Monday , November 16, 2009

Laura Jane's Magnum Opus #3: Love Is Just The Song I Sing

The coolest anecdote in my entire repertoire of cool anecdotes is that my first word was "book", and I grew up to be a writer.

For me, writing is a brutally active process, more dependent upon my hands than on my brain. Arranging words into patterns that Sound Good And Mean Something is more fun for me than anything else- it saves my life.

But, so much as my ability to write for pleasure solves all my problems, it often triggers them as well. I feel like I will die if I don't write, and it stresses me out, riles me up, and intensifies certain nothings to a degree that often tends, or bends, towards the negative.

Which is where the songs come in.

Music is writing's perfect twin brother; my relationship to it is wholly passive. Music balances out my nervy, frantic and ever-nagging impulse to write, write, WRITE, RIGHT NOW!!! I'd rather listen to songs than write them; music is something I disappear to. Writing forces me to exist; music permits me to retreat. It is a cocoon, cocoa, or blanket. Writing is amphetaminic; songs are straight-smoked opium.

This article is everything about both those things, the John and Paul of Laura Jane. When I wrote Magnum Opus #1, I decided that Your Art Is Not You, but: there is an exception to every rule. I like having my my art Be Me, it's all just the song I sing.

So, here I am, singing every song that ever meant the most, to me, from being born until tomorrow, to you, tonight.

Enjoy.

1985-1988 (AGES ZERO-THREE): The Kinks, "Lola"

I don't remember being a baby.

Some people say they do. I take that information in, and vacillate between being jealous and thinking they are lying. 50% of the time, I am wrong.

I know for sure that my Mother sang me "Lola" by the Kinks when I was a little baby because she has told me so a hundred billion kazillion times, in that uniquely Mother-y way. It's a natural fact: Mothers only know seven stories, but make up for it by telling you them over and over again, thirteen times a day, forever.

I am confident that my mother did not sing "Lola" to her newborn daughter because her newborn daughter was an irresistibly sexy transsexual. I'm sure it had a lot more to do with the glottological similarities between the words "Lola" and "Laura"-

And, because I need life to always be beautiful and special and literary, I am choosing to believe that I love John Lennon and Ray Davies and "Happy Together" and Curt Boettcher and "Blank Generation" as sobbingly hard as I do because my identity, before I had any control over it at all whatsoever, was shaped around "Lola"'s particular E A D G B E.

Well, I'm not the world's most masculine man, that's for goddamned sure. But I will always be the world's most "emphatically confident that 80% of her entire esse can be attributed to "Lola"-overexposure at a weirdly early age"-girl, which is is hell of cool at least.

1989 (AGE FOUR): Paul Simon, "Graceland"

It took four long and winding years for the "obsessively personal pop music dependency" hanging nascent inside my infant-to-toddler self to bloom. As soon as I was old enough to intellectualize the concept of "music" and, furthermore, "people making music," I got hooked, the shit of it emerged, and Graceland fucking ruled, yo!

I was four years old, and had diamonds on the soles of my Weeboks.

My Mommy helped me write Paul Simon a fan letter. His wife (Edie Brickell?) was pregnant, and I recall the crux of my communicative gesture being that he should name his child Laura, or possibly Laurence (if it was a boy). I had this really sick glittery sticker of a dragon, unicorn and castle, and I wanted to give it to him. My mother made me stick it to the back of the envelope, which irked me, because I wanted to give it to him unsticked. That way, he could have used it himself! I've never really gotten over that one; you know he would have affixed it to his acoustic guitar or something.

Sixty-odd business days later, Paul Simon mailed me (me!) a glossy B+W portrait of his doughy middle-aged bust, weak chin resting on his fist. I was honored.

And so commenced my lifelong desire to infiltrate the day-to-day lives of celebrities who I think are cool and would like me.

Here's to You, Mr. Paul Simon. Take that sparkly unicorn sticker and put it in the pantry with your cupcakes. Please.

1990 (AGE FIVE): Simon & Garfunkel, "El Condor Pasa"

The Ballad of Laura Jane and Paul Simon does not end at Age Four.

Having established myself as an ardent appreciator of PS's sonic oeuvre, it was time to, as they say, "explore his earlier work".

Back in Complex October when life was simple, my Dad and I were driving from New York City to Toronto, and listened to an S&G Best Of on the car stereo. It had been years since I'd actively listened to "El Condor Pasa" and, as I did, that day, the first time I saw snow this winter, the troubled water of it all came rushing back:

What did it all mean? Why would Paul Simon rather be a sparrow than a snail? Why is Paul Simon not satisfied with being Paul Simon? What is "satisfaction"? Am I satisfied? If Paul Simon would rather be a hammer than a nail, than is the same true about me? Would I rather be Paul Simon than Laura Faulds?--

"Oh, shit," I thought, "Life is hard."

