a wish for the new millenium

it's 2010, the "future." where's my flying car? my space suit? why haven't we colonized Mars yet?

all i want for my futuristic present is for someone to invent a time machine so i can travel back to the 1970s/80s and watch a young Bruce Springsteen sing "I'm On Fire" in an intimate low-lit concert venue and not feel guilty or self-conscious about squealing like a teenage girl.

aw heck. i don't need a time machine to do that!

memories and realizations

my father always came back from his business trips with presents for his kids. he would hide them somewhere in the house and it was up to us to find them. i got from this two things: 1) presents are all about presentation. the buildup of mystery and suspense was what made the presents interesting, not the presents itself. present = 1) a gift, 2) the now. a gift is always about something more than the physical material thing, it was always about the experience. 2) my success in finding things quickly, i decided, was due to my keen observation skills, which incidentally, might not have developed if they were not put to constant use. consequently, as a child, i always believed i would make a great detective, crime scene investigator, or bounty hunter. after writing, those were my dream occupations and the ones i felt best qualified for.

as i reflect on the way my father instilled excitement and mystery into my perception of the world, i decide that, sometime in the future when i become a parent myself, i will do the same for my son or daughter. hiding the box of cereal every morning before the bus ride to school. hiding the presents on christmas eve. hiding the clues that unveil a big family secret (your great-great aunt is german! your great-grandpa is a war hero! your great-aunt speaks to the dead!)

everyday would/should be a search for hidden treasures.

great things come in small packages

i just got a funny package from my parents. they sent me a pile of things i'd left in my room which they'd misinterpreted as crucial to my life here in the limited part of LA proper where i am currently residing.

and it's a good mix of things: some Situationism books, some shoes, fabric softener (but no detergent), a first-aid kit, and some recycling (must've forgotten to take it out before i left. oops.)

it seems my parents, in their wisdom, inadvertently sent me an important reminder: that i need to continue educating myself and learning and not forget my critical perspective, that my feet deserve to be kept safe and warm, that i should keep the things around me soft and fragrant (tho not necessarily clean...), that i should always disinfect my wounds, and that no job should go unfinished (i'm taking the recycling out tomorrow).

this is good life advice. heed!
-stephanie

reader rescue

all the things now missing from my life. but you can help me! read on...

in light of the recent death of my external harddrive (R.I.P. Jannik the swedish harddrive, 2007-08), i have been doing everything i can to try to fill in the now gaping holes in my life.

the most pressing thing, since i am such a huge audiophile, has been trying to recover my music library. i think my music taste exploded dramatically in the past year and a half, and i accumulated hundreds upon hundreds of albums, many rarities, which i am sorely sorry i didn't back up more regularly.

the last 24 hours have been a struggle to retrace my steps, racking my brain for lists of favorite artists and albums, trying to remember a faint and distant tune and trying to locate its context. it's like trying to recreate a complex recipe from the few scraps of leftovers you have from the night before. all i have are memories...

i grabbed lunch with my ma and bro today and when they flitted off to doctors' appointments, i wandered around the UK campus, where i was grossly ogled by a campus police officer as i walked by a drug bust (weird), and then i made my way to the independent bookstores. i only meant to go for a walk, but my sadness and desperation were too much and my will power was destroyed. i succumbed to some retail therapy and blew 50 bucks at CD Central in an attempt to fill in the gaps and now i'm ten albums closer to happy again (hey, i have no regrets. the albums were used. AND it's a local record store. i'm a sucker for supporting local independent businesses, especially if it means i can pop some Grizzly Bear into the cd player as soon as i get home.) alas, soon there will be holes in my pocketbook... (i need a job! i think after i'm done sorting thru my old clothes i'll make little bags and purses out of them. that sounds like a fun project. not necessarily lucrative, but i need to do something with my hands!)

oh, anyway, the real purpose for my post today is that i have a request to make of you, dear readers. my friends, with all my music now gone and possibly irrecoverable, the blog is, once again, my only way to retrace certain memories and their audio accompaniment. just looking thru the posts labeled "MP3" on the blog here, i can already identify several songs i would LOVE to have in my possession again. i'm assuming some of you took advantage of the downloads i put up for a time and now have them at your listening convenience? lucky you...

see, the beauty of this blog is that it often gives. and now, you, dear, precious, esteemed, good-looking reader, have the opportunity to give back. you have the power of edification in your hands! you can help reunite me with some of my favorite songs. you could make me so intensely happy, the waves of good vibes i will be sending you across the internet and geographic space alone will be enough to justify your trouble.

