Tag: Indie Rock

Dark Dark Dark, “Daydreaming”

We are consumed by a treasure hunt of unparalleled proportions on an island that has no name. This is the search for meaning, the journey towards a definition. This is life. The little things, the tragic things.

The sticker on the corner of a medicine cabinet mirror, left there by the daughter of a previous occupant and now a part of your morning narrative. The glasses worn by a woman of Italian heritage, removed from the bridge of her nose by death and sold for a pittance from her garage, now worn proudly by a young man more than half her age to that indie show headlined by that band (you know, the one with the lithe bearded gent at the helm) in a small basement around the corner from a former firehouse. The piano, a wedding present to that bride who secretly despised her groom, now spreading the gospel of tolerance and devotion to hundreds of bodies placed piously in their pews.

These are lives overlapping. The past marking the present as it gets passed by for the future. Nothing without meaning, even if the words have not been said and understood. Every anomaly not really out of place, but merely misunderstood. Layers are interwoven atop foundations poured by people framed in frozen photographs hidden in a drawer. Or maybe, if they’re lucky, gathering dust near the edge of a nightstand. Still remembered, still present.

This is history. Not an archaic subject caked in dust and mummified by dates to be memorized, unanalyzed. History is the story of people chasing dreams, or of dreams chasing people; of stickers, glasses, and pianos; of ephemera, sights and sounds.

History is meaningful. History is you and me, and all the other things I see. History Is.

Midtown Dickens, “Walk, Don’t You Run”

As quoted from Sara Teasdale’s poem ‘I Shall Not Care”:

WHEN I am dead and over me bright April
Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,
Though you should lean above me broken-hearted,
I shall not care.

I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful
When rain bends down the bough,
And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted
Than you are now.

Ane Brun, “Words”

Growing up, my room was directly adjacent to the family room in our sprawling single-story Southern California ranch home. Noises traveled through doorways and lingered in the halls of this old house, as did its people. Each night with such suburban regularity the noise of the nightly news watched by my mother in her kitchen cove floated by the feature film on which my father had paused, although he never stayed on any one image long. He reclining on the couch his hard work had purchased, feet on the Ethan Allen coffee table and arm raised high over his head as his suspended hand aimed the t.v. remote towards the cable box with nonchalant purpose.

Me, I was safe inside four walls, two windows and one door as the world revolved around itself outside, storming chaos as it paved its paths and picked its sides. But I knew nothing of this fury yet, even as I wrote nothings in a moleskin that seemed so urgent and so true. No, the things I knew then followed the floorboards of that grey-blue house set just before the foothills where my bare feet navigated each grain of wood as I summoned the courage to find my stride.  With each passing awkward year I wobbled less, noticed more. And while I know not the name of he who put those windows in those walls, I know the man who washed them clear of soot and soil to free his daughter from the task. From that clarity came words: words on paper; words that broke down letters to build stairwells; words that filled apartments with holograms and hopes; words that explained my station to those not unto myself.

Which is to say…if we are each a product of our environment, then I was packaged well. Kept safe and warm with only surface cracks sustained in shipping. So now I stop, I sit to recall the space that gave me words; to remember the rattle of its heater and the groans of its hinges, and capture this memory in characters. Using words to keep it real, architecture forming verse that reminds me of the people inside even if they roam its halls no more. Yes, here I stop…

She Keeps Bees, “Vulture”

Power is curious. Unless continually moving, like a rolling stone, its blood coagulates and forms a crust through which its captive can see but not do, feel but not find.

When Power stagnates, it feeds off the flaneurs, we the ones who are continually underfoot. Ever moving, ever changing what we are and what’s around us, Power watches us until the time is right. Then, swiftly, it descends, jaw clenched tight in anticipation. Hoping. Wanting to transmute to look like us, be like us, obliterate us in physical form.

But to no avail. Because we are the makers of meaning; we are that hallow reference on your tongue; we are the content on a continent flooded with vacancies.

We ARE what it is NOT.