6:58 p.m. - 2005-03-07
three albums
Monday, March 7>
three albums which are defining me right now.
I'm listening to John Denver, Poems, Prayers, and Promises. I'm almost 100% sure this was both of my parents favorite album in college (I bogarted the actual record from their basement about a year ago). Almost 100% sure that these were the lullabyes my mother sang to me when I wasn't old enough to even remember. But they did get lodged inside me somewhere, didn't they? When my mom hears crude popular music, she always comments, "why doesn't anyone just listen to Nice Music like John Denver anymore?" It's such sweet, naive, country pop music.
I'm listening to June Carter Cash, Press On. It's funny, spunky, and also incredibly sad. (A duet with Johnny where June sings about knowing she'll be the first one to go.) For a long time I've had a very very hard time thinking about death, my own death in particular, my mind has kind of blocked it away into a place I won't let myself go. For some reason this album makes me feel just the slightest bit better about dying. It's not morbid. Just reassuring.
I'm listening to Wilco, A.M. I listened to it all the way through this weekend, on a late night drive to my fiance's in the suburbs, and I'd forgotten how damn good it is. Reminds me of a time before I knew the trials and tribulations of wasted hungover days, feeling lost in the world, 12 straight hours in a cubicle. . . I listened to it a lot during some of my most carefree days, the summer of 2001. Before everything changed and then kept changing. They're songs from a time when Jeff Tweedy was just some drunk punk from southern Illinois, before he started giving lectures and talking like an intellectual. It's too bad. But A.M. is a good solid stick in the soil, reminding me of where I planted myself.
