In This Thread I Present To You My 16 Favorite Discs Of All Time

[trotchky]

16. Parenthetical Girls - Safe as Houses

http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/3286/598487.jpg

The first time I heard Parenthetical Girls, I think I was in sophomore year of high school. This won't be the only disc on this list that I first heard in sophomore year of high school, or in other years of high school.

This is what the band looks like when they model:

http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/2562/20080714parentheticals.jpg

Parenthetical Girls front-man Zac Pennington is on the far-right there, and it turns out he has the good sense to embrace his androgyny, push it as perspective in his songs and cackle with hideous glee at his deliciously evil lyrics (commonly used themes are pedophilia, incest, rape(?), or some combination of the three) that flip heteronormativity on its head before lighting it on fire and dancing in its ashes. Unlike Pennington's similarly-minded contemporary, Antony of Antony and the Johnsons fame, whose songs are wrought from a taste for high tragedy that seems rooted as much in self-pity as anything, Pennington has balls (even when he doesn't).

Back to high school though. Yeah, in high school, that wasn't such a great time. I was pretty unhappy, you know?

One day I followed a link to this song (http://www.slendermeanssociety.com/mp3/loveconnection2.mp3).

The link was linked in the signature of a man on an internet message board who also had a gif of Björk eating a watermellon in his signature.

I don't know what happened to that man. Something tells me I'd like to, though.

I followed that link not once, back then, but several times over a period of indeterminate length. I don't know why I didn't just download it. I wasn't big on downloading things, back then. I guess I wasn't big on anything, back then.

Pennington's gender-bending vocals lend his delicious rhymes, some of the illest in pop music today, a Dissociative Identity Disorder mood, where things are pleasurable that shouldn't be, and things that seem funny really aren't. That never stopped me from drinking deeply from the well of Pennington; his focus on the sharp, blinding pains of adolescent sexuality was something that resonated with me, and how.

Well, I don't listen to Safe as Houses much any more; instead I tend to listen to Parenthetical Girls' 2008 follow-up, Entanglements, when I feel like spending some time with the Grrrls, which is much poppier and more accessible than Safe as Houses, with all the transgressive joy of that disc. If you don't like the song I linked above but are intrigued enough to try them again (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h19KnjDqS5M), you might like the song I just linked. No promises, though.

In conclusion, there's no erasing the tread marks of feeling Safe as Houses plowed through my adolescent psyche. I listen to it now, and I can feel myself, in my skin, when I was fifteen. As far as I'm concerned, there's no better work about sex to give to a horny teen.

[trotchky]

Number 15 will be coming up soon; in the mean time, here is a list of musical acts that will not be making the list:

Joy Division
Neil Young
The Homosexuals
BORIS
Patti Smith
Belle & Sebastian
The Rolling Stones
My Bloody Valentine
Pavement
David Bowie
The Velvet Underground
The Clash
The Sex Pistols
ABBA
The Monkeys

Stay tuned!

[transmogrifier]

Number 15 will be coming up soon; in the mean time, here is a list of musical acts that will not be making the list:

Joy Division
BORIS
Patti Smith
The Velvet Underground
The Clash


Boo! :evil:


Number 15 will be coming up soon; in the mean time, here is a list of musical acts that will not be making the list:

Belle & Sebastian
My Bloody Valentine
ABBA


Yay! :pritch:

[Duncan]

Like that first song. Never heard of the band before.

[trotchky]

15. Aesop Rock - None Shall Pass

http://img261.imageshack.us/img261/6972/727607.jpg

None Shall Pass is a disc that took me a while to get into; once I was there, though, I knew there was no leaving. Originally this was going to be a joint entry with Public Enemy's Fear of a Black Planet, and maybe it should be.

Aesop Rock is a rapper, and this is what he looks like when he models:

http://i39.tinypic.com/1zyd89h.jpg

None Shall Pass is nothing less than a rebirth in political hip-hop. The album is a sprawling, sweeping masterpiece that tells tales of people on every level of the social order (as 'Sop remarks on album closer "Pigs": "All God's critters hold positions/ Some are violent, some are victims/ Each alive is an equal and vital piston I support.") It's the culmination of a career most noted for its social and political implications, but Aesop Rock's concerns are human, above all else. The dude's moniker refers to Aesop's Fables, and according to the wikipedia article I just looked up, Aesop was a slave in Ancient Greece. I never knew that, but given what I know about Aesop Rock, it makes a lot of sense.

