/reader

Today’s song is “Girl!” by Terror Pigeon.

We finally stopped to rest once we could touch the clouds. Stretched out around us in every direction, reaching into the atmosphere, an endless range of jagged peaks, mottled white, covered in pine tree peach fuzz. Dark splotches of diffused sunlight blanketed the crags, filled the valleys. Surrounded by the consequences of millions of years of tectonic friction, we basked in our accomplishment. The Earth was at once endlessly vast and impossibly small. We were thousands of miles from everything we knew. We were home.

I can still feel the cool air as it slowed my racing heart. I can still smell the scent of grass and trees and dirt and flowers dancing around us. I can still feel the smooth rocks in my hands as I grounded myself.

By the time we reached Hamilton Lake, my legs hurt, my lungs hurt, my back hurt. We climbed higher than the tallest building in the world! We hiked harder than all of civil engineering. There were so many times where I wasn't sure if I was going to make it. My body screamed. How did I do it?

We pushed. We climbed. We persevered. We persevered. We persevered.

And then we sat. We gazed around, dumbstruck. Our awe impossible to contain. We laughed.

I will never forget your smile that day.

I will never forget your smile. My favorite thing in the world.

Please allow me
To speak this clearly:
There is not will nor force or power on this earth
To keep you from me

Betraying every philosophical and spiritual belief I possess, the connection we share feels as though it was inevitable. The Universe merely bided its time while we grew into who we needed to become. Nudged us together when we needed to grow further. With such power guiding us, what else do we do but overcome the insurmountable?

And where I'm going
Will you come too then?
Cause all I want to do and see
Would be infinitely better with you beside me!

Of all the anthems we share, "Girl!" feels the most accurate encapsulation of us. Righteous, electric, optimistic. A propulsive, frenetic, emphatic ode to finding your person. The inexplicable bond that forms when you meet someone who gets you. The commitment you make over and over and over as you work to be better for each other. The adoration for the one you love. Who they are. How they help you see you more clearly.

And you know what I know
and you feel what I feel

One of my favorite memories: the first time I heard "Girl!" and I knew I had to share it with you. The way we shook our hips, our butts, as the song built and built and built. Until it exploded! And we were just a chaotic mess of limbs flailing around the apartment. Not dancing, per sé. Conduits of energy.

I love how this song compels you to shout the lyrics. To stomp with the beat. To fill any space big or small with as much joy for its entire runtime, and then do it all over again because it never feels like one time is enough.

I want to be there when you wake
I want to be there when you need
I want to be there when you laugh
I want to be there when you speed
I want to be there when you're hurt
I want to be there 'til you're fine
I want to be there for tonight
I want to be there all the time

One of my favorite memories: when we held each other and said "I love you" for the first time, changing everything forever.

There is nothing about you I won't love

One of my favorite memories: both of us sobbing at Kitbull.

There is nothing about you I won't love

One of my favorite memories: showing up so, so early in the morning to be one of the first of three couples married in Cook County in 2020, only to be fourth in line.

There is nothing about you I won't love

One of my favorite memories: how your compassion came through in the height of the pandemic when you had to sit with me and tell me how my anxiety and depression was affecting you. How I wouldn't have gotten the help I needed if it wasn't for you.

There is nothing about you I won't love

Your laugh.

There is nothing about you I won't love

Your voice.

There is nothing about you I won't love

Your wit.

There is nothing about you I won't love

How you make me laugh.

There is nothing about you I won't love

The silly faces you make.

There is nothing about you I won't love

The way you solve problems.

There is nothing about you I won't love

Your endless pursuit of self-improvement.

There is nothing about you I won't love

Your relentless optimism about people.

There is nothing about you I won't love

The way you see me like no one else has.

There is nothing about you I won't love

The way you make me feel safe.

There is nothing about you I won't love

How I am so excited to see where we're going.

