ideas

A friend just told me to write down my ideas. Sometime I'm good about that, mostly I'm not. My thoughts live and die in conversations with loved ones for the most part. I save my thoughts to say to you because I love you.

1) I've been watching a lot of 80's films because I'm drawn to the pre-internet and pre-cell phone communication styles. The film "The Warriors," which is incredible, could not be made today as it is. It's based on a mistranslated act of violence, and today, which all the flipcams and iphones and bullshit we have to record history as it occurs, the premise of the film is an obsolete threat.

2)I like 80's films because they do not have to accommodate technology the way contemporary films do. There isn't a third party technology interface involved to communicate things through characters. It's all done through human interaction, without being enslaved to media devices. I like it. It's refreshing.

3) People losing each other in films is a problem. Like in The Warriors, or The Pick Up Artist (Molly Ringwald, Robert Downey Jr, 1989). Without cell phones, if you lose someone in New York City you will lose them. I like the justification of chasing down your target and the threat of a city swallowing up someone. You can't find them on facebook. You can't google them. They are gone.

fuzzy memories

sad songs and chardonnay

story of my fucking life.

I GOT SOMETHIN' TO SAY

Sorry, folks- I've been watching Strangers with Candy on netflix. So good. Watch it.

Anyway, I saw something TERRIFYING today

I went to the "Novel Cafe" in Santa Monica, which is right next to where I work, so that I could pick up a grilled cheese sammich for lunch. As I had forgotten my phone at work, which I would normally fiddle with while waiting for my food order to be ready, I seized the opportunity to window-watch the people passing by. Normal, right? Skinny kid smoking. Surfer mom and her blonde gap toothed kids. Meathead boyfriend in a green day shirt and his skinny little girlfriend holding hands.

The passersby hit a lull and I stopped backtracking their life stories, so I turned around to face the inside of the restaurant.

SO DIFFERENT Y'ALL

There are these little tulip shaped lights that I had never paid attention to before, and today I realised that they aren't lights at all- but hanging outlets for phones and laptop chargers, above each and every table. Convenient, right?

Everyone in the restaurant was plugged in and talking on their cell phones, or clicking away at a laptop. No one was talking to each other. It was scary to look at because people were quite literally plugged in- a woman was shouting, indifferent and oozing self-importance, while her blackberry was plugged in above her. She was skinny and standing, tethered to the tulip. She had fake breasts. Another man was pacing, while attached to his charger, talking to Gotham Records (the label sticker on his Mac laptop, I'm assuming it's his workplace) about signing somebody or something.

I hated. I'm never fiddling with my phone in public again.

We use technology as a communicative crutch. It's easier to push the buttons on a keyboard to broadcast meaning than to speak the words. I'm doing it right now. I've done it before. I love you. I miss you. See? I just did it again.

Someone apologized to me via facebook for breaking my heart three years ago. Wish he would have said it three years ago, when it hurt the most.

I'm lookin' for truth, here, people. Something real. Something not presented to me through a technological buffering interface to diffuse the pain or discomfort. Don't tell me I'm in the wrong city for that- I know it's here somewhere, hiding.

New York was gritty, sharp, real- it was video. Los Angeles is grainy, fuzzy, soft, smeared, faraway, smoothed over with smoggy skylines. The whole goddamn city looks like a faded photograph. There's truth somewhere here too. There's real people.

So long, summer. It's been real.

I meeeeeeeeannnnn...damn.

I was stuck in traffic today and I saw New Jersey license plates. I just about cried. New Jersey is a wasteland, yeah, but really it was seeing someone that was so far from home, too. It was seeing something so familiar in a place that really isn't. I really miss New York. I miss you. (yes, you)

It's going to be easier once the boys get here. They begin their road trip tomorrow morning in the AM- two weeks of driving cross country to make it to mecca, where I already am. (waiting)

When I look back on this time I'm going to remember the music I was listening to mostly. I'm feelin' music like never before, like, it's breaking my heart and waking me up and stopping the gap- I heard Jose Gonzales' "Heartbeats" recently, and oh, hell, it just took my breath away. I had to turn the damn song off to catch my breath! Hearing that song felt like a pain in my chest.

That's the most defining part of my new life. Music. I feel like the people that are coming in and out of my life right now are static. And I feel that way because you spoiled me.