here's what i want: if any of you have mp3s of the following songs, please leave a comment below and we'll be in touch. (links are to blog posts in which i originally shared them with you)
"At the Hop" by Devendra Banhart
"Are Birthdays Happy?" by Jens Lekman
"Tonight, Tonight" by the Smashing Pumpkins
"The Idea of You" by the Neo-Futurists
the avocado couch podcast i did on covers
"Little Brother" by Grizzly Bear

thanks in advance. and have some preliminary good energy waves:
"Disarm" [mp3] by the Smashing Pumpkins

x's+ o's
-stefanie

happy bro day!

today is my younger brother's birthday! he turns the 1-9. nothing particularly special (about turning 19), but he's a good guy, so i hope he has a really great day.

he's living down in Durham, NC and going to Duke to study engineering/ accounting/ education/?who knows what's intriguing him these days. he's pretty easily intrigued. he's also a pretty easy conversationalist. unless he's uncomfortable. or hot. he's hot a lot lately. that's because he lives in the room above the furnace. he eats more than 12 meals* a week. he works out a lot and tans really easy. i freestyled a song about his tanlines last summer. he was running and i was riding my bike. he almost let me film it, but i couldn't ride and sing and film and laugh at the same time. so i didn't.

he's a lot of other great things too, but my words aren't good today. i've used them all to finish writing my thesis. so i was going to post a picture of him instead (b/c a picture's worth a thousand of those, or something), but then i remembered i lost all my most recent pictures in the fire. so all i have are really old pictures of us when we went to the beach once. he must be a freshman in high school in these.

they're still nice though. because we're at the beach. and it's really cold here where i am now...

little bro, i hope they turn that heat down so you can get down off the ceiling and have a dance party for your birthday!

and since he's always raiding my cds for tunes, i thought i'd give him (and you!) a freebie today. happy birthday, bro:

"Little Brother" [mp3] by Grizzly Bear (who i saw in concert recently, and should talk about soon...)

love,
steph

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*his meal plan at Duke only gets him 12 meals a week, which is pretty ridiculous and unreasonable, in my opinion. esp. for someone like my brother, who basically works out every day and plays tons of sports and is always hungry. had i better faith in our US Postal Service, i would have sent you a care package, bro, with all sorts of foods and steaks in it. but since i don't, i didn't. and i'm sorry. i'll be sending you books and a movie soon though!

are birthdays happy?

so, tomorrow, the 26th day of December, as is custom for this time of year, i will have my 22nd birthday.

yes, woo-hoo and all that...

but i am remorseful this year, more than any other year before (yes, even compared to yester-year) because this birthday, more than any other, signifies the end of my youth. i've dragged it on long enough, and i find that this year officially closes the door on that splendid carefree stage of youth, and launches me on the track toward adulthood, endless responsibility and trudgery.

looking back, i had it all wrong:
18 = i was "an adult" by legal definition, but lo! - still just a kid, but an empowered one at that - i could rock the vote, buy cigarettes and porn. i was riding out the end of high school, soaking up college like a dehydrated sponge... life was good. no, life was awesome!
19 = not really a "kid," but still a teenager. and living away from home for most of the year, i was far enough from home to still enjoy it when i came back. that is, i could be a kid, while still pretending to have my shit together the rest of the time.
20 = the end of the teenage years, in terms of numerology. a regretful time. but i got in enough wild debauchery just under the wire to make up for the lack of it in all the rest of my two decades of life.
21 = i earn the right to legally imbibe alcohol. the party seems to just be beginning! suddenly i can get into concert venues! the fun places to hang out and party double, no triple, in possibility! downtown Lexington is no longer a void! pass me a pint and turn up the music, all i wanna do is dance all night!...

you see, all those a priori assumptions and fears about my waning youth were unfounded. i put too much weight on the significance of numbers! and sure, this year could be no different, but here's a glimpse at what's in store for me as a 22nd year old:
-graduating from college, leaving my closest friends and the community i've become dearly attached to for a significant portion of my life for a world unknown (i consider 4 years of my 22 years - the first 5-8 years of which don't really count, i was hardly a real human being then - to be quite a significant amount of time, and they've certainly been the most formative)
-getting my first "real-world" job (that is: doing work for a wage that, livable or not, will have to sustain me and all my daily consumer habits), or possibly going to grad school
-living on my own, away from friends and family, and all the sturm und drang that comes with that
-moving to a new city, possibly having to buy a car, and etc. there's too much to think about

you see, i really am still a kid! i don't think i'm ready to be thrust into the world like this, and now turning 22... it just makes me wish i could slow down time for just a bit, just until i can catch back up to it.

