My garden work is paused and I’m not ungrateful for the break.
Instead, I write this post, a rare in-the-actual-moment capture of what’s going on rather than a pre-populated and sanitized version to make everything pretty. In the soft hazy light of a cloudy morning, a more raw, and at times tender, truth comes out. Spring often has that effect – it breaks open what was hidden all winter, exposing what might have only heaved a time or two in the winter before we push it back down into the earth. A poor mix of metaphors, that, and I’m too exhausted or lazy to modify it or make it better. Sometimes it’s best to let the world see you as you are, the way lovers glimpse you first thing in the morning. Such an intimate reveal, such a frightening concept. When you’re brave enough to show all your darker shadows, all your hidden recesses, something akin to freedom arrives, and you forget what ever made you afraid to reveal yourself in the first place.
If I pour your cup, that is friendship If I add your milk, that is manners If I stop there, claiming ignorance of taste, That is tea
A quiet wisp of a song is all the heart and head can take right now. Like a cup of tea.
And maybe even this is too much, with its expectant tongues and measured sugar.
But if I measure the sugar To satisfy your expectant tongue Then that is love,
After a stretch of sunshine and warmth, the cold rain and overcast dimness of the day have conspired to bring me back – to winter, to contemplation, to a life before the spring – and to a life after the summer. There, the danger of such a day in an overthought and overwrought nutshell. We are only a month into spring and my mind is wandering off to what happens after summer. None of that. Not now, not yet. All we need to do in this moment, on this Sunday morning, is raise a cup of tea gently to our tongues, sharing in this ritual, enjoying the gentle patter of rain on the roof.
But if I measure the sugar To satisfy your expectant tongue Then that is love, Sitting untouched and growing cold
“Nervous, but in a happy way.” Is this a description of falling in love or a tenderly anthropomorphic rendering of spring’s assessment of its own arrival? The days before the ‘safe’ frost-free date (nothing is ever guaranteed when it comes to weather in the age of global warming) are sometimes stricken with the queasy nervousness one can only liken to burgeoning love – and the earliest days of a romance with summer.
Don’t you notice how I get quiet when there’s no one else around? Me and you and awkward silence Don’t you dare look at me that way I don’t need reminders of how you don’t feel the same
Harkening to our Coquette Summer of a couple years ago, Laufey is a lovely musical selection for this lilac spring – an idyllic starting point for the blooms and perfume about to start popping.
Effervescent and fizzy, with Laufey’s trademark melancholic undertones, tempered by a sumptuous romantics, here is how we slip into a Saturday evening in spring.
That when I talk to you, oh, Cupid walks right through And shoots an arrow through my heart And I sound like a loon, but don’t you feel it too? Confess I loved you from the start
Confess I loved you Just thinking of you I know I’ve loved you from the start
Madonna’s super-long-awaited studio album, ‘Confessions 2’, kicks off its promotional-storming tomorrow as the first single is supposedly going to be released. Her first album since 2019’s ‘Madame X’, this is also a return to the promising dance-floor arena where she has always executed her greatest flexes. Reportedly a sequel of sorts to 2005’s ‘Confessions on a Dance Floor’, possibly her last near-perfect album in its entirety. At this point I’ve mostly given up on her matching the other-worldly brilliance that was the ‘Ray of Light’ masterpiece, but the original ‘Confessions’ was a genius move in its own way, and if ‘Confessions 2’ approaches such glory, the queen will handily regain her throne (again).
Initial looks at the visuals for this one are scintillatingly enthralling – the color scheme, the art direction by those who did LUX and BRAT, and the throwback references to the first ‘Confessions’ comprise a release by her original Warner Brothers label that finds her coming home in more than one way.
This lilac spring was in need of a jolt, and this springboard is precisely what the disco ball spins for: escapism through the dance. With its projected release date of July 3, we’re going to have an epic, hot, solid gold summer, rife with confessions and filled with the sort of sweaty passion that can only be found on the dance floor.