"I remember being like five and ingesting these lyrics," I told my Dad, "...I think it was the first time I ever really understood, um, you know, um, poetry? The words, were just, like, so, um..."

"Profound yet enigmatic?" asked my Father.

Yeah.

We laughed.

1991 (AGE SIX): The Beatles, "Michelle"

I've already written about this before:

I've been loving the Beatles since the day I was born. I remember the first day I ever heard "Michelle"- I was about five years old, in the car with my Mom, had just been picked up from swimming lessons. It came on 1050 CHUM and it was the prettiest thing I'd ever heard. I thought to myself, "I really hope this is a Beatles song," because I had a vague understanding of how that band existed, and that they were important and cool to me. My mother confirmed that it was, but when we pulled into the Hopedale Mall parking lot, she turned the car off halfway through the song. I was heartbroken that I didn't get to hear the end of it. Now, everytime I play "Michelle," I think about how lucky I am to be in charge of my own Beatles-centric activities, and that a life wherein I can listen to "Michelle" anytime I please is pretty damn fab.

Whatever. I'm sure that says it all, or most of it at least.

1992 (AGE SEVEN): The Turtles, "Happy Together"

("Dance Until You Can't Dance Anymore Laura Jane"; LJF, 04/29/07)

Precisely three minutes and ten seconds into "Dance Until You Can't Dance Anymore Laura Jane", a moment hits where I am so messed up on physical exertion and over-exposure to mecca-catchy pop music that- you can see it, plain as day-

I am transcending.

I don't really think that it happened then, at that exact moment, because it was "Happy Together". I don't think it happened because I grew up to "Happy Together" on the radio, because I listened to it so incessantly during my formative years, because it was one of the first songs I figured out how to love, or because it is even good at all. Not that it isn't- good- Oh God It's Good.

I just mean that I think I transcended because I was tired. Or, possibly, I did not even transcend at all! Maybe I was just so tired that it seemed like I transcended.

(NOTE: I am surprised by how necessary it has been throughout my writing of this article to overuse the verb "to happen"; I'm quite used to my devitalizing overuse of "just", "definitely", "totally", "kind of", "sort of", "pretty much" and "significant", but I would've thought that, in this case, there'd be some equally efficient synonym that might've been able to step in)

It is entirely possible that "Happy Together" just HAPPENED to be the right/wrong song at the right/wrong time: the time when I was just tired, and bored of myself, and decided to move closer to the camera because it was something, and not nothing, to do.

I am in love with the happenstancical linguistic similarities between the words "camera" and "chimera"; if I hadn't rejected post-secondary education, I might write an essay about it (if I wasn't too busy writing about "Her Satanic Majesties' Request" vs. "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", which I'm sure I would've been: easy-peasy). That moment was a chimera. It was a mirage. It wasn't real; it just seemed it because it HAPPENED to be recorded onto tape and documented eternally forever. "Happy Together"'s, er, killer-osity, I mean, "cultural substance", I am seeing, is equally hallucinatory. You have to be asleep- or else midway through a dance marathon- to see how life is but a dream. The best moments are always chimeric; you think back upon them and wonder how they were ever even real at all. To me, "Happy Together" sounds like those moments. I find it hard to process that it was ever on the radio, or that it could ever mean anything really, really real to anybody. To me, the only person who counts here, It sounds like the song that should be playing as you live all the moments you will one day doubt ever really transpired.

Nothing's ever like that. To compound my point here:

The lyrics to "Happy Together" are a fucking FALLACY:

The only one for ME IS YOU, and YOU FOR ME.

It means the same thing twice. Think about it (if you happen to).

1993 (AGE EIGHT): Nirvana, "Smells Like Teen Spirit"

I had no idea what this song sounded like until minimum 1998, but still, I believed in it. That is what's important here.

My early-childhood best friend (1987-1994) was named Caitlin Frederick, and her rogueish young father (tousled blond hair; hoop earring; sharp jaw; in retrospect, pure Zooey Glass) was the first Love of my Life. Caitlin's birthday fell on Hallowe'en, which means that she was a Premium Scorpio, and had the sickest spookiest birthday parties. To add spooky insult to spooky injury, her seventh happened to line up with the day River Phoenix was pronounced dead.