There is nothing about you I won't love

How frequently we turn to one another and exclaim, "Oh my god, we're married!" Or "Oh my god, we have a house!" Or "Oh my god, we have a dog!" That for every bit that feels inevitable, feels equal parts improbable. I love rediscovering how exciting it is that we are here together.

There is nothing about you I won't love

I love how "Girl!" so effectively uses repetition to reinforce the joy and invigoration and awe and adoration and admiration and optimism of feeling seen and understood. It's a raucous, riotous celebration of finding the ones that accept you for who you are. An ode to the people in our lives that help shape us, who make life worth living, who help you see which mountains are worth climbing, and motivate you to persevere.

Today’s song is “Float On” by Modest Mouse.

I failed Driver's Ed. the first time.

This, of course, was not a reflection of my actual driving ability¹ or my thorough understanding of the Rules of the Road.² By the time the final semester of my sophomore year was over, I had not only earned top marks on my actual driving assessments, I also passed the written exam with flying colors. By the admission of my teachers alone, I should've passed. But I had missed too many days of school that year. The administration had no choice but to fail me on a technicality.

The diagnosis from my therapist was Chronic Depression, and, yeah, I mean, that tracks. I was not a particularly happy teen,³ and as my unhappiness grew, I became more and more adept at faking sick to convince my codependent mother to let me stay home from school. Anything that kept me away from the oppressive, cavernous halls of GHS felt like a win. Every day I had a "fever" was a day I didn't have to worry about some dickhead who was going to dump his bottle of water on me, or wrench my textbooks from my hands, or hit me in the nuts while I walked by. Every day I was home sick was one more day I didn't have to bashfully tell my teachers that I hadn't completed the homework assignment. My life at that time was defined by finding short-term relief with no comprehension of long-term consequences.

So: failed. No drivey for Keen Bean. The only thing I was actually looking forward to that year wrenched away from me. No one's fault but my own.

Coincidentally, it was around that time that the incessant arguing between my mother and father culminated in us moving away from the distant Chicago suburbs⁴ to a more affordable house out in the much more distant country. We traded Starbucks for soybeans. The 300-kid high school class I despised was replaced by an entire school of just 270 kids brought in from five different towns—not exaggerating. The closest stop light was a 30 minute drive away.

Life changed a bit.

Because I still had a job in my hometown, my mom was on a mission to get me my driver's license ASAP so she and my dad wouldn't be responsible for getting me to and from work back in the 'burbs. I spent the summer between Sophomore and Junior year attending a private Driver Education school, relearning the things I already knew. Miraculously, this one actually stuck, and at the end of the however-many weeks I spent attending those classes, I was cleared to take the real exam at the DMV.

I passed on the first try. I was now free to drive the minivan (mom's car) or the seafoam green 1995 Toyota Tercel (dad's car) whenever either was available. I was usually stuck with the Tercel.

To call it a "car" in the first place feels generous. It was a soap box with wheels, retrofitted with an engine. It all felt very illegal to be driving on the same roads with actual cars. 120,000 miles on the odometer. A clutch that needed to be bested in physical combat to actually change gears. And when you drove it above 60 miles per hour, it shook so violently that it's a miracle the thing didn't dissolve and send the passengers sitting inside spilling out onto the roadway to be ground into a fine paste.

My little cheapo portable CD player came with me everywhere when I drove that car. It played the CD through the car speakers via that weird little cassette tape that had a cable that plugged into the headphone jack. Remember?⁵

It was a gigantic piece of shit. I loved that car. It gave me freedom. Freedom to explore. Freedom to be alone with my thoughts. Freedom to scream.

I would crank up my music as loud as the speakers could handle, and I tried to scream the songs louder than that. I screamed Slipknot. Screamed Korn. Screamed Kittie. Screamed Snake River Conspiracy. Screamed Limp Bizkit. Screamed Staind. Screamed Papa Roach. Screamed Linkin Park. I burned a spindleful of mix CDs specifically to ravage my vocal cords and leave my body raw and broken. Barreling down long country roads, all that could be heard for miles was the whipping of the air through open windows, the rattling of a vehicle held together by chicken wire, and the impotent rage of a teenager.