What's remarkable about this album? Well, every song hits its mark, and with dead-on precision. "Catacomb Kids" is about marginalized inner-city youth; "Fumes" is about a couple of white trash meth addicts ("Between tweaks he sweeps at Home Depot and reads/ Mostly Biblical but not 'cause he believes/ But found the lexicon of Jesus-heavy literature fly/ Feverishly sponged up the information high," Aesop intones in sickening deadpan); by the time we get to "Getaway Car" we're not even half-way through the album and already Aesop Rock is calling for straight-up armed revolution: "Storms on the harbor like a harbinger of gore/ Gore's my harbinger, pardon the art of war."

Yet a graceful humanism pervades throughout, one that's so earnest it's almost heart-breaking. Aesop Rock is completely bullshit-free, and on this album his eye for social injustice is both keener and more generous than ever: opener Keep off the Lawn is an ironic nod to the addictions and disorders Rock has occasionally dealt with on past discs, and from there on it's all other people, all the time. Aesop is a teller of other people's stories, and his delivery of his trademark twisty, elaborate rhymes is so self-assured that it might leave you breathless if you weren't too busy pumping your fist to it.

Speaking of, this is where I address the frequent criticism that Aesop Rock's wordplay is "pretentious" or "meaningless". Straight from the horse's mouth:


It’s probably because it’s not the most accessible music in the world. It may pose a slight challenge to the listener beyond your average pop song. I'm no genius by a long shot, but these songs are not nonsensical, that's pretty preposterous.

I'd have to be a genius to pull this many nonsensical records over people's eyes. It's not exactly fast food but when people pretend I'm just spewing non-sequiturs and gibberish I can’t help but think they simply haven’t listened and are regurgitating some rumor they’ve heard about me. Even if it's not laid out in perfect sentences—is any rap?—you’d have to be an idiot to not at least grasp a few things from these songs. Or have had no interest in pulling anything from them in the first place

Man, he sounds kind of like a forum poster there!

Aesop Rock is right about his own work, though, and None Shall Pass isn't just his most complex disc, it's also his most accessible. Rock backs all his rhymes with a full-fledged rock band (fun fact: his wife plays guitar) that makes this as much a rock disc and it is a hip-hop one. You won't find any singing here, though; Rock is hip-hop to the bone, and if the insanely twisty, moving beats which back his insanely twisty, moving rhymes don't convince you, his concern for the disenfranchised and oppressed might.

None Shall Pass is a State of the Union address penned by and for the people. Not since the glory days of Public Enemy has a rap act hit on such relevant points with such verbal wit. It's a rap album made by a New Yorker, and in many ways it is a New York album, although not nearly as much so as another rap album made by a New Yorker that will appear on this list. Still though, the city is in the disc, and I can no longer listen to None Shall Pass without visualizing Manhattan, in all its lurid, Capitalist-hate-cock horror and beauty; specifically, me walking around that pre-post-apocalyptic hellhole one sunny, glorious September.

It was thrilling the way being a protester and getting in a fight with some cops is thrilling. When I fist got to the city, I hadn't done that yet; I'd barely started listening to None Shall Pass, and yet its observations echoed in the sights and sounds I found myself suddenly surrounded by, leaking into my soul. If you're just a visitor to the city, you probably don't know what I'm talking about; you'll probably get a sense of the bustling chaos, but until you've lived in New York for some time you have now idea how complex and many and horrible and true the mechanisms of this place are, are as they grind and swing in codependent inevitability.

Maybe that's how all places, everywhere, are, but I doubt it's as prominent, as regular and expected and constant, as it is in New York.

No shit, Public Enemy and Aesop Rock are both from Long Island. A west coast rapper couldn't make albums like these. The city is where it all comes to the surface in an endless, roiling boil. Aesop Rock has made the most astute rap album since Public Enemy released Fear of a Black Planet. We should all be terrified, or else overjoyed. I'm not sure which.

At any rate, here's Catacomb Kids (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk6HTtpACuA), which is one of the best songs on the disc, as well as the inspiration for my Xbox Live Gamertag. If it doesn't make you want to be a kid again, dropping stink bombs in the hallways between classes and graffiti tagging bathroom walls, I don't know you.

[D_Davis]

Speaking of, this is where I address the frequent criticism that Aesop Rock's wordplay is "pretentious" or "meaningless". Straight from the horse's mouth:



That's cool. People critical of early De La Soul often said similar things about their word-play, which is still among the most creative in the world of hip hop.

Potholes in my lawn.

