Coldplay: A Personal History

"Spies" - First year of grad school. The tiny bedroom in the Abbott's Run apartments. Listening to Parachutes while getting ready for Clyde's class. Dragging out of bed to head downtown to the little brick office on Princess. "Spies come out of the water..." always makes me think of the light through that second floor window, the view of the dumpster, Kim Shable's patio, and the first slight easing of that summer's torrid heat when October arrived.

"Clocks" - I used to travel between Wilmywood and Charlottesville, VA to see Mike when he was in grad school at UVA. The five-hour drive was pretty brutal - an endless stretch of asphalt with very little to look at until you got on I-64 in Richmond and headed into the foothill country toward the college town. I can remember Sunday afternoons, getting on the I-64/I-95 interchange with the windows down and the piano unfolding into the sinking sun, the wind whipping my hair. "Home, home, where I wanted to go..." and wondering exactly where "home" was anymore.

"Fix You" - "And the tears come streaming down your face when you lose something you cannot replace." I sobbed relentlessly over these words as I turned out of the drive at Grace Street for the last time. I was losing something - Wilmywood, my first (real) apartment, my hard-won independence. I let go and jumped into the unknown, letting the tears come, letting "the lights guide [me] home."

"42" - The first time I heard this song, it gave me chills. "Those who are dead are not dead, they're just living in my head. And since I fell for that spell, I am living there as well." What an apt description of the last eight months in the aftermath of Ronnie's death...the retreat into my head where the dead live, where it's the safest and most excruciating place to me. Inside my head, I'm insulated and tortured by all that's there.

And tomorrow, I'll add another memory to my list...

Atop the Soapbox: Thoughts on the Literati

"But reading was never dead with the kids. Au contraire, right now it's probably healthier than the adult version, which has to cope with what seems like at least 400 boring and pretentious 'literary novels' each year." --Stephen King in an Entertainment Weekly article about Harry Potter.

The Growler posted a link to the New York Times Notable Book List. And while the Growler feels tremulous excitement reviewing the NYT's who's who, I feel, well, a bit annoyed. Aside from the obvious kudos to the seventh installment of the Potter series (how could they ignore the fastest selling book of all time?), most of the books sound like absolute snoozefests. And perhaps it's me and my narrow window on the world, but I'm not enticed at all to pick up most of these titles. The exception might be Rebecca Barry's Later, at the Bar, but for the most part, the descriptions sound positively...pretentious.

And I know, I know - it's the New York Times book review. What did I expect? But, I guess I wonder: what happened to good stories? Why is the notable list chock full of maudlin tales of Libya in 1979 and another Martin Amis book that recounts the painful tragedies of World War II that sound dry and boring? These could be good stories. But at first glance, it sounds like the authors are trying too hard. Trying to be smart. Trying to break into the literati. Trying to be the kind of book that people get told they should read.

Should read...the only time I want to hear that I should read a book is if it's an amazing story that I should read. That it's so hilarious that I should read it. That it's so unforgettable and I will fall in love with the characters so I should read it. But if you just think it's going to make me smart...just going to be something that will sound good if I say I've read it...well, I'm not interested. Most of the descriptions give little impression of great characters or page-turning, can't-put-it-down, stay-up-late-to-read-it excitement. And isn't that what we all want? To go back to that place when you were ten and trying to read Encyclopedia Brown under the covers with a flashlight?

A certain professor I had in grad school referred to himself as an "immortality queen". He also referred to my writing as a donut: all sweet and delicious on the outside and hollow on the inside - but that's a story for another day. And his point was that writing wasn't worth doing unless you would be remembered for generations.

I guess I'm a little more here-and-now than that. I read to enjoy...to be taken away and to escape. I hope that if I ever write a book that it will be enjoyed by people while I'm still alive. Because, generations from now, I'll be mouldering in the ground somewhere. Maybe that's why I have such mad respect for Stephen King. The literati sort of shun him - he's like the establishment's bastard son - but he knows good story. He knows how to tell a story that engages the reader, that gives them characters that last forever in their minds. And that, my friends, is far greater than any notable designation by the book snobs at the NYT.

I suppose I balk at the idea that books are being written and delineated in this way, gathered up into a tight circle and pushed toward that immortality level. Like those of us reading right now don't even matter.