Caitlin's Handsome Dad announced RP's demise to The Group of us, and being the only child present who knew who he was made me feel cosmopolitan, pretty much genius, in the presence of hot sweet Mr. Frederick. I also recall being impressed by my own ability to comprehend the severity of a drug overdose, or what it was at all; I also recall Mr. F letting me know that it was okay to pick up the cat by his tail and pet him with my feet, the cat liked it.

To this day, I always picture Kurt Cobain as Caitlin's Dad when somebody brings up his suicide, but only then. Hot young blond dudes, tragic passings, pre-adolescent counter-cultural mis-perceptions- my brain's fuzzed the whole thing up.

There was a song I made up when I was a little kid that I would sing to myself in my head, or softly aloud, in place of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" when I heard or read those words somewhere, and maybe that song is what I really mean, when I mean to define my Eighth Age musically.

I feel sadder about KC's death when I imagine him as Mr. Frederick than when I actually consider the factual details of the situation, which speaks volumes about the power of believed abstraction vis a vis the whole truth and nothing but. I almost always prefer the imagined to the material; that's part of the fun of being a writer! Nirvana the Actual Real Band were before my time, and I don't care about them very much. I think "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is kinda weak. Compared to "Smells Like To The Stony Halls of Private Elementary School and Alcohol-Free All Dogs Go To Heaven Body Spray" by some hopeful, hopeless, and always She Smiling Sweetly eight-year-old, at least.

1994 (AGE NINE): Green Day, "Longview"

In elementary school, I was notorious for always being The Last Kid At Afterschool. Both my parents worked late, so, every day, after the proper school day was done, I hung out at the Afterschool Program until every last kid had been picked up, and it was just me and Fio alone.

Afterschool ruled, and, along with Tristan Plant, I owned that shit. Tristan Plant was in seventh grade when I was in fifth; thinking back, I think he may have been the dirtiest, most erotically-charged twelve-year-old in all recorded history. Once, he told me I'd be beautiful if my chipmunk cheeks could be removed from my face and affixed to my chest.

We were kind of in love with each other.

Afterschool was run by a sassy Peruvian Sagittarius named Fio. She remains one of the most influential people ever to have walked down my street- it's weird, in that boring life-y way, to think about how, in 1994, she was probably younger than I am now, yet I thought of her then as being a legitimate adult. I guess, she meant adulthood to me.

I feel like more of a little kid now than I did then. At nine, after school with Tristan Plant and Fio, I was allowed to be the grown-up that I knew I was inside. We would eat those gross snacks that are Cheetos but onion rings, play floor hockey (which I was SO GOOD at), and listen to 102.1 The Edge, Toronto's "alternative" radio station.

The singles off of Green Day's Dookie sounded like what I hoped Nirvana sounded like; nicely snotty, mean enough, Like "Happy Together" Kind Of, bad, mean, new. Dookie was the first CD I ever bought, which is cooler than Ace of Base at least. The very fact that I owned a CD made me feel like a real grown-up. I've picked "Longview" as my Ninth Song because it said "masturbation" in it, and so was illicit, and mad bad-ass. It gave me a sick thrill, listening to dirty teenager music as my parents sat naively downstairs, watching television, ignorant to the smoking rebellion taking place upstairs.

I hate this band and I hate this music, but, gross as it is, Billie Joe Armstrong taught me how to Rebel Yell, as a Rebel, Rebel/Rebel Girl would.

I grew up, and it never stopped. I turned Number Nine, and from there on in- to myself at least- became more than just the Queen of Afterschool. The double-digits impended, and I was the Queen of the Neighbourhood. And if you think I wasn't, punch in me in the face then. I dare you.

I can dish it out, and I can take it.

1995 (AGE TEN): Oasis, "Wonderwall"

She probably wasn't the one that saved you, Liam Gallagher. Nobody ever could, or would be.

You can only save yourself.

A few weeks ago, I was killing away some hours at a really shitty shoe store that I hate, and this song came on the stereo. I'd been so drunk the previous evening that, in the words of the Fiery Furnaces, "I didn't even undress for bed" (NOTE: In terms of actual life, this is not a Fiery Furnaces-specific sentiment, but I feel bad not giving credit when or where it is due), and I didn't want to be anywhere, let alone at a retail outlet that I actively think is stupid. Then this song came on, and it hit me hard, Son.