i mean, i found clippings from the local newspaper about the Lord of the Rings movies in my room, remembered how much i loved going to see those movies in the theatres... and then i realized the newspapers were dated back to December 2002! that was 5 years ago! i was 16 then! i was in high school! i tried to remember what it felt like to be that young, to have so little in the way of worries, feeling absorbed by the immediacy of everything, having only to worry about getting into college and thinking that would be enough for now (for then...)

how strange it is to be turning 22. and to have nothing left after this but 23, 24, 25, etc. until i reach more decades, and then finally death.

are birthdays happy? maybe they should be... but i'll be spending mine writing my thesis.

meanwhile, i hope you enjoy these gifts [all links yousendit]

"are birthdays happy? or are they just a countdown to death? is there need to worry? there might not be much time left, i haven't lived my life yet!"

"Are Birthdays Happy?" - Jens Lekman

"there's only about 20 birthdays you should be allowed to celebrate. otherwise you are wasting cake and paper!"

"You are allowed 20 Birthdays" - Patton Oswalt

love and youth,
stephanie,
who was 21 when she wrote this


p.s. and all i want for my birthday? a decent enough ukulele, so i can play this song to my self, while wandering around in a nice pullover:

dramatic irony

a more dramatic and emotive version of U2's "with or without you" i have not seen, nor will ever see again.

this is a Belgian girls' choir that has produced several cd's of wistful and unexpecting pop covers. they go by the name "Scala and Kolacny Bros," which confused me until now, b/c it seemed incredibly egotistical for two dudes to take all the credit for the singing these girls were doing. [edit: Scala is actually the name of the Scala choir. oops.]

but then i saw this and i was completely convinced otherwise.

indeed, there would be no singing without the conspicuous affect of their conductor.

so carry on, carry on wayward son.
(now there's a cover i'd like to see them do!)

-stephan!e


p.s. one of my favorite moments comes around 1:12, when they sing "you give it all, but i want more." something in one of the girls' faces tells me she's got a real special interpretation of that song lyric. oh smiles!
p.p.s. 2:20 onward is pretty awesome too.

cool gif(t)

from the awesome band Architecture in Helsinki (and the only music blog i read, StG), we get an interactive gif animation that allows you to play along with the music.


play here.

fun!
-stephan!e

their beats kick back like death

all this rawkin hath lulled her into a catatonic state... glad the oven's still awake! slam ur door in her karate face!

i apologize for the lack of riting lately, but it seems that in wanting to keep this a fairly serious sight, i am much more discerning with what i write.

regardless, for lack of interesting writing of my own to share, and in lieu of my own video work (including a small docu-style film project i'm waiting to debut), i offer some amusing video finds.

the following videos are bizarre, beautiful, ridiculous. ostensibly sensual delights, particularly in their use of music to abhor, inspire, and stir ur soul.

beats,
stephan!e

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click on image to go to vid.

Tantrum Dance // Tantric Trance

this makes Michael Jackson in Thriller look like such a faker.

Claire de Lune

if you ever wanted to know how an 80s music video for Debussy would look, here you have it.

Anthem

watch his eyes. then watch his eyes in the last five seconds. then watch his eyes in this.

enjoying Spring into Summer

listening to some experimental sound poetry*
+ reading Dharma Bums by Kerouac (my favorite book from a past summer)

= it's already summer in my head.

sayonara,
stephan!e

---

*on Michael Snow's "Sinoms" [mp3 for download]:
"In the 50-minute Sinoms, Snow has multi-tracked some 20 voices, with as many different French and English accents, reading a complete list of the mayors of Quebec City, at some points making a simple juxtaposition of pronunciation and at others creating the effect of a choir." - U B U W E B

i was first familiar with Michael Snow and his work Wavelength, an experimental non-narrative film. but i learnt today that he was first and foremost a jazz musician, in addition to a photographer, a sculptor, an artist.

some of his photographic work, quite compelling and filmic:

Authorization (1969) - currently my laptop desktop

Venetian Blind (1970)