Decades ago, before my first trip to London, I was at a dinner in Boston to plan for Suzie’s return. We would pick her up in Finland, joining a family group for a wedding. Suzie had been in Denmark for our junior year of high school – one of the more trying years in our lives for many reasons – and my Mom and I were joining Suzie’s Mom on the trip.
At that planning dinner in Boston the adults went over their plans, and though I didn’t quite feel like an adult yet, I was at the table, listening and watching and learning how to pass as one. It was there where I heard the Cowboy Junkies for the first time, and their album ‘Black-Eyed Man’, which quickly became a pivotal collection of songs in my life. This song spoke to me from the near future, when romantic entanglements would, if all went according to plan, cloud my trajectory.
If you were the woman and I was the man would I send you yellow roses would I dare to kiss your hand? In the morning would I caress you as the wind caresses the sand, if you were the woman and I was the man?
Lately I’ve been thinking of London, perhaps some wanderlust before the weather warms enough to get me outside more. Spring and summer usually calm the itch to travel, especially when the flowers start blooming and the pool looks like the only relief when the temperature inches into the 90’s. But London has been calling for years, and in my mind I went back to my first trip there, when I was just 21, on a group trip with all the tourist trappings, uncovering these photos, actually taken in Wales on our way from London to Dublin.
If I was the heart and you were the head would you think me very foolish if one day I decided to shed these walls that surround me just to see where these feelings led, if I was the heart and you were the head?
Whenever I could get away from the group, I ventured around on my own – sipping cups of tea, browsing bookstores, walking around Covent Garden and stumbling into magical puppet shops that may or may not have been real. London cast a spell over me then, and all I wanted was to share it with someone. The stupidity and futility of finding a boy halfway around the world impressed itself upon my mind; that didn’t stop me from hoping and wishing and wandering the gay bars to no avail.
Something made me certain I was destined to meet someone there, or find something, or discover some secret that would unlock my future. By the time we left London for Wales, I was almost panicked that it hadn’t happened, as if I’d missed something when maybe the thing I needed to learn was how to be on my own. In a way I had done that.
On my next solo trip to London several years later I was ok doing it alone, but this song still reminds me of that first trip, of London in the spring…
If I was the woman and you were the man would I laugh if you came to me with your heart in your hand and said, ‘I offer you this freely and will give you all that I can because you are the woman and I am the man?’
I cannot find the original post, if there was ever one written. My memory is shot – I have to google my full name and whatever topic I’m trying to recall, then piece together what crops up – I don’t even remember some of my own words anymore. Fitting for a late-night look-back at childhood damage – maybe some things are better forgotten. They are certainly better when let go and released, however the fuck we’re supposed to effectively do that. Still figuring those intricacies out, still feeling my way into and then out of the muck.
Every view they hold on you is A piano, out of tune You’re an angel You’re a demon You’re just human Now your world has turned to trash Broken windows on the past Take that child, and teach him senseless Damage the dream, damage the dream I feel nothing, I feel nothing at all I feel nothing at all
Once upon a time a young man I adored, before I revealed my infatuation and scared him off, spent half the night on the phone with me – one of those early conversations that feels like the opening of a lifetime of happiness, electric with spring rain in the air, warm enough to leave the bedroom window open, and trying to find a comfortable phone cradle position in the hushed reverence of this early talk, scared to break the spell, not wanting it to end. He hinted at childhood terrors and read me a poem he’d written that had won an award. A hauntingly beautiful work, it made me instantly fall in love with him just a little bit upon hearing it. I knew enough not to mention that so early, even if I knew nothing else and would frighten him away anyway. I remember wishing we’d been friends as children, wishing we could have had just one person of safety and security in those tender years, wishing we could have been there for each other.
In this gloomy, haunted place All the feelings are of shame All the windows have been broken by the children So the wind screams up the stairs Slams the doors, and rattles chairs I wish we weren’t conceived in violence Damage the dream, damage the dream
The magic is broken The house is in ruins Your memory’s one-sided The side that you’re choosing feels nothing Feels nothing at all We feel nothing at all
Candy is seduction and promise – pure titillation and pure honey hope – the fabled, the fabulous, the albatross of fame flung so casually around the neck like some string of pearls – and Coco Chanel whispering always to take off the last thing you put on before leaving the house.
