Today was a cranky day, and yes, that is the sound of me spending an entire 48 hours only departing the apartment once, to take out the trash. We are all a bit cranky tonight, and i decided after intermittently coloring in a coloring book and blankly staring at the teevee for a fourth hour to say “goodnight” and get the hell out of the living room. The thing about living in a threesome of people is that it’s always two on one, and yesterday it was me and Lindsay versus Erika so today was them versus me. Erika and i hardly ever team up against Lindsay so much as we just hang out by ourselves. It actually doesn’t bother me in the least, but the intelligent thing to do was to extract myself before it did bother me. So, i came up here and recorded a suck-ass Trio.
Meanwhile, my cold has kept me substance free all weekend, and don’t think that has anything to do with being in the house, either. The ladies put a sizeable dent into a few bottles in the wet-bar, and i consumed three cartons of orange juice and one of ice cream. Such is a sleepy weekend, solely composed of naps, guitars, musical Buffy episodes that left me gasping and in shock, and blowout Eagles games. Makes me feel real, at least…
lindsay
My secrets are a set of Russian Dolls that i closely guard; the biggest of the dolls, the exterior one, is a secret in name only. She is a secret i willingly share. If you were to lift her away there is a slightly more secret doll underneath that less people have seen, and she is a more decorated secret that is only smaller through having been kept enclosed for so long; she has shrunk down onto herself, almost distilled down. Lifting her away reveals yet another treasured secret, and so on and so forth. Some of those larger dolls are ones that i just idly pass by to get to the smaller ones, and no one has ever learned to recognize them along the way. Some of the smaller ones i don’t even know the look of anymore — just where they fit into the puzzle. And then, somewhere in the middle of the entire mess, there is one secret so distilled unto itself that it is like a single drop of the purest alcohol in the world: enough to knock me off of my feet.
I let Lindsay have one of those inbetween Dolls last night… one that wasn’t so small but that i had totally forgotten the look of. She smiled a tiny smile as i handed it to her, and spread her fingers over the polished secret surface while i sang the song i had written for it, and when i was done she handed it back to me and asked why i kept such a pretty one hidden away, and i think i said that “i don’t even remember what it feels like anymore; i like that i’ve forgotten. i couldn’t feel this every time i play that song… it’s not the most hidden away, but i usually just skip past it and head towards the smaller ones.”
It is put away now, but i remember it’s shiny features and its beaded eyes and the ribbons in its hair… all things i had forgotten. And it’s song is still ringing in my ears, but i’m afraid if i play it again i might shatter everything entirely.
Lindsay and I sat on the couch last night and revealed things to each other. Lindsay was sick and convinced that the cure was sitting down for long periods of time and having some wine (she’s almost Italian, i know), and i was feeling about to be sick and was convinced that the preemptive cure was lots of vanilla ice-cream and lounging in sexy-but-comfortable clothes. I don’t think either of us was correct in our convictions, because this morning we both appear to be sick, but somewhere along the way we both decided that the television was rotting our brains, and so we shared.
Lindsay is a Digital Media major and total artistic genius. She sings, she draws, she designs, she photographs, she writes, she composes. She brought out three different versions of her creativity in physical form for me to see… an allegory, a play, and a picture-book. And, after having sat there watching her share things to me that she treasured so carefully none were crinkled or smudged, the only thing i could think to give back were songs.
I have songs that have never been crinkled or smudged… songs that i have left alone for so long that i stumble over the words and chords. So, i brought down my poetry book and gave Lindsay three songs, two of which i don’t ever really give… one of which no one has ever really heard before in real life (it was Trio-ed, once). And, i told her the story; my songs are pretty 3-minute tonal pictures without a smudge on them, but saying what it stood for turning some silly little song into something more important than i ever could have intended. Who knew that some silly emotion i felt Senior year of highschool could almost bring me to tears three years later? And who knew that such intentionally silly little words would come off so meaningful when prefaced by an explanation that had never seen the light of day before?
I was essentially at a loss for words, sitting at the quaint restaurant table with Lindsay and Dante trying to explain. I couldn’t figure out how i felt about New Hope… i felt like we were trapped in one of those quaint tourist trap towns and that it was like walking around in a life-sized dollhouse where nothing was real. It was more than that, though… more surreality like rose flavored ice cream that made me feel like i was in a novel somewhere other than circling around Washington’s Crossing of the Delaware.
So, we were at dinner and Lindsay decided for me that i should have brought a notebook with me, and i’m sure that i should have because i lost everything i had meant to say. I suppose i’m just so obsessed with being in a city and being metropolitan that it seems impossible to me that people live just around the corner from these shops… selling strange musical instruments and fantastical ice cream and ultra-hot salsa only to walk back home and lay down to sleep under those same stars.
Oh yeah, you could see stars. Everywhere. Our trip straddled Pennsylvania and New Jersey and we walked back and forth across a bridge whose wooden foot path was so worn that it seemed just like walking on a dirt road. We all wondered at once where the state lines were drawn… the middle of the river, or the middle of the bridge? I finally figured that they’d probably be indicated on old claimer’s maps, but then it came down to where exactly those hand-drawn maps would set the border in real life and we were back to where we started.
Other things happened too, that i can’t quite put back together into the blog they were meant to be. There was an armor store that was selling arrowheads from 200bc, and i couldn’t fathom how just anybody had the right to own something that old and have it sitting in a display case with a “please inquire” pricetag on it. I kept arguing with Lindsay that nothing could taste like a rose after we first passed the ice cream shop while still in the car, and finally she just replied: “it tastes just like it smells. You can taste anything you can smell!” And that was that until i actually bought my triple scoop and the owner made me try it first because “some people taste it and then just walk out on me.” And it tasted like… rose petals. It was flavored in that subtle way that green tea ice cream is, with the ultra-dark pastel color and the taste that slides off of your tongue while you’re trying to absorb it.
After we had walked around for a while i finally got used to the idea of everything being real, but i still can’t figure it out. It feels like it should be some tiny historical town tucked into Massachusetts because i always forget that Philadelphia is the exception to the rule of Pennsylvania and not the other way around. Everything in New Hope was vivid… all the local teenagers we saw working in the shops were like caricatures of people i know… three times as many piercings or hair twice as outrageous or poise that’s so much more postured. I realize that somehow it’s their reaction to living in a sort of suspended time where all of the shops and streets stay the same and people from outside come in to gawk, but at the same time it felt like i was looking at a catalogue of teenaged stereotypes trying to find the ones that matched my own friends.
Of course, those are all just snippets… glimpses into my surreal afternoon, because i should have bought a notebook instead of the two cds i bought. Live and learn.
So, here i am broadcasting wireless from the fifth to last row of our theatre with the aid of the roomies, and there are 30+ people on stage for auditions. 40minutes into the process and our director barely has them onstage. Linsday and Erika and I are here in the back, specifically to observe and to lament how dreadful and long auditions are and how happy we are that we’re not up there. I’m ostensibly skipping out on acting in this one because of my fraternity mini-convention, but really i let them set the date for it with full awareness that it would be a physical barrier in the way of my playing a part in our fall show. And i didn’t mind. So, this is it … me in the audience watching all those poor nervous faces on stage as it begins to dawn on them that they’re going to be here a long time. And again tomorrow night. And again on Wednesday. And for the rest of the term.
I hope they they all break a leg :)