broken windows theory & the sale of "safety"

i'm trying to do a better job of recording my thoughts as i read, so hopefully this high traffic, much lusted after blog will return 2 some kind of wack fervor.  yesterday i spent a good chunk of time reading through the first portion of essays in Policing the Planet, a book that examines the broader impact of broken windows style policing.  i first came into contact with this methodology when i was a college writing tutor for a class that read malcolm gladwell's "broken windows theory." in the essay, gladwell, whose neoliberal pop sociology is legitimately shocking to read now, confidently asserts that broken windows policing accounts for the decrease in violent crime in 90s nyc.  i absolutely refuse to fully revisit this essay but i remember a particularly infuriating section where--using the logic of broken windows policing--the new head of the transit authority bucks the trend of going after "violent criminals" in favor of cracking down on fare jumpers.  in the process, countless young people enter into the criminal system for a simple act of poverty or teen rebellion.  the head of transit is celebrated for making the system of arresting young fare beaters at a faster rate than ever and contributing to the ceaseless proliferation & substantiation of transit policing.

to get a fuller picture of the reality of broken windows policing, i include Robin D.G. Kelley's definition in the first section of Policing the Planet.  he writes:

"First elaborated in a 1982 essay by George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson, "broken windows" placed the blame for urban decay on the social values and behaviors of poor, primarily Black people. It argued that criminals flourished in deteriorating, disorderly neighborhoods, and that disrespect for one's community led to disrespect for authority and the law. As long as ghetto residents lacked concern for the condition of their neighborhoods, crime would run rampant; small infractions would become gateways to violent crime. Ignoring the structural factors that suppressed home values, perpetuated health and environmental catastrophes, and divested neighborhoods of essential services, jobs, government programs, and legal protections, broken windows theory blamed culture and immorality for crime and, in turn, poverty." (25)

Kelley's essay "Thug Nation" had so many thought-provoking moments for me.  the first was the assertion that criminal justice system expansion was not just the product of "a sharp right wing turn" post WWII but also a part of a liberal wave of protecting African Americans from, "mob violence, to quell urban rebellions, and to address what were perceived as rising crime rates following the triumph of desegregation" (21).  we see this same relationship between myopic liberal "good will" and unintended (depending on how you look at it) carceral consequences in Christina B. Hanhardt's essay "Broken Windows at Blue's" where she outlines hate crime legislation intended to protect LGBTQ+ people, part of the same pre-packaged idea of safety sold to rich white NYCers (straight & gay alike) in gladwell's essay.  all fueled by development revenue, of course.  as long as safety is defined & implemented by the state, it remains something as fatal to marginalized people as the interpersonal violence it forces & inspires.  Hanhardt ends her essay on a similar note: "the promises of solidarity offer much more than those of safety, and provide a collective alternative to solutions defined within rather than against the market" (61). a beautiful reminder that solidarity is an active, engaged process that finds its pulse in the margins--that our power will flourish in the spaces capital has long since abandoned.

Kelley uses the phrase "broken bodies policing" to talk about the fundamentally antiBlack police state & the meager differences between the way police officers see Black & brown folks vs they way they see the more frequently marginalized & overpoliced communities they exist in.  marginalized/overpoliced people are seen as products of their communities & neighborhoods except when it comes to individual criminality. broken windows policing asserts that an environment creates crime but the culprit is an individual then it refuses to put money toward what could fundamentally improve the community writ large.  policing logic in these scenarios is such that it simply points to its own actions in communities as evidence of both "crime" (a creation of policing itself) and "efficacy" (departments monitor & create their own stats) & gives no consideration to the actual ripples these practices have.  everything is so overwhelmingly circuitous.  broken windows policing opens up a self-fulfilling prophecy, like any other targeted tactic of policing.  a concentration of poorly trained, armed agents of "safety" with quotas and militant mindset are themselves the thing ruining a community & their presence & its necessary "success" only calls in more--more officers, more armaments, more arrests & violence.

i am thinking through the way criminalizing the person results in the creation of queer identity, as Christina Hanhardt begins to parse out in her article and as i've long thought about in my ongoing attempts to understand the pathologization/criminalization of lesbian existence in the 50s.  the way lesbianism is made REAL first through the purview of the state--how it is made medically diagnosable & legally incriminating.  i think, too, perhaps the only identity category to move in & out of legality in such a clear-cut way is gay/lesbian.  or maybe this example is just more available to me as someone who begrudgingly holds (& drops?) it.  i love when Hanhardt cites Times Square being called a place of "sin & decay."  i hope 2 exist in this world as such, a grand site of sin & decay--to exist in & toward ruin.

Hanhardt posits that in striving to become a community of "normal" people, white rich gays defined themselves against other functionally criminalized minorities (Black/brown folks, the poor, those w/ health issues) to prove their inherent "goodness" & normalcy.  this, though, is a product of social order & organization & the fulfillment of the state's initial labelling of lgbtq+ folks as a criminal "other."  the project realizes its ultimate goal when queers are able to act w/ the best interests of the state--to become productive employees, to raise children, create legible family unites, produce capital, pay taxes, & bolster gentrification efforts.  Hanhardt writes, "in many of these campaigns in recent years, activists have shown how the regulation of behavior deemed to be non-normative can be tightly entwined with real estate interests," going on to highlight the deaths of Dontre Hamilton, Akai Gurley, and Eric Garner.  she continues, "the real threats are not those individuals whose lives are considered to be at a distance from dominant 'norms,'"  quoting Cara Page (Audre Lorde Project) and Krystal Portalatin (FIERCE):