I’m gonna watch the blue birds fly over my shoulder
Candy on a necklace, candy on a toss, candy on a bracelet, candy on a cross, candy on a kick, candy on a cock, candy on a prick, candy on a frock… candy as a reminder that rhymes don’t always lead to reason, that madness can sometimes be sweet, and temptation, when handled delicately, can be dangerous and divine.
Candy caught in the crosshairs of vulnerability, deciding how much is safe to reveal, deciding what is best kept concealed, and struggling to relax into being desired. She wanted it before untangling its problematic roots and shoots – sugar forged into glass – shattered and splintered into shards and razors and the possibility of pain and destruction – the slow bleeding out from a cut too fine to be felt or found.
I’m gonna watch the blue birds fly over my shoulder
Candy coming on strong, oozing syrup and goo and sweetness – Candy coming on weak, tripping over her own trepidation – Candy coming on incorruptible in the pure innocence of original sin. Candy wanting only to be held, Candy wanting to be protected from the rain, Candy wanting only to be cared for – Candy always wishing and hoping and praying for something to be different, something to be whole.
What do you think I’d see if I could walk away from me?
This crown imperial (Fritillaria imperialis) has not flowered in years, but I don’t grow it for decorative purposes – it is to keep away the critters who might eat up the single crocus we have left, with its powerfully-pungent odor. For just long enough until the crocus foliage can ripen and start dying back, giving food for next year’s bloom.
Who loves the wind? Who cares that it makes breezes? Who cares what it does Since you broke my heart?
This song by the Velvet Underground sounds more like summer than spring, but we need summer more than spring right now because winter is still creeping into the nights and mornings. Ephemerals are coming up even in the most frightful weather – the enchanting and all-too-fleeting hardy flowers whose delicate appearance is at odds with how tough they need to be this early in the growing season.
Who loves the sun? Who loves the sun? Not everyone Who loves the sun?
Who loves the sun? Who cares that it is shining? Who cares what it does Since you broke my heart? Who loves the sun? Who loves the sun? Not everyone Who loves the sun? Sun Sun Sun
Shades of pink and lilac swirl in layers of tulle and lace, the sheer refinery playing beautiful tricks on the eyes. A cloud of color billows about and behind – maybe it’s the dress, maybe it’s the perfume, maybe it’s the illusion of pink. A portal to the past reveals itself in every bubble – it’s the bubble of self-awareness, the bubble of knowledge, the bubble of realizing that maybe you’ve been wrong.
Ah, but the truth has a way of seeping on in Beneath the surface and sheen And blind as you try to be Eventually, it’s hard to unsee what you’ve seen
Galinda’s transformation in the ‘Wicked’ movies is shrouded outwardly in pink fabulosity, shimmering with ethereal beauty and sparkling wands, but doesn’t fully take hold until she dons a black cape, muddy boots, and rides out in the night to help her friend. By then it’s too late, and sometimes life is about accepting the way that your choices have played out, making the best of circumstances that were never quite what you wanted or expected. It’s never too late to change, to become something better than you are today, even if nothing else changes. You can be different. You can be better.
And so that beautiful girl With a beautiful life Has a question that haunts her som?how If she comes down from the sky Giv?s the real world a try Who in the world is she now?
Does it feel a little frivolous in a world on the seeming edge of nuclear war? Perhaps, but think of the burnt bagel theory: if the worst thing in your day is that your bagel was a little burned, that can feel catastrophic. Not saying it’s right, just saying that comparison works in myriad ways. Usually it’s the thief of joy; sometimes it can be helpful. We want so badly to make sense and order of the world, especially when it makes us feel yucky, or we feel like we have failed. Revelations and transformations are difficult, especially when they start to change lifelong archetypes and beliefs.