Evocation is cool. When you smell the perfume (Stila Creme Bouquet) you wore three years ago ("Baron Saturday"-era) and suddenly are back there (on the Balco); when you eat the meal (a Loco Burrito) you ate every night when you were nineteen (circa "Vertigo") and are there again (stoned on the couch watching "Full House" re-runs on DVR), or when you hear "Wonderwall" at Get Outside on a queasy Tuesday, and, for a second, are SAVED. I needed to hear the whole thing so bad, RIGHT THAT EXACT SECOND, that I tried on a pair of ugly red lace-up Hunter boots to give myself an excuse to stay hanging around there the entire event.

Yes, in the long term, you can only save yourself. But sometimes, at that very second, pop songs can be a terrifically effective Band-Aid solution.

1996 (AGE ELEVEN): The Spice Girls, "Wannabe"

They were my Beatles. This song was a past life. This morning feels like a thousand years ago, but the afternoon recess I heard this song for the third or twelfth time feels like closer than yesterday.

Apologies for my paltry variation upon a lame Normie platitude, but: there is more than a lot to be said for the "Hey Jude"s of 20-to-21st-Century existence. Generally, the songs that penetrate the cultural consciousness most virally are kinda just the best; as much as I wish I could think of a really cool argument for how "Making Plans for Nigel" by XTC is better than "Rio" by Duran Duran, or that "Far Out" by Blur is superior to "Parklife", I can't, and what's more, I wouldn't. My favourite band is the Beatles, and the Spice Girls changed my life. Perhaps this means I should try to be more tolerant of Miley Cyrus' contributions to the present-day consumable-pop landscape, but hey- we're all entitled to a little hypocrisy now and again.

There is an uncertain and impalpable magic to the music video accompanying "Wannabe" by the Spice Girls; as much as this band can be examined as a prime instance of hyper-Svengalied, uber-constructed pop groups, there is something unsettlingly real (and there is NO fancy adjective I would use in that word's place right now) about the way these five women (girls? women? girls? IDK!!!!) come across in it. They seem really dirty, like they'd reek of nasty drugstore perfume and kind of annoy you in social situations. But who cares? The pre-fame Spice Girls are conveniently flawed, like they'd be fucking SO FUN to hang out with once you were drunk already. If Geri Halliwell was her exact self circa "Wannabe" in Dirty December of 2008, I know we'd be buddies; she'd be the type of girl who'd text me back immediately- and with a smiley face, no less- when I sent her some sort of "SO BORED AT WORK, U GNG OUT 2NITE?" text midway through a death-defying ten-hour work day.

In the words of Laura Jane Faulds:

Everything that cannot be solved numerically is necessarily magic.

And they are. The best bands in the world are those whose individual band members are highly discernible from one another, so you can pick favourites. And so, just for the fun of it:

Ginger Spice: John Lennon
Scary Spice: Ringo Starr
Baby Spice: Paul McCartney
Posh Spice: George Harrison
Sporty Spice: Brian Epstein?

THE SPICE GIRLS AT THE 1997 BRIT AWARDS- my equivalent of watching the Beatles playing the Ed Sullivan show in February 1964, Ginger Spice in her Union Jack beyond-mini-dress being pretty much the Style Icon of my life (her dry-teased kitschy sluttiness putting Justine Frischmann's androgynous cool to absolute shame):

1997 (AGE TWELVE): Kenickie, "PVC" (Live at Reading)

Kenickie are kind of the best band ever.

I taped the 199something Reading Festival off of Muchmusic and watched this performance over and over again, alone in my basement. I would dance to it. The Spice Girls were particularly momentous in the schemata of my life because they were supposed to be perfect but were not, could not be; to my post-SpiceWorld self, Kenickie meant what they did because they were never meant to be perfect, but were.

This song is sung by Marie Du Santiago and not Lauren Laverne, which makes it Kenickie-equivalent to a straight George Harrison Beatles song; let's call it their "It's All Too Much".

Because I skipped the third grade, I've always felt a year older than I actually am; therefore, twelve was my thirteen. These potty-mouthed bitches from Sunderland eased me into teenagerhood, which, as you will soon see, I conceptually embraced full-force.

Loser brats from SoCal allowed me to believe I was the Queen of the Neighbourhood and Courtney Love encouraged me to be The Girl With The Most Cake, but it was stupid little Kenickie who made me me.

Cockiness is a virtue. Wear high heels, and get a record deal.

1998 (AGE THIRTEEN): Peach Union, "On My Own"

I am picking this song in lieu of "I Am I Feel" by Alisha's Attic because, up until about six days ago, unpacking boxes of all the junk I've ever acquired in my new nook-y bedroom, I on all counts forgot it existed. From perhaps six days after I turned fourteen until, as I said, six days ago, this band and this song- melody, video, concept, album cover, all of it- did not traverse my consciousness on one single solitary occasion.

