mood: "the mood I would be in if it were exam week, but I didn't actually have any. like, sitting around just waiting for school to be over. but still having everyone around. but no classes."
smelling: the prettiest roses in the world
listenin': to Dar's As Cool As I Am on repeat. I used to say that this was my theme song.

[sayin' is it how she moves or how she looks? i say it's loneliness, suspended to our own like grappling hooks; and as long as she's got noise she's fine, but I could teach her how to dance when the music's ended...

i don't know what you saw, i want somebody who sees me]

other songs that I can never hear enough, even if I play them on repeat for hours:

• Ani's Angry Anymore. Good 1999 memories of picking up up up up up up up from Best Buy and heading to Augusta for Chetna's birthday. I couldn't get enough of this song. I had also just gotten Severe Tire Damage which has some kickass TMBG, but I couldn't stop singing "I just want you to understand, that I know what all the fighting was for... and I just want you to understand that I'm not angry anymore..." for long enough to put anything else in, for the entirety of the trip. Still have bleak, but nostalgic, snapshots in my mind of crying and driving in a silver Volvo on the country roads.



• Ben Folds' Philosophy. Another song that shouldn't, but did, make me cry. I do have the excuse here that it was live, and Ben looked at me for a split second before he started playing. Nothing kills me more. I do believe that the only reason I go to live shows is the scant possibility that the person up there with such an ability to capture my eyes constantly will look back at me for a moment. Other artists who I feel have dedicated a song to me in this way: Dave Grohl, who looked over as I was tucking the lower part of my shirt into my bra, 'cause it was so fucking hot. I swear, I almost fainted. Bela Fleck, at the third occasion I heard the Flecktones in as many months, made the most obvious look at me: he stared directly into my eyes during the entire opening to his solo. After the concert, I stood at the back of my group of friends getting autographs, and he looked up at me, tilted his head, and smiled. The coolest banjo player in the world! And he's friends with fuckin' Victor Wooten! Too bad he's also a "big goober," to use Karl and Brent's description.



• Mazzy Star's Five String Serenade. Just a simple beautiful song. Last summer, I would lay in my bed all afternoon listening to it.



• Simon and Garfunkel's Cecelia. A song that I actually knew all of its words before ever hearing a recording of it, courtesy of my favorite redhead in the world, Laura Norman, also known as the secret mistress of Mr. Ernie "the Ernmeister" Feinstein. Oh! but wouldn't Ms. Feinstein be appalled! She just spent so much time away taking care of little Timmy's syphillis. Or getting the dog catchers to go out looking for him?



• Sarah McLachlan's Ice Cream. I have not a single Sarah CD, and do not have any songs but this on my computer, but I have three separate versions of this song. Surely, the lyrics are a little insipid. The humming is a tad phony. And I'm probably primarily attached to it because of the lovely and happy circumstances in which I heard it for the first time. Now, though, all I can remember, is leaving it on repeat for hours, while Elena and I hung out in my room, and talked about Ben, and daydream believers, and silly dramas. It was a lovely Christmas break, and taught me that I could be my own person, even after having been a Siamese twin for over two years.



• Mirah's Engine Heart. A new pretty discovery. Indeed, the extreme girliness and ease of listening to this on repeat may confirm the theory proposed on the NY trip in March: it is only girls that like listening to songs even more than once in a row, and even then, they do it more because of emotional attachments, and listen to crappy songs. Of course, this comes from Brandon and Karl, closed-minded fools! They will never really understand the joy of truly having a song imprinted on the back of your hand, and in your heart.