Cleaning Out My Draft Folder..

I'm trying to whip this blog into shape, and actually post in it with something approximating regularity, and one of the steps in achieving that, apparently, is deleting my all the started-but-not-finished entries I've accumulated since April. I came across this one and decided that, actually, I liked it enough to finish an publish it after all. I wrote 98% of it in early May while "working" in Gund ballroom on, I think, my vastly overdue final paper for Sergei's Shakespeare class (on feminist readings of King Lear). For now, however, you can consider it as a precursor to my iteration of Jeff's popular "Name Your Ten Albums" meme. Without further ado, my lone draft purge survivor:

(actually, one small piece of further ado- if you click on the hyperlinked song names, you can go listen to them and if you right click them you ought to be able to download them too)

I'm sitting, still in the same computer lab as yesterday and the day before that, listening to Aimee Mann, and thinking long and hard about how fully I used to identify with this music. Like, for example, "Guys Like Me," off of my favorite of her albums, Lost In Space.

I used to hear lyrics like:

Guys like me
We look good at the gate
But you'll agree with the odds on the slate
and put your money on a bonafide heavyweight
and take it off guys like me
take it off guys like me.

And think- Yeah! Exactly! Sing it Aimee!

Now, I knew even then that this was Aimee singing about the trials and tribulations she went through with her old record company, but to me it seemed like a perfect metaphor for the trials and tribulations I was going through trying to get guys to like me. There I was (or am, really), standing around, and I look like a good pick. Nice, not unfunny, pretty smart, kinda pretty-- but no one seemed to want good, solid, decent. They wanted bonafide heavyweights-- those willowy, heart-breakingly lovely girls who needed them desperately and looked gorgeous while doing it. The whole album is more of the same gorgeous melancholy, and second semester Sohpmore year, it seemed like Aimee was singing my life back to me. If you've ever heard Lost in Space, you'll have some idea of how dire my perception of my romantic prospects appeared.

Here I am now, two years later on the brink of graduation, and I don't know if my perception of my romantic prospects has changed drastically, but the soundtrack to them has. I still love Aimee, but she's not my go-to girl for romantic trouble lately. That's another Amy- Amy Winehouse, whose album Back to Black has been on a constant loop in my room for about three weeks now. My favorite song on this constantly-on repeat album is "Tears Dry on Their Own". The whole song seems to be about being the other woman, and getting left-- not exactly a cheery subject-- and the lyrics don't dress it up, either. But Amy, even if she's stealing someone's husband, and letting men fuck with her heart, and crying-- she never sounds defeated.

I guess I like to hope the same is true for me.