But then there are the days, those endless and sacred days this song legitimately gave me. Thirteen was weird for me; it was as transient as "On My Own"'s melody, a year that disappeared, meant everything and nothing, was comprised primarily of imagining how I'd look without smudgy, crooked glasses, of applying cheap red lipstick and staring at the untrained expression on my undeveloped countenance, imagining how prepared I'd be for the day when life became as glamorous as this song sounded.

Most pop songs are, or become, or (as she is arrested by the Good Writer Police for infinite counts of baby-brand sentimentalism) ARE DESTINED TO BE, accidental ephemera. I love pop music because it is a both soothing and enriching accompaniment to Most Basic Survival. Pop music holds your hand through the shit of it so dauntlessly because it just IS IT, or isn't it, but either way: it mimics and mocks Real Life, is not a doppelganger but a fraternal twin. It comes close enough.

At twenty-one, I twenty-once lived a glorious, disassociative-fueled all-nighter with a Scorpio named Rachel. We scurried around the crooks and corners of the obviously haunted converted 19th Century Opera House I lived in at the time, played Pac-Man like madmen, she held my hand as I ornithophobically hallucinated flocks of pigeons flying at my face in my old nook-y bedroom. That night was valid; it was sublime. But the whole time, as the clock ticked by and the moments done died, I kept thinking: I am here with her tonight, but, by the time I am thirty-five, I will no longer remember this girl's name, her face, tonight, our acquaintanceship, anything we ever did have.

So much as it is true that time heals all wounds, sometimes it scratches out messages you might've meant to keep, had you been given the choice.

1999 (AGE FOURTEEN): The Beastie Boys, "The Grasshopper Unit"

The summer I turned 14, my Mom and Dad and I took a trip to Nowhere, Alberta for the Faulds Family Reunion, and the Beastie Boys were my Beatles. At fourteen, you are still new to being A Person, and your being is defined by an onslaught of meaningless problems that will in nine years time become fodder for jokey self-loathing blog posts:

Can my parents smell the pot smoke on my hot pink polar-fleece hoody? Is it okay to have a crush on a boy with a Grade A+++ double-cheeseburger pizza face? Why am I not more naturally adept at trigonometry? God! If only marijuana smoke came fragrance-free, Acne Boy adored be, and cosines made more sense!

I intensely love my father's home province of Alberta for many reasons, but the most important one is that dinosaurs used to live there, and if you focus really hard, you can feel their stupid stompy ghosts weaving through your stupid stompy footsteps every minute. The aforementioned Family Reunion lasted for one long weekend, and I spent the majority of those four days living inside the same Prehistorically Perfect Ritual:

Climbing up a steep craggy hill, Prairied but hinting at impending Rockies, falling and hollering, huffing and puffing, ideating, dehydrating. I had a stye in my eye that summer, so had to wear my glasses every day. They fogged up. At the top of the hill, you could see for a million silo miles. I craved contraband cigarettes and imagined Albertasauri loping between the bales and listened to "The Grasshopper Unit" and imagined that everything in the entire world was exactly the same, except for that Adam "MCA" Yauch was sitting there next to me.

The idea of him seemed so safe: grey hair and raspy voice; Buddhism and snowboarding. The weird thing about MCA is that he is a Leo; some of them (Leos) can be really unexpected.

Leos are totally the Scorpios of fire signs.

2000 (AGE FIFTEEN): The Beatles, "Happiness is a Warm Gun"

It is not lame to be cool. It's cool to be cool. Sometimes, however, it is also Cool To Be Lame.

In The Age Of Irony, these basic truths have gotten all messed up. I feel it is my responsibility to set the record straight.

In the vernacular of my generation:

--So, like, okay: fuck, shit, damn, whatever! I'm (like) fifteen, falling in love with the Beatles, like, for real (seriously!), and, so, like, there was this one day? I went downtown? And bought The White Album? And, then, like, I don't know, went shopping for a bit? And then I, like, came home? And put it on? And, like, listened to it? And, like, okay, okay, like, seriously: OMFG. I listened to it, and was like: Holy Shizz! This shit is totes crunk! KERRR-UNKKKKK!!!! "Happiness is a Warm Gun"? Whoa! Did I say OMFG? Oops! Ha ha! I so did. But, like, for serious? "Happiness is a Warm Gun"? That song is RAN-DOM! But, like, SO COOL.--

Okay, wow. Writing that was really emotionally trying for me.

