islands in the stream

this song is the karaoke version of itself but still does some thing to me that i can't ex plain. dolly's vocals are surprisingly light yet precise & kenny responds accordingly, holding back just enough to let dolly soar--a gentleman holding the door open.  the love feels true.

is this hold music? it's very margaritaville here where we've decided codependency isn't hot. we're not one island, we're islands--we each get half of the basement for our knick-knacks. the song is set in c major which is really the basic bitch of scales. no sharps, no flats. as uneventful and boring as a relationship with proper boundaries and good communication. it's the same chord progression as son of a preacher man or r-e-s-p-e-c-t which really shows you where this song could have gone. instead it's a polished diamond waiting to be strangled to death by the tongs of a wedding ring.

the only thing i've ever set out to get with a fine tooth comb was lice, but it's true, tender love is blind. more than professing love, this song seems hellbent on making the lonely feel utterly useless. "everything is nothing if you've got no one," sing the duo, sniping single beachgoers from their lifeguard chairs. if your love doesn't smolder like a skidoo in the sunset, dolly & kenny don't have time for you.

(this is the part in this blog post where i acknowledge how many times people have walked in on me with the lyrics to islands in the stream open. folks it is alarming. i must conclude this blog post soon...)

what is it about beach country? one youtube user comments "Okay, I changed my mind. Country music does not suck." another comments that she is 9 years old and will be singing it to her brother tomorrow for his birthday. it's a universal feel good song--"we ride it together" which might be figurative or might be filthy. we don't even mind that these islands are merely in A STREAM. still, it's undoubtedly a beach country classic--toes in the water, ass in the sand. kenny chesney fans unite under the banner of "no shoes nation" & in doing so, give themselves up to this same cult of eternal, unending shore. on the beach, we are free. all of the dreary country music cliches could be alive and well (lord knows I've cried on vacation) but somehow they really seem to dissipate. all you're left with are even-keeled professions of happiness & a beverage held inside a coconut.

the bottom line is this song is both perfect & disgusting, just like couples holding hands in public or men carrying pictures of their wives in their wallets. this song was made for first dances at weddings and dentist office waiting rooms yet for some reason i still want to huff it like it's the only thing that's gonna get me through science class.

it's too late (tapestry #3)

am i bloggin my way through tapestry?  HELL YES I AM.  things will get grim, though.  we are talking about a future that includes, "Smackwater Jack"...

it's too late!!!  this song is all subtext. a victory jog, foot tapping on the grave of what used to be--triumph slowed by confusion but triumph nevertheless. the lyrics provide the definitive statement that the music cannot--it's over & there's no goin back. you can tell me this song is sad a million times but i will never believe you! it's confused, sure, but even the minor key dabbles in the major. it's got a muted joy that feels both totally irrational yet inevitably perfect. when your feelings have departed, realizing that things are over is more of an accomplishment than a defeat. you're finally able to admit what you've been spending your every waking moment denying.

anyway here's the deal--the piano line is over it, luring us into the mess of the song with a drunken confidence. it saunters about the room before jumping on some kind of wobbly throne. those chimes that kick in with the chorus are like a breathmint for the soul. tabula rasa, bitch!!! carole's spent the morning in bed because she's been trying to keep that piano from cheekily announcing that her life will go on--it's almost like those hands have a mind of their own. but it's true what carole king's possessed ass hands announce, it's never too late to throw your boring man to the CURB.

i've been trying to avoid saying this but this album legitimately sounds like it was mixed in hell. the guitar line hits like audio blaring from a pop-up ad; it's a real oil & water scenario. i can never quite figure out why so much guitar was added when we've got carole playing the piano like she's in the finals for the worlds sauciest talent competition. you heard that intro--we have what we need!!! it's a gripe with the whole album--all of the stuff piled on top by some perennially & transparently high producer. a casserole king. we don't even get to appreciate the saxophone! anyway, there's a small orchestra in carole king's bedroom, helping her through this realization.

she feels like a fool not for having loved & lost but for having denied herself this kind of freedom for so long. these instrumental interludes feel like those inevitable pauses in difficult conversations. you ever had a sax line capture your romantic malaise??? the dream. next time i get in a fight with my girlfriend, i'm phoning the nearest saxophonist to play my truth. anyway, this song has it all--saxophone, guitar, a fuckin conga. god bless whoever brought that conga to the studio. for us, it is never too late, conga player. please call me!!! 

so far away (tapestry #2)

so much of what's good about tapestry is that it's an album populated only by people.  people as feelings, jobs, homes, ideas. all powerful & sometimes all-consuming. the piano line that runs through "so far away" seems to tell a story--it comes close then is pulled back to the beginning. a loop of almost getting what you want.  it's a little ache-y but we get used to it.  that's life.

this is a breakup song but it's not awful like "yesterday"--it doesn't think time is an answer or feel bad for itself.  the way we move in & out of each other's lives, we're all a little responsible for what doesn't work.  there's this line "doesn't help to know you're just time away"--something about how distance is really just the time we won't or can't give.