[Acapelli]

i hate aesop rock. i actually can't stand anything def jux puts out

although i know i'm in the minority here where it comes to rap

[trotchky]

That's unfortunate, because there's probably going to be another Def Jukie on this list!!!

[trotchky]

14. El-P - I'll Sleep When You're Dead

http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/323/405397.jpg

Basically, this album is about a young man in crisis.

El-P is a rapper and this is what he looks like when he models:

http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/309/elp1.jpg

I'll Sleep When You're Dead is auto-biographical in the same way Bret Easton Ellis' seminal novel Lunar Park is auto-biographical: it's not, but it is. Or maybe I just associate the two works because I experienced them at roughly the same time, and they both spoke to me deeply as a person.

El-P has described this disc as a "winter" album as well as a "city" album, and that makes sense to me in ways I could not possibly explain. I'll try anyway:

In winter of 2008, I very nearly lost my mind; I probably would have if I wasn't such a stubborn bitch about keeping it in the first place. I also probably should have been in the hospital, but again, stubbornness, etc. Describing what happened is inadequate. I could start with the drugs: I'd been smoking an enormous amount of weed for months (about three times a day) and was busy experimenting with everything I could get my hands on: lots of ecstasy and coke, mainly. On Halloween I smoked black tar heroin for the first time and spent two weeks in bliss before realizing I no longer knew what I was supposed to be doing and came to the shocking realization that I was still enrolled in college.

So, withdrawal symptoms in toe (and in the rest of me), I started dragging myself to classes again. Fortunately I had taken a light course load (three classes) but I was in danger of failing two of them. Also fortunately, I'm a fantastic liar over the internet (e-mails to profs, you see) and at that point everyone around me, teachers included, could see what I wreck I was turning into, and one was really nice and she let me pass despite too many absences and missing work.

I forgot what the point of this was.

No, not really I didn't, it's just not turning out the way I wanted it to. I knew it wouldn't.

I'll skip all the details about what happened in the following few months and get to something tangible--it was winter break and I was living alone in Manhattan, not wanting to confront my family, and I couldn't stop shaking. Like, ever, except, I guess, in my sleep. It was the most painful and humiliating thing I've ever felt. I'd leave my room, halfway down the block, buy a burger, twitching and jittering the whole time, all eyes on me, hurry back to my room. Eating made me feel sick, so did the heat, and the smell of the place, and everything. I was in a state of constant panic so severe I lost almost complete control of my basic motor functions.

Yeah....so anyway, along comes this disc by El-P called I'll Sleep When You're Dead. "Tasmanian Pain Coaster" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9b-ibeakUA) is the gateway.

Turns out, this is an album about a young man who does a lot of drugs and is suffering a protracted breakdown in NYC. It's also really fucking good. The beats are sick, the lyrics poignant, the beats sick, and the lyrics poignant. That's about all there is to say. I recommended listening to the whole album and see if you "get" it. When I first heard this thing, it was one of those wonderful moments you get when you experience art, sometimes, where you get chills throughout your entire body and want to talk and talk endlessly about it to the world.

At the time I thought it was because the disc was brilliant. I still do, but I also wonder how much of that is because of how strongly it spoke to me at a particular time in my life. The two are inseparable, to me: the time and the disc. It's become a part of me, in the way Lunar Park, which I read that same winter, is now a part of me. You can talk shit all you want but nothing will ever remove this disc from my personage. It is implanted there, as if through some permanent surgical procedure.

[trotchky]

Note to anyone interested: at least half of these discs will be from this decade. Sorry! I don't like a lot of old music. :twisted:

[D_Davis]

El-P's album is good.

I expect some Brother Ali on this list, though.

What about Dalek?

[Llopin]

I guess Madvillain is next - or is it too obvious, perhaps?

I saw EL-P live a month ago. It was fun, I guess, even if he kind of bores me on record (by the by, I saw Dalek that very same week and it was most noisy). I believe Meline's best effort is Company Flow's debut.

[D_Davis]

What kind of set-up did Dalek have live?

[Llopin]

What kind of set-up did Dalek have live?

Both guys, one at the mic and the other at the tables. There was however drums onstage, since Zu came up after a while and they played a few pieces together. Rad.

[D_Davis]

Both guys, one at the mic and the other at the tables. There was however drums onstage, since Zu came up after a while and they played a few pieces together. Rad.

So they didn't have any live instruments?

I always imagined a full band, with lots of guitar feedback.

[trotchky]

13. The Smiths - The Smiths

http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/4526/709962.jpg

What is there to say about The Smiths that hasn't been said already?

