Home

To my elders,

The Graduate and Garden State are two of my favourite movies. They are two generations movie monuments to figuring out who you are and what it feels like to be in your 20s. And I think both are relevant today. In entirely different and yet strikingly similar ways. The Graduate is about figuring out the post university what-do-I-do-now-and-is-this-really-what-makes-me-an-adult? and, you know, having an affair with a 45 year old Anne Bancroft, while Garden State asks what makes somewhere home and someone family. And to some degree examines questions of agency in one's own life. And, you know, is full of witty dialogue like "Don't make fun of my hobbies. I don't make fun of you for being an asshole." And both have amazing sound tracks. I am a Big Simon and Garfunkel fan.

The song "Home" by Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros is interesting as well.

"Alabama, Arkansas, I do love my ma and pa

But not the way I do love you.

Well, holy moly, me-oh-my, you're the apple of my eye

Girl, I never loved one like you.

Man, oh man, you're my best friend, I'll scream it to the nothingness

There ain't nothing that I need.

Well, hot and heavy, pumpkin pie, chocolate cake and Jesus Christ

There ain't nothin' please me more than you.

Ah home, let me go home

Home is wherever I'm with you.

Oh home, let go me home

Home is wherever I'm with you.

Hoh!

Hoh!

Hoh hoh!

La, la, la, la, take me home

Mother, I'm comin' home.

I'll follow you into park, through the jungle, through the dark

Girl, I never loved one like you

Moats and boats and waterfalls, alley way and pay-phone calls

I've been everywhere with you, Yes! That's true.

Laugh until we think we'll die, barefoot on a summer night

Never could be sweeter than with you

And in the street we're runnin' free like it's only you and me

Jeez, you're somethin' to see

Oh home, let me come home

Home is wherever I'm with you

Oh home, yes, I am home

Home is when I'm alone with you

La, la, la, la, take me home

Daddy, I'm comin' home.

Jane, Alexander.

Do you remember that day you fell out of my window?

I sure do, you came jumpin' out after me

Well, you fell on the concrete and nearly broke your ass

And you were bleedin' all over the place and I rushed you off to the hospital

You remember that?

Yes, I do

Well, there's somethin' I never told you about that night,

What didn't you tell me?

While you were sittin' there in tha backseat smokin' a cigarette you though was gonna be you last

I was fallin' deep, deeply in love with you and I never told you 'til just now.

Home, let me come home

Home is wherever I'm with you

Oh home, yes I am home

Home is when I'm alone with you

Home, let me come home

Home is wherever I'm with you

Oh home, yes I am home

Home is when I'm alone with you

Alabama Arkansas

I do love my ma and pa

Moats and boats and waterfalls

Lay awake 'til break of dawn

Home is wherever I'm with you

Home is when I'm alone with you."

And then there is the cliche "Home is where the heart is." Because that is far more eloquent than "Home is where you keep all your crap and where you eventually just kind of start calling home, regardless of how you really feel about the actual four walls." Garden State said that "It's like you feel homesick for a place that doesn't even exist. ... I don't know, but I miss the idea of it, you know. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people that miss the same imaginary place."

I don't think I ever had any better definitions for what Home means, but it was a feeling. It is the place you miss, more than anywhere else, when you are away. When you are anywhere else. Its the geographical version of "I want my mommy." It is comfort, more than anything. It is the place that everywhere else gets compared to in your mind. Every other place is different than Home in whatever ways. So what do you do when the place everything gets compared to starts to change? Starts to shift? I have no answers. But it makes me sad. And I don't know if that's a good reason to go back or to stay away longer. But sometimes, in the middle of the night, walking home after a long day, when I'm feeling a little melancholy, I wonder why I chose to stay. Why I forced myself to stay. I wonder why it didn't feel right to just go home already. And I don't really know what to do now.

-K

Carrying Yourself Inside Out

To My Youngers,

I am excitable. I'm an excitable person. Maybe not excitable like what that word actually means, but excitable in that I get excited about things. And when I get excited I get, well, quite excited. I use a lot of exclamation marks! I talk more loudly! My voice goes up in pitch (like a seventeen year old boy)!

It took me a while to see it, but for a few years there I was stifling that excitement. It leaked out for sure (how could it not?) but mostly when talking to students about their art (the times I get so excited I couldn't contain it if my life depended on it. Well, maybe only if my life depended on it...). In most other ways it just seemed to get buried beneath a bunch of worries and stress and grown-up stupidness. Then I made some changes. And with those changes came a resurgence of the excitement. Music and Movies and TV started to regain their magical powers, books became engrossing again. The sun shined a little brighter, the cloudy days seemed more purposeful. I rediscovered a laugh I had forgotten I had.

