rob blackledge - one step closer
red hot chili peppers – I could have lied
natalie merchant – my skin

emmanuel, man ray
rayograph, 1922

xray, 1917

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cat power – naked if I want to

ben lee - float on

song of the day

“you don't mind the fall until your face hits the ground” isn’t quite as good as “it was her own damn fault when He turned that bitch to salt”, but it’s pretty damn close.

Robyn- Crash and Burn Girl

self help reading + music

from Clearing Clutter for Good Feng Shui:

It is perfectly acceptable to keep some possessions that remind you of happy times, provided that when you look at them, you are filled with love. But if you have too many, your energies will be linked too strongly to your past, preventing new things from entering your life. Giving away or throwing out items that you strongly identify with can prove very painful emotionally, because it is like parting with a bit of yourself. However, the truth is that once you have relinquished some possessions, you often don’t miss them at all. Also, if you give them to someone who will love them just as much as you did, you will feel good about it. (I'm hearing that Dangerfield 'take my wife . . please!' joke right there in my head, how about you?)

Laurie Anderson - It's Not the Bullet That Kills You It's the Hole
Ralph Towner - Solitary Woman
The Year Of - Alone
Ron Sexsmith - Gold in Them Hills

Peter Wolf- Safe Travels

FUCK. (This.)

On moving. On second thought. (armsverycrossy)

I’ll bulldoze the shit out the window myself if necessary. I’m sick to death of memory. I don’t want to walk backwards into the future. It only makes me scared of what I can see behind me and of what I can not see in front of me.

Iron & Wine and Calexico – Burn that Broken Bed (and great tune. hrrmph)

don't bug me when I'm watching Planet of the Apes playlist:

johnny and june – if I were a carpenter
bert janusch - blackwaterside
ben kweller – how it should be
bonnie prince billy – love comes to me (irony can be beautiful)
modest mouse – medication
red hot chili peppers - make you feel better

The first and the last shall do something or other in the Bible, I don't remember, but they kick ass in above list.

The other side of lonely, which I beeeeen like I might start being able to sing like a black woman or worse try it and just sound like shiiiiiit and be miserable anyway . . . the other side of that lonely thing is GET OFFA ME. It's amazing how fast I got hungry for 10 hours or so of listening to music and doing otherwise absolutely nothing. And I think you can kinda tell that that's a human necessity or something by the way the playlists get more nuanced. I mean, there is an art to everything, including doing nothing.

(too much family/all about me - euro pop playlist:)

the darkness – is it just me(?)
keane – bend and break
kaiser chiefs – o my god
looper – impossible things
the feeling – never be lonely

Home sweet home means your own bed, which if it smells like a dog it’s your dog.

Out before dawn to Chicago to the nursing home where they won’t eat the food and g-pa is starting to look like a swizzle stick so the McDonald’s-a-thon until they’re in a food coma, then onto Wisconsin to my mother’s, from where I call the friend I have there and then lunch with both of them then onto my Dad’s where he’s made steak and has wine more wine (which given the circumstances, means a lot of demonstrative feelings about his and my and everyone’s existence . . . ) then back to my friend who takes me to my first Ultimate Fighting Party, attended by a room full of peace loving lefty hippie types, which you’d think would be counterintuitive but not really, where I made a friend! (Domino, the border collie—love that breed—who herded me to the end of the couch where he kept me pinned, which was reassuring given my feelings about any gathering of persons) then a few hours sleep and onto my sister’s in Milwaukee where her house has been gutted and the only thing left is the couch, the tv, and my bro-in-law’s laptop and one-liners [thank god for both, as usual], then out from there by 4 a.m. to get back to Chicago in time to deal with the omg security nightmare at O’Hare . . . and home, to Jasper-butt pillows (ahhhhhh) all in about 60 hours

=

the experiential equivalent of electric shock treatment. Really, the only thing it is possible to feel is disconcerted.