All of these thoughts, of course, come from a woman with an MFA who hasn't read a "notable" book in about 3 years and devours pulp romance novels. So maybe this really is all about my own insecurity. Still...who is breaking their neck to pick up this one? Knots, by Nuruddin Farah. (Riverhead, $25.95.) After 20 years, a Somali woman returns home to Mogadishu from Canada, intent on reclaiming a family house from a warlord.

Yeah. That's what I thought.

A Matter of Life & Rest

Dear Martha,
A few years ago, I bought the Puffball Bed Pillow from your Martha Stewart Everday collection at the illustrious KMart. It may have been that time I was with Kim and Hoang-Anh and I dropped and smashed the Earl Gray candle from your line. Sorry about that. Anyway, that pillow is my absolute favorite and it's starting to get ratty.

Trips to three different KMarts have proven fruitless in finding a replacement. As have KMart's online store and customer service department. What gives, Martha? Somewhere between the broken candle and the ankle bracelet, you stopped making my pillow? I find that unacceptable. Insider trading I can handle, but I really, really need a new Puffball Pillow.

If you could crack the whip (without, of course, disturbing your immaculate hairstyle), and produce a Puffball Pillow for me, it would be a good thing. And I know that I really should be submitting my request in ink made from crushed cranberries and written on handmade stationery scented with lavender from my garden, but without the pillow, it's hard to get enough sleep to have the energy for those things. So this will have to do.

Thanks,
Ash

The Girl Who Lived

"You can't help but wish that maybe you aren't really all Muggle -- non-magic folk -- but have some bit of wizard blood in your veins that would allow you the chance to visit Hogwarts....and so I've had my nose pressed into the pages of the first four books--rather lengthy, they all are. I've been obsessed with Harry, because in Harry's world, there is no graduate school. A fire-breathing dragon or a life-ending curse, but nothing as bad as moving to the next state."
-- Journal dated August 8, 2001, three weeks before relocating to N.C.

I've just finished rereading Goblet of Fire for the I-don't-know-how-many-times, and I can't help but think of the first time I read Harry Potter. It was six years ago to the summer that Niki convinced me that I had to read Socerer's Stone. I remember reading that first chapter with Dumbledore and the Put-Outer and the flying motorcycle and thinking, "What is this?" I don't recall exactly the point at which I got hooked, but once I was hooked, I was all the way hooked.

It was a tough summer. I'd just graduated from college, and on my graduation day, I had no plans. No job. No apartment. I was waiting to hear from UNC Wilmywood to see if a spot had come open in its MFA program. And on top of that, I decided not to get a job that summer, owing to the fact that Mom needed my help since Anna and Justin decided to get married less than 30 days apart. Did I mention that my boyfriend at the time was in D.C. doing an internship?

Everything was changing, my whole world upended and the future totally uncertain. I was lonely and worried. And I was suffering the fate of the youngest child, which is that everyone else goes on to the next stage of life without you. I suddenly felt like the classic which-one-of-these-doesn't-belong?

But in the midst of it all, I found Harry Potter, who was suffering a bit himself in a world so far removed from my own that I could almost forget what was going on here. I was insatiable; I carried the books with me everywhere. Car trips, waiting rooms, dress fittings, hotel rooms. At 2 in the morning, I sat in the recliner in the den deep into the graveyard scene in Goblet of Fire, and was more than a little spooked by the dark yard outside the sliding glass door. Upon finishing, it took me a bit to calm down enough to brave walking past the big glass door and go to bed. I may have finished the book, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. But it was okay that the next book wasn't around yet - it was time for me to go to North Carolina.

It was two years after that when Order of the Phoenix hit the stands, and I made myself nearly sick and hysterical reading that giant tome for such a stretch. And the death in that one hit me particularly hard, and I was inconsolable for days. Two years after that came Half-Blood Prince, whose release caused an absolute temper-tantrum when it wasn't delivered as expected. But that was nothing compared to the quivering mass I was after the outcome of the book.