This is what they look like when they model:

http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/8114/thesmiths.jpg

The Smiths existed before Morrissey did, and that might be why it's The Smith's best disc. Then again, maybe not.

I first heard this album when I was a junior in high school. It was the same time I discovered a little website called Crimethinc. (http://www.crimethinc.com/) and had my mind inflamed with rage at...well, pretty much everything and everyone. I read a little Chomsky, that year; read a little Howard Zinn, too; it was largely thanks to my World History II teacher, whom we'll called Ronald Reagan.

Ronald Reagan was the best teacher I ever had. I've spent a lot of time thinking about all the teachers I've had, so I think I have empirical proof that he was the best. He spoke, sometimes, Ronald Reagan did. Other times, he didn't. Walking into class the first day of school, I was struck by powerful, almost overwhelming vibes that told me one thing with certainty: this man cares about what he's doing.

Ronald Reagan did care, more than anyone else I've met who works in education, and the thing is, he didn't care about "teaching," in the vague, formal sense, he cared about getting his students to think critically and resist propagation. Reagan is unique from any other teacher I've had in this regard: he wanted his students to think, to question things, to question him, to not accept easy answers or conventional wisdom, to have the ability not to be propagated.

It's fair to say that if I never had Ronald Reagan as a teacher, I never would have lapped up anarchist thought as early on in my life as I did; at least, not with the same ferocity.

It was an anarchist who introduced me to The Smiths' debut album. This person inspired a potential title for a hypothetical album I will probably never make: Another Month In the Psych Ward. Fun fact: this person also introduced me to Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation, although I don't like that album as much as this one. Our communique ended with this statement from him: "....and then I hopped a Greyhound." Well. Riding a Greyhound Bus 'cross country became my ultimate fantasy. One day, I would think to myself, I'll get the fuck out of this town, and none of this will matter anymore.

Things didn't really work out as hoped, and it's actually kind of depressing to think about. Something that's not as depressing, but, rather, interesting to think about is, I never spoke with the person whom I gleaned these things from, not directly. I guess that speaks to how open to influence I was then, and still, pretty much, am.

The Smiths, though. Is it the godly lyrics, the saintly vocals, the lugubrious mood, or the fact that it became a component of my angry young anarchist phase that makes the album so fucking romantic? That's a rhetorical question, a phrasing device that allowed me to fit a bunch of different details into one sentence.

"I've never had a job because I never wanted one." How that line thrilled me! "I've never had a job because I'm too shy." How that line thrilled me more. Because, I mean, was it my shyness, my perpetual feeling of being an outsider, my constant anxiety, my teeth-gnashing rage and what my life was--was it those things that drew me to anarchism, or was it genuine concern for social justice? Both, I reckon, with the former set of traits fueling the flames of the latter.

I was a white, middle class, suburban anarchist. Were The Smiths? Well, those two lines I just quoted seem to say it all--if not about them, then at least about me, at the time I was listening to this album.

The Smiths is still the most romantic album I've ever heard. It makes me want to walk down the streets of my suburban home town, not going anywhere, just walking, looking at the moon and knowing there's something more than this. Not that I would actually do that, today. Fuck no. Maybe, then, The Smiths makes me nostalgic for a time when I cared more than I do now, and chaos, and escape, still seemed possible.

[trotchky]

Here comes the Dirty Dozen! I hope everybody brought birth control!

12. Hymie's Basement - Hymie's Basement

http://img239.imageshack.us/img239/9189/117464.jpg

It was either this or Pet Sounds, folks.

Hymie's Basement is a musical duo consisiting of Yoni Wolf (Why?) and Andrew Broder (Fog). I've never listened to Fog outside of this album, but I've listened to Why? and his other acts (most notably cLOUDDEAD) a whole lot. This is what Hymie's Basement looks like when they model:

http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/2990/2867742.jpg

I used to listen to this album a whole lot when I was high and home schooled. Other albums I listened to under the same conditions include The Beach Boy's Pet Sounds, Simon & Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water, and Bob Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home. I've given a lot of thought to which of these albums to include on the list, and I decided Hymie's Basement is probably my favorite of them.

Pet Sounds almost made the cut, but then I realized it wasn't as personal to me, and as soon as I realized that I shouted "Next!" and continued shuffling through my memory banks.

