Flight Writing

I think an introduction is in order here. For the past week and a half, I had not been getting very much sleep (remedied that last night with twelve hours). It all accumulated, probably got the best of me, and yesterday I flew for a combined seven hours on three hours of sleep (after almost a week of no more than six hours a night...more on that below). This does things to you. Don't ask about the physical effects, but mentally, I was moving between rampant paranoia, extreme giddiness, fascination with everything around me, bottomless despair, and finally, on my flight from Denver to Portland, a strong desire to write something. Anything. It's like was Lester Bangs says in Almost Famous, you know, where he talks about doing speed and staying up all night and writing twenty-five pages of gobblety-goop. Just to write. That's what the flight was yesterday. It's sort of a shame that I got cut off when I did, because after I finished my critical analysis of "Summer of '69" (really, for lack of any sort of word that could describe whatever the hell I was doing) I was going to talk at length about this Shooter Jennings song "4th of July" that really is spectacular.

Anyway. I don't pretend to think anyone was really aching to read any of this, and I'd be surprised and flattered if anyone read all of it, but I typed it and I didn't want it to just sit around. I made minor effort to effectively break it up - it's slightly reformatted, and I made some corrections where I couldn't understand the lyrics on the fly, but except for a quick parenthetical or two (all the stuff in brackets [ ]), every word from here on is something I wrote on the plane.

Just a small town girl...living in a lonely world...

Another day, another trip to the Airport. And that of course means my latest observations on airport culture and modern travel. Today I'm running on...very little, actually. Friday night was the last time I got a decent night's sleep. Since then, it's been consistently under 6 hours, with a little over four on Monday night and...maybe three last night (I'm unable to account for exactly how many hours of sleep I got on Saturday and Sunday nights due to my policy of never checking the clock after I lay down, compounded with multiple sleep cycles). I power napped at the beginning of each of these flights (I'm on the second, from Denver to Portland, as I type this), and I've had about twenty fluid ounces of soda (so far...Mom's taking me and Chris out tonight, so that'll require some rejuvenation).

The music of choice is loud. Big. It's been a good week, and in spite of the physical handicap the lack of sleep has left me with, I remain in good spirits. So, very little hard rock, which is often my travel music of choice, because travel makes me feel like shit, and hard rock was made by and for people who feel like shit but feel sort of awesome for it (Country was made for people who feel like shit and feel like shit about it...I have those days too). So I'm scrounging for big pop music - lotta Elton John, lotta Billy Joel, some Journey...I have "You Get What You Give" by The New Radicals on right now and I finished the last flight with Harvey Danger's "Flagpole Sitta."

Don't let go, you've got the music in you.

Fingertips have memories
Mine can't forget the curves of your body

I've taken a liking to the salmon they serve in first class on the long leg. Whenever you travel across country, you almost always end up with one flight that's demonstrably longer than the other. Ideally this is the first - unless it's under an hour and a half, the last thing you want to do after flying is get on another plane. You fear them. They are the enemy. Their bathrooms are small and if you don't get on the attendant's good side quickly, she won't refill your water. Having to remove your headphones and ask them to repeat everything is a good way to get on an attendant's bad side.

But the salmon - it's cold, but it doesn't really taste like anything in particular and it goes down smooth and fills you fast. Perfect airplane food.

Clap your hands if you want some more

The Pipettes may be a perfect band [They're not]. Is it pronounced Pipe-ets or Pip-ets? Is it a strong "i"? I've always said "pip" but the person who said "pipe" was very insistent. It should be noted this person also once believed you could grow a human fetus in your arm. Who are these people?

Through a minor error on my part - due in no small part to this tremendous lack of sleep - I started this flight with a talker. Since I've started college, I've flown more every year than probably the first eighteen years of my life combined. And in this time, at no point have I been subjected to a talker. I don't mind small talk on planes, and I require basic communication to get past me (I also consistently take the aisle seat, as I rarely sleep on planes and use the bathroom constantly). But I hate people who require your companionship on flights. I don't blame them, necessarily - it's a long(ish) flight and it can be a bit trying to just sit there, and those crime novels they sell in the terminals can only be so engaging. And actually, I like it in concept and am fairly adapt. But I never get an appreciable amount of sleep before I fly, so I'm unable to generate small talk. I know that if they get me going, I'll ramble and rant and my general loopiness will throw them, to the extent they may actually believe I am on drugs. And I think they stop planes for stuff like that.

