music angst.

Okay, so John Mayer has a new CD out. And this isn't big news, by any means, but I'm mentioning it because I'm hit with a weird sense of...I don't know exactly...whenever I think about maybe buying it.

Because when I first started listening to John Mayer I was hanging out with Carrie a lot, taking ice skating lessons at the Sportsplex in Nashville on Thursday nights, while I was in college. And I guess hearing his voice makes me homesick for Carrie.

Because I was friends with this sweet/funny/smart guy Derrick in college who also liked John Mayer, but we didn't know that about each other until we were back in KY after a study abroad program we were both involved in (in London, studying Austen, Shakespeare, Chaucer, etc.) and taking the same Hemingway and Faulkner class. Derrick made me a mix CD of several John Mayer singles, some of which didn't make it onto "Room for Squares." And I guess hearing his voice makes me miss being in school and feeling like I'm involved in an intellectual community.

Because when John Mayer's second album came out it coincided with me working on my thesis at break-neck speed. I'd stay in my apartment in Bowling Green, sometimes over the weekend (alone), and dissect poetry with that CD on repeat. And I guess his voice makes me miss that feeling, that drive to accomplish something no one else will ever really appreciate in the way I do--to do something for the sake of my mind.

Because his second album was widely regarded as not as good as his first, which I didn't totally agree with, I was often a little defensive about it being my CD of choice for a while. And now... I don't know. I hear Damien Rice on the radio sometimes and think, haven't you written anything new lately? And, in fact, he has. A new CD is expected later this year. But that isn't the point. The music that I listened to during my senior year of college is some of the last music I felt truly connected to. Sheila Nicholls, Damien Rice, John Mayer, Jimmy Eat World, Dashboard Confessional. They all have their respective merits, but I just don't feel moved by them anymore. Or much of anyone else for that matter. Yes, I like The Like, The Decemberists, Eliot Smith, etc., but it's not the same. It's just pretty sounds strung together with interesting words. I think I'm officially an adult. Not that I was ever one of those "music is my life" teenagers, but I definitely felt attached. And I don't anymore. And I guess hearing John Mayer's voice reminds me of what that used to feel like.

What makes it even weirder is that he touring with Sheryl Crow...so as to totally shatter any remaining illusions that he was ever cool. Seriously. Mrs. Tourdefrance? Come on! It's been at least 10 years since she wrote a song that didn't annoy me. (Sample lyrics from a song off her newest album: "Good is good and bad is bad. You don’t know which one you had." I'm not kidding.)

Deep down though, I know that what I have never outgrown is the desire to have musical tastes that people I think are cool would consider to be cool. That sentence doesn't make sense. But neither does the feeling. And I know John Mayer isn't cool anymore. And I guess hearing his voice makes me remember how I felt when he was and I was and everything was new. And I guess I'm afraid his new CD will just be terrible and embarrassing for both of us.

changes for laura.

I got an American Girl catalog in the mail today. Even now, all these years later, seeing it in my mailbox gave me that butterflies-in-my-chest-in-a-good-way feeling. I came inside the apartment and immediately looked at it, page by page. It's full of pictures of young girls in red and navy L.L. Bean-type sweaters holding their immaculate, factory-done-hair dolls. It makes me want to go out and rake leaves.

name the day.

I'm stuck in the middle of a book I don't really want to finish. But I sort of have to. It was lent to me by someone who thought I'd really like it and I'll feel like a jerk if I don't finish it before giving it back. I only have about a hundred pages to go...but it feels like a lot more than that.

Meanwhile, I totally ignored the boring book and read Letters from Yellowstone over the weekend. And I loved it. It's in the genre of historical fiction, a genre I do not often find myself drawn to at all really. I bought it 2 years ago while in Yellowstone with my family, taking the long route to LA and a new life of sorts. I bought it because, at the time, I was so enamored with the place that I thought anything at all about it seemed destined to hold my undivided attention. Plus, this particular paperback was a signed copy, long lingering after a book signing in the park that probably happened years before. The thing I so enjoyed about the book was that I genuinely felt transported. I've seen the things the characters were seeing, except that they're scientists and see (at least they would, were they not fictional) the world in a way that is much different than I do. They really see it. They have given names to it. These are the things the book is about, actually, as botanists in 1898 write letters home to their friends and family and try to decipher the boundaries of Science. As I said, it's nothing like what I normally read, but it made me remember my time in Yellowstone and it had a truly lovely passage about the group formed in the park and how they had become a family that is right on target with a lot that has been going through my mind lately. I went to work yesterday and ordered a copy each for my mom and my sister along with a copy of Diane Smith's second novel, Pictures from an Expedition, for myself.



I talked to my dad for about five whole seconds yesterday. That seems to be about all I can take some days. I hear his voice and fall to pieces. Yesterday, especially, since it was September 11. He came to see me at college five years ago yesterday and ate in the cafeteria with me and watched TV's tell us what we already knew. My dad's voice is like a song that I forget I love hearing until it comes on the radio in my car and makes me want to pull off the freeway and park somewhere, anywhere, so I can just listen. Plus, it was my grandmother's birthday. His mother's birthday. And I really need her advice.