One highlight, randomly chosen: I’m in my Dad’s kitchen looking at a photo on his fridge of my daughter and her father, who was so young when she was born that he kept growing and his shirts kept getting too short in the sleeves. The one he’s wearing in the photo fits, I’d just given it to him for xmas, I’m remembering that and our kid is in a purple velvet get-up we found at the thrift store, and I’m smiling at the photo. My mother comes in and looks at me and says, “The bible says that in the end times the love in most will grow cold and small, except for a few who will have the ability to draw a warm safe circle for those they’ve loved . . . .” Note that I’m not drinking the wine cuz I’m going out later. So it bemuses plenty me to learn that apparently just by not hating my X’s, I’m personally saving them from the Apocalypse. (You’re welcome! lol)

the killers- mr. brightside (jaques lu cont mix)

(WI joke):

You know you're ugly when you make a man shit his own dick.

love - everybody's got to live

Wisconsin Here I Come

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'an awkward gathering', 9,2006
(don't they look nervously clustered around the cells they already know?)

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I hate themed restaurants.
I hate walking by the assholes in first class.
I hate 'crafts and scrapbooking' stores.
I hate not knowing what to say.
I hate lawn art.
I hate Republicans.
I hate 'What would Jesus do" bumper stickers.
I hate the cheerful.
I hate illness.
I hate hospitals.

tom waits- bottom of the world

A friend from work wrote to me.

It’s hard for people not to dance nervously around your shit at work, like if you’ve gotten run over by a car or half your face has been removed for skin cancer or whatever. There’s the loooong ‘pretend not to see it’ phase, followed by the ‘things will get better so buck up’ phase, and finally the ironic/grumpy ‘sorry your life sucks’ phase where the shut-ins and other “fuck this” types stake their positions. Thank god I seem be moving into that last stage, because if one more well meaning idiot said “you’re still good looking” (“still”, ugh) you were gonna hear a news story about my aim from a watchtower.

So this friend wrote to say: When I got divorced, because the man I loved had this big affair with someone who looked just like me (but not as ‘difficult’ in personality apparently), he left me the same week as I was diagnosed with stage III ovarian cancer.

This wasn’t a “it could be worse” story—the point was that she was sick, and that fact so trumped the other problem that she hardly even thought about the other. She turned inward and focused on being okay again. By the time that was over, she thought “huh, I’ve been divorced a year.” She thought that was a good metaphor for how external pain should be handled by an inward turn, where the pain is actually located. The trick, she went on to say, is to do that before you get sick and before “parts of you have to be lopped off or out.”

A lot of people have given me a lot of advice this year, and actually I’ve only heard bits and pieces of it as I’ve rolled by, thump-ouch-thump down the Big Hill. But this one stopped me. And I thought I’ll buy a feng shui book to keep me company this winter, and quietly arrange every corner and color for wellbeing, and sink into solitude as into warm water.

frou frou - let go

Stina Nordestam - I Dream of Jeanie (you'll like this)

'if

only'

9.2006

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jake holmes - dazed and confused

tom petty - breakdown (I just like this song)

Why am I not a lesbian? . . . . Holley Anderson

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ok the tune's a little misanthropic, but it goes soo well w/ the pic--no?

anti anti attachment dali lama backlash playlist:

Modest Mouse & Califone – South of Heaven
Nick Drake – Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright (great Dylan cover)
Cake- Friend is a Four Letter Word
Morrissey – You’re Going to Need Someone On Your Side
Janis – A Woman Left Lonely
Pearl Jam – A Better Man (acoustic) (grrrmmmmm)

Bonus track: Hare Krishna (remix) Believe it or not, this is pretty sexy, and long enough to fall asleep to (or not). So put it on and lay there and wish you had both your shit together and someone worth the hassle.

I went to hear the Dali Lama today. I wish I could report a bolt of enlightenment upside the head. Mostly I froze my balls off in the seats that were so close to heaven I might as well have just jumped for it.