"[they are] when banks are allowed to engage in predatory practices that target communities of color and force groups to remain in poverty; when Detroit can declare bankruptcy on a city of mostly black communities and then take away basic rights such as water; when corporations are allowed to abuse other countries and depress US economies; when the US military continues to back and support Israel's oppression of Palestinian people and land" (60)

in a punitive and carceral world, normalcy means violence. thinking alongside Hanhardt, i have so many questions about the way my queerness has been "sold" to me.  how my desire & position have been created outside of any desire & position i might hold within.  in thinking about broken windows policing, i still cannot get over the transparency its name offers in the priorities of policing.  when private property is held in such regard that its disrepair, its brokenness, is the only root cause the police state is willing to acknowledge for any of society's struggles.  & while we expect the police to deny the reality of their impact on communities, it is more perplexing then that folks like malcolm gladwell might actually buy into this logic as well.  that to some a broken window might be seen as more of a call for harmdoing than a police officer drawing their gun.  that the end of all harm could ever be a single arrest for a skipped fare instead of asking why there are monetary limitations on how we move through the world.  i am looking forward to continuing to move through this book & reading more by Hanhardt & Kelley.

my beautiful laundrette (1985) & love island (US, s2e1; 2020)

sometimes i get in a mood where i just wanna suck down a movie & have no thoughts about it & this mood might be labeled depression but it is a kind of wasteful luxury, too, to just pop in & out of a different world. a disassociative pleasure amidst everything that's been going on.  alas after many months of this exact approach to all things, i am back to my thinkin man's blog...may the sweet waters of my words touch your lips like the first rainfall after a ten year drought.

last night i marathoned two complementary masterpieces--my beautiful laundrette & the first episode of the newest season of love island.  yes, two sides of the same coin.  my beautiful laundrette is literally about a beautiful laundrette in a way that i could not have anticipated.  even the soundtrack is some sort of menacing sudsy synthpop thing that sounds like margaret thatcher peering out from behind an overflowing washer. a weird sinister subtext for a movie that presents moments of violence w/ a cavalier attitude & moments of joy as the most natural form of resolution. it's an out of touch optimism that wrenches itself out of reality 2 make room for bliss. viewers are moved between somewhat heavy handed scenes about race (South Asian diasporic tension meets fash 80s white nationalism & something very British at that) and heavier handed scenes about capitalism but ultimately, everything returns to the laundrette--its beauty, its grace, its huge and unnecessary neon sign. u can disappear in this perfect laundromat, it seems to say. 

the plot of this film at one point becomes that two gay men have spent too much money renovating a laundrette and have to figure out how to pay it back (lol! classic!! we love it).  this conflict resolves very quickly, however, and we return to the central tensions of difference--the three-pronged romeo & juliet scenario that is so impossible neither party looks to place the label "love" on what they're feeling. for both men, the laundrette is a ticket out of the middle class that requires 24/7 vigilance (& direct acts of violent oppression, too, we see in Johnny kicking the man asleep on one of the benches). it's like any other act of existing in a higher bracket of privilege than society is ready to afford you.  i guess the primary way of reading queerness in this film is that it's the only thing that refuses to reify the nation-state & all of its socioeconomic boundaries, but there's something to be said abt how the coupling inside of queerness creates a space to uphold and build upon these ideals anyway. but i'm not goin in to that folks im just here to talk about a movie

love in this film--like a lot of its other crimes--is casual, uncommented upon. the desire is a little muted. it was strange to watch both this and the handmaiden this week--two movies w/ queer characters that don't depend on the push & pull of will-they-wont-they touches & glances. there are a few great moments of stolen kisses--when Johnny licks Omar's neck secretly in front of his skinhead friends or when the two hold hands before departing a party under the guise of bro-y connection. there's a lot of queer proximity throughout the film, part of it being all of the masculine posturing in Omar's father & uncles taking the form of sexual bragging.  but ultimately there is a loudness to everything but the sex in this movie. the first kiss is sudden and confusing for viewers but so is desire, i suppose, especially when it operates against all of the boundaries of the world

we're told Omar's father is a socialist but he's mostly just an asshole with ptsd and alcoholism.  the politics of characters are all over the place--pretty indecipherable.  everyone's doped out--all bombast & out of character one second and quiet the next.  tonally, it's hard to know what this movie wanted me to feel and maybe that's the point.  it's a world w/ no good options.  we learn that love is either impossible or, simply put, transactional financial security.  that hate is a more vibrant unifier and agent of change.  that homosexuality isn't even enough of a consideration to be named or spoken of.  that laundrettes are hard to run and seem like low return financial ventures yet Omar's trying to get more of them???  the more Omar works on the laundromat, the more he becomes entrenched in and indebted to the ideals of his family.  & as the laundromat is the thin veneer under which he may reasonably spend time w/ his lover (all sex becoming workplace tangential), these modes & ideals dictate how he speaks to Johnny.  the movie closes abruptly (only 90 minutes), with another tonal shift letting us know everything will be ok but as long as the joy Johnny & Omar experience together happens inside the fucked microcosm of the laundrette, Margaret Thatcher wins.  may my 2 cents reign w/ the same ignorant authority.

i finished my beautiful laundrette thirsty for more TV & thought it finally time to put on the newest season of love island.  my beloved friend sondy's coworker will be appearing at some point during the season, so i am committed to supporting her in this trying endeavor of keeping up w/ love island--a show that airs 5x a week (a part time job if u will).  if u thought the microcosm of a launderette loaded w/ all the chaos of 80s British politics provided a stressful & wild underpinning for complicated love, u r really gonna blow ur top when u hear 2020 COVID fash implosion USA's love island is in fact a Vegas rooftop, overlooking our nation's stalled miniempire of expensive deflated thrills.  as devoted readers of my blog know, i recently went to vegas to experience a little love island of my own (a couple thousand ppl vying for the love being exuded from mariah carey's distinguished vocal chords) and since have received about 1400 emails from The Venetian Hotel aggressively advertising their great rates while the world around them burns.  temptation island? certainly. but love island no.