And why hide that? It doesn't mean I don't take things seriously, it doesn't mean that I see the world as a permanently happy place (once again being able to appreciate melancholia without getting sad might be my favourite thing about being excitable again!), it just means I'm not apologizing for being me. And thats a pretty good place to be.

After all, your insides are who you are, why do anything other than wear them proudly?

-E

B&B from another ERA!

To my elder and younger,

Last weekend I went to visit E in her wonderful city. It was an interesting experience that involved police, thunderstorms, "bomb threats" and a B&B.

Now you'd think one of these things doesn't really belong. You'd be right, hence why I am going to talk about the thing that doesn't belong. The B&B.

We stayed in this Victoria house turned into a B&B on King Edward blvd. The owner was excentric as was the house. This Victorian built home was decorated to look like it would have in the year of its construction. Now you might think that's not that bad, but I would beg to differ. This house was over decorated, over stuffed, over populated by plants and it had an indoor stone fountain! Not my taste at all.

Yes we knew it was a Victorian place when we booked it, but I have been in numerous Victorian buildings in my travels and never have seen one so TACKY!!!! The pictures on the website were taken from angles to hide the tackiness and over-stuffed look of the house.

If this was a review of the place on a B&B review website, they would only get 1 star out of 5 for atmosphere (the A/C units in the rooms were broken, and the kitchen's stove broke after the first day) and 1 star out of 5 for the breakfast (which was the same thing every morning, and got lower quality each morning)

So other than the "Won't be staying there again" B&B, the trip was fun! (well at least it was full of excitement).

-A

Analog Love

To my elders,

"

Quick kid quick, so harsh and cynical

Touches stricken, cold and clinical

What a transformation to behold

But I don't like this new, I want the old..."

That is the opening verse to the song Happier by A Fine Frenzy.

Now, I realize that the last line there is about a person, but I am taking it to refer to life. Well, no life exactly, but how fast things change, and how much of a complete turnover has taken place over the past 10 to 15 years. When I was in high school, we passed notes in class. Because text messaging didn't exist yet. Not that we had cell phones anyway. I once told this story to an 18 year old who responded with "How old ARE you?!"

In High School, I took photography class. Film photography class. I developed my own black and white film and printed it. I even wound my own rolls of film in "the baby" (which is what our teacher called the roller. It has a picture of a baby on it. Because it was to be treated like one. Gently). It wasn't perfect and there was a lot of trial and error (especially since my light meter didn't work) and it took a long time to get a handful of good photos. You had to go with it and hope that the Dark Room Gods would smile on you and not ruin all your film. That some of the super cool photos you took would actually turn out. You couldn't just click something and check a screen. Editting involved waving your fingers between the enlarger lens and the photo paper while exposing. No two prints looked alike. It was creating art just to print a snapshot. And it isn't perfect. Far from it. Farthest from it, possibly. But analog just has so much... life in it. It is so human. I has feeling and emotion. It isn't just bits and bites and 0s and 1s (parsel tongue sudoku!!!). Its light and colour and reflection and shading and grey scale and foibles. It is dust marks and scratches and all those things that make you take note of how much time and energy and effort went into making it. Digital is too perfect.

I am not a luddite. I got a walkman in 6th grade that was waterproof, just in case. I got a discman in 10th grade when they were actually good enough to bother spending the money. I've had an iPod for 6 years. And by "an" I mean 2. I still have the first one, the buttons just don't work anymore. It is a Mini, after all. But I also have a record player and a collection ranging from jazz and swing that I inherited from my grandfather to the classic rock albums I stole from my dad's collection, the used original Ziggy Stardust I bought for 9£ in Edinburgh (which has such a huge wobble you can hear it as the record plays), to new prints of The Shins and a ridiculous collection of Less Than Jake 7" singles. Some with matching images printed into the records. My collection started with a 1$ copy of "Bridge Over Troubled Water" by Simon and Garfunkel that E and I picked up at a Value Village and has grown, mostly through used record stores, however used records stores everywhere I have ever been. I have records from quite a few of the places I have been to, and let me tell you, flying home with vinyl is not that fun. I get really worried its going to break because no one remembers what vinyl is or that it is housed in cardboard.

What really got me onto the Analog Love thing though, was Polaroid cameras. But more on that another time. For now, what you need to know is that The Impossible Project is completely awesome, Polaroids are beautiful, and that seeing the beauty in the world, in simple, mundane, regular, everday things, is worthwhile.

