Good Night for Whiskey

Every January, I have this thing (call it neurosis, call it perfectionism, call it compulsion, call it spring cleaning) where I have to listen to all of the songs in my iTunes library.  And every year, of course, it gets a bit more difficult because I obtain so many more new songs over the course of a year that my library gets more and more full.  January is, in short, the month I go deaf.  This year, I have 4994 songs over which to go deaf, and so far I'm a little over halfway through.  I'm hoping to get it done before the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics, which is on 7 February.  Fingers crossed!

Something I really like about this whole bizarre enterprise of mine is that, every year, I fall in love (again, or sometimes perhaps for the first time) with a different album, and it's almost as though I'm rediscovering it again.  It's a very nice feeling.

But, of course, sometimes it isn't.  Because I just...I feel too much, and it gets me into trouble.

And there's a line in this song that's at the heart of everything I've ever felt.  Well, there are two lines that are particularly apt, but one is more fact, whereas the one I'm talking about is a poetic observation of a fundamental truth that is at the core of all of my heartache over the years.  I'll let you know which one it is...after the song.

Good Night for Whiskey

tonight is a good night for whiskey
'cause I'm betting he don't even miss me
and the makeup on my face feels like I'm trying too hard
to cover up the fact that I've got a forgotten heart
and I don't think I know how to smile anymore

tonight is a good night for whiskey
'cause I've been drowning in a lifetime of lonely
and right now it feels like there ain't nothing else in store
than dying and crying and all the wrong sides of closed doors
and I don't think I want to make another start

CHORUS:
so burn me, break me, tease me, chill me
and maybe all this emptiness will fill me up
dance with me, trip me up, make me unrecognisable tonight
take me out of my skin and maybe tomorrow
I can face it when a new day begins

but tonight is a good night for whiskey
'cause I need to forget these old foolish dreams
and hope is the hardest thing for a lonely heart to bear
whose worst mistake was taking too much time to stare
still I've never called anyone mine

tonight is a good night for whiskey
'cause it'll turn today into hist'ry
and I've made a fool of myself enough for a lifetime
just for being myself for a moment in time
and nothing about this is fair

CHORUS:
so burn me, break me, tease me, kill me
and maybe all this emptiness will fill me up
dance with me, trip me up, make me unrecognisable
'cause I wanna be someone else, someone beautiful tonight
take me out of my skin and maybe tomorrow
I can face it when a new day begins

BRIDGE:
but somehow I doubt I'll get over him like that
it might be easier to turn my heart cold and black
and my life could be a good life for whiskey
so I might get over how much he don't miss me

and burn me, break me, tease me, kill me
and maybe all this emptiness will fill me up
dance with me, trip me up, make me unrecognisable
'cause I wanna be someone else, someone beautiful tonight
take me out of my skin and maybe tomorrow
I can face it when a new day begins

take me out of my skin and maybe tomorrow
I won't remember how much this night stings...

Oh, the irony.  Goddamn the irony.

First things first: I realise it's not my best song.  And it's not (really) meant to be.  It's kind of wordy, and maybe a bit fuzzy, and it's perhaps a little too angst-y.  But (a) I don't want to go back and rewrite it, because the melody (the one I hear and you can't, sorry) is really nice and the words fit to it nicely, and (b) the individual lines are what make it what it is, I think, because they're stronger than is the song as a whole.

As such, I won't analyse it too much.  There's, actually, not too much to analyse.  I threw it together, really, with lines that all made sense to me, because I've felt, and I feel them all.

The one line in this song that just kills me is hope is the hardest thing for a lonely heart to bear.  And I should qualify that: it's fruitless hope that's the hardest thing, the hope you just know will never turn out to happen, because it only throws into sharper relief the loneliness of that lonely heart, and dashes its hopes of ever getting out of that.  And I know the song isn't the perfect carrier for the line, but it settled into my heart like a truth that has been there for years but has never quite been named.  Because that's what it is.

And it's a truth that makes me want to drink until I can't feel anything anymore.  (But I don't drink, so I just feel, if not weather, the pain and write songs about it.)  Hence, this song.  It doesn't mean much, other than the song is the me I wish I weren't.   The me I wish I didn't have to be.

Also, I think the chorus is addressing the whiskey.  Those are all directives for the alcohol.

Much love, and thank you for the musik,

Just Another Ordinary Girl

Now I'm all messed up, wondering...whose life you're making worthwhile.

Before My Eyes

Happy January to all of you lovely people.

Would you believe it if I told you that this is the 100th post on this blog?  It seems sort of crazy, almost impossible.  And yet...

Thank you for being along for the ride.

I thought this was a good song with which to begin a new year.  It looks to the future, to the other years ahead, and pins hopes and dreams onto them.  Which is kind of nice, and very thematically sensical with the time of year in which we are at this current moment.