in its first episode, love island is a show where people are expected to look at each other and know instantly they have found love. five women stand in a pool of shallow water on a vegas rooftop--a doomsday scenario of sorts--awaiting their five suitors' arrival.  women are told to step forward if a man emerges from the "tunnel" (from where? we ask, looking at the bounds of the roof) who they'd like to couple up with, but no one ever does.  both parties stand mostly in silence.  sometimes the women take a pity step but the men are easily able to choose which woman they find the hottest without their guidance. perhaps the boldest takeaway of the first 20 minutes of love island is that all men--no matter how reality show perfect--are duds. repeatedly the host asks woman contestants why they didn't step forward.  small excuses like "he doesn't have facial hair" or "i don't like tattoos" are given in moments of dire panic by a group of women, who, even for how shallow the show wants them to be, join the rest of the world in being unable to picture the perfect or even a lovable man.  who are you waiting for?  the host asks again and one woman answers "a greek god." 

the host gives each man the opportunity to steal someone else's already-claimed girl while the disappointed women's eyes fill w/ panic as the men scan the crowd.  no one is safe on love island.  i can't help imagining myself--ME--on love island.  5 perfectly chiseled and outgoing men, 5 women w/ disney eyes who can't stop giggling, & me, a cartoon character of a human who has the vivacity of a comfort shoe.  one day i will make my reality tv debut, but in the meantime i crawl ever-closer to age 28--a kiss of death 2 my real(ity) youth.

the easiest way to make someone lose their mind might be to lock them in some kind of confined space and then repeatedly change the rules that govern their confinement.  love island producers know this and have perfected the craft.  contestants are immediately made insecure with the addition of a sixth man once everyone has paired up.  it is announced that he will steal someone's girl at the end of the next 24 hours.  psychotically, love island is equipped only with enough beds for couples to share.  our sixth man, alone in his bed, stares sadly into the distance as night falls. the other couples all sleep as far away from each other as possible on opposite ends of the beds.  somehow i am still watching this tv show even though the announcer is like a radio dj without any of the softening measures of airhorn blasts or fake crowd sound effects and i can't find distinguishing enough characteristics to remember anyone's names or faces.  two women who look exactly alike hug each other & tell each other how beautiful they are.  some men confess they've been spending more time getting to know each other than the ladies.  one couple is immediately friendzoned and there's a blatant racism underpinning everyone's choices that i am not prepared to unpack.  yes, even love island replicates the violent flaws of the world.

whether laundrette or rooftop, no space is truly a sanctuary for perfect love.  what we do know, however, is that hardship is the true breeding ground  for its escapist whims & distracting feelings.  perhaps it is no better time than covid to be locked on a roof with six sexy potential suitors.  i leave u with these thoughts as i attempt 2 cleanse love island from my mind.  have a lovely sunday.

mariah thoughts

Mariah telling us "no."

i dont know how 2 properly describe my love for mariah carey & have struggled for years.  folks,  when i listen 2 her sing, i am suspended in the spacetimecontinuum...an astronaut peacefully separated from the spacecraft, floatin away in the impossibility of octave jumps & whistled trills, high on hearing.  every note is a feeling 2 roll around in, in utero once again or strangled by what clda been. when u follow a diva, too, u feel electrified by the highs & lows of her career.  every moment operates at the precipice of comeback or defeat.  mariah's music has always had a bit of triumph embedded w/in which is maybe the easiest way 2 obtain me as eternal fan--underdog narrative.

the story goes as follows:  when mariah carey the album was released in 1990, the teenaged mariah was touted as both a new standard in the industry and a girl of questionable ability hiding behind the safety of studio recordings.  backed by a 1.5 million recording budget for the s/t, carey was championed by SONY head tommy motolla who assured the then-18-year-old he'd make her the next madonna or MJ.  for carey, whose childhood had been rough but filled w/ desire for this exact kind of success, this was too good 2 b true.  the world found this same kind of impossibility in carey's five-octave voice (especially when coupled w/ inexhaustible songwriting talents that have kept mariah in the billboard 100) & critics didn't believe that she was more than a studio artist.  after her second album dropped, mariah booked an appearance on mtv unplugged to assuage the haters.  until then, carey had insisted that the stress of touring would strain her voice, making only small appearances at award shows.  carey's unplugged episode led to a #1 single and became the most replayed unplugged episode on mtv for good reason--she had the pipes.

in the background, carey wed to motolla (twenty years her senior) whose emotional abuse would come to light years later.  fans have pieced together clues from more personal tracks--especially those on butterfly, carey's sixth album & the one she's deemed her magnum opus.  butterfly's strong venture into r&b, which motolla had kept carey from pursuing in the past, continues threads from daydream and pushes carey further into a genre-bending hybridization which revolutionized pop charts and provided her with the underpinnings of her biggest comeback--still to come.  one could say without this reinvention, carey would have been left in the 90s.

flash forward to 2001 and carey's soundtrack for her film glitter has released on 9/11, completely eclipsed by the tragedy of the day.  glitter's throwback flourishes were genius but ahead of their time & rumors of revenge by motolla, the general political/emotional climate, and carey's own mental health struggles, coupled with a movie that's basically a star is born set in 1983 (though isn't that terrible), resulted in a record that would drag carey's career down to its lowest depths.  i used to say "if mariah can get through glitter, we can make it through anything."

