I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry

In the midst of a crowd of people on the train rides to and from the city, I spent some quality time attempting to pick out an absolute "right here, right now" track for my latest endeavor, Audio Time Capsule. A Death Cab for Cutie song that had me tearing up as I listened to it (b/c apparently there is a ticking time bomb in a 19 year old girl that explodes upon her 20th birthday causing eyes to brim with water over emotional movie moments and touching songs that speak so deeply to one's self for the rest of her adult life...). Tongue-in-cheek despair follows me unchecked, cynical and ever-present. My mind in two parts debating, "This is so real right now," and "This will be hilarious when I look back on it in a few years." Like the diary entry written at age eleven featuring a poem about how sisters stink or the terribly embarrassing tribute to age 17 and yikes, hormones. It's being aware of adulthood, but pondering where the familiar went.

Mix Tapes

Growing up, I listened to the oldies station, flitted into a brief, but embarrassing alternative rock phase, traipsed through the necessary indie phase and finally settled into the fringes with a mix of everything good for the ears.

Train rides to the city consist of podcasts that I can't focus on when they actually air on the radio (as I managed to pick a career that requires enough attention to detail that everything else melts into background noise the second my mouse clicks to open Illustrator and adjust the kerning). WNYC's Soundcheck recently aired an episode devoted to the mix tape, a topic which sums up much of my teen angst years. I manage to hold on to all those tapes and cds from a plethora of friends and more than friends made up of songs that worked together to describe the time and place at that moment. I remember sitting in front of the boom box I saved up for while in junior high, radio on and fingers hovering urgently over record waiting for the station to play whatever awful song was currently in rotation.

This stop start fixation.

Damion and I used to pass mixes back and forth during the last half of my senior year in high school (see above for a mix from me to him). I drove down 35 from Austin regularly to kick around San Marcos, hold hands and shuffle through leaves on the sidewalk. He was probably where I am now, grumbly and overwhelmed with life, and I was this young, overly enthusiastic kid, and somehow it just worked for a while.

Chair Dancing

Holy fucking god, put 'em up. A long steamy day culminates in some lewd chair dancing...the solitary and confined head bobbing, shoulder pumping chair dancing, none of that Roxie Hart stuff. New York, why? Sticky and chugging water, the night is young, but used up.

I must divulge a growing urge to associate age twenty-four with a Weezer song I associate with top-of-the-lungs anthem status at age fifteen. Seriously. And yes, I myself must concede that Weezer has been blacklisted for quite a while in my audible existence, but giving credit where credit is due, "The Good Life" somehow manages to encapsulate that odd quarter-of-a-century struggle.

Thanks, New York. I mean, where else would I end up so regrettably in debt (to the government, no less) and feel so alone around eight million other people? NYC is rapidly becoming a figure with which I throw all blame towards. Maybe it's because I currently imagine the city shrugging its old shoulders at me with a "What are you gonna do?" query on its building-pocked face. I feel like I've been dragging my feet towards adulthood (though I acknowledge that I am chronologically a "fuckin' grown up" as Giavedoni used to say), waiting for it all to magically fall into place. Truthfully, as I finished Waterloo late the other night (unemployment sleep schedule!), my eyes lingered over, "'This town's not so bad. I miss it. The land of eternal youth. You move away, you get old.'" There's a self-induced pressure on this NYC transplant to live up to an age-old longing to "make it" that all but crushes one born and raised under big skies and within slow days. The rippling heat differs here; at least, now it does. No boots-moseying-up-wooden-steps welcome, but a plop-down-on-concrete-while-some-random-man-tries-to-hit-on-you hello. Perhaps it's better to get the twenties struggle over and done with in a place you'll reminisce about in your thirties (assuming it hasn't finally snagged my heart) rather than spending the whole time wondering why you never left. What are you gonna do?

Austin, you are my siren's song

Something feels not quite right about summer in New York. As I delve deeper into unemployment, days filled with crumpled sheets and poor posture, Texas pulls at my hem to drag me homeward. With a masochistic thrill, I tie myself up with forms of so very cultural entertainment (see: Friday Night Lights, King of the Hill, the novel Waterloo) that echo my lone heart's true longing while writhing in time to Dale Watson. Where is the dust? And grill-charred red meat? I miss you, porches and lazy mosquitos.

In younger days [and presumably lustier depending on my stake on the wthn (why the hell not) front], my hand manipulated a marker to illustrate a solitary dear Lone Star State and another state (for sake of tale, we'll say New York) with me and hearts floating aimlessly inbetween. How is it that body has followed chicken-scratched art? Rather than feet firmly planted at home, I tug like a marionette or - more aptly - the struggling catch lassoed by Pecos. And he's shooting down those stars with me in the sky. What the hell am I talking about? I guess, what I mean to say is, this place can be a hell hole with no tin cans of cheap beer, dripping grease dream tacos and those faces that become surrounded by more and more people I do not know at all.