PJ Harvey - The Piano

"new" kate bush!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5UsjqXXcZ4

a sort of re-make of the song from The Sensual World, one of the few Kate Bush albums that failed to completely enrapture me, until just this year, when i discovered a cassette copy of it in my collection of cassette tapes comprised of tapes from high school and tapes i picked up for extremely cheap at thrift stores or the flea market. i've been driving my dad's car and it only has radio and a cassette player, which had me listening to The Sensual World for two weeks straight.

Kate's new album is remakes of songs from Sensual World and Red Shoes, her most underrated albums but also her less brilliant ones.

This new version of 'deeper understanding' kind of rules though. You can instantly hear the difference in technological ability that might prompt an artist to release remastered or reworked versions of songs released in the 80's. The song is about a person who feels more of a connection with his computer than with other people. The computer offers him deeper understanding. But this was back in, what, 1988. People's relation to computers has obviously changed drastically. I suspect that these reworkings will have more of a concept, rather than simply working as remasters.

I'm very pumped to hear the rest of this album. We'll see how the rest of it sounds but judging by this one track so far, Kate B still stands as a musical genius in my mind

now that i'm living in miami, i feel that i do less socializing than in gainesville. for one thing, i don't have as much income as i did in gainesville. plus the few friends i do have in miami live pretty far away and driving to them (when i am lucky enough to have my dad's car at my disposal) can be a mission.

Therefore, i'm watching more movies. I'm also supposed to be reading more but i've tried that a couple times from the comfort of my bed and i doze off after five or six pages. Simply i need to find a reading spot less conducive to napping. I discovered the Video Rodeo of Miami, Lion Video (website doesn't seem to be working now).

It's pricier than I'm used to ($10 membership fee, $5 per 5-day rental with a rent-3-get-1-free deal, and $2 late fee per day per movie) but it seems well worth it. I did the Rent 3, Get 1 Free deal, but four movies on a five day span (esp when New Years Eve is included in that span) is not always an achievable goal. I watched two in full, one half way (wasn't that impressed by the Hollywood-esque, talk-in-English-with-thick-Cuban-accents-while-in-1960s-Havana Before Night Falls), and had to skip out on one altogether. But I wanted to recommend the first one i watched and totally loved:
Glue (2006, directed by Alexis dos Santos)



It's the kind of movie with minimal narrative or plot development, but awesome composition, awesome shots, great acting, great colors, great soundtrack (mostly Violent Femmes). No real beginning, no real ending...I love it when a movie does it and I really love it when it pulls it off well.

The director is cool as fuck. He has a MySpace.

I also loved the main actor:


nahuel perez biscayart

i love how quickly the sun comes back up in the summer.

now, however, when i was in germany during a summer. where the sun had still not set at 10 o'clock and was rising when you left the club at 4AM, as opposed to Miami's 6AM post-club rise

as per usual, summer came and went in such a flurry i can barely remember what happened. a new living situation with new roommates. a trip to miami for the birthday weekend. a couple tori shows. some heartache. some fun times. some drinking...probably a lot of drinking. new hours at work. i feel like i'm still learning a lot, developing month by month, sometimes day by day. the end of summer and the onset of the fall months and i have noticed myself becoming slightly more rational, ever so slightly more clear-headed, and slightly inclined to actively continue developing and advancing the intellectual parts of my brain. i want to also continue learning more from conversation, something i think has come about recently, an active and productive way of having conversations that both entertains and educates.

the first tangible signs of the change in season and the rotation around the sun was felt early this week when the clouds were all gone from the sky and the permeating feeling of humidity could no longer be felt. i remember first noticing it on monday, on kenny's twentieth birthday, as we went to one of the favorite spots to go to anytime but especially on gorgeous days, cafe gardens. the temperature had barely dropped but the change from summer to fall was there. it's exciting for seasons to change, for the sun to move out of one seasonal cluster of constellations and into the next, to remember that our life is a pattern that changes and evolves consistently, constantly. the past two days were the first temperature sign of the change. everyone seems to be in good spirits. i forget what one side of the sun feels like as it compares to the other, completely forgot the months of sweaters over short shorts, firepits over swimming pools, and the comfort of a warm bed over the mild distress of a moist soggy one.

i know gainesville's a tricky one and this tangible change should only last until tomorrow, but soon enough the change will be fully here (at least as fully as it can be in northern florida) and the weeks will be filled with cool sunny days and chilly dry nights. sometimes music sounds that much better with the onset of these months. i claim i'm more of a summer person--and i am insofar as i will take hot and sweat over bitter cold and 40 degrees any day of the year--but i like the overall feeling of comfort, contentedness, and agreeableness that seems to come with the arrival of the cooler fall/winter months.

am i feeling stagnant or comfortable or intentional?