The theme was Compassion. Since this is the year that I found out that I was Stupido and reached a relationshipdeadstop likesomethingflickedatawall, I tried to go with an open mind. I strained to hear, because as he pronounces words, you have to translate the rest of the way into English. Anger is bad. Happiness is the goal of a human life. Glad to hear it, though easier said than done. Compassion is the way to happiness. But wait, not as in for anyone you know. That kind of compassion is tainted with yourself. I can kind of see that, put that way. The goal is to love the stranger, and to love those you know as if they were strangers, as far as I could tell. Because, in that case, whatever they are they are and the impact on you will be irrelevant, thus . . .

I’m kind of growing uncomfortable with this, because if I asked, I’m not sure that the few people I love would like to be loved as if I didn’t know them. Or would they? Hmmm I don’t think I would, just speaking for myself. In fact, the opposite of that is what I’d prefer. So I’m sitting there wondering if I have it exactly backwards and what people should do is unwrap the wounds of their hopes, desires etc. to another. If people did that, i.e. treating others as the OPPOSITES OF STANGERS, then they’d know each other’s fondest wishes, and where within the two of them a wish could not be fulfilled [inevitable?], then they could try to deal with that, with compassion.

I’m mulling this over, at this point kind of drifting in and out, watching this guy with sideburns and a nice butt strut around between groups of friends looking very much like someone who is NOT about to give up attachments, when the Lama starts to reach the crescendo. What you get for success is a world full of friends. (really?) He laughs, “You see! Everyone is your best friend!” (o) And I kind of guffawed, and I soooo wanted to turn to the guy next to me and say, Hey since we’re best friends now you want to come over and watch tv and order pizza? But I didn’t. He was a stranger.

What did the bartender say to the horse?
What?
Why the long face?

I like little boy jokes because they don't care about causality at all. I mean, why is a horse talking to a bartender? Who knows? Who cares? Hey, horse or sloth or bear or turtle, if there's a bartender nearby . . . what the hell, say "buttcrack" if you can't think of anything else.

"Love Ain't Just a Four-Letter Word," Jenny Wilson

Today, I thought for approximately 15 minutes (total) in a way that wasn’t: sorrysorrysorryoshitoshitofuckthissuckswhatthefucksorryouchOUCH

That’s setting the bar kind of low for a “good day”, but hey, set it where you can set it.

Home.

It’s the kindness and the generosity in how you see the person you’ve decided to love, some kind of way, as best you can, that’s the thing. So that they can get what they need. Even it takes them from you. Again and again. And again.

Ladyfuzz – Staple Gun

for Virgo this week: There was one main reason why America's founding fathers gave Thomas Jefferson, not Benjamin Franklin, the job of composing the Declaration of Independence in 1776. They were afraid that Franklin, a compulsive teaser and trickster, would slip jokes into the document. In my opinion, we Americans would have been better served if Franklin had been chosen and allowed to mess around. After all, even the most profound commitments and weighty situations benefit from the leavening power of humor. Keep that in mind during the oh-so-serious games that are ahead for you, Virgo.

John Butler - The Hand of the Almighty (God Will Fuck You Up)
[if you never download anything else from this blog, pick this one]

jose gonzales - slow moves (my moves are slow)

Looks like I’m moving again. (Now don’t all you dykes grab your paintbrushes all at once.) Sigh.

I’m going back to the red house—I have to think of a name for it. Headquarters? I’m in a life that for the most part was built around a marriage that isn’t any longer. The only toehold feels like that place, and I’m in freefall so I need a toehold. I’m struck by the strange irony of it. X is being kind and generous, very, so I’m noting that. I will, I hope, take some comfort in a real home again, where the sink is actually a laundry tub because I insisted that the baby be able to take a bath in the kitchen, and my father swore up and down about the pain in the ass it was fitting the dishwasher beside it. I’ m struck by the strange irony, in other words, of being surrounded by the generosity of men who in the last month, for their different reasons, have had to conclude and concede that they didn’t love me. That they had wanted to, that they had tried . . . but they couldn’t change the things about me that they hated. There is a pain, a hole, in their hearts where they tried. (woops)

