to Western Mass, which isn't often. I first saw her open for Ida at the Flywheel in 2000, touring for Peregrine, where she played the entire show with her back to the audience. The best show of hers I ever saw was in Montague, when she played at the Montague Bookmill (one of my favorite places on earth). Almost no one came- it had been raining or snowing pretty heavily that day, I think. Renee and I sat on a couch and drank tea while she performed, after dusk, surrounded by bookcases and in front of the open windows overlooking the river rushing by the mill. If I sound sentimental, it's because I am- I've seen too many live shows to count in my life, of varying sizes and in varying venues, but that show was something truly special. If you've ever been lucky enough to catch TJO live, you might have an idea of what I'm talking about.
It would be an understatement to say that the sort of music I gravitate toward has changed dramatically in the past 8 years. My taste (in most things, but most obviously the music I enjoy) has morphed into something much more abstract/bizarre and much less outwardly sentimental than it used to be, which (if you wanted to get philosophical) you could say has happened simultaneously with an identical change within myself. While that once infamous sentimentality still exists (of course), I'm not as straightforward about it as I used to be, for better or worse. The last few years have been especially rough for me, as many of you know. The quieting of my more personal urges is tied into all that; I'm not gone, just safely tucked away, growing, waiting for a time when I'll feel comfortable enough to share my voice again. According to her website, TJO is recording this month. My son will be born in July. I can only eagerly anticipate what this next stage of my life, coupled as usual with another new Tara Jane O'Neil release, will bring to me.
Fans of electronic/noise music, please do not miss! Silver Apples is legendary and mind bending, Loto Ball Show is entirely insane.
June 17 - The Empty Bottle - Chicago, IL June 18 - Scrummage University - Detroit, MI June 20 - Grog Shop - Cleveland, OH June 21 - 31st Street Pub - Pittsburgh, PA June 22 - Mowhawk Place - Buffalo, NY June 23 - TT the Bears - Cambridge, MA June 24 - Knitting Factory - NYC, NY June 25 - Cakeshop (Loto Ball Show Only) - NYC, NY June 27 - North Star Bar - Philadelphia, PA June 28 - The Velvet Lounge - Washington DC June 29 - Local 506 - Chapel Hill, NC June 30 - E.A.R.L. - Atlanta, GA July 1 - Hi-Tone - Memphis, TN July 2 - TBA - New Orleans, LA
Phases 2 & 3 of the renovation of the nursery are now *finished,* leaving just the fun parts left! The paint & wallpaper removal ended up taking us a lot longer than we thought it would (about two and a half weeks), and the drama didn't end there.
This is my father, most likely grateful that we're nearing the end of our two and a half week "removing 5 layers of paint and wallpaper" debacle
A different angle showing our progress
After all the paint was off, we sanded, spackled, and moved on to primer (none of which I took any pictures of, unfortunately). The bare walls actually soaked up two layers of primer, leaving some parts of it whiter than others no matter what we did. We wanted to paint the blue over a pure, white surface to ensure it's true brightness would come out, but the house just was not allowing it. Finally we gave up and just decided to paint the blue over what we had- and it worked!
Brightest Blue EVER!
After another coat of "Galactic Sky," we'll be putting up big, realistic wall decals of all the planets and a huge handpainted mural of a rocketship (painted by my dad) to break up all the blue. Also forthcoming (depending on how lucky I am bargain hunting) will be a large gray area rug for the floor! There's no way we can afford to rip up the carpet and put a new one in, so I'm improvising. Wish me luck!
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