And though so much of her wishes that she could float on And the beautiful lies never stop For the girl in the bubble, the pink shiny bubble It’s time for her bubble to pop
For the popular girl, high in the bubble Isn’t it high time for her bubble to pop?
Music lends itself to spring moments, and this song touches on beauty, one of the themes of this lilac season. Here is our growing, and increasingly eclectic, playlist:
Andy mentioned the angel’s trumpet in passing a little while ago, and maybe this is the year we bring them back – the first year is really just the planning – their show usually happens after overwintering for a year or two, when they can develop roots and trunks and soar like small trees, dangling their sweetly-lemon-scented blooms in the nights of summer.
Two other arms around you now,
Some other love has found you now!
But when love forgets to smile,
My darling, once in a while,
Remember April and lilacs in the rain!
For now, the lilacs will have to do, and they stand on their own perfume-wise. I’ve been afraid to examine our lilac trees to see how many buds might be present – there’s nothing other to be done whether they are full or scant, and lately I’ve been focusing on what is real, what is present, what is at hand – a method of mindfulness that fills the head-space when overthinking runs the risk of overtaking.
The previous sentence dangles there without a proper ending. It began in such busy fashion and then just petered out. Playing with words is merely an excuse for disguising something deeper, something more vulnerable and telling. Lilacs evoke such sentiments – they have me spilling secrets of the heart’s desires, and the heart’s hurts. That’s why this post would have never stood up to the unforgiving light of day; there wouldn’t be enough shadow to shield…
A record of a lesser-known musical titled ‘The Most Happy Fella’ by Frank Loesser peeked out at me from a bin at a downtown Albany thrift store. A lovely-enough introduction to an operatic excursion, the few song excerpts I found online illuminated why it never made much of a lasting splash, but there is beauty in this song, and the atmosphere provided by the Percy Faith treatment fits in well with this beautiful lilac spring we’ve conjured to gain some traction out of this recent hazy winter.
Without words, the music creates atmosphere over distinctive scenes or plot points – evoking a feeling, a sense of something, a hint of emotion – and the rest you can fill in from your own earned experience. What does it sound like? Where does it place you? It is possible to believe you’ve had an experience just by hearing certain songs, even if you’ve never quite had it. Music does that, even in the most trifling song, if you let it, if you give it the space to live.
{Note: The Madonna Timeline is an ongoing feature, where I put the iPod on shuffle and write a little anecdote on whatever was going on in my life when that Madonna song was released and/or came to prominence in my mind.}
He’s a pretender, he knows just what to say He’s a pretender, you meet him every day He’s a pretender, that fish that got away he’s a pretender, why’d I fall in love?
Pure 80’s synth pop prettiness, ‘Pretender’ is a relic that doesn’t completely stand the test of time, but we all seem to be in an 80’s celebration, and it’s good to have a reminder that not every Madonna song is going to be everlasting. This one still has its charms, and it brings me indelibly back to the days of 1985, when we rose around in a station wagon and the ‘Like A Virgin‘ album sang of things we’d never known at the ripe age of ten.
It was so strange, the way he held my hand I wanted more than just a one night stand He had a way of making me believe that he was mine and that he’d never leave. I know that I should take my friend’s advice Cause if it happens once, you know it happens twice If there’s chance then I know I’ve got to try I’ll make him dance with me, I’ll make him tell me why.
The betrayal of the protagonist of ‘Pretender’ was very much one of those things, but Madonna sang with such forlorn bitterness and convincing hurt that I felt I already knew that brutal sting. Maybe it was a presentiment of rocky romances to come? Maybe just a shared love of the dramatic? Or maybe just a hooky pop tune of the 80’s, with a bombastic bridge crafted as deftly as anything Taylor Swift has ever erected.
I’m not afraid to fall a hundred times And I’ll believe in all your silly lies I’d like to think that I could change your mind Don’t say that I am blind, I know all about your kind.
When I was all of ten years old, I thankfully had no idea what a song like ‘Pretender’ might be about – my romantic trials and tribulations wouldn’t start wrecking me for another decade. And maybe it does stand up to the test of time – betrayal still being very much a part of the mess we call humanity.