August means going on year six of living in Gainesville, Florida.

Am I stuck with no where to go? Have I developed a life that is too easy and just fulfilling enough? Or do I want to be here because it's the place I need to be and the time I need to be there?

yesterday was so hot like a hot southern day where you picture people sitting on porches in rocking chairs just barely rocking back and forth and savoring any tiny bit of breeze that comes their way. I stood leaning against a pole at Common Grounds next to Coral for abut 15 minutes. When I walked inside my back was soaked and I was dripping droplets of sweat from my forehead as if I just got back from a 30 minute run with Mo. I don't love it but I have a unique appreciation for this type of summer heat.

definitely recommend checking out this blog: Catch Us If You Can

I met these two cool girls in Key West when I went down with my coworkers in March. I did some couchsurfing.com research before the trip to try to meet some cool-seemin' locals. found one of their profile sites, sent a message and she agreed to meet up. i was able to hook her and her roommate/travelbuddy up with a free jet ski tour from the company i work for and we met up again later that night, totally hit it off like old friends. Like when we met up again the 2nd or 3rd day it didn't feel like two girls i had just met, it felt like two girls i'd known for a long time and was visiting on the island.

anyway, they were down in key west spending a few months sleeping at kelly's mother's house, sharing a bed, living rent free and saving every dime they could to go on this 12+ month trip over to UK through asia and into Melbourne. Their journey just started a month ago in mid May and they are currently just out of Turkey. Their blog is pretty damn awesome, great stories, great pictures.

they were all they had been talked up to be, the biscuits at the Original Pizza Place

mosephine recounts our atlanta trip via cell phone pictures.

love sleeping next to kenny, flat out. summer nights, fan whizzing away blowing cool air our way, music coming out muffled from laptop speakers, what would summer be like if i didn't have to come to work every day? overwhelmingly lazy i'd imagine. it was so hot last night so josh unbuttoned his plaid shirt and insisted on us all going to the pool. i didn't particularly care to go to the pool on a sober tuesday night and it was getting late anyway but i can be easily persuaded by josh and kenny and why not go hang out in a pool with them instead of on a front porch. grabbed our second $3.20 bottle of red wine and rode our bikes out to the courtyards pool. relaxing and refreshing. was feelin good.

now i'm sipping on my morning coffee. no matter how many hours of sleep i get the night before i feel i am always craving the coffee in the morning at work. i wait til the last possible minute i can wake up every morning, even tho i set my alarm to give me 45 minutes of wake-up time at home. never happens. never want to get out of bed esp if i got my favorite boy sleeping right next to me.

somehow i find myself the brokest i've been since last summer. don't feel bad about it but semi confused. then again, a trip to new orleans followed by a trip to atlanta and all these new and old vinyl don't come at no cost. do not regret any of it of course but i do hope i can make an extended summer trip develop sometime soon. talking to vera about it, got chicago on the radar, renting a car for long distance ground travel, got maybe a tori show or two on the radar though i might have to end up passing up on a few of those for the sake of a cheaper trip. we shall see. being broke always has an edge of excitement to it. plus it's easy to choose which type of beer to buy at the store

lovelorn is my word of the week. not that i'm feeling particularly lovelorn just a slight bit but it's a particularly useful word i feel.

current favorite thing to eat in the morning: publix brand Raisin, Date, and Walnut instant oatmeal.

feeling good now. all alone. somewhat craving some company. content though. sipping on white wine johann left in my fridge. just rearranged the living room,liking how it looks a lot. listening to a quick mix on pandora, right now nouvelle vague station is playing, some band called martina topley-bird. never heard of her but sounds great. not sleepy. kind of want to watch a movie but i am not in that movie watching mood. mo got her car stuck inside of the gates of pergatory. some club in broward county. they locked her car in and her mom got pissed. so funny. these few days before christmas vacation are always really interesting in gainesville. they feel really secluded. johann left gainesville yesterday morning. my constant long time gainesville friend, the person who has always been around the four and half years i've been here. and the newest gainesville friend left on tuesday for italy. leaving for miami for a week and a half on tuesday with soph. wonder what that is going to be like, i'm looking forward to it. i want to sit and have one on ones with a few people, janelle, vanessa cid, my cousin denise. looking forward to new years eve, this year surrounded by people i love, different from last year's in gainesville. i honestly am in awe at how fast this year felt like it passed by. in complete awe and it gives me chills sometimes. looking forward to the next year, the spring semester in gainesville which is going to be markedly different than the last as they always are. i am looking forward to hanging out with two new friends in particular. and hopefully saving some money for fun times away from here by mid spring or summer. and always looking forward to summer time. but am feeling content with this moment right now.