I was home schooled because they said I was a danger to myself and others. The final straw, for them, was a confession of love. I knew what I was doing the whole time, and only one other person, a counselor who I was assigned to see periodically, knew that I knew. When she confronted me about it she was smiling, and I felt exposed, naked, but by then it was too late to matter: I was banned from school grounds, and if this smiling woman could see right through me, there was fuck all she could (or would) do about it.

So I was off the hook. It was senior year of high school. In the weeks before my expulsion an agent of DYFS showed up at my house and asked me and my siblings some questions. She looked around my room. Fortunately, she didn't find the drugs. Looking back, I really wanted to tell her to go fuck herself.

Simultaneously, I started smoking an enormous amount of weed, by myself, in my bedroom, at night. Those were my first highs, and they remain the best. I wish I could go back to the way weed felt then, when I would lay in bed and listen to music and let images flow through my mind like water.

Consequently, Hymie's Basement is best listened to at four in the morning, on a dark night of the soul.

Hymie's Basement is about Western Civilization. It has really good lyrics. Under the umbrella of Western Civilization, it deals with constructions of reality and familial units and masculinity. This (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpTz8r5OMdg)is where you enter.

There's not really much else to say, and it isn't from lack of trying. I feel like I've talked so much about that period of my life already there's nothing left to do but rehash the fuzzy memories. Instead, I'll make some tenuous connections between Pet Sounds and Hymie's Basement:

These are both great pop albums. Pet Sounds' legendary harmonies have inspired at least one other album that will appear on this list. Hymie's Basement's un-legendary lack of harmony, and sometimes-grating juxtaposition of Wolf's style and Broder's, probably hasn't inspired any commercial product. The former is good vibes all the time unless you pay attention and realize that this dude isn't particularly happy, and the whimsy functions in a similar fashion to the whimsy in Wes Anderson movies; the latter is bad vibes most of the time unless you pay attention and realize that these dudes aren't particularly unhappy, and the whimsy functions in a similar fashion to the whimsy in one Paul Thomas Anderson movie.

"The innocence in children's laughter can be confused with a touch of evil."

And less than a decade after Brian Wilson lamented that he just wasn't made for these times, Patti Smith was declaring that Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not hers.

Okay, that's a wrap, people! Next entry!

[trotchky]

11. Saul Williams - Saul Williams

http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/3497/191466.jpg

Saul Williams is a poet. This is what he looks like when he models:

http://www.uaa.alaska.edu/studentlifeandleadership/activities/images/Saul_Williams_1.GIF

Saul Williams is one of hip hop's great humanists. I guess you can throw Aesop Rock up there as well, but even Rock's rhymes are no match for Williams' crystal-clear vision and pin-point precise insights. His debut, Amethyst Rock Star, is also great, albeit less consistent.

Two of the most accessible songs on this album are

List of Demands (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1llNYAlYrc)

and

Black Stacey (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRsgavuG4sg)

I recommend checking them out, and then maybe we can talk about them. Maybe you'll even like them enough that you'll check out the full album, and then we can talk about that. Either way, let's talk.

[This Space Left Intentionally Blank]

[transmogrifier]

I've mentioned before, but I think The Smiths are one of the most unaccountably celebrated bands, considering that the only thing they spark in me is the urge to nap.

[Duncan]

The Hymie's Basement write-up is decidedly less coherent than the other ones, but these are always interesting to read, I guess. Kind of a sucker for ridiculously personal reviews.

[trotchky]

The Hymie's Basement write-up is decidedly less coherent than the other ones, but these are always interesting to read, I guess. Kind of a sucker for ridiculously personal reviews.

Thanks for reading them. I'll try to make this all worth your while by the end, I swear.

[trotchky]

10. The Dismemberment Plan - Emergency & I

http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/1151/9910l.jpg

If I could start this list over again...well, I probably wouldn't, because think of all that wasted effort. To call these entries inaccurate, however, would not be inaccurate. Far from it. Actually, looking over the list again, everything up until and sort of including The Smiths looks pretty good. The Smiths is the pivot, essentially, on which this list swings from something I felt pretty confidant about to something I lost control over. Now all those entries are squandered and I'll have to not speak about some of my real favorite discs ever. Oh well. There's no turning back, now.

God that's some amazing album art, isn't it? Fits really well with the album, too.

I should probably say something about how this disc is from the '90s and then say something about how if you like Pavement and Radiohead and The Flaming Lips and haven't heard The Dismemberment Plan you're missing out on one of the best acts of that decade.