The title is something I'm not sure about yet.  So that doesn't have to remain the same.

The melody that kept resounding in my head as I wrote this one was some kind of bizarre, mellifluous mashup of "Last Kiss" by Taylor Swift, and "Little Things" by One Direction (which is, surprisingly, a completely beautiful song, as it was actually written by the brilliant Ed Sheeran, and also, it's possible that there's a line in there about drinking tea before bed and talking in one's sleep that is completely about me).

Before My Eyes

I think I just saw my future flash before my eyes
you walked past me, and it's like I just always knew
if only you could see what's now playing in my mind
I don't even know your last name, but I know I could love you

I can picture your face as you ask me to dinner
and I will say yes because I've only been waiting my whole life for that
you'll take me somewhere warm 'cause it's getting to be winter
and I'll spend all night trying to make you laugh
and we'll both be surprised when it's suddenly midnight
so you'll drive really slowly when you take me back home
you'll park your car and kiss me under the flick'ring streetlight
and I'll know in that moment that I won't anymore be alone

a few months later you'll take me to meet your family
I'll bring flowers for you mother, and a bottle of wine
your feet will touch mine under the table, and your dad'll love me
you'll come to my place around Christmastime
and my parents will find you as lovely as I do
because you can reach the top of the tree, they'll let you hang the star
my sister might ask some hard questions just to test you
but you'll handle them with grace 'cause that's just how you are

I'll wait for you to say "I love you" first
even though I will have felt that way for many more days
and when we make love, you'll be my only and my first
but we'll pretend to my parents we don't, 'cause I always swore I'd wait
it'll be a secret that makes us smile in public and giggle behind closed doors
and it'll only be a matter of course when you ask my dad for my hand
because he'll know you were made for me, and I was meant to be yours
so you'll take me back to this place, where it all began

where I think I just saw my future flash before my eyes
you walked past me and it's like I just always knew
if only you could see what's now playing in my mind
I don't even know your last name but I know I could love you

I can picture a white dress as day turns to night
and you'll wear a tux for maybe the first time in your life
we'll have his and hers rings after we walk down the aisle
my name will be engraved in yours, and yours will be in mine
you'll be proud when I take your last name for my own
and over the next years, we'll help each other grow into ourselves
we'll turn this old house we bought into our perfect home
and celebrate with champagne the day we pay off our student debts

we'll have a boy who looks like you, and a girl who has my eyes
we'll decide that I will be the one to stay at home with them
and I'll watch you fall asleep as you read to them every night
it will be an image more beautiful than I could have imagined
some days you'll work too much overtime, and that will annoy me
then we'll really learn just why they say this life is so hard
and you'll hate that I'm like my dad and don't speak when I'm angry
there might be slamming doors but we'll never fall completely apart

we'll drop our babies off at college and I'll cry all the way home
but in the quiet evenings, I'll get the chance to rediscover you
and suddenly we'll be glad for the time we have together alone
everything between us will again be both comfortable and new
you'll be the reason I'm not afraid of things like time, and growing old
because I will get to experience everything with you
and when the end comes, yours will be the hand I get to hold
I will have loved you every day, from that first afternoon,

when I thought I saw my future flash before my eyes
when you walked past me and my life was never the same
these are the daydreams hiding behind my distant smile
in this moment, where I don't even know your last name... (end)

This song brings out so many emotions for me.  I cried at least four times while writing it, typing it up just now made me cringe, and reading it over today is making me so sad.  So sad, and it's not supposed to (so much has changed since I wrote it, in early November), which just makes it even more sad for me today.

But let's make this much clear: I'm no longer stupid enough to believe that this will actually happen.  That's why I dream about it, and put it into songs like this.  So, for at least a few minutes, it does become real for me, and I fall into this fantasy that shouldn't be so fantastical.  And I guess this song was just me putting down on paper everything I once held in my heart.

But of course, as evidenced, the fantasies I have and create are very much grounded in reality - I really tried to keep this song from getting too fanciful.  So I mention paying off student debts (all too real) and arguing (which happens, or so I'm told), because that's all part of the picture.

As much as it made me cringe just now, I did once like the line "it will be an image more beautiful than I could have imagined," because, of course, the whole thing is an imagined image, so it's a tongue-in-cheek perforation of the constructed image that the entire song is.  As are the intro/modified intros peppered throughout.  The verses are longe enough (or were supposed to be so) to actually make you forget that it's fake, and then it's a slight reminder of the present reality.  And it's a variation on a frame tale narrative, in that way.  I don't know if it works, but it was intended to.

Anyway.

Next song to be posted: "Good Night for Whiskey."

Much love, and thank you for the musik,

Just Another (very) Ordinary Girl

If ever I could love, I think it could be with you.

What you are is a daydream I'll never get to hold.