I got so used to being myself, unfiltered and uncensored, that I forgot what it was like outside our little Brooklyn bubble. I can't do that here. I can't say what's on my mind because I get blank looks. I can't say how I feel (or voice the lack) because people are scared of how I live. Meeting tons of new people, building up that rolodex, yeah, but it's like flipping through a deck of cards to figure out how to present myself. I'm good at being charming. I'm not good at being myself. How long did it take with you? Awhile. And we lived together.

So many new people. But I don't know them and they don't know me. I can't wait until the boys are here. I feel like my anchors are road trippin'. My kite strings are coming! I need reminders of who I am. I don't want this place to change me. I'd rather evolve, first. Let the city morph to fit my needs. So far, so good, but I'm feelin' that strain of survival adaptation, that pull of self-preservation. I keep having to remind myself of who I am because I get lost in the shattered parts of who I think people want me to be. Remember who you are.

This is a love letter.

I wrote this song for you: (not really)

villianess

c'mon now

Would someone like to inform me of the exact percentage that my adult life will be spent sifting and sorting through disappointment? I would like to schedule around it. Thank you.

Parents- stop teaching us that if we work for anything, we will get it. Stop teaching us this. Stop coddling us. You baby-boomers, man. You brought us up softened and sorted into neat piles of self-esteem and self-worth so we enter out into the work force thinking we are necessary for something (see HERE. and you know that shit is legit because it's the mathafucking ny times.) and that we might even be overqualified for whatever it is we are approaching. It sucks. We're stunted.

Not that I dislike work. I love work. Working. Having a job to exhaust me. I think its marvelous. Being employed out of college is just splendid.

I dislike the ebb and flow of false hope. This, I find, is supplementary to pretending to be grown up. The parking garage that is $60 a month and a 10 minute walk away. The coffee that I spill in my car. The DIMINUITIVE paychecks. The friend who is angry with me. The boy that didn't call. The Ikea bed that did not come with all its parts. The cockroaches. The mac'n cheese nights. The clothing on the floor.

I'm requesting a time table, plz. I would like very much to know when I can expect the pieces of my life to fit together nicely, like they are supposed to. Like I was taught they would. When everything will fall into place, because I was told that they would. Well, I'm working, world. Hard. Exhaustively.

ATTN KARMA: cut me a deal.

I don't fear that things won't get better, because things always do, eventually. I fear that they might get worse before this happens though.

I'm feelin' like an unencumbered embittered heathen these days. Dazed like an antebellum dream. Sleepin' like a creepy mummy.

I got a tattoo months ago that says "Wake Up." Apparently this permanent reminder is not enough.

spaceman, oh, spaceman, come rescue me

I got somethin' to say. I've got a theory I've been working on that has been pinging around unsaid in my skull for awhile.

You can pitch in if you've got some more fact or fiction to contribute.

I'm religiously untethered. (That's a nice way of calling myself a heathen, y'all.) I tend to see a lot of physical prospect out there, in this whole great big universe, that when I confront it, I back down a little. The world is so big, and we are just the gum on a planet's shoe.

I think not being religious can lead to a certain sense of impending doom. Atheists must live life as a means to an end, right? This is it. This is all we've got. It's hard to keep yer face up and smile into the sun with that kind of attitude, I'll bet. Not having a God up there can make you feel so small and insubstantial.

I used to sit in church when I was a little girl and feel like such an impostor. It all seemed so silly to me. I got baptized and cried, not because I felt the touch of Jesus or I felt connected to God, but because I looked up into the pastor's sweet face and thought "This is a ridiculous show," and I cried for lying.

I believe in art. I seek refuge in music, film, literature, and I think museums are my temples where I go to worship. That's where I experience enlightenment.

There's something else, too. I think science-fiction is the rational mind's answer to religion. I mean, think about it. Futurism and the obsession with the superiority of man-made technology seems like a hopeful prayer for longevity. For something more. For a goddamn eternity.

When I look at sci-fi nerds (like myself) and what we're drawn to, this is what we're praying for. Not a dystopian downfall, necessarily, but the idea that We. Are. Not. Alone. And I don't mean that we believe in little green men and probes and whatnot, that's reserved for the Roswell conspirators. We aren't consciously hoping for E.T. to come be our best franz plz, but just by being drawn to science fiction we are displaying an acceptance of the subject matter which implicates at least some sort of belief in it.

