Thoughts on leaping: Fake it ’til you make it

Photo credit: Mark Glovsky

Before jumping off a ledge of any variety,
Be it childhood dare or adulthood surrender
Remember,
Looking down into that menacing blue,
Once you choose to leap,
To feel that spring in the bend of your legs,
And release—
You cannot un-leap

So,

Leap with gusto, and at the top of your gravity-defying parabola
Screech with indignation
At the height you’ve allowed yourself
To reach
When falling, drop with bravado
For false confidence or not, make them certain
This is what you meant to do all along; not to defy gravity—
But to comply, to acquiesce to that obligating force
—

A response to Daily Post’s prompt: Leap

 

Too Little, Too Late

By: OkArt

You can burn your paper fingers in the ashtray
Place your swollen lips on mine
You can shave your heavy head in my carpeted hallway
Sure for the first time you’re wearing the right clothes

Now take them off
Meet me on the band room rug
Tie my right hand to the ride

You can take a live wire into the bath with you
For a feeling you can’t find
You can entertain your childhood friends with a tour of the bedroom
Laugh to erase the dirt on your mind

Oh let’s move out
Meet me at the motel
Tie my right hand to the bible

Too little too late but we can’t say no
It’s too much to feel
Tie my right hand to the bible

Metric, Too Little, Too Late lyrics

Just feeling the funk today.

Metric live: Daaamn, those slower moments though

Genres (Wikipedia’s version): Indie rock/new wave/synthpop

Genres (my version): Cityscape sounds/introspective pop/SYNTH SEX

Let me tell you about a band called Metric, and if we want to be real about it, The Emily Haines Show. Looking for a band that will make you dance AND think about your loneliness at the same time? Look no further than Metric.

I was dancing lonely to Metric in high school about eight years ago, when my best friend Eugenia presented me with a mix CD and simply said through her black bangs, “Here, listen to this, I think you’ll like it.” And eight years later, here I am still liking it, in fact, liking them more because I just went to my first show by them a week or so ago.

Their performance with more energetic songs is lackluster at best; during “Youth Without Youth” and “Synthetica”, I was wishing Emily Haines would physically do more than walk around the stage and jump halfheartedly. Their genius is tucked away in the intimate moments, like when Emily and guitarman James Shaw hold a sing-along, or when Emily gently delivers a pah-pah-da-dah that all at once sounds sinister and pleading. One minute, you’re bobbing your head to some sexy synth melody and the next you’re struck by lyrics like “We’re so close to something better left unknown/I can feel it in my bones”.

I would have to say that Metric’s greatest strength is Emily Haines. Forget being more physical. I nearly cried when they did an acoustic set of “Gimme Sympathy”, when she slowly sang “Gimme sympathy/After all of this is gone/Who would you rather be?/The Beatles or the Rolling Stones?”

It takes a lot of charisma to connect with hundreds of folks from a stage, and with that husky, expressive voice and random phrases like “here’s to time travel”, she’s a natural at it.

Photo cred: VH1

I don’t think there’s anybody quite like them—trust me, I’ve tried finding similar bands, with unsatisfactory results. They’re an otherworldly, introspective band with a sound that is at once intense and intimate.

Setlist:

IOU
Help I’m Alive
Youth Without Youth
Twilight Galaxy
Cascades
Too Bad, So Sad
Artificial Nocturne
Dreams So Real
Sick Muse
Collect Call
Other Side
Synthetica
Combat Baby
Gold Gun Girls
The Shade

Encore:

Empty
Celebrate
Gimme Sympathy
Breathing Underwater

People-Traveler

I exist in two places, here and where you are. —Margaret Atwood

I think if someone were to ask me what my superpower would be, I would be flummoxed, as the case always is whenever I am given options.

I think I’d be more satisfied if the world worked this way: that your superpower would be whatever your real-life strength is, enhanced.

(Yes, like Twilight. No, I don’t like Twilight – but yes, I’m borrowing the idea.)

It started when I was eight years old. I was walking and passed a man walking the other way. I don’t know what it was about this man; maybe it was because his brows were furrowed in such pensiveness, that he reached out to me—but for a second, I was that man. I felt his frustration, his back-and-forth what-if’s like brushes of bold color across my own brow.

It’s been like that since then. Not all the time—only when I get out of the cobwebs in my own head long enough to look up, and feel out another furrowed brow.

To quote Margaret Atwood, in those moments, I do exist in two places.

This is why I live for one-on-one conversations. With enough time, and enough trust to be vulnerable, I get to touch more than just the tip of the iceberg of a person. I, along with anybody else, become so entangled in the business of living that sometimes I forget there are whole other lives being lived right next to me.

A friend of mine once talked about this old man who said something along the lines of: “I fall in love ten times a day.” As Jacki Kellum, whose delightful blog I’ve just discovered, talks about in her post, crowds are quite lonely. Ironically, sometimes the world is a less lonely place when it’s just two people talking. Because let’s face it, more often than not, the better you know someone, the more likely it is that you fall in love with them—and for the space of a few hours, they are your world, and you exist in that place.

I think I know what my superpower would be: People-Traveler.

A reply to daily prompt: Counting Voices