It is really rare that anything is gained from the transposition of LP to CD, but something truly powerful about the CD-vs-LP tracking of The White Album is the sequencing of "Martha My Dear" after "Happiness is a Warm Gun"; I think it is perhaps the most striking illustration of the John vs. Paul dynamic in all existence. "Happiness" is John's coolest song; "Martha..." is not Paul's lamest, but it's undeniably Top Five.

When I was fifteen, there was no such thing as irony. I mean, I was able to vaguely grasp what the word meant, even though a lot of that graspage was dependent on the lyrics to "Ironic" by Alanis Morrissette. But in terms of myself- how I acted, and what I responded to- the question of irony was irrelevant and inconsequential. I fell head-over-heels for "Happiness..." because it was so fucking cool; conversely, the brilliance of "Martha My Dear" didn't kick in until a long while later (because it wasn't, and I didn't get it).

My Fifteenth Age was my "This Will Be Our Year" by the Zombies of years. I was cool, and it wasn't shallow, and I don't see why it has to be. Gnarly, wicked "Happiness..." is John Lennon; jaunty, sharp "Martha..." is Paul McCartney. Loving them both, in the case of this paragraph only counting their contradictory but equally relevant/equally equal coolnesses, makes me cool (in a really deep and important way).

Oh God; "I'm so tired" of thinking about this.

I hope I wear a really cool outfit tomorrow.

2001 (AGE SIXTEEN AND FABULOUS): Thurston Moore, "Psychic Hearts"

Thurston Moore doesn't understand me.

I am listening to "Psychic Hearts" this exact second, trying desperately, with the hopeless, hopeful determination of my Eighth Age self, to connect to how this song ever made me feel like he did.

To truly consider the thousands of intellectual, emotional, and visceral levels by which a pop song can inform the way your own life feels at a given moment is a token of self-reflection that, nine times out of ten, makes me itch all over with frustration. It kills me how many times I have adored a song and, subsequently, convinced myself that:

a) said song is "my life," even though that sentiment actually makes no sense;
b) said song is somehow "about me", which makes even less sense than Non-Point A;
c) the person(s) who wrote said song is/are the only person(s) capable of understanding my oh-so-complexicated self.

Having just self-consciously and "judging 16-year-old-Laura"-ly listened to "Psychic Hearts", I have, within the past three point five minutes, finally hammered home some medium-ly pithy business to myself:

When you marry a killer melody and nicely-poetic lyrics meant to communicate an extremely general sentiment &/or experience &/or the sentimental value of a general experience, it can be deadly, especially to a self-aggrandizing semi-pariah so fucking Sixteen and Fabulous as I once was.

But, that being said, I must being say: this song is a downright classic, and if you've never heard it before, you must being do so now.

Just make sure not to get too caught up in Cat Power's cover of it:

She doesn't understand Thurston Moore at all.

2002 (AGE SEVENTEEN): The Beach Boys, "Don't Worry Baby"

I always think I'm dying.

I am the most deathly thanatophobic person I've ever known. Everybody and their brother pleads insomnia (when they're not too busy pleading ADHD and borderline personality disorder, I mean), but, if they knew it, they'd never say it, because if you do, you won't. Because if you do, and you do, it will make it worse. And if you do (Know It Not Plead It)- you know what I mean.

I feel embarrassed for saying that, but I did. I have been very, very lucky in my life in that I am yet to experience the death of a Grade A+++ Loved One, but I've always known that, when I do, the first thing I'll do is play this song.

Because "Don't Worry Baby" is my "Dies Irae", because it is my personal Theme For Death Which I Don't Understand, this song makes me feel like I'm alive, which I am. And hey-

I'm not very worried about it.

2003 (AGE EIGHTEEN): Tommy James & the Shondells, "Crimson & Clover"

So: we are now dix-huit anos into The Life of LJF, and the moral of the story so far is:

IT IS A BAD IDEA TO MOVE TO NEW YORK CITY WHEN YOU ARE EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD.

Seriously. Dumbest thing I ever did. I mean, it's what happened, and I am who I am because of it, and I wouldn't be the person I am now without it, blah blah blah, it is as it is and as it isn't it aint'--

All I really care to remember about that year is the night I lay in my crappy dorm-room twin, gravity bong-stoned to near Death, listening to this song so loud that I would, in a couple months' time, develop a HIGHLY ANNOYING case of pulsatile tinnitus FOREVER as an in-my-opinion highly unfair consequence of wanting to have my mind blown by "Crimson & Clover" by Tommy James and the Shondells. I was smoking a cigarette, most likely either a Parliament Light or Marlboro Red, and I watched the ash unfurl into ancient runes, Druidic, into tesserae, primordial, into chalk-drawn hopscotch stencils, shattered candy, baseball-ruined windowpanes, smashed bottles of Nehi belonging to F. Jasmine Addams, Southern Gothic, and-

How refreshing (!) I wish I could have known it was, to be so goddamned stupid, to think, to not-think, that this night alone was enough to mean-

That everything would always be okay.