waldo

here we are outside of the waldo flea market looking so sunday chic

today i am cranky, cranky, cranky. work. is. so. annoying. all of them. except the library job. get paid to play on the internet is not a dream job but pretty close to it.

i have gotten a lot of new music lately. and i made a fantastic mix that i need to send out to friends from a mix cd trade from eight months ago, i'm so late. i don't think i do this but i do, take forever to send something out i say i'm going to.

this weekend was good and kind of crazy. the nights were cool. friday night i partied late into the night with sophie and paul and this boy from down the street taylor who is nuts when he's drunk and dissected some artwork at my house. i got bitched at by paul. no biggie. i'm surprised some of my friends think i treat them like an asshole cause i don't think i do. but i guess there's a lot of things we do that we don't think we do. i'd like to think our own perception of ourselves is the most accurate (since you know we've been with ourselves for the longest amount of time), but that could be wrong. or it could be right but you have to balance your own (accurate) perception of yourself with others' not-so-accurate but equally valid perception of you.

ideal: near-complete honesty with friends, supported by mutual love and respect.

i believe i have that with a lot of my friends, which is lucky.

last weekend i woke up semi early for a sunday, cracked out from a late late night working at pita pit,and called my roommate lucy to see what she was doing. it was a perfect day and i could unknowingly feel it in the air. I'm at El Indio she says. I'll be right there! i respond. I didn't make it to el indio but my fabulous roommate brought me an egg burrito and scooped me up with Sophie and her friend Saad and we drove out to the Waldo Flea Market, which I had never been to before. Waldo is a small small small northern Florida town and they have this fantastic flea market every Sunday. I call it fantastic partly because, as I said, the day was perfect, and also because I looked good, I was in a good mood though I needed coffee BADly, and I found great buys! Myra Breckenridge by Gore Vidal for a whole 25 CENTS! Then Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the book, for 50 cents. Then the CD Last Splash by the Breeders for 2$ (ok a little expensive), and a pound of potatoes for $1 that Lucy later made into mashed ones.

As if the day was not good enough already, on the way back to Gainesville, we spot our two favorite professors having coffee at a cute little gay coffee shop in the middle of Waldo! We had no idea it even existed! When we waved to them, they called us over and we got some coffee and sat with them for almost an hour! It was so cool! Almost too good to be true! Chillen in at a gay coffee shop in Waldo, FL on the most perfect Sunday I have seen yet, talking about chill but interesting topics. I'm telling you, it was wonderful.

And the day got eeeeven better! When I drove over to Sarah's house where Johann and Tina S. and Kenny my neighbor were hanging out, recovering from a huge potluck in honor of Kenny's 19th birthday. That was fun, because I love those people. And then later we had beers together at lucy's restaurant, and continued the night by smoking a joint on my bed, listening to great songs, acting out the Robyn video (ok that was only me and only lucy understood), and kenny and i blabbering about massive universal stoned-type things. I was in love with everyone that day.

and so in hopes of attaining the tranquility and content-ness of that day, i need some proverbs or advices. like mayybee...

don't give so much of a fuck

but better than that.

my room has been the most welcoming and comfortable and enriching sanctuary for me this week. i have downloaded new music. like amanda palmer's new cd. and i downloaded the mac version of soulseek. fall time weather has arrived in gainesville surprisingly early and everyone is pretty happy about that. makes me want to make plans and i've been making them.

i've been reading my 3rd james baldwin novel, go tell it on the mountain. phenomenal

what i've been looking at online today:

Song to the Siren introduced to me by one beautiful boy on a late night on mo's couch just after tons of booze, a few hits of green, and a couple slices of Five Star with mushrooms

Grad Schools... ...

www.miami-fever.com awesome

Miami Bike Scene funny story

Bigger Than Hip-Hop: A Q+A With Kevin Powell really good interview with a former real world contestant and former Vibe magazine writer who is running for some congressional house in brooklyn

Defiance, Ohio's website complete with top 3 reasons to go vote

i confuse dreams with reality more and more each night. last night i was mostly asleep and in my dream my mom was nagging at me over something, but i was awake enough to know it was in my head, but i was too asleep to really figure out that i didn't need to actually say something out loud to get her to shut the fuck up, so i caught myself shouting "OK NANCY!" out loud in real life. then there was a dream where my parents re-did my room back home so nice and i was pretty much starting to pack my shit to move back home. it had a walk-in shower with a black leather couch inside. and a sleek black futon but not with the clunky steel bars that mine has now. i woke up and it took me a bit to come to terms with the non-existence of that room. i wanted to draw a picture of it when i woke up.