All of the cruelty I absorbed in school, all of the chaos and anger I absorbed at home, erupted when I was the only person for miles. For so long, music had been my refuge. When I was alone on the road, it was my release. Just me and my feelings and the soybeans.

Somewhere west of Paw Paw, Illinois, a real town with a real population of (at the time) just 900 people, there's a wind farm. I discovered it by happenstance on one of my drives. Rows and rows of white titans towering into the air. Three lanky arms reaching out, slowly turning in the breeze. They are strange, alien structures. Unsettling in a way that's difficult to describe. Few things are creepier to me than seeing the silhouettes of windmills beset against a darkening sky. I always felt as though if I turned my back to them, they would reach down and pluck me from the Earth, remove my brain, and replace me with someone new and no one would ever know the difference.

For two years, I aimlessly drove through the country whenever I could. Roads winding between trees, up and over the tiniest little bullshit Illinois hills, through miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles of flat, nothing, fields of soybeans, corn and soybeans and corn.

And the windmills. No matter how many times I returned to them, they never got less creepy, but I kept going back.

When I graduated in 2004, my uncle gave me $500. Mom implored I save as much as I could—which I did! But not before going to Best Buy and treating myself to two albums: Franz Ferdinand by Franz Ferdinand and Good News for People Who Love Bad News by Modest Mouse. These two albums became the de facto soundtrack of my solo excursions on the road. With time, my drives became less about screaming, more about grooving. More about singing. About softening. Appreciating. Resting. Soaking. Soaking it all in, shaking it all out, becoming more in tune with me.

Franz Ferdinand got me moving my body. It got me to sing. It was fun!

Modest Mouse got me to heal. Good News for People Who Love Bad News is a quirky, beautiful album that, 20 years later, still feels as relevant and important to me today. It is timeless. My adoration for Franz Ferdinand has long waned. My adoration for Modest Mouse has only grown. I return to it often, and when I do I can't help but be transported back to who I was as at 18 years old with the clarity of who I am nearing my 40s. Bright blue skies. Open windows. My arm snaking up and down in the air. The heavy scent of nature filling my body. Learning to appreciate the flat, boring, nothing fields.

Highway 30 runs straight through the heart of a town called Shabbona, Illinois, where I lived for those two years. At the time, it was just 950 people. As of the 2020 census, just 862. It's a town that has seen its best days, and now slowly dwindles. I miss its quiet. I miss the long stretch of University Road, where it ended at Highway 30. You turn right to make your way toward town, and the road curves up and over the railroad tracks. At the precipice of the hill, you see fields stretching off in all directions into the horizon. A small nothing town enveloped by agricultural sprawl.

Have you ever stopped to watch a field of soybeans in Summer? The leaves wave delicately in the breeze, like tissue paper, and as they do so, they catch the sunlight in a way that makes the field shimmer and flow. An undulating ocean of green slowly surging over the land. Corn rises and rustles. Soybeans beckon. Set sail and go wherever the wind takes you.

The simple beauty of the chorus for "Float On" reminds me of soybeans.

And we'll all float on, okay
And we'll all float on, okay
And we'll all float on, okay
And we'll all float on, alright

It's a mantra of reprieve.

It's not enough to say it. You have to repeat it. You have to internalize it. You have to embody it. Life marching on is inevitable, but you have a choice of accepting it. Let the road lead you where it may. Enjoy the drive.

God, I miss that fucking piece of shit car.