And now it's coming down to the wire. Less than 25 days before all will be revealed in Deathly Hallows, Potter's last stop. I'm on schedule to plow through OOTP and HBP before the big day gets here. Today, I read an article with a massive spoiler, a possibility that I hadn't considered, and it was the first time during all my conjecturing that it really hit me that, whatever the outcome, this is it. Whatever's on those final pages, whether it's Harry's death or happily-ever-after or a mysterious sentence ending in "scar," it's the end of the story and we'll all have to live with whatever ending Rowling penned.

I can't help but recognize that there are eerie parallels between reading those first pages of Sorcer's Stone and now anticipating Deathly Hallows: the waiting, the need to escape reality, this strange station between one chapter of life and the next (a Platform 9 3/4 time in life, if you will). There are similar trappings - temporarily living at home, my stuff scattered everywhere, and me not really belonging anywhere. And more than once in the last couple of weeks, I've thrown up my hands at the job search and buried myself in Potterdom just like I did way back when, only then I was trying to avoid registering for classes and folding wedding programs.

Me and Harry have been through a lot together. (Like the development of my slightly unhealthy obsession. ) The intervening years have been as much an adventure for me as him. And whether or not he lives or dies, his adventure is coming to an end. But me? I'll get to be the girl who lived. For me, there will be another chapter.

Workin' 9 to 5

One night during grad school, I got a call from Kim asking me to come and get her from Martha's Karaoke Lounge. I went, thinking that I'd just dash in and retrieve her. Instead, I ended up with a microphone in my hand, waiting for the words of "9 to 5" to come up on the screen. That first karaoke experience is kind of legendary - it was like I became an entirely different person. My inner diva finally tapped, I became a frequent visitor to Martha's with my fellow grad school comrades. Kim and I do a killer "I Want You to Want Me."

Now that I'm moving away, I'm making one more appearance at the famed Martha's. Back by popular request (a.k.a. my coworkers who would like to see me humiliate myself in the name of good fun), I'll be taking up the microphone again on Saturday evening. Wilmywood friends, grad school kids, join us if you dare.

Ash's Obsessions du Jour

Tagged by Pen - here we go.

1. Noticing. Everything. Contemplating the light through the windows in the apartment in the late afternoon. Considering Kudzu's regular patterns of movement from room to room and neat jumps onto the windowsills. Ways of getting from one place to the other in town, recognizing the acute knowledge of each curve and straight and landmark - I know this road. Wondering (but trying not to overly much) if this will be the last time I do this or that in Wilmywood before I move. Noticing. Everything.

2. Quiet solitude. Not that quiet is the way anyone would describe me - prone to nervous chatter as I am and filling silences with it. And generally talking too much and too loudly. But today is quiet, and I relish the quiet and hold the quiet.

3. Oakdale Cemetery. Having never been there until yesterday, I was unaware that it holds the esteem of being quite possibly the only place in Wilmywood that I might describe as "hilly." Any other season, it might be drab - naked wintry branches or fully-leaved summer trees. But in spring, it is blossoming and fragrant and serene.

4. Songs that I hear that have a confusing context. How sometimes The Killers' "Smile Like You Mean It" sounds like a song Kim and I would've listened to in the car on the way to the beach, even though it came out after we graduated. Or how The Fray's "How to Save a Life" feels impossibly like a song from college that I would've listened to on repeat going up Stretch Road and hummed to myself as I rattled around Frost Chapel.

5. Kudzu's relentlessness in waking me these days when he wants to be fed. His pawing the covers off me and wet nose on the eyelids. He drives me mad until I stumble into the kitchen and crack open a can. But then, after he's eaten and I've gone back to bed, he'll curl up against my spine in a tight circle and I feel loved.

6. My secret day off. I hedged about going home for Easter because I selfishly wanted a three-day weekend to myself. Other than my sister, sworn to secrecy, my family thinks today was just another day at the office.

Georgia on My Mind

Other arms reach out to me. Other eyes smile tenderly. Still in peaceful dreams I see, the road leads back to you....Some sweet day when the blossoms fall and all the world's a song, I'll go back to Georgia cause that's where I belong. -- Stuart Gorrell and Hoagy Carmichael, "Georgia on My Mind"

About six years ago, I sat in a dorm room and wondered what would happen after graduation. I'd applied to five grad schools, received nice and less-than-nice rejection letters from four and clung to the single hope that my place on the waiting list of the fifth would give way to an actual spot in the M.F.A. program. And two months later, it did.