Protest songs have played a vital part in times of history that feel dreadfully wrong – and we happen to be in such a time right now. Hailing from Ozark, Arkansas, Jesse Welles earns his first Dazzler of the Day crowning thanks to his multi-talented work as singer, songwriter and performance artist. Speaking out against the ills of the world, especially the terrors of our country at this moment in history, is dazzling enough – doing it with melodic brilliance and musical prowess is the stuff of power and grace. Check out his website here for upcoming tour dates and more.
At the time of this writing I am felled by a sinus/cold thing that has my head stuffed and throbbing. I’ve had to miss a day of work and the No Kings rally. The world feels separate, removed, muted – more like winter than spring. And I don’t want to rush, but I don’t want to remain…
Dreaming of lilac trees, and the way their gnarled trunks last from year to year and the beauty that only age can create. Their perfume and flowers are the showiest and shortest part of their annual cycle. The most seemingly wonderful things don’t usually last, but when you learn to find beauty in the venerable gnarled trunk as much as the fleeting flower, you can find beauty everywhere and always, in sickness and in health.
When The Body Shop announced it was bringing back their ‘Dewberry’ line from the 90’s, my heart took a nostalgic leap as I hurried to the nearby mall to pick up a fragrance that I felt certain would bring back some questionable memories from my youth. As I approached the area where I remembered the store was located, it was nowhere to be found. It’s been a while since I was in a mall, or at least since I was paying attention to the stores rather than just walking through to the movies. Apparently all of The Body Shop stores had closed long ago. Alas, we live in an online world, and within days I had a bottle of ‘Dewberry’ body wash and body butter in my possession, where I kept them for a bit, saving them for one of the early moments of spring.
On a recent evening, when the hope of this new season tickled the senses in a warm night wind, I rubbed the Dewberry between my hands and inhaled the sweet aroma as it surrounded me in the shower. Suddenly, I was transported to the days of ‘Always Be My Baby‘ and ‘Waiting in Vain‘ and ‘Be My Lover‘ and the freaking choo-choo train… the music was cheesy and awful and I still remember every song like it was yesterday…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9McVO9hpUE
Back in the 90’s, I didn’t place much importance on colognes, at least judging from the small arsenal of scents I had at the time – Curve, Cool Water, Eternity, Safari. Of greater relevance was the fragrance of my skin and haircare products – I was keen on specific shampoos and body washes, and one of my favorites was the ‘Dewberry’ line at The Body Shop. (I also loved their tea tree oil products.) ‘Dewberry’ was vibrant, fruity, and sparkling in a way that said spring and summer to me. By the spring of 1996, I was living alone in Boston, and focusing on what made me happy rather than trying to impress anyone else.
Beginning with just a brief bit of paradisiacal birdsong, Melanie Martinez’s fourth album ‘HADES’ jumps right into its gorgeous hell-storm of musical majesty with opening track ‘Garbage’. Plucked strings, gun shots and church bells swirl to usher in this theatrical feat of wonderment – a grandly beautiful entrance for the ‘HADES’ era.
No stranger to dramatic and visually-arresting images, literal and sonic, Martinez paints a conflicting soundscape of America at this most perilous moment as ‘Garbage’ winds its introductory way down a dark and mesmerizing path:
Militant freaks hovering over the sky So you better run for the forest And we’re all under their cold watchful eye So you better hide what you’re growin’ Lookin’ out for yourself won’t get you far Better make peace with your people There can be beauty among trying times We can push through all the evil
A beautiful Jesus-looking figure named Hades is the treacherous temptation on display in ‘Is This A Cult?’ before Martinez lets loose with some of the most deviously diabolical lyrics, backed by equally-demoniacal music:
All of my girls wear whatever they wanna No men allowed ’cause they wanna control us We grow our own food and don’t need no money Everything’s free, and we have our autonomy Is this a cult? Or is it home? We see the future and get what we want We killed the leader, and now we’re on top Is this a cult? Can I come home? We make the rules, and we love on the land We fuck ourselves better than they can.