2004 (AGE NINETEEN): U2, "Vertigo"

My Nineteenth Age was an economic recession. Lexy was sick, and so was I. Lexy was gone, and I was too.

Chelsea and I spent every night of that brutal winter scared and alone: alone but we were together, alone but we were alone. We bought glue traps for the mice because we thought they were humane, but we were wrong (as usual). We tried to pull his feet off the glue but he was a goner (as were we). We drowned him in a Tupperware bowl and cried in bed.

We decided to only listen to Bad Music; this song was the King Of It. There is a part of it we called "The Joke in Vertigo": the lyric, "The boys play rock and roll/
They know that they can't dance/At least they know". It made us laugh, because it was stupid and nothing and "Vertigo" and we didn't care, and we only cared about things we didn't care about, which was a surprisingly effective coping mechanism. Our apartment was a disaster and we ate White Castle for dinner, which wasn't dinner. There was no dinner. We got good grades but loathed those numbers because of what they validated. We smoked pot out of the chic-est bong in the world; we were beautiful but let it slide.

I would give my entire life to have one of those nights again.

I have never been less happy as I was that winter, but our conjoined sorrow was solid and stolid and magic and fucking SO MUCH FUN. Nothing mattered, and so everything did. We were horrified, and so we laughed.

I would give my entire life to live one of those nights again.

UNOS, DOS, TRES, CATORCE!!!!!!

2005 (AGE TWENTY): The Pretty Things, "Baron Saturday"

Ninety percent of my lifelong pop music consumption has been delivered to me via unlabelled CD-Rs I've hastily burned for train and bus rides, composed of the catchiest songs I know. Even today- I have an iPod (it's a hot pink Nano named Chandler Bing), but instead I choose to listen to "COOL LAURA, Volume A Billion" on the shittiest Discman you could possibly imagine.

If not lazily unlabelled, said category of CD-Rs are almost always designated "COOL LAURA," such pointless and ridiculous titling scrawled onto pointless ugly silver-but-not in permanent marker, which smells good at least. "Baron Saturday" by the Pretty Things is the King (or Baron, I guess) of "COOL LAURA" staples.

I discovered this song the summer when I was twenty years old. I was staying at my parents', but stowed myself away at my then-boyfriend's idyllic fifteenth-floor apartment in idyllic Steeltown. It was a fiendishly muggy July, and we spent most of our time getting crazy-stoned, sitting on his balcony (referred to exclusively as "The Balco") in our underwear, and, most importantly: Listening To Music And Talking About It, the most consistently fun activity that exists on this planet.

What matters about "Baron Saturday" is that it hits the shoulder-punch of a sonic climax that "Dirty Boots" by the Youth never did. I generally do my best to refrain from comparing pop music to sexual intercourse, but, well, see, um- well, you do the math.

2006 (AGE TWENTY-ONE): Clifford T. Ward, "Wherewithal"

Turning twenty-one is some tough shit.

Personally, I chose to inaugurate my twenty-second year on this planet by: overdoing it on the Greyhounds (not to mention the vodka tonics, the Seabreezes, the Colt 45s, the anythings, the alwayses, the EVERY NIGHTS), overdoing it on the Big Bad Narcotics, underdoing it on the eating, engaging in a toxic love affair with a Louisiana-born and Rome-bred Aquarius nearly twice my age, and justifying my absolutely unjustifiable behaviors by reminding myself how COOL it was that I DJed bubblegum 45s every Tuesday. Tuesday night was Girls Night, spent wasted and anxious, me & Katie, wearing green or navy American Apparel jogging shorts and running to the church's stone steps to get stoned/stepped. Basically-

I turned twenty-one and fucked up my life with a fervor so heavy-handed, so fluorescent, so OH!-

Two-and-a-half years later, I am still cleaning up the mess that dumb jerk left.

__

I have recently realized that it is part of my gift as a writer to unashamedly bare my soul to the ether, the clear sky, anytime pen hits paper, which is fine, but, so, yeah:

That Explains That.

__

I am twenty-one years old, and a mess. Steve walks into Girls Night with his signature swagger in one hand, and 2 hits of acid in the other.