I made my way to the Carolina coast and started grad school - and at barely 22, I was about as tender and green and unprepared as I could be. But after about a semester, I had managed to find a few friends and a job. I had cried a lot and felt lonely more. And I wondered if I would ever feel at ease in this town. And two years later, I did.

When I arrived, I never imagined that I would stay so long. That grad school would run its course - rife with good friends, good memories and bad workshops. That my part-time job would turn into a full-time career. That I'd start to think of the big yellow house with the red roof as home. That unexpected relationships would be unexpectedly important.

But in the past year, I've started to tire of the long way home. It's six hours at best - and I've seen a few speeding tickets trying to make it less. I long to be closer to family and to put my roots down in the Georgia red clay. I suddenly noticed how flat it is here and found myself wanting hills. Smelled the salt and wished for pine.

And so I've decided to head back to Georgia. It's long been on my mind to do it, and I finally decided that the longing wouldn't go away, no matter how hard I tried to make it. I'm still getting my plans in order, but suffice it to say, I'll be weathering my last spring in Wilmywood. It's been a difficult decision to make - to pack up and say goodbye after so many years. To leave behind friends who have been my family away from family for so long now.

I won't be going back the same person I was when I left. I depended on my family for everything then - I'd hardly ever stepped out of the nest without someone holding my hand. Now I've grown so independent they hardly know what to do with me. I'm so proud of what I've accomplished while I was here and who I've become. And I will miss Wilmywood and the house on Grace Street and the river and the downtown streets. And more than that I will miss friends and faces and morning coffee across the desk from S. and girls' nights with Pen and Mel and gatherings at the bar with my old grad school comrades and dinners at Circa with Justin. I will miss the part of my heart that I will leave here.

And then I will find out if it's true that you can't ever go home again.

The Sound of Music: A Personal History

Let's start at the very beginning. It's a very good place to start.

*1965 - My parents go to see the movie in the theater on one of their early dates. The thought of my father sitting through this in the theater is...laughable. But it must've been a good date. They married two years later. And then 10 years later, there was me.

*1984 - I figure I was about 5 when I started listening to the record we had of the soundtrack. I clearly remember sitting in Anna's room with its yellow and white shag carpet and striped daisy wallpaper and trying to learn the words to "Sixteen Going on Seventeen." And thus began my obsession with song lyrics.

*1980s - For a long time, one of the channels would run the movie every year at Christmas or just after. It was always a big family event to watch together - we were easily entertained.

*1993/4 - Somewhere along in here I got the movie on VHS. And I also developed a terrible crush on Christopher Plummer. Captain Von Trapp is HOT.

*1997 - Our high school put on the musical as the spring production. Jenn was totally robbed of playing Leisl by this horrible girl who thought she was headed for Broadway. Instead, Jenn and Allison were cast as backup nuns. Oh, the agony. It led to many, many inappropriate nun jokes for which we will certainly burn in hell.

*1998-2001 - I learned in college that I could use this movie to study. No, really. I would let the movie play while I was studying for tests and then I would listen to the soundtrack on the way to class. Excellent memory trick. It's the only way I made it through Dr. McKee's Public Relations Theory course - I had confidence in me.

*2002 - Hoang-Anh discovered my love of The Sound of Music. There was a communal viewing. And possibly a sing-along. But I'm not confirming anything.

*2006 - At Christmas, Mom and I happened to catch the movie on TV. We had forgotten how cheesy it is. Particularly "Something Good" sung by Maria and the Captain after they declare their love for one another. It was so silly in fact, that Robert Wise chose to shoot it in silhouette because Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer couldn't keep a straight face.

*2007 - Excellent distraction to pass the time while counting the hours until meeting my nephew.

So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, good night. I'm off to see the baby. Copious amounts of pictures from every imaginable angle upon my return.

Holiday Garland

Driving home from the office Christmas party tonight, I saw the lights from what Wilmywood claims is the world largest living Christmas tree - at least I think that's what it was. And then I had a sudden memory of going to Port City Java with Kim one night right before Christmas when we were in grad school. We were in her Camry with the blue fuzzy steering wheel cover listening to a mix of Christmas music that included the world's deepest bass voice singing "Go Tell It On the Mountain", which I believe Kim said was from a very famous gas station Christmas compilation.

