'Mine' / Phoebe Ryan

Mine

Phoebe Ryan

I don't desperately love this song, but I am starswept by the lyrics.

I found gold in the wreckage
Put it on a necklace
Keepin’ it cause I-I-I, I know that it’s mine
I wear it like a message
So I don’t forget it
Keepin’ it cause I-I-I, I know that it’s mine

I know that it’s mine no matter what I do
I know that it’s mine whether I win or lose
And even though my heart needs to take its time
I know that it’s mi-i-ine, I know that it’s mine.

As the year closes, I think everyone tries to find things to sum it up. What did you accomplish? Where did you go from where you were before? Did you shift out, pull up, fall in, explode forward? Backward? At all?


Every necklace I wear means something.
And this song encapsulates my year more profoundly than anything I could say.

'Babyface' / U2

Babyface

U2

U2, so says every hipster music blog ever, has fallen wayyyyy out of vogue. I've mentioned that longlasting rock bands have a few paths they can take to their second or third decade -- and as far as I'm concerned, U2 picked a really annoying, bland one. And don't get anyone who gives a shit about music started on their ridiculous Apple-marketing partnership. What the fuck, honestly? Start with those dumb iPod ads (I'M AT A PLACE CALLED VEEERRTIGOOO -- remember?? remember?? the black cutout shadow of Bono dancing?? GORGEOUS), then force-download an entire garbage album onto everyone's iPhones; GREAT JOB, GUYS. Dad-style marketing if there ever was. These guys have aged ridiculously.

BUT.

Did you know they did some really cool shit in the early 90s?

BECAUSE I DIDN'T. Not till this weekend.

I mean okay: 1991's Achtung Baby is absolutely solid (and have you heard that cover album released for the 20th anniversary? Garbage's take on Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses will BLOW YOUR DAMN MIND). But I'm a casual fan -- years ago, when I was downloading the discographies of every band I mildly enjoyed, I snagged theirs. Did I listen to it? No. I have a fuckton of Rolling Stones to get through, too. But Saturday, it was me and Zooropa, baby.

I used to write fiction a fair bit when I was younger -- I don't share my work, really, but I love writing. In the haze of personal goals I made last year, writing more kept coming to mind. So, 2015 has been the year I got back into writing. Of course, I like to make life exponentially more difficult than it has to be -- so heaven forbid I just, you know, write a story like a sane human being. Instead, I've started a series of vignettes -- one per month of the year 1993 -- with each based on a song released that year.

Consequently, I have all these albums from '93 floating around on my iPod. When the urge to write strikes, I'll give another one a go. Saturday, I was feeling it -- and Sarah McLachlan's Fumbling Towards Ecstasy wasn't cutting it (great album, don't get me wrong, but I wanted something weirder). So: Zooropa. With a bit of a resigned eye roll.

And wouldn't you know it -- the album is fucking good. Despite claims to the contrary from the band (but you know, I'm clearly not putting too much stock in U2's opinions, here. DAD MARKETERS.).

The title track sets up this fantastic soundscape, to the point where it's almost a landscape -- visual, lush, neon and dark. I love when albums start off like this -- setting a defined mood for what's to come, even if it shifts in tone. The first track is like the emotional key of the album: you may slide away from it, but you're aching to get back, and you'll pull the content with you.

...so much is lost from the listening experience when we only listen to singles.

Anyway, I didn't like the title of the second track ('Babyface', really? ugh) and I was feeling 'Zooropa' for my January vignette, so despite it being catchy, I didn't listen closely -- moved to the excellent, droning 'Numb'; the fantastically '90s 'Lemon'; the heartrendingly melodic 'Stay'; and so on. I was excited, man; who knew U2 could pull something like this off?! Zooropa is weird, disjointed, and kind of brilliant.

But at 1am, writing away to 'Lemon' (come on: that image of a girl in a yellow dress on a grey day begs to be vignettified), I restarted the album and forgot to be irritated at 'Babyface's title and...fuck.

'Babyface' is a lot more than mildly catchy.

Just take a second, here, to appreciate this lyric:

Slow down, child /
Let me untie your lace

 Get out. Get out. Not okay. God.

It's also about the lullaby sounds & melody, and the plays at created narrative in the lyrics ("checking out every frame / I've got slow motion on my side") -- there's something deeply special happening in this song.

'Zooropa' is more my ultimate style. 'Stay' is more beautiful. 'Lemon' is probably smarter.

But 'Babyface' is a flash of magic.