so i woke up to a relatively cool house this morning. all our windows had been open all night and it felt so nice sleeping in that and waking up to that also felt delicious. i brewed a pot of coffee, ate half of a tasteless green apple, made a bowl of cinnamon and spice flavored oatmeal, then ate it, then found some left over kashi cereal in a box of fiber one, ate that with some soy milk, probably then took a poop, and got dressed for work.

work life is miserable half the time, kind of glamorous in a totally not glamorous way the other half. i realized that i was lacking in enthusiasm and excitement from the moment september started. i blame work. i blame not having hours upon hours of me time, free time. but i kind of feel that changed this weekend. i got invigorated by people that showed up out of no where on thursday night and spent the weekend at the house on 4th ave. zest for life is back. thursday nights have done it for me in different ways, last week's thursday being the most tangible, last night being through cristy c road's zine.

i realize that most of my journal writing (here, my old LJ, my notebook journal, my daily thought journal) talks about two things: how i feel, why i feel that way. that is basically it. i never expand beyond those two topics. i wonder why this is, is it a representation of my inner self, my cancerian/pisces sun/moon combination that is ruled by a world of feelings and curiosities. but i'm mainly just curious about my own inner feelings, a lot more so than anything outside. i know outside things inspire me and incite me but it's not like i appreciate a beautiful sunset just because it's a beautiful sunset and because clouds and colors are such amazing things and they do other amazing things blended together, but more so because i am there and feel somehow a part of that blending and i am experiencing it and even more so if the afternoon has been perfect and the weather feels so nice and makes me and whoever i may or may not be with also feel so nice and together we feel nice but the point is that it's always centered on me and my interpretation and my feelings. is this everyone? i don't think so. i think someone can appreciate the sun setting from an objective point of view, from the sun being beautiful in and of itself, or from a song being perfect not because it makes me feel so good or it sounds exactly like something i've felt, but because musically and lyrically or whatever it is perfect and it has nothing to do with me other than the fact that i can appreciate it.

but this journal and my writing, the sparse and half-assed writing i do, is somehow supposed to be representative of me...how i'm feeling inside...what inspires me and incites me and,sometimes, why. and there's so much that does this. so many people, so many songs, so many words jumbled together, and pictures and ideas and inebriated moments and shared moments and shit like that. i could go on. i remembered this stuff from a few interactions with the surprise visitors this weekend. somehow. their genuine willingness to connect in an honest way, and their willingness to share and shit like that. shit that i'm used to from many other people but sometimes forget when i'm in a barely-noticeable barely-actual slump where i lose a little bit of fire and where i get tired and blasé.

work life is only going to last so much longer i sure hope. september is almost over and october is coming and i have plans for october. sort of.

Defiance Ohio last week was incredible. They are this awesome folky punk band that play in Gainesville once a year and have blown me a way once a year for the past three. Me and Sophie got 32oz High Life bottles. Good idea, Soph. We had a Defiance OH singing party at my house after the show with Mo and Lucy, and Kenny said we need to be careful for being too loud cause our neighbors want to keep calling the cops on us for noise violations. what ever.

Last night was Paul's fashion show. SO MUCH FUN! Get this: pretty lame people all dressed up to the nines, looking pretty good, I must say, at this really fancy "exclusive" (eye roll) bar that is also actually pretty impressive aesthetically. Upstairs: fashion show, white run way, packed people, annoying girl saying to me "you are not about to stand there" yes i am girl, but then cute waitress girls walking around with huge monster trays filled with this DELICIOUS sushi (even though the girl i met at the show alicia said the best sushi in g-ville is in Tatu...didn't know that), and then smaller trays with pretty fancy glasses filled with martinis, also complimentary. It was me and Sophie and then Paul came out and it was so exciting, he did the best run way walk and i couldn't believe i knew the best model in that whole show but then again I don't think I really noticed too many of the other ones, just Paul. I looked great too, Sophie had picked my outfit out, and I kept getting compliments. Felt kind of nice but I wanted a boy to be lusting after me, not just kind compliments.

Also, I finally finished the whole Sandman series. The last book, The Wake, was pretty great but I was kind of disappointed and kind of confused with the last story about William Shakespeare. Didn't get it. But I loved the first story, the one where they are all at the wake, and Despair talks about the old Despair, and Delirium is dressed up with fairy wings. Despair is quickly becoming my second favorite of the family, especially because of the way her speech was laid out in the book I just finished and because of how intense she is.