my extremely correct opinion is that glitter is full of fantastic vocal performances from mariah and a real treat for fans who wanted to hear mariah experiment a little, especially in the styles she grew up listening to/singing.  i think "didn't mean to turn you on" slaps & "lead the way" makes me cry--the ending man!!  i love mariah's lifelong friendship w/ da brat & i think they've always had great chemistry, so the loverboy remix is one of my all-time bops.  it's crazy when you listen to "if we" & know about the rumors that motolla manufactured jlo's "i'm real" to co-opt its initial backing sample.  heinous!!!  if you watch the infamous video of mariah showing up to TRL on the brink of breakdown, she walks onstage right after carson daily finishes airing "i'm real" w/ a "loverboy" tshirt & cart full of ice cream.  a few minutes in she says "all i want is one day off."  in 2018, carey would explain that during this period she was diagnosed with bipolar 2.  her hospitalization immediately following the TRL incident further tarnished her reputation as a "viable" pop star

carey's next album is one of my favorites, though many seem to hold it in even worse regards than glitter.  charmbracelet was released in 2002 to little fanfare & it's lead single "through the rain" a ballad about perserverence had very little chart presence.  i found charmbracelet during a time where i just wanted music 2 lull (suffocate?) me in2 some other sphere.  i used 2 listen to "my saving grace" as loud as i could while lying on the carpeted floor of the otherwise unstaffed office building i worked at, interrupted only by the ding of a UPS guy opening the front door.  "giving me strength when i / almost lost it all / catching my every fall"  charmbracelets r like nostalgia arsenals & this one is filled w/ the usual heartbreak, coping, redemption, diss tracks that mariah is known for--lush, luxurious even in its pain & always in its pleasure.  charmbracelet feels a little too safe at times, the act of someone really needing to have an album that erases the wild desires of glitter.  but it's not a bad album--not at all.  (it's worth mentioning, too, that the 00s occurred during mariah's 30s perhaps one of the trickiest transitional periods for female singers who have been "sexy" at any point--further complicating all matters.)

where does this lead us?  mariah of course returns to the billboard charts with a string of hits in the mid-00s, including 2005's "we belong together" which spent 14 weeks at number one.  she gets married, has kids, eventually faces a high profile divorce.  later in the decade, people begin to criticize her voice.  after years of overperforming--what carey had originally been afraid of--she gives some bad performances, mostly after insane back-to-back scheduling or while singing outside in east coast December weather, wearing the sexy outfits she can't seem to shirk.  justice for mariah carey might be that she gets to perform in her sweats after 30 years of hot but uncomfortable stage wear.  but she is a diva, she will wear a gown until she dies.

when i listen 2 a mariah track, it somehow feels underpinned by all i have written here.  what does it mean that this voice can still hit the high notes, has a record of what it's done before that can't be erased in spite of all of the nitpicking & vitriol from critics?  when you love a diva, u live to see her redeemed.  u wonder if each new single will have the potential to work against time--to chart in spite of the way that pop charts thirst for youth while mining the trends & sounds of the past.

seeing mariah in vegas had been a dream for a few years, not only because vegas seemed like the only reasonable place for me to allow this completely inane obsession to flourish but because i'd never gotten the chance to see mariah live.  we sat in our seats 30 rows back, which each cost more than i make in a day and a half of work, & waited breathlessly for mariah to arrive.  she was an hour late after a mild dress snafu.  a tailor had been attempting to rehem it.  everything that went wrong was a crime done to mariah by cesar's palace, including the too ornate crystal-studded glass of water ("they can't just get me a regular glass") and the too hot tea ("cesar's palace is trying to burn me").  our diva had arrived. we blame cesar for everything!!!

where do i start?  after that extremely gay remix of "butterfly" that appears at the end of butterfly, mariah walked out singing "emotions," an opener that refuses the haters a single moment of vindication.  "emotions" ends with an unfurling crescendo of whistle register, a sound finally--after all the anticipatory description--given to the titular emotion.  mariah seemed to hit these notes effortlessly, though from far away it was difficult to tell if anything was being lipsynced.  at this point in the concert, an usher came to tell us that standing was not allowed in our section of the theater.  we boldly headed to the first section of seats to scope out a place we could properly enjoy ourselves.

what came next?  my brain is addled, but the one-two punch of "can't let go" & "make it happen" arrived soon after & i absolutely lost it.  mariah teased "underneath the stars" saying "the lambs might know this one" & me & all the gay men in the front row shrieked until hoarse.  at every mariah show, a given--a gay man in the front row, a dyke in the 15th.  at some point an usher approached us to ask to see our tickets, & i told him that i needed to be somewhere we could dance.  i had traveled all the way from kansas.  channeling my inner mariah paid off & we were allowed 2 remain in the illicit $200+ seat section.  god blessed the lambily that night, my dear readers.