After my little girl got sick and then better, I started waking each day and giving a few minutes to remember all that there is to be grateful for. I’ve stopped that. I should start again. Solid house, solid job, two little kids who couldn’t be better or sweeter or smarter or weirder. Old grape vines. Old quince trees from Greece. My mother would throw in “skinny and smart”, but all jokes aside it’s hard to be grateful for a mind and a body that both feel every inch across lonely lonely. I can feel very keenly tonight the appeal of Jesus. I wish I could cry out quietly, O ______ [something] . . . . All I ever believed in was the ability and will of people who wanted to and did hold on to each other specifically, despite the evidence I had when I married X that love might not be able to bridge geography or sexuality or trauma (or anything, ha). Still, I spose that many women have started over (again) and faced the world alone (again) with less (and less practice at it). But I am not quite five feet tall, too little for all this, and friendless in this city now, and so I am going to be best friends with self-pity for awhile so we can hold hands. It’ll probably make my playlists kind of dragass’n shitty for another spell.

The Used – All That I’ve Got (acoustic)

deadpan, 9.2006

cat power, knocking on heaven's door (dylan cover)

wee morning irony report

"Steady As She Goes (acoustic)," The Raconteurs

from The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James:

Men lapse from every level - we need no statistics to tell us that. Love is, for instance well known not to be irrevocable, yet, constant or inconstant, it reveals new flights and reaches of ideality while it lasts. These revelations form its significance to men and women, whatever be its duration. So with the conversion experience: that it should for even a short time show a human being what the high-water mark of his spiritual capacity is, this is what constitutes its importance—an importance which backsliding cannot diminish, although persistence might increase it.

[persistence 'might' bc it's like sasquatch] [like jesus]

untitled, 9.2006




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‘solitude remembering touch [fri nite]’ playlist:

Jack Johnson – Sitting, Waiting, Wishing (a longtime fave)
Everlast – What It’s Like
Cake – Love You Madly
PET – Ride My Heart [what is this?]
Shivaree – Close My Eyes
Massive Attack – Dissolved Girl (best in show by far, turn it up - but the squealing tires at the end of the Cake makes that the runner up)

[soundtrack for a rib kick]

I am soothed by the order within an elementary school. Everything is so ‘in its proper bin’. Today, there appeared on the door to the classroom a “chores chooser”. It’s actually one of those kinds of organizers that women put in their closets to hang shoes in or whatever, but each pocket on this one is labeled with a chore: reptiles (feeding), snack, attendance . . . All the kids find, on the little table next to this, their names written on pieces of construction paper, and they are to put theirs into the pocket of the chore they want for next week. The Judge loves a rule, so he dutifully picks up his piece of paper and reads over the chore choices. Then he says “naaaaaaaaw” and puts the paper back on the table and goes inside.

eels - beautiful freak

ben harper - alone (acoustic)

[insomnia is this tune on repeat-try it 5 times] [in the dark]

Does anyone have any clue what a white blood count even is, let alone what it means when it doubles in a week? Cuz I sure don’t. How many different ways do I have to discover that I am futile and stupid this year? Who took a piss in my karma pool? I love this part though:

So, how does that . . . I mean, what does that mean?, I ask,—Like, in time (left)?
Well, says Mom, he asked that and they told him that the average time for this type of leukemia is 10 years.
(pause)
The average height of an American woman is about 5’6” I think—clearly that doesn’t apply to me.
Riiiiiiight.
Riiiiiiight.
(pause)
What are you doing about it, anything?
Saturday it’s supposed to be lovely, she says, so we’re hoping he feels well enough to go kayaking.
(pause) (lol) (lolweepy)
Word to the wise: When in Doubt, Kayak!
Well what are you going to do? Have fun, as much as you can, that’s all there is.
Fair enough.
You should try it, she says snippily.
O please don’t start in on the liberated woman hear me roar shit.
You need to SEE DIFFERENTLY, just DECIDE TO, you’re SMART and are a [BLEEP] and have a GREAT ASS—It’s a SMORGASBOARD for you to pick from if you just DECIDE.
(pause) (lol)
Mom, ya know how you can just DECIDE that Jesus is real?
(lol.shecan’thelpherself.lol) (lol)
Stop, He IS real.
Riiiiiiiight.