I don't like the new, I want the old.

-K

Eli's Coming

To My Youngers,

I'm not superstitious. Not really actually superstitious,  though I do toss spilled salt over my shoulder, knock on wood, and leave the theatre when I accidentally say Macbeth.... whats the harm? Its fun taking part in traditions, and tried and true superstitions are fun. They are part of a larger mythology, a collective mythology that brings people together. Like loving Doctor Who or singing the Fresh Prince theme-song in a foreign land, some things just make you feel like a part of the universe, they stick with you that way.

However there's a different kind of superstition that I do find incredibly intriguing: the superstition of coincidence.

Now I don't take this too seriously- I don't plan my life around whether or not a light turns green or if I hear a certain song on the radio, but I do enjoy having my own little set of coincidences (at least partially self manufactured, I'm sure) that work together to make the world seem like an ever so slightly more magical place.  Nothing has this effect more than re-discovering a long-forgotten personal mythology and suddenly seeing it everywhere. My latest is Eli.

Eli's Coming. Yes from the Three Dog Night song, but for me from Sports Night. Its one of those phrases that seeped into my brain and was something I said long after I remembered where it had come from.

Dan Rydell: Eli is something bad, a darkness.
Casey McCall: "Eli's coming. Hide your heart, girl." Eli is a inveterate womanizer. I think you're getting the song wrong.
Dan Rydell: I know I'm getting the song wrong. But, when I first heard it, that's what I thought it meant. Things stick with you that way.

The wind is blowing in from from the west, Eli's Coming. The birds are sitting on the wire, Eli's Coming. Your pets are acting weird, Eli's Coming. General strangeness with a side-order of odd, Eli's Coming. Its thunderstorms and stroppy moods, stubbing your toe and thinking fuzzy. Its tornadoes at the drive-in. Its nine different kinds of weather in a day. Its Eli.

Eli may have started out as a darkness, but over the years its become for me more about the feeling of impending Big Change. An epic shift in mood or weather or perspective or or or just... life.

On the last-day-of-my-twenties Eli was everywhere. In the wind, in the snow (in April!), in the radio, in the sneezing cats, even in friends being cavity searched at the border (I think that one was the weirdest). Eli. Marking the day as one preceding change. A day to remember.

So I went with it, I absorbed all the weirdness and enjoyed every second of it. I talked a lot and listened a lot and laughed a lot and drew and drank and decided to get a tattoo. One I had been planning for a long time (a story for another post), but one I had been putting off for equally as long for a million incredibly common and suddenly not-good-enough reasons. K has a few tattoos, and I talked to her and decided I would go visit her and get it done by her friend. Now I was already really sure about this tattoo, but of course I was a little anxious about the placement and the exactly what it was too look like and, I'll admit it, the pain... then K says "Oh it'll be fine, she's really really good. And by her I mean my tattoo artist friend. Eli."

Yep, Eli. Eli the tattoo Artist. Eli the tattoo Artist who is going to do the tattoo that I decided to get on the last-day-of-my-twenties, my Eli day. Even if that doesn't mean is was meant to be, its still pretty frickin' weird, and that enough for me!

So every time big change is on the horizon, every time there's a day full of coincidence, every time there's a storm, or a feeling, or a shift in the wind, despite what anyone tries to tell me, I know its Eli.

Sometimes things stick with you that way.

-E

Family Friendly

To my elders,

I love kids. I do. I plan on having some, someday. But I f*cking hate things that are “family friendly.” Places that are designed for children, by all means, should be geared towards children. Public parks. Children’s libraries. Chuck E Cheese. And that is great for toddlers. Toddlers should be protected. They are not capable of understanding explanations and often not even basic safety rules. But this idea that we should clean up the world of adults, that we should protect kids from what makes up the other 80% of the world, not even that, that we should pretend it doesn’t exist, is stupid and annoying. Stupid because when these kids discover it, possibly earlier than we did thanks to the internet, they will need to deal with it. Annoying because I hate censoring myself just because I am craving McDonald’s fries.

I knew all your basic swear words by the time I finished first grade. I think it took me 4 years before I ever repeated one. I didn’t understand the sex jokes on early seasons of Friends but I watched it every week anyway. And maybe these things are why I had the mouth of a sailor when I was 15. And maybe not. Because I still had a 4.0.