Classes were done, and we were both getting ready to go home and leave our sadly decorated apartments behind for real trees (and real food - as I recall we were living off Chic-Fil-A and Burger King). And Judy Garland's version of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" came on as we drove down Front Street through the Christmas lights. We started out singing it, and I think by the end of it, we were both crying for wanting to go home. Don't be fooled by that "merry" in the title - that song is sad. And once again, I find myself trying to muddle through somehow until I can go home to a real tree and real food. And sadly, no Kim to sing me Judy Garland.

A Little Flocculence for the MFAers

The Unblogables

One of the groomsmen in Dan & Jenn's wedding happens to be a poet in the final stages of his MFA. In the limo, we talked briefly about writing. He asked if I still wrote fiction - a question I get a lot after I've confessed that I have an MFA. I laughed a little and said no. I told him that I was blogging and journaling a lot but still not quite ready to get back in the saddle with fiction.

I wondered what he thought from that side of the fence - the final throes of the thesis work; the squeezing out of every last drop of energy you have to put into it; the feeling that something you'd put that much of yourself into had to amount to something. And me looking at him from what seemed a great distance and thinking about how I can't even seem to remember how to put a story together anymore.

Later I thought about how I had matriculated from this very serious writing place to writing posts about Paris Hilton's unfortunate wardrobe choice on magazine covers and broken computers. And of course, there is the other side - the personal journaling and sorting out of life that takes place in the offline corridors of this machine that's for me and me alone. I often think it's my better writing, but as many of the bloggers have discussed at length, there's certain unblogable territory. Online, we're all iceberg writers - just the tip that belies what goes far deeper under the surface.

I like my career and respect the integrity of it and my clients, and so I refrain from writing more than what skims the surface and holds on to some level of anonimity. And my family doesn't even know the blog exists, but there's certain sacredness to that part of my life. There's just a certain amount of what goes on in daily life that's top security access, that's not just for anyone who happens by.

I guess I felt a little guilty admitting that all I was writing at this point was a blog and a journal. I didn't further incriminate myself by telling him that I also write ad copy for The Man.

I want to write what's honest and gritty and close to the bone. But it's too hard when you don't know who's watching. Or who might get hurt. Or fired. Or angry. I admire you nonfictioneers who are willing to tell that kind of truth and make it artful. I'll just have to collect my unblogables and change the names to protect the innocent and produce a story that's honest and gritty and close to the bone. And pretend it's a lie.

Artwork that captured this feeling perfectly: Critique of Judgment, Observer by Ralph L. Steeds

Steamed

Dear Romance Writers of America:
I hope you're happy. I've tried to keep silent on this issue, but the book I received in the mail today has forced me out in the open. It's quite likely I will be stripped of my MFA for writing this letter, but it's time. You must be confronted.

Admitting that you read pulp romance novels is akin to admitting you have a crack habit. Or cross dress. Or enjoy playing the bongos naked and high. So please, help a girl out. I ordered a book that I was hoping to read on one of the plane rides I'll be taking over the next few weeks. Taking it out of the envelope, I noted that the cover was a little pink, a little girly, but bearable. And then BAM! The back cover detoured right past the Tasteville exit and went straight down to Smutty Town.

Now, I have read a lot of these books. And this particular one takes place in Regency England. I'm pretty sure there's not going to be a scene where our heroine is pressed against a tree in a flimsy dress with half her bosom showing while she's molested from the shirtless reject from the Iron Man competition. I DO NOT want to see Conan the Barbarian on my book cover.

I know there's going to be some steaminess in this book. But let's keep it inside the covers, okay? I don't want to see these women swooning so hard their clothes are falling off. And really. Do we need to be subjected to so many male nipples?

In conclusion, I'd like to say that it is my belief that many intelligent and sensible women, like myself, for whatever reason, enjoy these kinds of novels. We don't want to admit it our next board meeting, but we don't mind it on the airplane. Unless we're going to have to flash the guy next to us with Boobs & Brawn: A Love Story. So please, PLEASE, cover up on the cover. 'Kay?

Love & Semi-Nudity,
Ashley

On a Musical Note

I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music. ... I get most joy in life out of music. - Albert Einstein

I go through phases in life where I'm more or less attached to music. Sometimes I listen to the radio with general indifference, but then I enter a phase - like now - where I have to have music on every second of every day or the silence is deafening.