The Tragically Hip – She Didn’t Know

ahh

nothing like the smell of irony in the mornin










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cowsills - goodmorning starshine

U2 (Bono) - Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out of (acoustic)

[jasper just shit behind the couch]

untitled, 9.2006

resolutions are for mornings (?)

billie holiday - detour ahead (the sarah vaughn version is smoother, but this gouged-up one is more genuine)

Bill Evans and Jim Hall, 2:25-2:40 3:46-[4:35]-5:08 (soundtrack want)

If I had to call it, Hall's running the plays.

light and thedarker [to a light beat]

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he hey my my - too much space

of you calling - (no fear of falling) - I am kloot

the "it" song tonight

ever get the feeling that you're doing all the

Sometimes for long periods I think, Who Cares? And I lie down and look at the sky, or whatever. Then other times, it’s as if I’m summoned into action, and so I stand up and do things. Sometimes because I have to, but more often because I want to, since ‘have to’ is right next to ‘will not’ in my universe, eh? And then between long bouts of thinking nothing matters measured against all time anyway, I feel this thing: alive now. From the inside, something kicks hard at the rib cage. Wanting and Willing. And the damnest thing is, as far as this blog goes anyway, is that the soundtrack for that and the slitting-your-wrists soundtrack are really really similar, but entirely different. Something, some very slight sensual quality differentiates the soundtrack for death from the soundtrack for alive.

Anouar Brahem - Le Pas du Chat Noir
Anouar Brahem - C'est Ailluers


--Ashbery, "Where We Went for Lunch":

And when I was having lunch
I heard this voice singing
about the breath of other planets blowing.
I mean, who needs to be reminded?
I am at your doorstep after all,
sliding down the door, I pick up the knocker and replace it softly.
There seems nowhere to go,
nothing to do.
I can ask you out on some pretext,
only don't be lonely,
see?
There are enough unhappy people in this gyre.
But I was never one of them and now you will be too.

p.s. or nevermind

If I have to keep posting 'this sucks' tunes, which I do, I figure it's good of me to be letting up on the laments-to-slit-your-wrists-by and posting a few catchy ones. (hrrrmph) . Think of it as that sherbert crap you eat between courses to clean your palate. That Cake was a toe tapper, no?

Everlast - I've Seen Better Days (boop boo pi do)
Everlast - Sad Girl (we like this one-careful whitey, don't blow a gasket)

Cake - Never There

self help (email) reading + music

“Except for Petty that last batch of music sucks.Pick yourself up.Dad xxxx”

I mean this lovingly (for the most part). It’s dear ol' dad who taught me to be attentive, going through life with a corkscrew of feeling that empathy or desire might turn into pain at any moment, and to stay ready if necessary to get to a point in that process . . . . and . . . turn: “Fuck. This.”

For dad: My favorite song on the radio these days.

The last time I glanced at that Timberlake brat, he seemed still so short of puberty that he was positively clammy in his hairlessness. So I’m giving all the credit for the tune to Cameron. And let that stand as a lesson for what an (‘older’) woman can do for you, provided you can hold her thought.

“Fuck. This.” 9.2006

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the weepies - citywide rodeo (say I am you)

radiohead - exit music for a film

school days, 9.2006

First day. Why the hell does this shit have to start so early?? God damn, 7:30 a.m. is not an hour at which anyone should have to argue with little buggers over miniwheats versus captain crunch and who gets the power ranger t-shirt, while the dog goes ape at the door a good two hours earlier than he’d normally get to take a leak. You're so vulnerable at that hour that by 8:30 and time to go, the dog and the kids can all pee and eat and watch violent cartoons and any f’n thing just to get through it. I was up scanning music blogs just three hours ago for christ sake. ugh.