Luckily, I was in the wrong seat. Unfortunately, someone was in my rightful seat so he could sit with his lady friend. Fortunately, the seat I had accidentally taken was not his, so I relocated to HIS assigned seat, next to a guy who appears to have a lot of work to do. Hopefully he can't see what I'm typing, or he'll discover that a) I'm not really working like I appear to be, and b) I'm writing about him.

I'm just going to warn you - my Mac says I have almost three hours of battery life. This flight is only due to last for another hour and a half [only an hour of which I ended up writing for; they make you turn off electronics and such eventually], so I plan to use the entirety of this time typing this post. Maybe by the end I'll have an essay that will somehow address the problems of modern travel on the twentysomething. Maybe I'll only have blather.

Tell me, Grey Seal, how does it feel to be so wise?

As many of you know, the purpose of this trip is to see two friends from high school get married. Well, okay, if I was really in it only for the wedding, I wouldn't have taken three days off of school or planned to stay three days past the wedding. Chiefly, cross country travel is a truly shitty undertaking - and I used to enjoy traveling. So if I have to make the trip, I make a trip out of it. A week at the least. But the wedding...

I really got buzzed when your sister said,
"Throw away them records 'cause the blues is dead."

It is all so very surreal. Which feels strange to say from a the relative position of an outsider - I've been loosely involved with the planning, but it certainly hasn't collided with my day-to-day life, and when I go back to Boston next week, I'll have my own set of concerns and things to look forward to and do. But nonetheless, when I think about it, it is very surreal. It feels like we should be going to 'Nam the next day or something [This is a reference to The Deer Hunter, which is like the last thing anyone wants their wedding compared to, unless you only watch the wedding reception part of The Deer Hunter, because it's like the best wedding reception ever. At any rate, don't take the above negatively, I really am insanely amped for the whole thing]

It's getting late, have you see my mates
Ma tell me when the boys get here
It's seven o'clock and I wanna rock
Wanna get a belly full of beer

The attendant has twice held a full cup of coffee over my computer while handing it to the guy next to me. Remain still. Make no sudden movements.

An angel smile is what you sell
You promised me Heaven then put me through Hell

Okay, so I wandered into the rock. I'm not quite comfortable calling Bon Jovi "hard rock," but he is certainly rock n' roll. Accept it.

Turn around...
Every now and then I get a little bit terrified
But then I see the look in your eyes

There is some music that I love, truly and deeply, that many, many other people listen to only in jest. "Total Eclipse of the Heart" is one such song. It's a song of such unrelenting power and passion, I find it impossible to ignore. I get why people think it's cheesy or dumb - it's sincere, and sincerity bothers people. They want emotions to come wrapped in loose poetry and analogies that don't address the feeling head on but speculate about it. But when Bonnie Tyler cries out "And I need you now tonight. And I need you more than ever. And if you only hold me tight, we'll be holding on forever", man...."Together we can take it to the end of the line." And listen to that voice, man. "I really need you tonight. Forever's gonna start tonight." Who sings like that? Nobody. It started in the late seventies and ended in the early nineties [I cannot back up this statement]. No one's got the balls anymore.

I think it bugs people because lyrically, anyone could come up with it. Except maybe "we're living in a powder keg giving off sparks." That's just the genius of Jim Steinman. I know I pick on Bob Dylan a lot, and the guy doesn't really deserve it, but the first comparison that came to mind was "Most of the Time," which is an unbelievably great song. It really is. One of the finest songs about heartbreak and loss. And what's so great about it is the fact that he's sitting there trying to convince himself he isn't still crazy about the girl. "Total Eclipse of the Heart" is a great song for the exact opposite reason...all she wants is to feel that love again. And she knows it. She doesn't run from it, so she yells and she screams and she belts.

Nothing ever grows in this rotten old hole
And everything is stunted and lost
And nothing really rocks
And nothing really rolls
And nothing's ever worth the cost

Outside of maybe Bruce Springsteen, nobody overwrites a song like Jim Steinman. Especially "Bat Out of Hell." This is a song absolutely packed to the brim with analogies and metaphors and things wholly created. And all for a song about a guy leaving his boring home town, but regretting the fact that he has to leave his girl behind. It's not a complicated idea, but the song could not possibly be less about that on the surface, yet have everything to do with it. "Baby you're the only thing in this whole world that's pure and good and right / And wherever you are and wherever you go, there's always gonna be some light / But I gotta get out, I gotta break it out now, before the final crack of dawn / So we gotta make the most of our one night together, when it's over you know, we'll both be so alone." Man, if that ain't songwriting, I don't know what is.