the only track mariah pulled out from caution, her newest, was "a no no," which is the inevitable result of having so many #1 hits you can't even perform them all in concert.  we love watching mariah wag her finger at us!  tell us no one more time!!!  the list of things we say no to has already turned into a scroll--the authority of the ushers, those who don't know all the words, Las Vegas (in general), $140 tickets, men who glare at their wives having fun, the lack of time for more outfit changes, mariah not singing "the roof" even though we need it.  a duet with her keyboardist of "#beautiful" caused me to literally die & a paramedic in the form of mariah's angelic whistling intertwined w/ the savory vox of the piano man revived me at the track's end.  i was glad to be back alive in time to witness a medley of songs--crybaby, honey, i'm that chick, say something, breakdown.  i am certainly missing something.  heartbreaker?  we were given lines or melodies--30 second snippets.  cean & i had an absolute meltdown when she did not finish "crybaby" to the end--one of the best cacophonies of sound i've ever lived inside--yet we understood.  she can only sing so much--a voice, a person.  when we force mariah carey to sing, we tap into a natural resource which is not easily replenished & can never return to its original form.  guiltily i wonder what a 3 hour mariah concert would look like.  what kind of gems would be unearthed.  after hearing the rest of the setlist i felt truly blessed to have witnessed "can't let go"--a sappy ballad that starts off "there you are [choir cuts in] HOLDING HER HAND" that only reached #2.  she favors newer tracks that engage with a hip hop/r&b sound.  she doesn't do "vision of love" & i weep because "vanishing" would have sounded so good solo w/ the pianist.

alas, there is so much to enjoy, we cannot dwell in the what-ifs.  everything is beautiful--genuinely.  the gown turned in2 a leotard which lingered until it was hidden by a long coat made of boa, swapped eventually for another gown.  was there a third gown?  mariah closed out her set singing "hero" in an undeniably pink dress, its color one i've only ever seen in lipstick.  she was always flanked by 4 male dancers, who first adorned the stage in baggy white suits with white top hats and later dressed down into a vest and pants combo that looked a little Waiter at an Italian Restaurant.  at one point, the men enter the audience & grab four superfans to dance in front of--no one grabs me because i don't look like i want one of these vested men to give me a lapdance to "touch my body."  fair enough.  a gay man who earlier had his YASS hand-painted fan snatched by the elusive chanteuse herself is plucked to the stage & cannot believe it.  we all live vicariously through his spiraling joy.  for all of the comic & corny glitz of arena background videos, especially after observing miranda lambert's a few weeks before, mariah's set mostly looked strikingly classy.  everything was velvet & diamonds.  timeless, just like mariah.

in vegas, people have this zombielike stupor, desperately wandering the streets looking for fun.  everyone's tired and sweaty, corralled by the insanity of the authoritative sidewalks.  some wind up at these concert residencies, ready 2 experience the greatest pop hits of the past--aerosmith, shania twain, cher, something familiar.  most members of the crowd are not mariah superfans, in fact they'd likely forgotten many of these songs had been mariah-penned or maybe forgotten the songs altogether.  fandom is a kind of insidious thing, certain people's brains & hearts better poised for an infection of undying & all-consuming love.  a stupid passion.  inevitably the audience was mostly those who wound up at the concert as one might walk into jimmy buffet's margaritaville.  for these fans, the artifice, the skill, the history--it's not there; mariah could just as well be a movie, the circus, the wax museum, a fountain that starts on fire (?).  for the rest of us, we have found some kind of absolutely braindead solace in our worship of a woman we can never know appearing before us.  we are here to watch her prove she still has a voice, can draw a crowd.  mariah leaves the stage and returns walking through the aisle next to us--only a few feet away.  for a minute, i see her real face, the real way her body moves, the way her cheeks do kind of have this natural glisten, even if it's half facial filler and half $1k concealer.  it's too uncanny valley.  i scream when she returns to the stage, right where she belongs.

miranda lambert at the sprint center

miranda lambert at the sprint center was a grand display of the finest boots in kansas city.  my friend grace & i were no exception.  pic of our boots forthcoming...  we arrived fairly early after ambling around kc's ever-changing downtown where vacant old factory buildings r becoming high rises hidden behind billboards advertising techn9ne concerts in the blink of a very steady & slow midwestern eye.  much like me, kc's downtown glows with the promise of all-night fun but mostly shuts down around 10pm.  u cannot deny its (our) charm.

the last concert i wrote about on my fantastic pulitzer award-winning blog was mary j. blige & truly sometimes it seems miranda's music follows mary's like god's fingers touching adam's on the sistine chapel ceiling (most of the music i listen 2).  where mary j's songs dwell in the reflection stage, looking ever ahead in triumph and dignity, miranda gives a little look back to the past w/ real, human spite.  simply existing, we learn that vengeance is the aftertaste of being wronged.  in probably her best known song, she sings, "cant get revenge and keep a spotless reputation / sometimes revenge is a choice u gotta make"  miranda pens "petty bitch anthems" w/ a graceful hand that lolls in country's wordplay but refuses to idle on a beach, in the back of a car, on the porch.  they r songs of action--a relentless desire that electrifies, its tendrils strangling our common sense.  they r songs of heartbreak or nostalgia that tug at yr heart until u fall in2 a collective but restless mourning.  they r songs, of course, of revenge.

i am a miranda lambert fan because, like mary, her voice carries a really vibrant grit.  the tune carries a feeling as much as the words.  it's a voice built for sorrow as much as redemption.  it knows how 2 turn suffering in2 a public display & in doing so, we r invited 2 join along.  as i am leaving the sprint center a nearby husbo remarks that her voice isn't as good as carrie's (underwood) & my friend has to quiet me as i begin to shit talk 2 high heavens.  it's not about the technical proficiency!!!  call me when carrie's protagonists aren't just slippin their abusive husbands a lil poison in the cocktail; miranda's got us out there on the stoop w/ gun loaded & thousands of women stand alongside her screaming "if he wants a fight well now he's got one he ain't seen me crazy yet".  if ur husband cannot recognize the difference between these two singers please leave him at home!!!