A dystopian vision is being built – insidiously, viciously, gloriously – and with a certain element of undeniable delicate beauty thanks to Martinez’s voice – ethereal, soothing, tender, and heartbreakingly human, even amid the ruinous machinations at work here. Fairy tales get turned on their fairy heads, the string-tastic one-two-punch bombast of ‘Disney Princess’ and ‘Grudges’ promising a world that wants to defang our prettiest monsters – and the pretty monsters refusing to blunt their incisors.
I just wanna burn bridges and kill bitches And pour their medicine in their mouth and give them a taste
In a musical time where the two-and-a-half minute song is a standard bearer for all that anyone under twenty can digest, ‘HADES’ is a magnificently fully-fleshed out world – the very illustration of album as art form – with songs that take their time to develop, and an overall arc that leaves one gratifyingly gasping for more. By the time the album reaches its apex and midpoint with ‘Avoidant’ and ‘Monolith’, love in its ambivalent and most heartrending ways arrives to temper the tempest at hand, and it’s almost enough to make one believe in an almost-happy ending.
If the fall of our memory comes to be true, then I’ll know I did everything I could do To show you the depth of what love can pursue When you’re out there talking to someone new Think of everything that I have given you Maybe she can get some of that, too, that’s what my love can do
Alas, love would never prove such a savior, not when it could cause such hurt, not when it could inflict such pain – and never in a world where things like ‘Weight Watchers’ and ‘The Plague’ exist. One of Martinez’s greatest strengths is balancing the tension of how to push through and make sense of such a mad world – how to be human when we are hellbent on being superhuman or inherently evil. As disturbing as the imagery and lyrics are in a song like ‘The Plague’, the music carries us along, a cough or two working perfectly in each of the dance breaks. It shifts seamlessly into ‘Batshit Intelligence’ where things get even more dystopian, and the sonic wind is so enthralling you almost don’t mind where we’re headed, or perhaps where we’ve already landed. Around us the discarded inhabitants of the ‘Gutter’ are paraded to jail, or worse, as Martinez begs that we “don’t get immune to this” over a vaguely circus-like musical meandering.
A haunting choir opens ‘The Vatican’, defiantly setting up the last section of ‘Hades’ – and this banger is a majestic fuck-off highlight of religious indictment:
Money power got its chokehold on humanity Nothing gives these motherfuckers quite a boner Like religion, Catholic, Christian, kissing Jesus, licking AR-15s
It’s so homoerotic, the way you pray to men And treat your women like the Leviathan Come out the closet/ Sip my holy water/ Pray to this pussy/ Confess your sins
Oh Melanie, now you are speaking my language and I’m down on my knees and waiting for you to take me there. Weaving in the patriarchal hypocrisy and evils inherent in all the evangelical bullshit, ‘The Vatican’ is this generation’s ‘Like A Prayer‘ taken to an incendiary extreme – precisely what this space in time needs. Finally descending to ‘Hell’s Front Porch’, Martinez gives in to the awfulness around us – because there’s no more denying that we’re fucked and there may not be a way out of it anymore – and the music swells to the point where we’re just “Fuckin’, sweatin’, dancin’ on hell’s front porch, baby…“
‘Chatroom’ may be the most perfect encapsulation of how people connect (or more pointedly don’t quite) in today’s online world, and as grim as some of the observations are and how deeply they pierce the heart, the music retains some small bit of hope among the disappointment and anger at constant work.
When I stare out the window, crying It’s ’cause you’ve made me hate my reflection In another reality, I could’ve loved myself, I could’ve been myself But here I am cramming all of your words deep into my veins till it kills me
Burning boldly right up until the very end, ‘The Last Two People on Earth’ brings us to the final days, and the only thing left to do is carnally express ourselves, blowing up “like a volcano/ Catastrophic orgasm that can wipe out a whole nation.” The one act that is creation and destruction at once – the one act that is love and hate and desire and annihilation – the one act that brings us heaven and hell, fire and ice, rendering words and music into mere echoes: the act of the fuck.