But then, the tables turn. Because they gotta go to school [ha!]. The Judge was particularly out of sorts and has been for the last day because he’s moving up a level and he doesn’t want to. In a school that has 3-level classrooms, every three years a boy is a “senior” in his class, a position he is loathe to give up. Plus, in this case, the boy in question insists that since he knows how to read (better than older kids, he frequently points out), he is perfectly capable of now teaching himself anything he might want to know about the world simply by looking it up, so why does he have to go at all? (Intellectual arrogance is a genetic thing inherited via the Y chromosome, in case anyone was wondering.) Plus to add insult to all this injury, he’s moving up into Ears’ class, where he will be low-man to his brother’s senior position. The Judge has been simmering near outrage about all of this for a couple of days.

Hence, of course, they beat the absolute hell out of each other in the backseat with fists and feet most of the way there while I yell “Knock it the hell off!” and they ignore me entirely.

But then, the tables turn again. The Judge will be formally escorted by his old class to his new one and introduced to his new one with all the fanfare of a departing monarch. That helps. And meanwhile, Ears and I go ahead of him up to greet the Beauootyful Ms. Molly: hair loose to her waist in dark blond waves, long flowing skirt of kid-pleasing purple, and a flowered halter top with pink bra straps all straining in tightness around the full veiny breasts and swelling belly of about 5 months along. Ears took one look at her, dropped his eyes to the carpet, and probably won’t look up again until Christmas.

Warren Zevon – Life’ll Kill Ya

llasa de siela - decara a la pased

I sleep for shit.

Up til midnight, up again always someplace between 2-3 a.m. . . My father was always like that too. At 2:30 a.m., there are, miles apart, always at least two 'depressed' people probably awake and with each other somewhere in one another's business.

Then the midafternoon slump, kerplop. If there’s a bed nearby, get outa my way. I “went to the sandwich shop” today, i.e. two pillows on either side of the head to block out the day for an hour. When I opened my eyes, this was staring at me. Carefully balanced near the bed on a chair.

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"exoforce guy"

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[I take it out to the living room and returned it to its owner.]
Did you leave this in my room?, I ask.
Yes, says Ears. To protect you while you slept—cuz your eyes are closed when you sleep ya know.
Yeah, I know. (weepy)

I am becoming more certain every day that there are things that language cannot represent. I wouldn’t even call these things ‘feelings’, more like big cracks in a person through which you could look and get flashing glimpses of something too enormous for anyone to ever see the whole of it. To represent those things, we’re forced into silence, or touch, or maybe writing music that you’d play if you could and if it already existed.

Like this. John Coltrane – Stardust

(Can anyone think of anything else, cuz I’m thinking I could use a longer list of options comin’ up. Ya know?)

Vaccuum
Organize school clothes
Go to 3 stores filling supply list
Mop kitchen
1st load of laundry
Do dishes
Clean the fridge
Organize the play room
Etc
Etc
Etc
(poor Jasper)
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gorecki - symphony of sorrowful songs

[He always calls early. TOO early.]

Jesus, what?
Go back to sleep.
What?
Go back to sleep, I’ll call you in an hour.

He calls back, It’s been an hour and a half, are you awake?
Sorta.
I’ve been diagnosed with leukemia.
(pause) Well Dad, now I’m really awake . . .

. . . It changes your perspective. You’ve got a lot less time than you think.
(weepy) Yeah.

“Running Out of Ideas”

Brigid of Ireland – of fugitives
Vaast – of those late in learning to walk

Dominic Savio (and juvenile delinquents)
John Bosco
Nicholas of Myra – of boys

Patrick – of the excluded
Jude Thaddeus – of lost causes
Catherine of Bologna – of liberal arts

Agnes of Rome
Blandina
Catherine of Alexandria
Irene
Maria Goretti – of girls

John Nepomucene – of silence
Dymphna – of sleepwalkers (and sadness)
John the Apostle – of friendship

self help whatnot + music

bonus reading: for Virgo week 8/31:

Editors at the prestigious UK medical journal Lancet have called for the legalization of LSD and other psychedelic drugs.

