Saturday, April 29, 2006

Because I'm still in Junior High

I have not changed at all. I am essentially the same teenager I have always been.

I've added two new albums to my collection this week: Future Retro (Great Alternative Anthems of the 80's Souped Up With Dance Beats) (e.g. Crystal Method does Bizarre Love Triangle) and Morrissey's new Ringleader of the Tormentors. And I have to say that both are very good. No one can orchestrate an opening like Morrissey can, no one at all.

On top of that, I have worked late late late this week, and how do I keep going? Just a simple mix of Morrissey and Midnight Oil, please. (Dear reader, you do know that Blue Sky Mining is Midnight Oil's greatest album, followed closely by Earth and Sun and Moon? They're not just Beds are Burning, no, no, no.) Since we're doing finest albums, Morrissey's is, of course, Viva Hate.

(Earth and Sun and Moon is so good on headphones walking through a forest.)

Which begs a discussion on picking favorites. Is the favorite the song you hear first off, identify with, and claim, love at first sight, whole-hearted and blindly? Or is the favorite the song that etches itself slowly into your soul, hook by hook, riff by riff, until it is part of the fabric of your soul and tearing it out would cause a loss of self?

Are we talking about love now? or worship? Do we leave particles of our souls with the things we love in exchange for the memories? I once worked for a man who owned a very nice shop, and he claimed that if you go into a store, and find something you like, and pick it up and walk around with it, feeling it and adoring it, and then put it back, someone will come find it and buy it because of the piece of you that rubbed off on it. Interesting, but when I think of the things I put back and regret having put back (the jewelrey box in Genova, for starters) I wonder if what I'm missing is the piece of me that stayed with it when I walked away.

How much worse to leave our friends! Our favorites! The ones to whom we have given large chunks of our souls (please don't lose them), who finish our thoughts and travel our same paths not nearly long enough --

And so we capture what we can: photographs, songs; and we write notes and letters; and all the while it's more of our souls that we are leaving on these treasures -

And our yearbooks say "Stay Sweet!" and "Friends Forever!"

And somewhere we are. Because they are in us and we are in them,

because we're still in junior high.

No comments: