A bit behind on the poeming, but I should be caught up by Wednesday.
“Down Court
By Maggie McGinity
Drove down for two hours
Again in this place
Nostalgia holds powers
Can’t be reasoned or reckoned with
Every myth gains rapid pace
Coming back is strange
Looking at the changes
And what stays the same
Someday I’ll lose sight of this game
Someday this’ll just be a name.”
Quote:
“No matter what they wish for, no matter how far they go, people can never be anything but themselves. That’s all.”
“Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: 24 Stories” by Haruki Murakami
The last of the Home Picks, and quite possibly my least favorite. It’s just very mixed, and it kind of feels like a break-up song. I’ll post an actual break-up song tomorrow, but know that most of the things I post today, tomorrow and Thursday have to do with what was going on in my life 5 years ago, and not at all to do with now.
Fav neutral lyrics:
“So tell me what you need and I’ll accommodate
But if too long goes by you just might be too late
An opportunity you can’t afford to waste
So have the lines in your head first for heaven’s sake”
Apparently I have a penchant for picking split-screen music videos this week.
So I thought this going to be a one-Pick kind of day, but then I started singing “Closing Time” in my head this morning, and I realized it had almost exactly the same theme as “Take Me Home Tonight,” and then I knew I had to Pick them both at once. Just what that theme is, I’m sure you can figure out, my assumedly intelligent readership.
These are both songs I can be found singing along to whenever they come on over the radio in my car.
I enjoy this song, but this music video I have to enjoy ironically. Black and white, singing to an empty arena? Soooooo 80s in the most mock-able way. That saxophone, though(should not be played like a guitar).
I like this video, but it frustrates me. Go back into the club and look again, Semisonic lead singer! Have your bandmates told you she’s wearing a very distinctive white jacket? They should, they really should.
We’re going to keep the Home theme going for a few more days, until the 15th, at which point we are switching gears a bit. Not sure in what direction after the 15th, but I’ll figure it out. The 15th itself is kind of a holiday in Maggieland.
Anyways. This Pick is getting Picked because A. I need a transition to another home song that does not at all at all feel like a Sunday song, so it’s gonna be a Monday song, and B. because of a comment a friend said yesterday.
I was watching a movie with some people last night and afterwards we all talked for a bit. Someone there said that where we were at the time felt a lot more like home than where he actually lives most of the time. Not feeling at home at your actual mailing address is something I myself have been thinking about a lot lately, especially with the Home theme.
I listen to this song a lot when I’m walking around campus, because it’s on a lot of playlists I made on my old iPod Touch that I recently started carrying around again. A lyric towards the end of the song caught my attention and that’s why it’s being Picked.
I think it’s also good to bring forward the idea of “home” not necessarily being a place you rest your head, but possibly a place where you feel a great sense of community, or a place outdoors where you feel very comfortable. It can even be an idea, a person, a song, a book, a movie, an activity. Just wherever/whatever makes you feel most comfortable and most comfortable being yourself.
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for this to turn into a monologue post. Anyways, the lyrics:
“It’s always have and never hold
You’ve begun to feel like home”
One of my favorite songs of all time, something I can be heard absentmindedly singing while washing dishes or cleaning. Only while there’s no one else in the house, though.
I’ve always wanted to do a gender-bent fan music video for this song, an elaborate lip-sync. This idea occurred to me in the time when lip-sync videos were actually a thing on YouTube. It would be laid out a little differently than this official video, but the style and feel would be very much the same.
I knew this phrase was a song, and I knew that I heard a version of it many years ago on Glee, so I set out to find a better recording of this song and reacquaint my ears with it.
So far, this is the version I’ve settled on. I really like the singing choices and the accompaniment. You really get the message of the song.
So good for the theme. It’s also such a good song. Sad, but hopeful, and just poignant.
I was kind of hoping for a rainy day to post this Pick, because I’m always looking for good rainy day songs, and this could be one. However, today is the most perfect weather day of all this week, and in a way that’s perfect for this Pick.
This song explores a lot of ideas in an interesting way, and is musically cool. How does it fit with the home theme, you ask? Well, in a lot of spirituals, the lyric “I’m going home” actually means “I’m going to Heaven.” I think a lot of these spirituals had origins with the African American slaves who worked plantations in the 1600-1800s, until the North created and eventually could enforce anti-slavery laws. Singing built community and helped to distract slaves from their mundane and sometimes painful daily work; coded lyrics like these were also a way to secretly rebel, to express but not let your master know that, in some ways, you would prefer death and Heaven to working his plantation.
I generalize, but it intrigues me, the correlation between “home” and “Heaven” in so many hymns and spirituals. This song kind of turns that on its head.
Sorry for the low picture quality of the video. All the versions I found were like this. I think you still get the effect of the ghost band, though.
Lyric version in case you don’t like somewhat creepy, somewhat blurry, emo music videos.
Also, perfect weather and the perfect lyrics:
“Don’t believe that it’s better when you leave everything behind,
Don’t believe that the weather is perfect the day that you die.”
I’ve noticed today that everyone seems to be rather melancholy. Not sure why, though I did understand it on the bus that gets you to your 8 AM 10 minutes late(when you can still get attendance credit and participation points). Everyone seems well-dressed, too. I don’t know what’s going on.
Anyways. Melancholy Monday + home theme = this song. At it turns out, I like this music video.
Also, I am not especially melancholy today, but I could use some chocolate.
Also, never ever ever listen to the acoustic version of this song.
Maggie Lives 