So I've been hoarding science fiction music to aid and abet my obsession. And I'm choosing to write about it now because I think science fiction film and literature is a more obvious choice. I'm more interested in the deviations and where the edges fray, and where sci-fi meets normal. Science Fiction music in my mind is divided into two categories:

1)"Subject" Science Fiction : Music that clearly states science fiction subject matter within the lyrics or title. Includes space, time, stars, aliens, etc.

"Rocket Man" by Elton John
"Spaceman" by Bif Naked
"Robocop" by Kanye West
"Remains of the Sun" by Leitvox
"Sad Robot" or "Space Invaders" by Pornophonique
"Starshine" by Gorillaz
"Conquer" by ABK, Esham, & Violent J
"The Stars Are Projectors" by Modest Mouse
"When They Came For Us" and "We Are Pilots" by Shiny Toy Guns
"Extraterrestrial" by Outkast
"Starstruck" by Santogold
"We Are All Made of Stars" by Moby
"Space Mountain" by Fuck Buttons
"One More Robot/Sympathy 3000-21" by The Flaming Lips
"I Want to be a Machine" by Pornophonique
"Slipstream" by the Crystal Method
"Space Oddity" and "Life On Mars?" by David Bowie (DUH)
"Phone Home" by 'Lil Wayne
"From Stardust to Sentience" by High Places
"I'm So Tall" by Chester French
"Paranoid Android" by Radiohead
"Technologic" and "Robot Rock" by Daft Punk

OR

2) "Prospect" Science Fiction: Music that utilizes typically science fiction "noises" like electronic beeps or sonar noises, without necessarily singing about science fiction. Not just electronica music. More like electronic, technological echoes that you would typically hear in a science fiction film score.

"Flashing Lights", "Stronger" and "Coldest Winter" by Kanye West
"Look Back In" by Moby
"Purr" by Tides From Nebula
"Rome" by Yeasayer
"Lullatwerp" by Disastertron
"Chromakey Dreamcoat" or "Satellite Anthem Icarus" by Boards of Canada
"What I Have Left" by Alexis Taylor
"Nights of the Week" by Apes and Androids
"We're Looking for a lot of Love" by Hot Chip
"Coconut" and "When I Grow Up" by Fever Ray
"Flying" by Secret Machines
"DEA" by The American Dollar
"Alice" by Pogo
"Sexy Saturn" by Bix
"Sleepyhead" by Passion Pit
And pretty much everything by this guy.
Or this girl.

It seems that the sci-fi is either implicit or explicit within each category. Some bands, like Daft Punk or Pornophonique pretty much exclusively write songs heralding technology or space. There's even a subdivision of my subject sci-fi just for sci-fi rap. Think Kid Cudi, some Kanye songs, 'Lil Wayne's "Phone Home" or ABK's "Conquer. It seems to me that a lot of sci-fi rap involves a conquering theme, which is congruent to the mainstream aim of most hip hop and also seems to be the mission statement of science fiction. A lot of those songs, no matter what the genre or target demographic, will employ those fuzzy radio voices calling out to you through some staticky nowhere. Hope from beyond.

And all these different songs- this is just what I cound find in my 7500+ Itunes. So that's got to just be a sampling.

Furthermore, I noticed that when I was searching for links to the implicit prospect sci-fi music, a lot of the "fan made" videos depicted space scenes, orbits, galaxies...just images of space they lifted and set to the music, even though the songs never discussed space explicitly. Like Fever Ray's "Coconut" and Alexis Taylor's "What I Have Left." Both show space pictures. Both not about space. People know. They feel the same way.

Isn't this amazing, how this subject seeps into music from so many different genres?

And then I realized.

It's our gospel music.

When we sing out to the stars, we are throwing out our hope for a forever out there, not at the hands of some unnamed, unknown deity, but placing our faith in mankind to rekindle our futures and that there is more out there. Cloning? It's reincarnation.

I guess I am religious. I just think my religion is art. It's what I believe in.

We may not have a God, but we have hope. Hope in ourselves and the intelligence of humanity to perpetuate the species so we can seek out an eventual eternity. We don't sublimate ourselves with a hankering for heaven and dreams of the pearly gates. We evolve.








Here are the related links I could find on science fiction music videos and music. Here and here.