fifty-four. [THEME: away]

[cabaretlights.livejournal.com]

Another White Dash
Artist: Butterfly Boucher
Album: Flutterby
Year: 2003
♥: This song is --------

- spring in March. Or February. Sunshine as the snow maybe-thinks-about-melting; that inimitable crisp smell of sun hitting ice (it smells best in Rigaud, like trees maybe-thinking-about-waking-up).

- 2005, the last stretch of living in Rigaud -- the last gasp of cegep -- beginnings and endings and a paper about Lolita.

- unabashedly pop, and I love it. I love how it jingles, but roughly; the chugging guitar line; the bouncy melody; the repetition (another white dash, another white dash, another white dash) pushing on, forwards, up and out.

- a bit of an autobiography. maybe just in one line:
"I got a heart full of rubber bands / that keep getting caught on things." 
(I made an art to that line, last spring. It's called Next.)

- a lyrical gem, but not really; just in that way I talked about in my comment for 'Writer's Block', ages ago: simple.
"There is something deep and pulling, leaving everything behind
Something about having everything you think you'll ever need
Sitting in the seat next to you."
(a little confession: in cegep, "everything i think i'll ever need" was not a person; it was a laptop. thaaaat might still be true, a little bit.) 

- possibility & movement. freedom, concretized.

- hard for me to articulate, I guess, in terms of how I respond to it. But I picked it for the theme after rejecting dozens of others, and when I remembered it, there was no other. I swear swear swear that I didn't even realize she cries "away away!" until listening to it, after deciding.




Away, away. I have to remember the road is endless. ♥

post fifty-four (theme: away)

[amethysting.livejournal.com]

Can You Find a Way?
The Rapture
In the Grace of Your Love
2011

I was originally going to post Goldfrapp's "Fly Me Away"--a song that I consistently go back to, especially when I want to wish myself somewhere else.  I've been listening to In the Grace of Your Love since the end of last summer, when I first got it.  It doesn't bowl me over, but I still haven't deleted it off my iPod and I still get pretty smiley when songs like "Miss You", "Come Back to Me" or "It Takes Time to Be a Man" pop up on shuffle. 

"Can You Find a Way?" got dropped into my on-the-go playlist a little while ago when the line, "Can you find a way, to live your life/That doesn't break you up inside" hit me over the head and left me in a bit of a daze on the sidewalk on the way home from work.  I swear, sometimes my iPod speaks to me.

This song diverges from where I was originally going to go with this theme.  My initial thought was "away" to another place.  Far, far, away.  Like across an ocean.  But then, I heard this song again and I just knew it was right for this post.  This song still focuses on getting away (physically and in the sense of letting go), but also turning away from the thoughts or patterns that drag you down and--brilliantly--finding a way, and I love that. 

I love the image of, and I paraphrase, the hook in the mouth, keeping you down, drowning you until you die.  This kind of powerlessness or lack of control over some aspects of life is paired with a kind of pleading urge to change the things you can (that sounds very Serenity Prayer/AA, but I'm just going to have to stick with it for now).  I like that the song is sung in questions.  "Can you find a way/To be yourself?"...even with that hook in your mouth, forcing you down.  This song is pretty weird...I like the speed of it, the frantic pops and blips and that chorus of voices moaning? chanting? in the background...it makes me think of church music on crack (yes, I did just write that) and makes the repetition of "let yourself go" more effective.  The religious-fervor vibe makes, "WHY CAN'T YOU JUST BE HERE NOW?" seem like something that should be shouted from a pulpit.