¹ I had played a ton of Gran Turismo after all!⬏

² I was a nerd who was desperate to please people in authority after all!⬏

³ Do those even exist?⬏

⁴ Close enough to Chicago to just say "Chicago," when people ask you where you're from, but far enough away that when someone from Chicago asks and you say "Chicago," and they say, "Which part?" and you say "Geneva," they get very defensive about it.⬏

⁵ To this day, I still don't know how those things fucking worked, and I'd really prefer to never learn. I will always believe it was some strange Eldritch magic powering them. Please let me have this.⬏

Today’s song is “Maps” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

My relationship with Shée could be described, charitably, as a flurry of obsession—the way that you might describe any high school romance, where your worlds intertwine and become unrecognizable outside of the context of the two of you together. Phone calls that last for hours. Rambling emails and AIM conversations. Stretching out every last possible second to make the most of your time together before curfew. It was less about mutual connection and growth and partnership as it was about finding someone to shower with all of your big feelings and calling it love.

With Shée and me, there was no expression of big feelings more powerful than the sharing of music. I don't think I am exaggerating when I say that our relationship alone propped up the entire blank compact disc industry. We'd spend hours in my (dad's) Toyota Tercel, driving through country roads and suburban sprawl, parking in quiet lots, just listening to music we compiled for each other. Mix CDs filled to the brim with Taking Back Sunday; Blink-182; Green Day; Sum 41; Alien Ant Farm; The Used; Something Corporate; lostprophets; HIM; The Rasmus; Rasputina; David Bowie; Kenna; Res; The Darkness; X Japan; Zilch; Quarashi; Mindless Self Indulgence; Abandoned Pools; Dashboard Confessional; Phantom Planet; The Mars Volta; Jimmy Eat World; Snake River Conspiracy; O.A.R.; The Cranberries; Sublime; Marcy Playground; No Doubt; Third Eye Blind; Harvey Danger; Blind Melon; Placebo; Sneaker Pimps; The Goo Goo Dolls; Live; Jack Off Jill; System of a Down; Kittie; OK Go; Hot Hot Heat; Fountains of Wayne; Cake; They Might Be Giants; Marilyn Manson; Pinback; Caviar; Ida Maria; The Faint; Franz Ferdinand; Modest Mouse; Garbage; Junior Senior; The New Pornographers; Shiny Toy Guns; Kaiser Chiefs; The Von Bondies; The White Stripes; The Raconteurs; Chevelle; Cold; Spymob; The Vines; Silversun Pickups; Weezer; Semisonic; Smashing Pumpkins; The Polyphonic Spree; Fuel; Freezepop; Cibo Matto; Staind; Barenaked Ladies; Saves the Day; Simple Plan; Say Anything; Dispatch; Oleander; The Verve AND The Verve Pipe!¹

And those are just the bands I can remember! I can't recall who brought what to the table. Our musical tastes were so enmeshed that it feels like these bands just appeared before both of us simultaneously, bestowed upon us by Jeff, the God of Music. But credit where credit's due. I can say with utmost certainty that Shée was the one to introduce two bands to our relationship that were extensions of her as a person: Interpol and Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

I'll never quite understand Shée's obsession with Interpol. Sure, "Evil" is an incredible song, and I think Turn On the Bright Lights and Antics are extremely solid albums, but her reverence for these blokes was otherworldly in a way that never resonated quite the same with me.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs, though... Whatever she felt for Interpol, I felt for Karen O and the gang.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs entered my life when Shée burned me a copy of Fever to Tell and said I had to listen to track 6, "Pin." That was her song. And like literally every track on that album, it goes hard. I don't need to tell you. "Pin" is a revelation. To this day, whenever it comes on, I feel compelled to put it on repeat. One listen is never enough.

Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam
Duhduh, duhduh, duhduh, duhduh
Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam
Duhduh, duhduh, duhduh, duhduh

Is there a better chorus in all of music? Does any chorus rock harder? Is there any other chorus that makes you want to have really long fucking hair so you can dunk your head in a bucket of blood and then whip it around with a thousand bodies gyrating around you?²

I know why Shée loved "Pin." I also love "Pin." When I think of Shée, I think of "Pin." The two are inexorably linked.

