Life Glimpses

Early morning but late enough that I am home alone. The coffee left in the pot is still warm, I make an effort not to look at my phone. Recently, I’d changed the settings on it so it’s on “downtime” mode from 7pm-10am every day. I try not to look at my phone knowing there’s nothing there anyways and if anything, it would be a text to the family group chat, most likely a picture from my dad’s morning walk with the dogs. I enjoy those messages, but they can wait. Waiting. That word comes up a lot.

Latter in the day, the sleepier part, tired from a morning of work and needing lunch which will only make me more sleepy. Readjusting back to the routine. Readjusting implies a former regularity. Have been trying to avoid formers.

Been listening to Emma Ruth Rundle again but this time their album Engine of Hell. Sonically almost opposite of On Dark Horses. Nothing but a guitar, piano and her voice. It feels eternal. Rundle has become one of my favourite musicians in the last few years. I can’t stop listening to her and Engine of Hell is a wonderful slow odyssey. Favourite track at the moment being Body.

I have been writing while listening to the Anthony Naples album Orbs from last year. I had been stuck on Kali Malone’s Living Torch for quite a while and as much as I love it, if it were a tape, it’d be worn out. Need to remember when I get stuck during writing, it might help to change the music. I have also been enjoying Minhwi Lee’s Hometown to Come, desperately need a rainy day so I can sit in a café and listen to this album. Perfect for a dreary day.

Love is to Die by Warpaint pinpoints an exact and vague section of my life. A transition from teen to adult, a noticeable shift in taste. Around the same time FKA Twigs debut LP1 came out and Lorde’s Pure Heroine, music was in full post-Foster the People alternative pop. Genres scattered, branching into whatever the hell Art Pop is, the last dying breath of indie sleaze. Rock radio was dead and Spotify was starting to make a real name for itself (I recall, around 2011, reading Mike Shinoda’s blog where he talked about Spotify and assumed it was like Napster and in a way, how it steals from artists, it is). American Apparel was still around and what all the cool kids were wearing. Topshop filled wardrobes. I was for once, feeling fairly comfortable in my skin. 19 years old and with my first ever iPhone, took this music with me from rural Ireland to the streets of London. I can never listen to Electra Heart by Marina and the Diamonds again because I listened to it non-stop during exams. A decade later and I envy the newness of it all.

I listen to Let’s Go Out Tonight by The Blue Nile late in the evening in a particularly sad mood. The cat silently judges me as I sway around. No booze so I play the part of the drunk with sobriety. Keeping the movements slow and low, my wrists twirls around imagined obstacles. I envision myself slow dancing, no, slow motion dancing, in a blue lit club. It is as if it was not filmed to be slowed down so the frames are blurry. I must stop imagining life in frames.

I wondered if the loneliness was so pervasive I thought it was me. Rather than a metaphorical aspect. A play on words to convey a feeling. Paul is still singing. Click the kettle, tie the knot, try not to sink. I wondered about identifying myself as a feeling, which comes and goes, like everything, a wave I keep getting caught in. One would think I’d be a strong swimmer by now. The song ends. I let the silence in.

A good morning album is Nourished by Time’s Erotic Probiotic 2, it’s the kind of album that makes me excited for summer. This is one of those to listen to on the train on a sunny day, watching the city sweep by. The song Daddy on repeat, wishing I could be on the 176 from Denmark Hill heading into town. An album that makes life feel more full. The kind of album you play around friends because it’s cool and in turn makes you look cool.

Surprised to find myself so enraptured by the newest Mitski album, The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, because I haven’t really been a big fan since Puberty 2, finding the newer sound not my thing. But I throw on the vinyl and Bug Like An Angel starts playing, a choir sings “They break you right back” dragged out humming and Mitski creeps in with the line “When I’m bent over/Wishing it was over/Making all variety of vows I’ll never keep/I try to remember/The wrath of the devil/Was also given him by God”. No one is doing it like her. Still not over I’m Your Man since the albums release. A dangerous album to listen to late at night but also a very good album to listen to late at night.

