we were just pretending

30 Days of Song

Day 30 - Your favorite song at this time last year

 Joanna Newsom - Bridges and Balloons (via filmCASAvideo)

This is still one of my all time favorites, but circa this time last year I was pretty much listening to it on an endless loop. I’m the wanderlustiest, and this song brings it out in me like no other. I’m the calm canary that gets irritable.

We sailed away on a winter’s day 
with fate as malleable as clay; 
but ships are fallible, I say, 
and the nautical, like all things, fades 

And I can recall our caravel: 
a little wicker beetle shell 
with four fine maste and lateen sails, 
its bearings on Cair Paravel 

O my love, 
O it was a funny little thing 
to be the ones to’ve seen. 

The sight of bridges and balloons 
makes calm canaries irritable; 
they caw and claw all afternoon: 
“Catenaries and dirigibles 
brace and buoy the living-room —
a loom of metal, warp - woof - wimble.” 
And a thimbles worth of milky moon 
can touch hearts larger than a thimble. 

O my love, 
O is was a funny little thing 
to be the ones to’ve seen 

30 Days of Song

Day 29 - A song from your childhood

James Taylor- Sweet Baby James (via ckovertime)

My Dad used to sing this to me as a lullaby. Still gives me the warm fuzzies whenever I hear it—and makes me sleepy.

I should also note that there was a period of my childhood in which I was really into polar bears, and used to sing my own version of this song replacing pretty much every noun with the word “polar bear.” i.e.:

There is a young polar bear
He lives on the polar bear
His polar bear and his polar bears are his only companions
He works in the polar bear and he sleeps in the polar bears…

Side note: James Taylor was kind of hot back in the day, wasn’t he?

30 Days of Song

Day 28 - A song that makes you feel guilty

Cathedrals - Jump, Little Children live at the Music Farm (via adrockc2)

It was back during my junior year of college when I was studying abroad in London. I was traveling around a lot, seeing new places, something I’d always wanted to do, but at the same time I also felt oddly useless. I couldn’t get a job because my student visa didn’t allow it, and I always felt a jab of lameitude whenever I did super-touristy things in new cities… like going to cathedrals. Everywhere. 

I’m what you would call a militantly unreligious individual, but I ironically get a huge kick out of big, gaudy cathedrals. In every city or town I visited, I’d end up at the top of some spire, surrounded by gorgeous frescoes of Jesus and all his little assholes, looking out over the ancient rooftops of some city or other.

I loved it, but this sense of not being of use to anything, of traveling without really growing, festered within me. I got this song in my head standing in a million naves, gazing up at a million Tintorettos. It was the nagging voice in my head, saying: “Girl, you need to figure your shit out.”

In the shadows of tall buildings
Of fallen angels on the ceilings
Oily feathers in bronze and concrete
Faded colors, pieces left incomplete
The line moves slowly past the electric fence
Across the borders between continents

In the cathedrals of New York and Rome
There is a feeling that you should just go home
And spend a lifetime finding out just where that is.

30 Days of Song

Day 27 - A song you wish you could play

Gogol Bordello, Through The Roof ‘n’ Underground (via ancasmth)

I didn’t pick this song because it has some particularly amazing guitar part or is crazy complicated or anything, but just because I would love to be able to jump-start random impromptu sing-alongs of it. And being able to play it? Would be the best way. Because this song is the best and is the story of our lives and is really good for singing along to in a fake Russian accent.

30 Days of Song

Day 26 - A song you can play on an instrument

Cigarette- Ben Folds Five (via hpsnorlaxdirector)

I took piano lessons for years when I was a kid, but hardly ever practiced. And my piano teacher, being a wacked-out Rick Moranis-looking struggling jazz musician who only taught piano as a survival mechanism, never berated me for not practicing. And so my skills never really grew.

Still, I can play this very, very simple song, and even sing along. Fortunately it’s a good song anyways.

30 Days of Song

Day 25 - A song that makes you laugh

Meryn Cadell - The Sweater (via BongoBeatRecords)

I haven’t actually listened to this song since maybe 12th grade, but when I was thinking funny this jumped to mind from out the murky depths. The ballad of a teenage girl who gets a hold of her crush’s sweater. It’s still really really funny and you should listen to it.

“The sweater has that faintly goat-like smell
Which all teenage boys possess,
And that smell will lovingly transfer
To all your other clothes…”

30 Days of Song

Day 24 - A song that you want to play at your funeral

The Kinks - This Time Tomorrow (via toasters007)

I’m just picturing my ashes being scattered somewhere up high and ridiculous, and someone’s playing this song on portable speakers (because they saw it on my Tumblr, cause it’ll still surely be a thing), and maybe the wind blows the wrong direction and the ashes get in everyone’s face and everyone’s like “Oh JENNA.” And then there’s like a laugh track.

No but seriously shoot me off in a rocket. Outer space is THE place to be dead.

30 Days of Song

Day 22 - A song that you listen to when you’re sad

The Smiths - Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want (via peppitisio)

Not to be a totally predictable hipster kid, but yeah. This song. Clearly.

30 Days of Song

Day 21 - A song you listen to when you’re happy

Badly Drawn Boy - Once Around the Block (via h1y0)

Again, just listen to it. Blast it. Out the speakers of a convertible, driving under a bright blue sky.