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Making yourself up as you go along
1. Despite recent stress, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
derspatchel and I went out tonight for Dine Out Boston at the Marliave. We wouldn't have been able to afford it ordinarily. But on a prix fixe menu, I had succulent, garlic-dripping snails and an entrée of scallops seared over tiny enoki mushrooms and crisp sage leaves with sweet potato ravioli on top and Rob had a starter of rarebit with smoky bacon and a superlative beef Wellington with nothing else on the plate to distract and we split half a dozen oysters for a dollar each and the desserts were frankly ridiculous. I expected not to like the mint chocolate chip ice cream which came with the other two flavors in the trio of the day; I accepted it as the necessary cost of blueberry swirl and salt caramel. It was the best of the three. The mint was fresh mint, not candy. It tasted like a garden, cool and bitter-green, like chewing on the crushed raw leaves. We may have fought over it a little. Fortunately, there was more than enough candied ginger butterscotch pudding to smooth over tensions. Afterward we walked around the North End, stopping in to Modern Pastry to lay in a store of cannoli and lobster tail for tomorrow, and watched Government Center under construction slide past the windows of the Green Line like a diorama in a dark ride, and between Harvard and Porter a stranger vomited slightly on Rob's shoes, which was not awesome. Everything until that point, A-plus!
2. Against Me! is a punk band from Gainesville who released their first album in 2001, so there is a non-zero chance that I heard some of their music in college. I found them in my new music trawl last week. Frontwoman Laura Jane Grace came out as trans in 2012. Transgender Dysphoria Blues is the album she wrote around that period; it was released in January on the band's own label. What I've got right now are the acoustic demos of two album tracks, released last year as the EP True Trans: "FuckMyLife666" and "True Trans Soul Rebel." Both are very good songs and I could find them for free on the internet (the EP was briefly a giveaway over the summer). The actual album, I am going to buy. I want to support the band. Cash-clear that trans punk is awesome. Also, the acoustic versions have been stuck in my head for a solid week now and that is generally a good sign about a record.
3. Talking about PJ Harvey withashlyme, I realized that I never mentioned a thing I noticed a few weeks ago. For years, I couldn't listen easily to "Sweeter Than Anything." It crystallized a part of my life that hurt. I mean it was physically painful when it came around on iTunes; I'd leave it playing only if I was feeling desolate. How can this be? There's nothing left here. We were never more than a dream. Harvey's voice breaks with the chorus, unable to complete the question she knows there's really no answer to. Even that rolling underwater bassline sounds like the endless repetition of a grief it's hard to think outside of, wearing the same spiral of memory and loss. I can't even remember where I was this last month, on foot somewhere in Cambridge or Somerville, running an errand or returning from a doctor's appointment, and I realized the song was in my head and I was using it to keep time as I walked and it was not wrecking me. I was not singing it to grieve. I don't know if I will ever be able to listen to it as simply as "White Chalk" or "Yuri-G" or even "The Phone Song," which is one of the B-sides from Uh Huh Her (2004) I like better than the album. But it's not nothing. And it's a really good song. To Bring You My Love (1994) and Is This Desire? (1998) were the first PJ Harvey I heard and I loved them at once. I was sorry to lose any of her voice from that time, no matter what it told me.
derspatchel and I went out tonight for Dine Out Boston at the Marliave. We wouldn't have been able to afford it ordinarily. But on a prix fixe menu, I had succulent, garlic-dripping snails and an entrée of scallops seared over tiny enoki mushrooms and crisp sage leaves with sweet potato ravioli on top and Rob had a starter of rarebit with smoky bacon and a superlative beef Wellington with nothing else on the plate to distract and we split half a dozen oysters for a dollar each and the desserts were frankly ridiculous. I expected not to like the mint chocolate chip ice cream which came with the other two flavors in the trio of the day; I accepted it as the necessary cost of blueberry swirl and salt caramel. It was the best of the three. The mint was fresh mint, not candy. It tasted like a garden, cool and bitter-green, like chewing on the crushed raw leaves. We may have fought over it a little. Fortunately, there was more than enough candied ginger butterscotch pudding to smooth over tensions. Afterward we walked around the North End, stopping in to Modern Pastry to lay in a store of cannoli and lobster tail for tomorrow, and watched Government Center under construction slide past the windows of the Green Line like a diorama in a dark ride, and between Harvard and Porter a stranger vomited slightly on Rob's shoes, which was not awesome. Everything until that point, A-plus!2. Against Me! is a punk band from Gainesville who released their first album in 2001, so there is a non-zero chance that I heard some of their music in college. I found them in my new music trawl last week. Frontwoman Laura Jane Grace came out as trans in 2012. Transgender Dysphoria Blues is the album she wrote around that period; it was released in January on the band's own label. What I've got right now are the acoustic demos of two album tracks, released last year as the EP True Trans: "FuckMyLife666" and "True Trans Soul Rebel." Both are very good songs and I could find them for free on the internet (the EP was briefly a giveaway over the summer). The actual album, I am going to buy. I want to support the band. Cash-clear that trans punk is awesome. Also, the acoustic versions have been stuck in my head for a solid week now and that is generally a good sign about a record.
3. Talking about PJ Harvey with
ashlyme, I realized that I never mentioned a thing I noticed a few weeks ago. For years, I couldn't listen easily to "Sweeter Than Anything." It crystallized a part of my life that hurt. I mean it was physically painful when it came around on iTunes; I'd leave it playing only if I was feeling desolate. How can this be? There's nothing left here. We were never more than a dream. Harvey's voice breaks with the chorus, unable to complete the question she knows there's really no answer to. Even that rolling underwater bassline sounds like the endless repetition of a grief it's hard to think outside of, wearing the same spiral of memory and loss. I can't even remember where I was this last month, on foot somewhere in Cambridge or Somerville, running an errand or returning from a doctor's appointment, and I realized the song was in my head and I was using it to keep time as I walked and it was not wrecking me. I was not singing it to grieve. I don't know if I will ever be able to listen to it as simply as "White Chalk" or "Yuri-G" or even "The Phone Song," which is one of the B-sides from Uh Huh Her (2004) I like better than the album. But it's not nothing. And it's a really good song. To Bring You My Love (1994) and Is This Desire? (1998) were the first PJ Harvey I heard and I loved them at once. I was sorry to lose any of her voice from that time, no matter what it told me.
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Nine
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Yep, totally agree. I've just played the title track and it's ace.
As I type this,I'm hearing "Sweeter Than Anything" for the first time. Oh man. Polly Jean hurts when she's wearing sepia. (I've not given Is This Desire? the listening time it deserves, and I'll rectify that tonight.)
It was good to talk to you last night. Let me know your song of choice!
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Glad you were able to recover "Sweeter Than Anything"; I know what it's like not to be able to listen to a song easily.
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1a. One of these days when I'm headed up there I should stop in Boston long enough to have lunch with some folks. You, for example, should you wish.
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I'm glad you can listen to "Sweeter Than Anything" again. "Silence" by PJ Harvey is the one that still wrecks me.
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There's a place in Providence that makes a mint chocolate chip ice cream with fresh mint. It is truly wonderful.
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