Mitski is not “sad girl music”, that is a disservice to her songwriting and performance. I don’t like Mitski music because it’s sad, I find her to be a great storyteller, her use of language is just so far beyond so many musicians. She really is IT. She doesn’t have to be my favourite musician to see that raw talent is raw talent. And it annoys me that she gets bunched with other “sad girl” musicians who are, overall, fine artists in their own right, but she is so out of their league. This is her 7th (!) album and still is putting out this level of quality! It’s Wayne and Garth bowing to Alice Cooper crying “We’re not worthy!”

For some reason or other, I spent a whole evening listen to Moby’s Find My Baby on repeat. I imagined the inspiration for the song being “song that plays while driving very fast to rescue your girlfriend”. A fast car must be involved. I cleaned out my closest. I tried to change the music but keep clicking the play button on this song. The pace keeps me going.

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I spent a Sunday severely depressed for no specific reason. Some days are days spent laying in bed, staring into space, dreaming of a different life. Despite it, I did laundry, got a mocha that didn’t seem to have any coffee in it and an okay vegan banana bread. The one bit of solace was listening to Youth Lagoon’s first album, Savage Hills Ballroom. Though it did not take away the weight on my chest, it’s hard to be totally down when listening to something beautiful.

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Same day as I listened to Savage Hills Ballroom. Before leaving for dinner, I thought I was dying and told myself we’ll die either way, might as well go out. Having been very depressed I still made it out to my siblings and their spouses. Realised I was the only partnerless person at the table. Came home and listened to Ain’t It Easy by Alex G because I like to wallow. Despite seeing texts from good friends I ignore them, afraid that if I reply they wont respond. That somehow I will run out of friend points, how they’re tallied and exactly what they are I don’t know. One of those days where music seems to sting a bit more. As if every lyric is relevant. There is no containment at the moment. I stare into space and hope it passes. Then I listen to Miracles and cry for no particular reason. January is not a cloud over my head more like a blob fish upon it, weighing me down.

Lovers Spit (Redux) by Feist (a cover of Broken Social Scene) on a rainy Tuesday night. The wind makes the sheets of rain look like a mass of starlings. The light on the roof makes me think of paintings of the ocean at night, a big landing strip of white. The days still weigh heavy and I do agree “You know it’s time/that we grow old and do some shit”. I get stoned for the first time in a long time and it’s too much and I don’t think this is what the song meant. But for a moment taking a drag while the piano sung out, life felt right.

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The day is very icy and miserable. All we could tolerate outdoors was a trip to the grocery and grabbing some food from the vegan shipping crate restaurant. My mind was wandering away from the cold wind. I was searching for a particular song and ended up listening to Kryptonite by 3 Doors Down which just makes me think of being 10. Then my mind wanders to Heaven by Los Lonely Boys which I recall being played non-stop on the radio when I visited a friend who’d moved to San Diego when we were around 11, then think of how inescapable Sublime’s Santeria was and how much I really fucking hate that song because it was literally always on the radio. I’d hear the opening chords and yell. I recall in high school people defending the song but it’s overplayedness could not sway my pure hate for it. It reminds me of Tal Bachman’s She’s So High which eventually leads to me the song I was actually looking for in the beginning: There She Goes by Sixpence None the Richer but in reality I was looking for the original by The La’s. All these songs make me think of 2004 despite none of them being from that year. It’s not quite nostalgia, because there there’s an element of return. Of wanting to go back. These songs more so contain that actual over artificial. I get annoyed with these tunes, their symbology. I change to something that still feels good to hear, even after many years. I sit back and let one of the greatest songs ever written, Lazy Eye by Silversun Pickups, play.

Thank you for reading,

Enya xx

Link to youtube playlist of music mentioned