But when I think of Yeah Yeah Yeahs, I think of "Maps."

Because I often get obsessed with individual tracks, I sometimes miss out on listening to entire albums. So "Maps" snuck on by while I played "Pin" on repeat for weeks (months? Impossible to know). It wasn't until I was watching MTV one day when the video for "Maps" came on and I was immediately drawn in. Four minutes and twenty seconds later, I knew I had watched the best music video ever created. If you haven't seen it (or if you have), it's at the top of the post. Stop reading and treat yourself. I'll still be here when you get back.

There are few images more emotionally resonant to me than seeing Karen O on this small stage, barely holding it together, singing this song, begging him to see her. To feel her love. To come back. I don't know if I have ever identified with a stranger on a screen more than I have with Karen O here. Watching this video, listening to this song, feels like my own sense of self is unraveling. Am I me? Am I Karen? It's hard to know where she ends and I begin as I watch. I can feel the oppressive heat of the lights. I can barely choke out the words of the song. My heart is in my throat. It is the soundtrack of my own loneliness. It is the frayed thread that manages to keep me whole when the world is falling apart around me. Throughout my life, this song follows. Whenever I make a new playlist. Whenever I need to share me with someone else. Whenever I need something to make me feel. "Maps" is there. It has punctuated relationships, regardless of how bitter they ended. It has guided me through a journey to grasp my own identity. It is the melodic encapsulation of my despair, my desire to be seen, heard, and understood.

Wait, they don't love you like I love you
Wait, they don't love you like I love you
Maps
Wait, they don't love you like I love you
Wait, they don't love you like I love you
Maps
Wait, they don't love you like I love you

Is there a better chorus in all of music? Does any chorus love harder? Is there any other chorus that makes you feel every emotion about someone, about yourself, about the person you used to be, about the person you long to become, about the things you've done and wish you could take back, the things you didn't do and wish you could?

¹ And while "Bittersweet Symphony" is an absolute banger of a track, I'm sorry to say that it will never ever ever ever in a bajillion years top "The Freshman." Apologies, The Verve fans! Please leave your complaints with the maître d' when you pick up your jacket.⬏

² Rhetorical questions!⬏

WeblogPoMo2024, the brainchild of Annie, is exactly what it says on the tin: if you have a Weblog, you try to Po every day for a Mo. This particular PoMo happens to begin May 1. Wow! That’s alarmingly soon!

Have you really considered what it would be like to see a post from me once (or more!) a day for 31 days? Neither have I. We’re both in for disappointment! If there’s anything I love more than publicly committing to trends, it’s publicly abandoning them in a very short timeframe.

Luckily, I have an anchor to keep me on track and motivated: I am going to write about 31 songs. Songs that I love. Songs that I have strong emotional attachments to. Songs that have helped me through tough times. Songs that I just dance around my house to while shaking my butt and scaring my dog. Do I know what I’m going to say about these songs? No! I don’t even have the list of songs yet! I gotta do that. Wednesday is… close. Oh god what have I done.

Anyway, stay tuned I guess. Just keep refreshing my website over and over. Check out other participants! Participate yourself! The possibilities are well and truly limitless.*

Update (April 30, 2024): I made the playlist. Even if I don’t finish all the posts, at least you have this to rock out to. It’s good.

Update (May 5, 2024): Henry graciously made a copy of the playlist for all you Spotify folks out there. Cheers!

* Possibilities limited. Please see provider for details. The views expressed in this blog post belong to a moron and do not reflect the opinions of WeblogPoMo2024 or any reasonable person. Not eligible in all regions. No purchase necessary. Offer void in AZ, IL, IN, MO, NE, NM, NY, PA, and Wales. Keenan is not responsible for any feelings of disappointment, anger, or ennui experienced as a result of reading any of their blog posts.