miranda's openers were one soft hot country boy w/ chiseled abs & then, as my friend grace pointed out, a band that looked like that man's band cryogenically aged 15 years.  they of course rocked but as much as rock is intoxicating, they simply were not the miranda lambert i had been waiting 2 hear.  when miranda took the stage we all went absolutely hog.  the three college girls sitting in front of us who had been chaotically snapchatting about 5 selfies a minute immediately stood & put their phones (mostly) away.  this is the raw power of miranda lambert.  miranda was wearing a western shirt w/ pink fringe & a snakeskin pattern etched in fragile gold, exhaustingly hot frayed black denim shorts, black boots, fish nets.  what do u wear when u r ready 2 reveal ur greatest flaws & desires & fantasies--reader, look no further.

i don't know if miranda is one of the best performers i've ever seen, but she puts on a show in the smilin' & stompin' department & so i will always be in attendance for a good time.  her new album has some tracks of frankly strange arrangement.  "mess with my head" is a little like an 80s pop song, "track record" has beachy riffs that are like indie surf rock 2009 (country is always about 10 years behind in the pop dept).  miranda is sick & lets the audience know--she's never shied away from the opportunity to be vulnerable, in fact her music is driven by it.  her songs are proud to be made of feelings.  her actions hold them w/ the greatest esteem.  she sings well in spite of a setback bc her voice comes from its root.

she plays a rendition of baggage claim that ends w/ that "i'm feelin' alright" song, following a cover of "say you love me." she pulls out classics like "white liar" & "kerosene" & "mama's broken heart" which make me scream.  "all kinds of kinds" has a dog slideshow & during "all comes out in the wash" a shirtless man drifts amidst the bubble suds.  "gunpowder & lead" has an anime-style animation where a woman is poised & ready for what comes next.  i would kill 2 b miranda's graphic designer.  "pretty bitchin" is an anthem for minor victories, "all comes out in the wash" an ode to small mistakes.  "the house that built me" causes the sprint center to glow by smartphone light, as tears fill everyone's eyes.  u can't go home again but u can build a monument 4 everything you've left in the past.  we r here kneeling at its feet, our next move inches from our fingers.

little women (2019), under the tuscan sun (2003)

the newest little women is a movie about how women maybe don't have to marry (though we are given the meta treatment on this) or could marry happy but will be poor, or will die alone & innocent or i guess the fourth option is to marry stupid & have things all turn out in your favor by sheer luck.  there's maybe an ambient fifth option floating around, becoming marmee, a woman seething w/ imperceptible anger played by laura dern in the rare role that doesn't give her a chance to break down in hysterics. at one pt dern turns to laurie, urging him to call her marmee, invites the audience, too, to treat her as mom. teat 4 the world.  marmee's absent & dull husband who is given more scorn in the novel is played by bob odenkirk (?) & might as well be a bag of potatoes w/ some sideburns.

someone says their friend is thankful that little women is finally given the ending it deserves, perhaps alluding to the VERY 19th ct feminist take on domestic affairs, love, etc., but the ending it most deserves is probably one that comes w/ the grit of real life.  we get a lush fantasyscape in which the middling talents of every march sister flourish in providing for the next generation.  all of the narrative tragedy of little women is always too muted, coated in the bliss of happy family, a zone devoid of trauma and full of security in spite of professions of the opposite.  for straight women the ultimate ending is maybe to be shown that they don't have to settle for a wooden toothed thousandaire, that they themselves could one day be the thousandaire.  jo gives a dramatic speech about the perils of a life without a husband, how she is filled w/ dire loneliness.  i want 2 to know why she doesn't just make some fuckin friends.

its maybe a Homosexual trait to be born knowing that you'll die alone & have every romantic interlude be some sort of wild diversion in an illegal paradise.  dying alone is among the best scenarios that could befall one truly in a world where coupledom and marriage are the sites of the greatest violence against women.  in under the tuscan sun, which i watched a few hours after little women, a lesbian played w/ clunky tact & aggressive style (berets, leather, suspenders) by sandra oh spends a total of two onscreen minutes mourning the loss of her partner who has abandoned her then falls happily in2 motherhood.  here is where we remember laura dern, an utterly zen look on her face masking the complete exhaustion & rage, "i'm angry every day of my life"  marriage is a curse, is motherhood any better?

some say being an artist is like being a mother.  would louisa may alcott agree?  releasing your work into the world after caring for it so deeply.  this is kind of like calling your dog your son but whatever it's complicated.    there are so many wink & a nod moments when gerwig zooms out & looks at the way narratives were crafted in 19th century America.  some cranky publisher says no one would ever want 2 read this story about an UNMARRIED WOMAN LIKE JO  meanwhile every woman who has ever read little women has identified w/ jo so strongly that they would sooner die than have to be an Amy or Beth or Rhonda or whoever the hell the other women are.  we can't even remember their names.  gerwig holds up a mirror but also isn't willing to do a fast forward to jo living our her days like emily dickinson straggly grey hair 2 her ass refusing 2 leave the house except 2 go 2 the bread baking competition, nightgowns stained w period blood, bed filled w crumbs.  heaven.

under the tuscan sun, which we watch because one of my favorite people loves it, is also a movie about women's desperation to find love & the narratives we are told 2 cling 2 in the face of love being revealed as impossible, busted, or just kinda gross.  at one point the cartoonishly horny (the only way middle aged women r allowed 2 experience sexuality in films like these) protagonist frances has finally gotten some passionate d after years of her own wooden toothed thousandaire exhusbo and wildly slides down the side of a muddy hill in chase of the car of her italian lover.  she will do anything 2 find the love that is guaranteed 2 cure her suffering.  at the end of the movie, i think a man reminds her she has everything she needs.  get bent loser!!!

