i should leave it alone but you're not right

today brings: more acoustic distractions from the pain i can't stop feeling. one day i'll be able to write and speak with clarity the sorrow of love lost, will be able to give shape to my pain and then discard it like a husk. but until then, these songs are all i have to offer for utterance.

edited to add:
a few hours after the initial video was posted, i rode my bike to the lake and i cried as i stared out across the water. when i got home, my longtime partner and former fiance packed up his stuff and moved out. empty bookshelves and half an apartment vacated... literally holes all around me where a person i loved used to fill it. in the trash i found a note he'd written me last christmas: "Happy Christmas, Baby! Want to color and/or read together tonight? I love you so much, Your Baby Boy" -- so much lost in a year. and he took the activist coloring books he gave me as presents with him. he left other things... frames of us on the floor, a copy of a book i gave him when we first started dating, piles of laundry. such an empty hollow feeling. right now i don't know how i'll ever not be sad, this feeling seems like it was built to last.

so i cried and i cried and when i had no tears left i tried this song again and this is what came of it:

heartbreak hotel

things have been so shitty lately. if i can live through this i can live through anything.

i can literally feel my heart break into irreparable pieces every day. i think if i ever manage to put the pieces back together, it will be less capacious than before. sometimes i feel i may never find a way out of this sadness.

my survival tactic is to space out distractions for myself... yoga this day, dancing the next, dinner with friends the day after that, a phone call with a west coast friend after that... and in those gaps, i learn songs on the guitar and ukulele, like applying mortar to the gaps between bricks... hoping i can build up defenses around me.

i'm not a super singer. i do ok with strumming things but i'm no rock star. i'm just trying to cobble together an arsenal of kick ass break-up songs to sing when i feel my resolve disappearing.

guitar tabs for Jens Lekman's "Cowboy Boots"

ever since i first heard this song i wanted to figure out the tabs. enjoy!

Capo on 3rd fret

Intro - G A D G

G                A
You were in my dream last night
D                    G
Like every night since two years ago
G                             A
I think my dream is trying to tell my something
           D                   G     
And I say “tell me something I don't already know”

G    G/B       Em        A          D
Just buy me a drink, so I can refuse
G                          G        A                   D
To raise my glass to these sad and worn out midnight shoes
              G      A            D
In my next dream I want a pair of cowboy boots
              G         A                    D
The kind that walks the straightest and most narrow route
G/B
Anywhere but back to you

G                     A
Here we are down the same old street

D                G
Here we are with nothing to say

G                         A
My little hand trying to make it into yours

        D                         G
But you put it in your pocket and look away

G               A
I keep my eyes on the sidewalk

D                       G
For something flippable like a dime

G                     A
I wanna know how you forgive someone

D                          G
Someone you've forgiven so many times

G    G/B       Em        A          D
Just buy me a drink, so I can refuse
G                          G        A                   D
To raise my glass to these sad and worn out midnight shoes
              G      A            D
In my next dream I want a pair of cowboy boots
              G         A                    D
The kind that walks the straightest and most narrow route
G/B
Anywhere but back to you
Anywhere but back to you