And the last thing I see is my heart still beating
Still beating
A-breaking out of my body and flying away
Like a Bat out of Hell

Oh well you hold me so close, that my knees grow weak
But my soul is flying high above the ground
I'm tryin' to speak, but no matter what I do
I just can't seem to make any sound

That's expressive shit, man. Maybe it's too cheesy for you, whatever, that's your loss. But I have never, ever in my life heard a song [I have wandered into talking about "You Took The Words Right Out of My Mouth," the song that second set of lyrics comes from] that nails that feeling of teenage anxiety, anticipation, and excitement in romance. And yeah, I'll own up to it, I'm a romantic - I like all that lovey-dovey, goopy shit. I was too cool for that crap for so long, but what's the point, right? That's why I listen to pop music. Because pop music doesn't just understand that side, it says that perspective is COOL.

Well you were lickin' your lips, and your lipstick shinin'
I was dying just to ask for a taste
Oh we were lying together in the silver lining
By the light of the moon
You know there's not another moment
Not another moment
Not another moment to waste

Ohhhhhh, come take my hand
We're riding out tonight to case the promised land

[Yes, those really are the words. I didn't think so either, but they accidentally prove the point I'm making below. Also, it's my absolute favorite Bruce Springsteen song and there is so, so much I could write about it. And maybe one day I will.]

So does rock n' roll, though. Not all rock, sure, and the harder it is, generally they tend not to, until they do a ballad (but hey, even Guns N' Roses put "Sweet Child of Mine" on their first album). But nobody, I mean nobody, does it better than Springsteen. Sure, his lyrics don't always make a lot of sense - Chuck Klosterman has always focused in on the line "Wrap your legs 'round these velvet rims, and strap your hands across my engines" to express this, but examples are everywhere across his discography. But what's so great about Springsteen isn't just that he sings unrelentingly pop lyrics in a rock n' roll style, or that he really seems to have lived a life in which he was always a small town boy going out with a girl and they're both trying to escape that one-horse town. Those things are totally great. It's that Bruce Springsteen can say anything he wants and it sounds like The Truth. And that puts him in a rare league of music acts, and an even rarer league of rock n' roll acts.

Standin' on your mama's porch
You told me it would last forever
Oh, the way you held my hand
I knew that it was now or never

When I heard Bryan Adams' "Summer of '69" for the first time, it was like the song had always been with me, waiting to be heard. That's half true. I don't think you can be a culturally-aware American and not know OF Bryan Adams' "Summer of '69." I do know, though, that you can go through much of your life not listening to it. A lotta people don't really like Bryan Adams, and "Summer of '69" is often put in a context that says in no uncertain terms that it is a lame song. Plus a lot of people you kind of hate - or at least whose taste in music you hate - seem to really like it, but even then you can't quite figure out why any of this is true. Why do you hate that taste in music? What is it about Top 40 that makes it so detestable?

But "Summer of '69" IS a great song. It doesn't open particularly strong - well, strike that, it opens with a PUNCH, but lyrically it doesn't open strong - "I got my first real six string / Bought it at the five and dime / Played it 'til my fingers bled / Was the summer of '69." I mean, I guess it might be for people who played guitar in high school and who can identify with that, but the lyrics themselves aren't particularly evocative, interesting, or well-crafted, and the song just kind of drifts. "Me and some guys from school / Had a band and we tried real hard / Jimmy quit, Joey got married / Shoulda known, we'd never get far." This line is misleading in that great tradition of misleading rock lyrics. Because you'd think the song would be a little more regretful, but it's here where Adams starts to get into it. "And when I look back now / The summer seemed to last forever / And if I had the choice, yeah I'd always wanna be there." The music picks up, the attitude seems more hopeful (if overly nostalgic).

But that doesn't prepare you for the next verse.

"Ain't no use in complaining / When you got a job to do / Spend my evening's down at the drive-in..." and when I sing along, this is where I start to scream... "AND THAT'S WHEN I MET YOU / Standin' on your mama's porch / You told me that you'd wait forever / Oh, when you held my hand / I knew that it was now or never." Jesus.