I was too young in the early 90s to really experience it. The music that sprang up is something I'm honestly just now starting to appreciate in its full glory. Misplaced nostalgia: like, I wasn't listening to alt-rock or grunge when I was 7, but I get all ~music used to be~~~ about it. Particularly when it comes to all the creepy concept shit groups that had been around awhile were doing -- Zooropa, yes, and Bowie's 1. Outside (one of my all-time favourite albums), etc. There was a certain vibe to the early 90s that -- even though I don't actually remember it -- I find quite profoundly captured when you listen to those experimental cult classics.

U2 has undoubtedly lost some of their cachet (sometimes bands need to gracefully bow out). But there are treasures in their back catalogue, and Zooropa is one of them.

'Butterfly' / Grimes

Butterfly

Grimes

In elementary school, best friends are convenient. You sit beside someone who likes the same cartoon as you -- instant camaraderie. You're friends for life, man, this is it. You have sleepovers and talk till eleven, trade Pogs and fuzzy stickers, sometimes even let each other play as Barbie instead of Ken. Everything is perfect.

And then everything is drama.

You sat with someone else at lunch and didn't even look at me. I brought you back something from a family trip so you let me sit beside you during computer time. I didn't feel comfortable wearing a tank top and you rolled your eyes and found the cooler girls who wear makeup. You liked the Spice Girls and I thought you were too mainstream. The friendship falls apart -- it was nothing to begin with.

High school ain't much better. If you're not a cool kid or a nerd or an athlete, you get grouped with the outcasts, the people who don't fit in a social circle. Now: I made two of my very best friends in high school -- but that was not the norm. I drifted away from most of these people; we didn't have much in common, in the end.

You're supposed to make your best friends in college, in university.

But I don't think I knew what friendship was in university.

You could be anything out there
Butterflies flying in the air
Oh no / it came
Higher than an airplane

I used to be lonely.

It wasn't that I had no social contact ---- I don't know that I can describe it, though I know most of us have felt it: that crushing certainty that no one really gives a shit. Yeah, our family's on our side, but no one's choosing to stand beside us. Not invited to parties or deciding not to go to parties -- either way, I felt separate, and sad. None of my friends ever really asked me how I was -- or if they did, I assumed they didn't really care. I was a receptacle: what's wrong? do you need to vent? tell me everything. And, for the most part, they did.

I have always kept significant aspects of myself private -- it's a personality quirk, so I shouldn't fault my old friends for indulging it. But I thought, vainly, that they might want to know; that they might...but they never did. They never asked.


Friendship, though, has so little to do with what you say.


It took me, as I'm sure it takes most people, until my mid-twenties to understand what friendship could be -- that it isn't about mutual complaining or gossip; bribery; pictures plastered all over social media; constant contact. It's not even endless conversations or similar goals or shared interests. Friendship is fucking sacred, and it is rare, and when it's real, it is worth clinging to with every shred of you.


Friendship is nebulous as fuck, and much of it is inarticulable -- like the feelings you get being with the people who truly fucking get you, who've stood beside you through the wars and who are not afraid, will not stand down. But it's also being inspired, daily. It's feeling safe in conversation, in silence, in shared space. It's waking up with a roaring hangover and knowing no one will judge you for the bullshit you pulled the night before. It's genuine laughter seguing to genuine anger and back again. It makes you fucking fearless.

And it doesn't dissipate with distance.

 I started this post a few weeks ago, upon returning from a weekend in Toronto. Cause the problem, you see, with building an adult life in your home city is that most of your friends...don't. So: flung across the continent are people who have big chunks of my soul. They keep 'em safe, but I know I'm not complete unless all those parts are back together. Ah, friendship.

Two of my soulmates are in Toronto (which is not great, but better than, say, Vancouver. Or Whitehorse. Or Edinburgh. Or Nashua or San Diego or....). I visit when I can, which is less often than I'd like. When I got home from this particular trip, I instantly opened Blogger to start writing about how deeply and intensely I felt while I was there, while I was with them -- how profoundly they sparkle, how they fill gaps in my heart, how I would not be complete without either of them, without any of the absolute goddamn diamonds I am lucky enough to call friends.

And then this post sat for about three weeks because it is completely fucking inarticulable.


So I give up.

Are you looking for harmony?
There is harmony in everything.

I have more incredible, more brilliant, more vibrant, more intense and kinetic and inspirational and powerful friends than I could have hoped for when I sat at home biting my lip, wondering if I should go to that party (though admittedly -- some of them were at those parties. It takes time.).

And I blared this song as the plane took off Sunday night, staring down at Toronto blinking yellow and white, and it encapsulated everything I could say -- about my Toronto princesses; about any of my diamonds.

It starts as a bright song, a little cheesy, a little ridiculous. The verses are singsong joy, pulsing cheerfully. La la la.

But the choruses are riven. Hands in the air -- from bliss, from fear, from surrender, from sheer fortitude of emotion.


Friendship, huh.

Hold on to your diamonds.