it's another song that starts with the chorus.  sometimes it seems like a chorus is the lie we tell ourselves--the narrative we create; the verses & bridge hold what's true, discreetly hidden somewhere less intoxicating.  the drums kick in & we finally get a little more insight with the softly aggressive--"one more song about moving along the highway / can't say much of anything that's new." coming off of "i feel the earth move" we are a bit skeptical of the mature detachment present in the rest of the song--the ho-hum melody & beautiful resignation to the vocals.  we don't trust this woman to be somebody who just lets things go.  the frustration of being away from a lover is funneled through the dissatisfaction with not being able to create an original song--of the reason for distance (to be a perennially road-weary musician?) not having any kind of reward.  or at least that's my two-cents.  i'm still a little shaken up from the earthquake 2 min ago.

what does it mean that the roads might come to own you?  you're addicted to the chase?  you can't stop for what's good?  letting yourself follow the ebb & flow of life too long will run you down?  aren't the roads already in control--the only paths we have to one another whether they're the few feet between us or long enough to get tangled in.  i like that this song doesn't have to be about romance, in its open-ended & deftly melancholic form.  so many of our relationships seem to have this same capacity to slow us in their absence.

it used to be the case that absence made the heart grow fonder but now absence seems kind of impossible.  & anyway, none of us have enough experience with it to know how to use it for good.  i wonder if we burn through relationships a lot quicker in the present, letting resentments fester in our infinite connectedness.  or maybe this fixes as many problems as it would have caused.  if only i could stick carole king in the hot seat.  she seems to have so many answers.

be prepared for the flute solo at the end of this track--a woodwind hug to make up for the loss of your lover and offer comfort as you float back off onto the lonely roads ahead.

p.s. i'm not done talking about this song.  i simply must mention the weird choir of caroles that happens around "traveling around sure gets me down & lonely."  a representation of the delirium of being whisked from one place to another?  & to be lonely, too, stuck in the company of yourself.  i'm not sure fully what i think of this addition but it does momentarily remove you from the flow of the song.  a weird mixing choice but there's no going back.

tell me lies tell me big little lies

in spite of my greatest attempts at tearing down myself and the people around me, my life has never been like a soap opera. this is, possibly, the grand allure of HBO smash hit limited tv series BIG LITTLE LIES. the moms of monterey, ca (though with kids always conveniently off-screen and jobs that are on hiatus or part-time as in at an aquarium for 45 minutes a week) always seem to have each foot expertly planted in a different bad situation and all of these big...little...LIES about whether they're ok or how they can afford living in a beach bungalow on an underemployed accountant's salary JUST KEEP ADDING UP.

it's hard to share your truth in a town where almost everyone is a hot actress i had a confusing crush on in middle school, but things aren't as peachy as the power suits and pastel peacoats would lead us to believe. everyone carries their own secret trauma and all this experience concealing their pasts & presents has convinced our protagonists that one more lie won't do much. that's, of course, the kind of wishful thinking that helps someone with deep trauma limp along. one day this big little lie is going to catch up with us, warns Madeleine, mostly talking about an actual murder, though her recent tryst with the theater director has taught her about beefy tiny fibs, too.

BLL is an instagram-filtered romp through lives that we'll never have and mostly don't want. where you wear a $10k suit to your custody hearing or drive a $200k car off the road in an ambien fueled fugue state. we've seen at least a handful of these situations play out with less glamour in our ordinary lives, devoid of the HBO-sheen that seems desperate even to make the show's most horrific moments a bit sexy. while season one carries the premise of "escape," season two works through the hazards of "concealment." one can't escape in place & the resulting drama leaves our ladies lying in a mess exponentially fed by even the most benign efforts towards cleaning-up and repairing the past.

each episode of BLL starts with crashing waves and a song which asks of a viewer who has likely just settled onto her couch with a glass of wine the size of her migraine, "did you ever want it? / want it bad?" the answer is--as with every HBO show--no, not really. this is followed--if one chooses not to frantically hunt for the remote--by a very sensual overview of what's to come--well dressed ladies, saltine cracker husbands, unaware frolicking children, Chekhov's gun (never to be fired literally but metaphorically going off like a semi-automatic). the most reoccurring scene in the show is a tracking shot of someone driving over the same bridge between what seemed to be their own BIG LITTLE LIES and the rest of the world.

i hate that i am the target audience for this show but it's true & here i am front and center. i might even call myself a devoted fan. i love when women do just about anything. my dream tv would be a talk show where a bunch of mild mannered ladies talk about what they got in the mail that day. the truth is, even though i will complain to anyone that this season was chaotically boring--one bad last episode spread out over seven hours--i was still riveted. i loved the school drama, petty fighting between husbands, watching renata klein arrive in her husband's train lair like a vulture in the desert.  even though watchers had already seen some of the Monterey Five at their lowest, the allure of this season--seeing the characters truly unravel--was perhaps some kind of perverse vindication. the rest of the world looks on from its rummage sale living room and target comfort wear but tv's about voyeurism, baby. windows not mirrors. we don't want to see the violence & drama but we do want to know that it can happen to anyone--regardless of beachfront mansions or how many close friends they have.

