post thirty-eight (theme: trick or treat)

[amethysting.livejournal.com]

Zero
The Smashing Pumpkins
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
1995

I posted this theme without the slightest clue as to how I was going to interpret it (I find that this often happens when I post my theme, haha).  The only thought I put into it was that I wanted to acknowledge Halloween on the community.  I love Halloween--though my devotion has been pretty lame the last few years.  When I was young, I always loved the back-to-back days of Halloween and my birthday.  It meant the occasional Halloween-themed birthday party (like the epic Halloween costume party I had in grade 7 for my thirteenth birthday  I decorated the "music" room in the basement with stretched out cotton webs and plastic spiders and the pumpkin and witch cutouts we used to decorate my house every year.  Girls AND boys were invited and, in the controlled "mood" lighting of the basement, we slow danced some).

Halloween meant Dark Night in the TV room in my friend Erin's basement...candy and episodes of Are You Afraid of the Dark? and Goosebumps.  If Halloween was a Saturday, it meant a sleep over and hours of music videos on Musique Plus and The Hit List Sunday afternoon on YTV.  This album cover makes me think of that time in particular...and of Erin and her older sister, Kelly.  Kelly's room was in the basement and she let Erin and I hang out in there, even when she wasn't around.  I remember the mess of clothes and CDs (The Smashing Pumpkins' Siamese Dream, Nirvana's Nevermind, Soundgarden's Superunkown...studying that awkward little girl dressed as a bee on Blind Melon's album while we listened to "No Rain" over and over again), the mix tapes paintedwith glittery nailpolish, the perfume  samples, the plaid shirts that still smelt of cigarettes, the tangle of Mickey Mouse sheets on her unmade bed.  Kelly had a huge Caboodle full of makeup and Erin and I would spend evenings giving each other makeovers.  I can still remember the smell of this particular purple lip gloss she had that came in a tube with a clear cap.

I remember when Kelly bought this album.  It came out in October.  It was a BIG DEAL.  A double CD.  I thought the packaging was lovely and the music...I was exposed to "alternative" music second hand...I remember liking it, but being kind of scared of it at the same time.  In some of these songs, the singer sounded so...angry..."In spite of my RAGE I am still just a rat in a cage".  Haha, this maybe relates to my discomfort with anger in general, come to think of it. 

My favourite Smashing Pumpkins song is "1979", but there is something about "Zero"...that grating guitar paired with the whine and growl of Billy Corgan's voice.  The music video--and Smashing Pumpkins music videos in general--is dark and, when I was young, they seemed so strange and creepy to me.  Billy Corgan's face always looked like it had been drained of all of its blood...there was something ghoulish about the darkness circling his eyes, his glowering look, and his sporadic flicks of the tongue.  "Emptiness is loneliness, and loneliness is cleanliness/And cleanliness is godliness, and God is empty...just like me" still makes me feel kind of anxious...I love mouthing the words, but there's this little twinge, this feeling that they are wrong...like saying fuck in my head when I was in church. 



Aside: I totally only made the Halloween = Pumpkin connection on my way to work this morning, haha.

thirty-eight. [THEME: trick or treat]

[cabaretlights.livejournal.com]

Ceremony
Artist: New Order
Album: Marie Antoinette OST
Year: 1981
♥: Once upon a time, I thought dancing was stupid. GASP. I know. The first time I went to Saph, barely 18, I sat upstairs and raised a disdainful eyebrow at the people on the dancefloor. You all look like idiots, I thought to myself, sipping a beer and continuing some drunkenly political conversation with people I hardly knew.

...clearly, I've changed a lot since I was 18. Now: I don't drink beer, I don't talk politics, and the last thing I would ever think is that someone looks stupid when they dance.


Alright, so that sad part of my past is out of the way: let me set the scene for this song.
It's October 2006, my second year living on my own. My roommate and I decide to throw a Halloween party. It'll be the first real house party either of us has ever hosted, and we're terribly excited. We buy booze, set up a mini-pumpkin-painting station, bake cupcakes and set Corpse Bride on loop. I remember so vividly the day of that party: instead of heading back to Rigaud, I met up with Daniel and Emily and we went to the SAQ, giddy and giggling, and I was thinking about ~my boyfriend~ and loving being in the city and I was hit with the realization that This Is College Life.

Ah, but.
There were issues with the aforementioned boyfriend [and issues with myself for having issues, oh you know the cycle], and I'd just got my 18C Novel midterm back with the lowest grade I'd ever get at McGill (I cared a lot about grades, then). So before the guests started arriving, I had a bit of a breakdown in my bedroom. I felt inadequate, I felt insecure, I felt very, very alone.

All of our friends came. We raged. It was a success, though no one danced. The night was drawing to a close, cups & bottles & Sharpied-up balloons everywhere, and music still blaring the playlist I'd spent a night making instead of writing a paper. Said playlist was full of songs from the Marie Antoinette soundtrack -- still one of my most defining October albums, rife with all the conflict and weirdness of Fall '06. And then, this song came on.
My friend Kat squealed (she loves Joy Division). I was drunk, at that point, and I felt this surge of something intense. I'll never be able to define it, articulate it, but before I knew it I had grabbed her hand and we were pushing people out of the way to get to the speakers and DANCE.


It was the first time I danced the way I do now: no holds barred, every part of my heart on display, immune to everything but the music and how strongly I felt, pointfinale, not felt for someone or something or about this or that, but just felt.
I'll break them down, no mercy shown.
Nothing else mattered but that feeling, my bare feet, the music, Kat's hand in mine, and our heads shaking until the world blurred.
Trick or treat: polar opposites (Jill at 18, Jill at 25) shifted & combined in that one 20-year-old Halloween moment.



We used to use MySpace in 2006, and there was a profile section for "Heroes." Kat listed all her best friends, with reasons why. After that night, she changed mine from something to do with intelligence to:

"Jill -- for dancing like the floor is on fire."
I'll live the rest of my life settling for nothing less.