does jo have a lot in common with frances?  yeah, they're writers, don't need anybody but themselves, risk takers, etc.  we've heard this one before.. society keeps telling em "you need a man" even tho theyve got that gut feelin' every woman is born with... ("all women are lesbians" -jill johnston)   "write what you know" is eternally in vogue so you'll be hard pressed to find a story like one of these that doesn't feature a writer.  it's a great occupation if you don't want your protagonist to have any earthly responsibilities or need to deliver some cosmic burns or give them something to live for outside of marriage that is then complicated by marriage.  but they're women working against the conventions of their time, which r of course the same.  nothing much changes in the apocalyptic pastpresentfuture time collapse of heterosexuality (lol sorry).  anyyywayyy I'm looking fwd 2 the next little women adaptation where marmee is just played by a roomba in some sexy lingerie, jo's a real dyke, the dad's a bag of potatoes, meg gets in2 improv so no1 will marry her. beth goes to CVS for the antibiotics, amy cheats on laurie w/ a guy who won't return her calls.  period pieces are beautiful traps, invitations 2 forget abt the world for an hour or two.  romantic comedies r like snorting buzzfeed articles.  can't complain either way.  cotton candy 4 the soul. 

wong kar-wai & feelings time

i am watching movies made by wong kar-wai which have made me think a lot about the duration of a feeling and its quantifiable potential--this could be called something like "feelings time."  does a period of happiness carry as much significance as, say, the period that is an hour?  equally abstract though the former tugs you in & out of a span understood viscerally.  inside the depths of a feeling, one is unable to pay attention to most time anyway, lost in love or sorrow.  no1 wears a watch at the pinnacle of a feeling, the place where it is most vivid & inescapable.  there r certainly no alarms, calendars, nothing more pressing than whatever rushes of good or bad capture us.

in the mood for love gives a sense of the way we piece together past time via a feeling.  the way snippets of love r sometimes all that survive from a period of greater stress & activity.  we craft a porous yet durable quilt from our most vivid emotions.  we find any time they were extinguished or nurtured or revived.  a year potentially known only for its brushes with love becomes a unit of time composed entirely by feeling.  we might forget things (whether consciously or unconsciously) that take away from this emotion's vividness or dissuade us of its power or stranglehold.  the emotion is in charge of our memory, thought, doing whatever it wants w/ it.  i love the first half of this movie, how the viewer chugs through the endless start and stop of love's first moments.  how they r all that survive from this period &, possibly, all that is worth saving.  love's past brushes--no matter how painful, fruitless, or flung out of space--making future longing impossible & possible all in one.  history repeats itself--that's about feelings, too.

i have a watch i wear to work most days which is part of a costume i wear--that of a servant 2 regular time, the boring kind, the one that has no feelings at all.  when i am at work, part of my job is to respect the boundaries of things like seconds and minutes and even the surreal 5-day work week.  i know deeply what it means to have a monday or a thursday--identical periods of time that will yield wildly different experiences.  that a month could contain some certain element, sectioned off of the rest of the world, is impossible but i, too, have calendars.

feelings time has the same unpredictability of regular time--that identical "units" could be felt in completely different ways.  this is perhaps why it is the best alternate measure to regular clock-oriented time telling or the one we most readily adopt when our memory traces our pasts.  love will never be identical, though might burn w/ the same bodily parameters.  some periods of depression are completely arresting, others produce great art.  the feeling of sadness, sometimes stops one in its tracks or other times that same kind of minor ticking.  these can go on for months of years, vivid sensations sometimes burning out much quicker than the things which we dully carry with us from day to day.  feelings that r bland in their familiarity being the ones that we r most afraid to have leave us--common happiness, faded love, quiet anger w/ the world.

chungking express lives, too, in feelings time.  & the feeling that rules is, again, love--the iron fist whose fingers grow like weeds.  a birthday not complete without the rush of acknowledgement, understanding, infatuation.  a year that passes composed entirely of longing; we don't need its particulars--we know exactly what this looks like (how this feels).  wong kar-wei's sunglasses-filtered worlds could not tell u what time it is.  they have beautiful clocks & calendars which may as well read the same time over & over again.  we r foolish in love--the groundhog's day scenario that we allow 2 derail us w/ the same blissful wonder every time.  dissolved in its warmth, we r careful students of tests we can never pass but probably would never want to.

in the mood for love, kar-wei says in an interview i watch, features foods which tip off the viewer to the time of year.  we are given glimpses of an exterior world--coats, rain from beyond hallways, seasonal vegetables on the table.  yes a sense of time's passing but ultimately time has no real authority against feeling.  snow can stop the mail but getting rid of love is literally excising some physical sensation from oneself--an impossibility.  chungking express's soft, boozy atmosphere makes the viewer feel uncertain of the world altogether--trapped in chaotic bursts of people then alone again, at work, in one's apartment, at bars.  "alone" is a feeling that people don't necessarily fix.  a world this hazy and uncertain is one in which we inevitably retreat inside ourselves looking for the feelings that will remedy the burden of having a body & moving about.  time's monotony--its rules & regulations--are part of this withdrawal.  we can trust only the felt, as these other measures r so ready to betray us.  to trap us in traincars and commitments.

as 4 me, i have no respect 4 time & will watch as many movies in a day as i please.  off 2 watch another wong kar-wai film...