[I thought it would be most hilarious if it stopped there. But.]

They're not envisioning a thousand totally buzzed freaks dancing deliriously at an outdoor festival, however. [god forbid] Rather, they want to make it possible for researchers to carefully explore the therapeutic benefits of altering consciousness. "The blanket ban on psychedelic drugs continues to hinder safe and controlled investigation of their potential benefits," they said. Be inspired by their example, Virgo. What taboo is it high time for you to break in a discerning way? What inhibition no longer serves you, even though at one time it might have kept you safe and sane? What conventional wisdom based on fear has infected you, preventing you from experimenting with exciting possibilities?

[o brother]

bonus track: jann arden - sleepless

From “Bedfellows”, Psychology Today:

Sleep disturbances and depression are such intransigent bedfellows that troubled sleep is considered a hallmark of the mood disorder. At least 80% of depressed people experience insomnia -- difficulty falling asleep or, most often, staying asleep. Indeed, early morning awakening is a virtual giveaway of depression.

But it may be that insomnia is more than just a symptom of depression. It may in fact unleash the mood disorder. If sleep researcher Michael Perlis, Ph.D., is right, insomnia may be an early harbinger of depression . . . In a complex mix of chemistry and behavior, disordered sleep may actually bring on depression, setting in motion an array of forces in the nervous system that result, ultimately, in a frank depressive episode. Most intriguing, treating the insomnia may forestall a first episode of depression or recurrent disorder, or at least keep it from becoming chronic.

It isn't just that depression sufferers wake up early and get less sleep. The makeup of their sleep is shattered. Normal sleep has a well-defined architecture. Four or five times a night we cycle through periods of deepening, relaxing sleep, marked by slow waves if the brain is monitored electronically. Then we burst into dream sleep, marked by dramatic brain activity and rapid eye movements. Depressed people lapse quickly into REM sleep [think: chasing ball], as if they were in a hurry to get to the highly emotionally charged activity. "For some reason, there is a lot of pressure to get into it," says Perlis. And it's unusual both in duration and intensity, more dense, intense and longer-lasting.

The fast track to dreamland is not a good thing. "There's something about dreaming that is meaningful in depression," Perlis says, intriguing the Freudian lurking in all of us.
But exactly what it is is not quite clear. "It certainly looks like REM sleep represents an abnormality in the neurobiologic machinery of dreaming," says Perlis. "But there is still something wrong with the way that the depressed dream; the function of dreaming is undermined."

One of the functions of sleep is to facilitate the consolidation of memory. REM sleep in particular is involved with affective, or emotional, memory. "There's something wrong with the memories depressed people are consolidating and the way that the REM system is mood-regulating," says Perlis.

The intense activation of REM sleep in the depressed may lead to the overconsolidation of negative memory, rendering the depressed overly biased to remember bad things. They do not discharge negative feelings over time.

blondie - dreaming
cat power – all I have to do is dream (everly bros cover)
frou frou – must be dreaming
aretha franklin – day dreaming
massive attack – daydreaming [sexiest in show]
jack johnson – dreams be dreams [best in show. if ya can't sleep, you might as well have some company--a particularly good list]

Just like if your asshole suddenly stopped working, except very very different, your whole life would be impacted if your name were 'Aretha', I think.

"the disrepair of norma jean could not compare to your routine"

I think that's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me.

So classes started. ( ) I'm trying to be big about it. And it is kinda like taking a bath when you're a kid--not so bad once you're in it. And I make this cd of harlem whatever, and I haven't learned that stuff yet and have never heard these songs. I play it while they do an inclass assignment. At one point, just a second, one of them looks up sideways at the cd player at "hot dog on my roll" and it was priceless. It was like a Charmin Toilet Paper moment.

Bessie Smith - A Little Sugar In My Bowl