i don't know if i have anything tremendously unique to say about BLL. i still think about that scene with Mary-Louise a lot, where she puts the cross to her lips. it's hot sacrilege. her primal scream, too. the death of a tyrant unleashes the wrath of the demon who spawned him. but here's what we learn--trauma begets trauma. we are creatures of our own upbringings--even Mary-Louise's vampyric psychobully ass. Bonnie's pointless storyline allows us to mash together a parallel. two abused children, one of whom learns to break the cycle but never fully reconciles the parts of her that have come from her mother. another who allows that part of him to take control of his life. Bonnie's still convinced violence lurks within, but we can't trust Bonnie's interior monologue, the show says, giving us heavy-handed avant-garde imagery & fractured "what if's" anytime she appears. the gift the other women give to Bonnie is the clarity she denied herself--if she didn't push Perry, someone else would have. the women were all guilty all along, not just for lying, but for wanting the death. how's that for a BLL? the women all walk together into the police station. as we've just learned from all the courtroom drama, guilt & innocence aren't always clear-cut.

Madeline gets more Madeline, while Celeste is both fucking one thousand dudes off-screen (s/o to Mary-Louise's selfless tho sometimes terrifying childcare) and able to deliver a cross-ex that can't even be countered by the state of California's best child services attorney. she contains multitudes. there's something about Nicole Kidman's frail onscreen presence that always makes her feel like a background character even when she's giving an EMMY AWARD WINNING performance. ethereal but on the brink of being blown away by a fan. a few tender moments between Madeline and Celeste remind us that even annoying people like Madeline can use their obnoxious & meddling behaviors for good. she wishes she would have known--could have stopped this all from happening. we don't we LOVE THIS TV SHOW!!!

the showstopper of season 2 has of course been Laura Dern's PERFECT Renata Klein who went from season one terror mom to season two alpha bitch husband destroyer. Renata's stable home life that allowed her to be such a go-getter in the first season is ripped away though it only seems to give her MORE STRENGTH. compared to our other protagonists, she only loosely leans on the other Monterey moms, she seems to thrive off pure rage. perhaps the greatest failure of season two was not enough onscreen sparring between Renata and Mary-Louise, two women who truly operate from the most heinous depths of the soul.  somewhere there's a season 3 of BLL where we see Renata take up a new career as a hired assassin to get back her money. or maybe a season 3 where she eviscerates her husband like it's Midsommar. i'd really watch a reality show where laura dern is hired by angry wives to destroy their husbands' toy collections.

i don't know if one can truly make much out of this world full of eyes bleary with sunsets and bodies sculpted by weekday surfing hobbies. i apparently don't even have anything to say about Jane, whose fourteen year old narc boyfriend and aquarium job had my blood pressure rising every time they came onscreen. everyone learns their lesson & things mostly work out as they need to. we get the sweet ending, cut off before the realities of the judicial system can steamroll any happy life that we fantasize these characters might get to lead. maybe now is the time for all of us to let our big little lies free.

i feel the earth move (tapestry #1)

i want carole king to play me like a piano. i was somewhere last night where they were raffling off a massage not from a company or anything just from some guy named michael. anyway that's what i want--a massage from some sweatpants-clad carole no-last-name. i love this song because it's like yeah you feel the earth move you're about to break your fucking hands playing the piano. downstairs neighbors banging on the ceiling with a broomstick, shit falling off the walls. of course the earth's moving.

it's a song about getting the earth-shattering hots for someone which is kinda sexy and kinda scary, one of life's greatest combos. a rigorous mating stomp that lapses into gooier and more stomachable fare before returning to the iconic fuck me chug that reeled you in in the first place. i love a song that starts with the chorus--why not? if it's the best part of the song, it's the best part of the song. towards the end there's that guitar line that almost doesn't matter. it makes the piano even better. it has something to talk over.

that fuck me chug, though. it's a cartoon character's tongue splayed across the room when somebody hot walks by. i can't believe we're all just stomping around in this erotic parade then rolling around in a bed of flowers then back out in the streets I FEEL THE EARTH MOVE. a terrifying "oh darling / I CANT STAND IT / when you look at me that way." you almost don't even hear that last bit. She Can't Stand It. we're outside with a boombox and if that doesn't work, we're going to scale the building until we can suck on the glass of your bedroom window. i don't even know the guy and now im air humping around the living room.

my mom loved carole king--a live CD called the living room tour came out when I was in sixth grade and joined her regular boombox rotation. carole came on when she was sweeping, dusting, doing laundry. these songs felt then like the fear that i might be asked to wash dishes or vacuum. i can remember hiding in my room fearing the opening applause of the intro track in spite of this being so much better than hearing kd lang's ingenue for the 400,000th time. when carole plays "i feel the earth move" live, she riffs a little on the opening melody, making us want it even more. she demands everybody clap and sing. what is the deal with this song? i didn't need to be told to clap and sing. i'm already in the streets, tipping over cars, ripping my clothes off, busting out my vacuum. making the earth move.