The Dismemberment Plan were a band, and I'm not going to show you what they look like when they model, because not only don't I already know how they look, I don't want to know. I also don't want to hear any songs by The Dismemberment Plan other than those on this album, although it wouldn't take much arm-twisting to get me to do it. It's just, that picture, and Emergency & I itself, are too perfect to introduce to foreign substances.

Emergency & I, like almost every other disc on here, is charged with emotion. Its charge charged me with emotion, and it still does, even when I'm not listening to it. Just a minute or two ago, I got chills from thinking about the broad set of circumstances in which I first listened to Emergency & I. I wasn't even listening, just thinking. No joke.

Is it pop? Is it prog? Is it metal? Is it jangly? Does it jangle? Is it sparkly? Does it sparkle? Is it a Frankensteinian monster, cobbled together from such disparate and constantly morphing parts that its hideousness is transformed, paradoxically, into moving beauty? The answer to the above questions is a frank nod of the head, indicating the affirmative.

See, now here I go again listening to Emergency & I, just because I'm writing this, and here I go again getting all tingly just because I listened to Emergency & I when I was young and alive and in love for the first time and the fall light disappeared from the sidewalks and because of the boys I lived with--not in my parents house, for the first time--and the things I did for myself and others. The details hardly matter; seem, in fact, to cheapen it, so here they go, out with them as fast as possible: New York City. Manhattan. College. First semester. Freshman year. Greenwich Village. Being away from the people I cared about most meant being free before it meant being lonely.

They say--or, rather, I say--that the measure of a great pop song is how well memories stick to it. If that's the case, then Emergency & I is quite deftly one of the greatest pop albums ever, which is amazing because it's not really a pop album; or if it is one, it is no more so than anything else that has or will show up on this list.

Where to begin? I guess I already have, and at the same time, I haven't. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think I'm getting through to you guys, and the onus is completely on me. If I could give you a headpiece that doubles as consumer electronic hardware like that thing in Strange Days and have you feel my feelings and remember my memories straight for yourself, I would do it. No joke. That's not an option, though linking you to the song "What Do You Want Me To Say? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbNOgJai31k)" (ignore the video) on Youtube is. The band's front-man (I don't know his name, and I don't want to), mewls with a pent-up frustration more earnest than most of the other songs on discs, but that doesn't mean the other songs are bad. Dude just has a lot of range.

So does the disc in general. While many of the songs ("You Are Invited," "Back And Forth") are, at base, about partying and general hedonism (another reason the album instantly grabbed me), none of them, especially not the ones about going to bars and clubs and getting hammered and getting heartbroken, are what they appear on the surface. Just as the instrumentation on this disc branches and twists and evolves and breaks apart and comes back together again, so does its themes. It helps that the lyrics are better than most discs where the lyrics are supposed to matter.

Parties, and early fall, and late fall, and the Village, and the girl I loved, once, fleetingly. It was, temporally, a small slice of joy--pure, unabashed joy, the kind I hadn't felt since before high school--before things got out of hand and it all came crashing down.

Here are some of the lyrics to the song "Gyroscope":


He says it’s over and it’s such a relief
It’s finally happened and he’s making his peace
All the reminders don’t bother him in the least
The Jekyll and Hyde shit will finally cease
His eyes on fire and his hands kind of shake
Like his voice is ready to break
You kind of wonder how long this boy’s been awake
Or how much less sense one person can make
If he spins fast enough than maybe the broken pieces of his heart will stay together
But ain’t no gyroscope can spin forever

In another thread, today, someone mentioned recovering addicts propping themselves up on religion in a sort of moral righteousness. Well, I was raised an atheist, and the closest thing I ever had to religion was art. First of all, "Gyroscope," and its follow-up, "The City," are sickeningly romantic. Second of all, as I watched myself plunge deeper and deeper into a disaster I could not intervene in, merely watch helplessly, I would listen to those lyrics I posted above, knowing there was something in them about me. Struggling in vain, with everything I had left in me, against the current, trying to find the shore, trying to find an exit or an answer or a stable object to rest upon, I listened to The Dismemberment Plan until I didn't. Eventually winter came, and Emergency & I--changing as I did, changing as the weather did--became just another thing to make me feel paranoid, anxious, crawling out of my skin.

Well, those times are gone, and the clock on my computer has just past six am. I'm on a pretty heavy dose of prescription drugs right now (literally right now--I take them at night) and they did something, I guess. A lot of things did something. So I'm numb and exhausted and now I'll get into bed again. Fair enough. The thrill has past and I don't know when or if it will return. That won't stop me from getting all teary-eyed, remembering it.