lonely looks as bad on me as lonely looks on you

I forgot how much I love Mary Chapin Carpenter aka Chapin, as her close friends, associates and delusional fans call her. Lately I've had problems finding tapes to listen to in my walkman for the work commute. I think the problem is I want something familiar, but not overplayed. And most of the mixtapes I've acquired or made in the past year or so have been played to death, so I'm searching through my old collection of tapes. But then I don't want something too old, or too dated, or too faddish. So yesterday I pulled out a tape I originally dubbed from CD's I checked out of the Atlanta library. On one side was the Indigo Girls first album (I had just broken my other tape and didn't that the money to buy it again) and on the second side was Chapin "Shooting Straight in the Dark", right before it won a grammy. Or right after. I can't remember everything.

Oh wait, I'm getting everything mixed up. Let's start again.

The summer of 1992 was the first year I was allowed to attend the Mission Trip with the church youth group. I was beyond thrilled to go live in rural Georgia for a week and fix up houses of folks who couldn't afford it, while at night writing notes for my secret buddy, taking swims in the lake, and playing spades on the porch. To this day those trips burn more brightly in my memory than the numerous Florida and ski trips that often happened in those years. Writing out the details makes them seem so wholesome. And they were.

During this time I had a strange dual life, because my high school friends and acquaintances were entirely different from church friends and acquaintances. Church was probably a class above, moneywise, and exponentially whiter. Around this time, the high schoolers would often move away from pop music and 'oldies', and moving towards listening to country. Because, even though Atlanta is a big metropolitan area, it's still in the south, it's still only a 15 minutes drive to rural spaces, and these people were still white southern christians. Some trends are just bound to be followed.

But I still hated country music. And not in the typical whiney teenager way. I had reasons. I hated how the male vocalists did that yodeling with their voice and would slide all over the notes sloppily. I hated how simplistic the chord structures were (I was just learning guitar). I hated mundane the lyrics were (I had already been into Indigo Girls and other singer-songwriter types, so I had a taste for more lofty attempts at poetry in my lyrical taste). But driving around in vans in rural north Georgia, there was no argument to be made. Only 3 or 4 stations were received on the radio, and they were all country or lousy talk radio. And it seemed cruel to vote for the radio to just be off, so I let the country fans have there moment in the sun.

The was one song that came on the radio once a day I loved. "I Feel Lucky" by Chapin. I went home to my local Turtle's music store and bought the tape. My mother lightly chastised me, saying "you bought a whole album when you only know one song?" She was also skeptical of whether I would actually like a country album. Now, this criticism could have been made of a LOT of albums that I've purchased in my life, as far as the one-song rule. But it's amusing that she actually vocalized it in this case, since she became a Chapin fan, thanks to me.

So Chapin was my guilty pleasure through high school. For friends who liked Indigo Girls, I could often convince them to give her a listen, and I would often use her as middle ground to the growing rednecks in my youth group who would ride in my car to Baskin Robbins and later would avoid all together, partly because their parents bought bigger houses in whiter neighborhoods further away from the city.

Chapin's not really very country. She's just as pop as Garth Brooks. She's from DC for chrissakes. But she doesn't use her breasts like Shania Twain does. She doesn't yodel. Her chord structures are pretty simple, but I don't act as self-righteous about that anymore. Her lyrics are sometimes complex, sometimes cliche. And I haven't been able to sit through an entire album of hers since Stones in the Road.

But she can still make me cry with songs written 15 years ago. And I'd still marry her, move to the country with several big dogs and sit on rocking chairs every evening, drink whiskey or sweet tea and watch the sun go down. I'm so urban-minded it's ridiculous, but occasionally, certain people will bring out a hidden desire.

fuck off

Yesterday's dialogue is featured on the Black Star album, between track 5 and 6, as an intro to the song "Brown Skin Lady". What's that? You don't have the Mos Def and Talib Kweli album? Well, I think you know the answer to that.

I deal mostly in obscurity and minute details, for those who didn't know. I'm the walking example of postmodernism -- I haven't said anything original in over 10 years. I speak in footnotes. Everything has an origin, and with that, a story. I can tell you about walking down Chicago Avenue late at night to a former lover's apartment. I can tell you about Damon sliding the CD under the door of my bedroom after he finished borrowing it.

I have an intense history of things.

I've been thinking lately about wills and healthcare proxies. I'm strangely intrigued by the idea of cataloguing my life. Not so much because I'm bent on having every thing passed onto someone else for their burden. But just the experience of remembering. And not because I"m even particularly attached to any past time period -- it's more that I relish the process and sit in awe of it.

And it's strange that I talk to people once a week and advise them to take legal steps on their own behalf, but I don't do it for myself. So I finally looked at the forms and will bring them home. And I've made the decision that I will get down on one knee and take MelRo's hand and look deeply into her eyes and ask her if she will shoulder the responsibility to tell my doctor to pull the plug if necessary. And then we can go to Kinko's and shrink down a copy of the letter to carry in wallets, so she'll be allowed to get in the ambulance with me or enter the intensive care unit. These things are scary to me. Not the possibility of health hazards -- the ability to articulate that level of commitment. But if I were to ask my bed-ridden self if I would want her, and Damon, and Poet Friend with me instead of my parents....well, this isn't a matter of instead of. It's in addition, assuming they'd make it up in time. I would answer yes. Yes, of course, you moron. Why are you even hesitating?

Of course, it's the fear of putting something in paper that will then ruin something in real-life. If I sign something big and important and it has her name on it, then something will inevitably happen to cause her to leave my life. I know this is silly thinking.

But the beauty of power of attorney is that it's easily legally binding. And easily legally changed. I can tear up the piece of paper. Or write a new one. Or just tell someone I plan on tearing up the piece of paper, and as long as they're willing to sign an affidavit saying I said that, it's as good as doing it. So in the end, I won't let this stupid fear of "jinxing" hinder me looking out for myself.

Do I want artificial nutrition and hydration provided? Do I want to starve to death? That sounds horrible, though obviously if I'm in a condition that placed me in that position, the horror probably already happened. Talking about this brings up another psychological supersitition. That somehow, bringing up the topic will make it happen. That somehow, I'm psychic. Maybe I am. But even so, I should still fill these papers out and figure out what all this living will stuff exactly means, and not just guesstimate.