I warn my friends that there are small children near by at the mall when I can feel some swearing or inappropriate story coming on. The friends who tell those types of stories, however, often could care less. So why do I actually hate places that are “Family Friendly?” Because they missrepresent the world. Its like watching Leave It to Beaver and thinking that it represented family life in the 1950s accurately. It is like then trying to reconsile Leave It to Beaver with Mad Men and The Feminine Mystic and The Man In The Grey Flannel Suit and remembering that our grandfathers killed people in WWII. Or may have killed people or would have killed people if they’d made it to Europe before the War ended. Tom Rath killed 19 people. Pete Campbell got a girl pregnant the night before his wedding. The version of the world that “family friendly” portrays, the world that 1950s Americana portrayed, does not exist. “Family friendly” is like Pleasantville. It is two-dimensional. It is without real personality or complexity or interests. Or maybe Pleasantville is just where I got the idea. But I’m sick of pretense. Truth is far more interesting. Truth in its grittiness, its uneasiness, its awkwardness, its heartbreak and honesty, its beauty and joy and silliness. Its louder and dirtier and more dangerous, as Toby Maguire put it. And I like it so much more than the “family friendly.” And one day, those kids will too.

-K

The Honesty of 90s Lead-Singer Rock 'Dancing'

To My Youngers,

I am an 80s kid, I lip-synced to Madonna and Fresh Prince at sleepovers, I wore neon legwarmers, and I crimped my hair. I watched Sunday morning cartoons and was scarred by Bowie's pants in Labyrinth.  I loved Return of the Jedi best based solely on the Ewoks.

I was a kid in the 80s. But I was a teenager in the 90s, and that's when I fell in love with music.

Recently my room-mate and I went on a 90s-music-video-binge. On this particular occasion it was sparked by the mention of Train's first-time-around hit Meet Virginia, and how much better it was than their recent Hey Soul Sister. Now admittedly this opinion is largely based on Meet Virginia having a time and a place for us, a sense of nostalgia, but it is also because the lead singer just looks creepy in the newer video! No, its not because he is older, its not because he looks like a messed-up version of Uncle Jesse on Full House, its because of his dancing.

Despite their recent rebirth, Train is a 90s band. The lead singer is a 90s singer. He should dance like he's a 90s singer in a 90s band, not all choreographed and slow and smooth! The 90s, especially Alternative Rock in the 90s, was not about smooth dance moves (unless you were the Backstreet Boys, whose dance moves were... well slightly more smooth I guess?). 90s Alternative Rock 'Dancing' was all about the grab-the-mic-walk-back-and-forth. Simple? Sure. Kinda dumb looking? Usually. Honest? Most definitely. These guys were singers, not spokesmen, not fashion models, not marketing creations. They were there to sing- not the most groundbreaking, innovative, creative songs in the world, but songs that were about what they were about. Songs about speeding down the highway, songs about recreational drug use, songs about breakin' up and feelin' bad about it. Songs about life. Average, everyday, un-choreographed life.

That's what everyone says right- about the music of their generation? That it was so much more honest, so much more awesome, so much more than 'this crap kids listen to now-a-days.' Except that that's not what I'm saying at all- I like much of the music 'kids listen to now-a-days,' in fact I absolutely adore quite a lot of it! Kate Nash wasn't around when I was a teenager, nor were the Decemberists. Most of the bands I listen to hadn't even met each other pre-2000. But most of them are also magical- they tap into the deeper unseen bits of the dust of the universe and turn it into melancholia, beautiful, and heart-pounding odes to the wonder of everything. That is not what 90s music was about. It was about Rock. It was about fast driving, and parties, and stealin' your best friend's girl. It was about being a 90s teenager, even if you weren't a teenager like that at all.

And it was about honest dancing. It was about mosh pits and jumping and waving your hands in the air while you got covered in sweat that wasn't yours, and ducked so you didn't get an errant shoe in the face. You can see it in all kinds of 90s music videos (from back when Much Music actually still played music videos...), the kinds of videos teenyboppers like Miley Cyrus and Justin Beiber try to replicate all the time. Promise by eve6, Third Eye Blind's Semi-Charmed Life, or The Oaf by Big Wreck all fit the bill- awkward rock dudes with guitars (or basses) stomping around, grabbing their mic stands, taking two steps forward and two steps back, singing their hearts out, lookin' kinda dumb and surprisingly sexy.

Maybe it isn't super-innovative. Maybe it isn't magical, or beautiful or awe-inspiring. But it is honest. Simple, straightforward, and honest. Its my music as much as any of what I listen to now, and I still love it every bit as much as I did back then. Which is a lot.

-E