I remember when I was little, my dad used to play his guitar sometimes at night. He usually played old country tunes like "Tennessee Waltz" or "Frankie & Johnnie." He was completely self-taught on a guitar he bought at a pawn shop, and I have always wished I'd inherited even a trace of his musical ear. As I got older there was my sister, six years older than me, who shaped my early music tastes with the tapes she'd let me listen to while she was at school - Madonna, Wham! and Michael Jackson.

And when I first got my CD player, I only had 5 CDs that I listened to endlessly including Counting Crows' August & Everything After, Dave Matthews Band's Under the Table & Dreaming and Sarah McLachlan's Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. And from there, the collection grew and expanded. Tastes changed. Friends introduced new songs, new bands. And now I've amassed a fair collection of music. Most of which has profound meaning to me, whether in its lyrics or its connection to the past.

I love how some songs are irrevocably tied to moments in my life, and no matter when I hear them, I am transported back to that moment. "Africa" by Toto makes me think of going to the park, eating bologna and cheese sandwiches and listening to WRFC 960 AM in my mom's gray Oldsmobile with the plushy red seats. Other songs simply give me a certain feeling when I hear them - Tori Amos' "Putting the Damage On" can make me cry at the drop of a hat and David Gray's "Twilight" makes me want to go downtown and sit in a dark bar. And then there are songs that I only want to listen to under certain conditions. Like "One" by U2 and "Don't Dream It's Over" by Crowded House are best listened to when it's raining at the change of season and cold like the beginning of winter or spring.

I was telling Kim today that I wanted to make an autumn mix, with songs from This Desert Life (an inherently fallish album) and "As I'm Leaving" by David Gray. And we talked about how the songs that came out our first year of grad school make us think of fall - like "Clint Eastwood" by the Gorillaz and "Start the Commotion" by The Wiseguys. Which led me into thinking about songs that make me think of the grad school years like "Tiny Dancer" and "Sex Machine" - two songs played so relentlessly on the juke box at Cedars, I'm surprised I still like them. And "Teenage Wasteland" - (which Kim & I decided is a spring song) makes both of us feel like we're going somewhere important. Like Krispy Kreme.

I'm fond, too, in my solitude, of thinking, "If my life were a movie, what song would be playing right now?" When Kim was in town, we were all sitting at the bar, and "Here Comes the Sun" started playing and it seemed like the end of the movie when the camera is panning out from the characters and the credits start to roll and you know everything's going to work out just fine.

Ah, music. How you move me.

Days Gone By

Today I met with a man who was born & raised at the beach. He's a historian by hobby, and he has been collecting historic photographs from family, friends and other locals for a long time and assembling them into a historic photo essay of sorts. He's about 80, white-haired, brown-skinned. He was waiting for me to arrive, standing on the porch that faced the main thoroughfare of the island. He invited me to sit in a rocking chair on his back porch and chat for a bit before we took a look at the photos I was hoping to use for an ad series. We sat looking out on the waterway on a perfect afternoon - breezy, 83 degrees, zero humidity. He told me a little bit about his childhood and how the house he grew up in caught fire in '74 and took his father and he rebuilt in '78, retired in '85 and how his wife had just died two years ago so it's just him and his cat named Schooner.

When we looked at his photos together, he talked about each of them as a man who is profoundly devoted to place. He described riding the trolleys from downtown to the beach, stopping at Station 1 at the beach to get a soda and watching nickleodeons at the downtown theater. He remembers when no cars traveled over the main bridge. When the 200-room hotel burned to the ground in the 50s, he stood across the channel on the mainland and watched as bits broke off and caught the whole north side of the island on fire.

It was fascinating to know another part of this place that I know in my own way. To see for an afternoon how he has grown old as the island has grown up and developed around him in his little waterway-facing cottage. As I drove over the bridge, I thought about my history with the place. And something about the air and the light and the time of year reminded me of when Kim, Hoang-Anh & I drove out to see the sunrise in the early months of our first year of grad school. Those are some of the first pictures I took when I got here. And I couldn't help feeling as nostalgic as the old man for the memory of the way it was.