im goin downnnnnnnn

i have not blogged in a while cos dang it has been a crazy month for me, with a vacation, a mary j blige concert, 2 of my best friends comin 2 visit, a fellowship application (gag me w/ lottery tickets folks), lots of practicing with my new band jelly, & EVEN MORE hangin' out!!!  i have been blessed this summer with the gift of many new friendships & have been tryna ride this wave.  lucky 2 have figured out how to live in a city i never fully got 2 kno until this past year & 2 have been engulfed in a mess of weirdo geniuses who respect me even tho im a plainclothes freak.

i would be remiss if a review of the mary j blige concert i attended early this month did not appear on my blog.  this was my THIRD mjb concert & i can't even begin 2 describe how much these r SPIRITUAL experiences.  mjb is there 2 soothe & process alongside her attendees.  if u have a broken spirit, broken man, broken sense of self--u will leave knowing the next step forward.  mary always takes a moment 2 pause & rap w/ the audience.  some perfect moment just as you feel yr heart might give out from shuffling in the aisle 2 cyclical tales of love heartbreak disappointment redemption.  sometimes people tell me i am good at giving advice but i feel that maybe everything i've learned about giving advice has come from mary j blige? "enough cryin" is one of my favorites in this regard--"I've gotta be out my mind to think I / need someone to carry me" there's venom but it's the kind of venom where you don't even wanna bother w/ the past.  what's there to look back on?  i've done enough cryin cryin cryin sings mary waving her hand at the gnats of her past that are tryna get some time w/ her certainty in the future.  ugh she nearly opened w/ this & i was not ready.  this was one i had not seen live yet.

arriving at the concert, my sister & i were greeted by westboro baptist protestors who frequent a lot of random stuff here.  they're a little bored & they're from nearby--it's kinda like when neighbors stop by your grill n chill & can't hang w/ the preexisting vibe.  they'd apparently listed the mjb show on their website as a very sinful event in need of protesting.  some held signs that said "eat your children."  my sister rolled down the window & yelled "we're gay, we're sisters, & we're married" our favorite joke being that we are both sisters & wives which is especially not funny if you're my mother & you have to listen to the beautiful song we sing to one another "my sister my wife." anyway at one point mary was excising the suffering from my soul with her razor-sharp wailing in "im goin down"  in front of a sick flame graphic.  these must have been the hellfires the wbc was warning about.  that said, the thigh-high glittery black boots mary wore throughout the show (throughout her 4 outfit changes) were truly an act of sacrament & mjb's entrance into heaven is imminent & mandatory. 

mjb's music is powerful because it creeps in2 yr body, possesses u w/ emotion.  her vocals dare U 2 quake & quiver like her heart.  she is always crying, always thankful.  she can't believe we've come to her concert, we can't believe she has decided to impart this wisdom.  if you're a mary j blige fan, you have been through some shit.  you are at the mjb show because you are ready to heal.  you are also at the mjb show because you want to fuckin dance.  we are all getting it in the outdoor airconditioned zoo ampitheater because doing anything else would be grand disrespect.  it doesn't matter if you're good at dancing or if you just like to tap your foot, sitting down is a disgrace.  even the boyfriends & husbands get up at certain points.  if you don't know the words you probably feel a little left out.  but how can u not know the words?  u have been here before.  if u havent had a not gon cry im not gon cry im not gon shed my tears moment you should not be at the mary j blige concert u sld b at the weird al show tomorrow night that a few of my friends r going to hit me up if u need somebody to go w/

anyway i could write a million more words abt mjb but i really have to go use the bathroom that's all folks

the kinds of dreams you have when you're sleeping in somebody else's bed

i am housesitting for two friends i see almost every week so it feels both strange & not strange at all to be using their shower, cooking with their pans, playing their piano, sleeping in their bed.  while i sometimes forget where i am as i go about daily activities, at night i am all too aware.  i had one dream where i was attempting to rearrange furniture, another where we had permanently traded beds, and a third where i struggled to cook an egg, cracking it directly onto the burner of the stove rather than into the pan which sat a few inches away.  in this last dream, my friend charlie flawlessly cooked an omelette right next to me as i made the unconscionable gaffe.  

in general, my dreams are far more likely to err on the side of domestic, laborious, believable, etc. than fantastic.  i often dream i am at work writing emails and answering questions or at home struggling with large loads of laundry.  these dreams are far more nightmarish & exhausting than ones where i'm falling off a cliff or committing a great crime, since they extend the monotony of my day into my precious hours of sleep.  that said, they have nothing on the ones where i'm fighting with an ex or being emotionally destroyed by my mother.  

my favorite type of dream is one where i've created an artwork i can replicate in real life, though it also falls--complicatedly--into the category of dreams that i cannot stand (which is also, unfortunately, most of the dreams i've already mentioned): dreams which play out real-life scenarios and leave me with a sense of confusion about their reality upon waking.  sleeping in someone else's bed seems to make me hyper-aware of the fact that i'm a person in a house--i fall asleep knowing i am in a room, in a bed, going to sleep, physically immersed in the spatial & sensory differences.  my dreams are then almost inevitably set inside the house, it all makes sense.  but i'm a person who cannot always determine what is real & what is not, easy to lure into a different reality & ready to live there interminably.  i wake concerned i'll be spending all day cleaning the stovetop or moving my own bed back into my house.

it's maybe a little different when you're sleeping in someone's bed with them.  you feel protected from the strangeness of the room, or understand it better.  though sometimes it's amplified.  the last person i dated was a restless sleeper and her whole bedroom seemed to absorb this energy, radiating it back into whomever inhabited the bed.  certain things, too--the bay of windows that sometimes meant we awoke naked and in perfect view of a woman in the garden, or the fact that there was a large loom in the dining room which i would bang into every time i went to the bathroom--kept me very alert of my surroundings, in spite of spending so many nights there.

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.