Obediently, I drop them.

(SORRY, MOM!!!)

DJ Katie Rose, my partner in crime, plays Clifford T. Ward's "Wherewithal" approximately three hours into the kicking in of it. I am sitting on a dirty tweedy couch with Steve and whatever nasty loser I happened to be "vali"-dating at the time.

And, for the length of that song, that night, and for that night only, mostly- I HAD IT. All I could say, and I did- over and over again- was,

THIS SONG HAS BEEN PLAYING ON A CONTINUOUS LOOP FOR EVERY SINGLE SECOND I HAVE LIVED OF THIS INCARNATION OF MY BEING THIS SOUL SO FAR I THINK. I AM CONFIDENT. I MAY NOT HAVE HEARD IT ANY OF THE TIMES EXCEPT NOW, BUT NEVERTHELESS, IT WAS THERE. OF THIS, I AM SURE.

_____

And it was true, though it wasn't.

It wasn't.

It was the acid. I know it, and so do you. I knew it not five hours later, lying in bed during the Eighteenth Century as the J train raced above my head.

"Wherewithal" is a heartbreakingly beautiful beautiful song, that exquisite balance between ballad and thumper that makes you taste your lungs in your throat. And I saw this then (in the Eighteenth Century), and therein I discovered, found, have found, and find the wherewithal needed to teach myself that THIS SONG IS NOT MY LIFE. And then (in the Eighteenth Century), I learned: life is nasty; songs like this are just the antidote.

Two-and-a-half years later, I've only just begun to realize that THIS IS SOMETHING TO BE HAPPY ABOUT.

2007 (AGE TWENTY-TWO): John Lennon, "Gimme Some Truth"

I was born on a Monday night in April when I was twenty-two and less-than-fabulous, on the night I sang this song at Piano's karaoke and my best friends watched me and I meant it. I spent my whole life hoping that I would end up as the person who hosts silly little videos and belts it out in public; part of me suspected I would never be her. An April Monday proved that part of me wrong.

This song is the smartest thing anybody ever said, and I will live by it until I die.

The only time I ever feel sad anymore is when I give (the proverbial) You some bullshit, and I'm sorry that I live a life where sometimes I have to. I wish I could wash all those fibbers' nasty mouths out with Irish Spring; I wish there was no such thing as the obligation to suck it up, brown-nose and lie.

John Lennon was allowed to only ever tell it like it was because he was John Lennon; "imagine" a life where LJF could do the same.

I do and I will.

That month tasted like Cherry Coke. Sometimes, I sure can retail the shit, and, Oh God, last, April:

I loved you for it.

2008 (AGE TWENTY-THREE): Matthew Friedberger, "The Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company Resignation Letter"

Anytime anything ever happened to me, it always came back to this song.

Life is, in the words of the Slits, SO TOUGH, but things must be all-right, if, inside of it, I can know a person capable of producing something so beautiful as this song. From the April I got re-born, on along to a Golden Summer, Complex October to my really, really Dirty December: I existed, curling up on buses, getting kicked out of America, booking it home, drunk as a skunk, a million times. This song hums and hangs. It is citronella candles and cedar in the hazy malaise of twilit twenty-three degrees Celsius; it is houses and porches, the salt smell of sea, a hundred things that aren't me and then all that are (!!!): the subway that day, Cherry Coke, tired, too awake, when Trevor came to visit and I played it in the Mini with the windows down and screamed "THIS IS WHAT IT'S SUPPOSED TO SOUND LIKE!!!!"- dripping July nights with Kellner & George, getting ripped on Fresita and frozen Seabreeze juiceboxes, a copper Strawberry Shortcake taste on my tongue, double-stepping sidewalks to Union Station, this song a cove for my ears, these guitars a riptide. My legs reflected in store windows looking like they could snap off at any second but really, instead, I knew, I know, they will carry me along to greatness.

Winter hit and I could kill it, but your favourite songs never change; still, it feels so easy; still, it feels so safe. Flattery may get me nowhere in this life, but my name's Laura Jane, and I like going nowhere fast.

Thanks.

QED,
LJF
12/15/08

Tags: Adam Yauch, chimera, Halloween Scorpios, Laura Jane Faulds, Laura Loves Dudes, Laura loves The Beatles, Laura loves The Kinks, Leos, Magnum Opus, nostalgia, pulsatile tinnitus, River Phoenix, safety, sixteen and fabulous, Southern Gothic, Spice Girls, STEVE, The Pretty Things, Thurston Moore, transcending

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