I'm pretty convinced time is doing something funky right now because the past five days have felt like months, but they have passed at the speed of light. If the rest of semester - and year - goes the same way, I'm in trouble.

She said, "Take me to London, tell me something I don't know."

Trying to decide how serious I am about potentially going to grad school in London. If I'm pretty serious, I might nix UCLA, USC, and NYU from my application list and just do 4 or 5 schools in London. And maybe still Columbia.

The upside:

• When else am I going to get the chance to live in London for a year?
• Easy access to the rest of Europe. By which I really mean, I could go to Scotland and France. Finally.
• It's only one year.
• Slightly cheaper tuition...I think.
• Easier applications - they don't care about the GRE's and are less interested in writing samples.
• Last I heard, James McAvoy was living in London. :: Swoon. ::
• Probably easier to get into a PhD program should I decide to continue after getting my M.A.
• West End theater!
• Great chance to get away from everything that makes me think too much at home and have a fresh start. (That's one of the upsides of life, actually: you can always mentally wipe the slate clean and start again.) (It just struck me that that is a very American notion - the idea that a person can go somewhere new and create a better life for himself. Mmm.)

The downside:

• Away from family and friends and home for an entire year. (Even though they could visit!!)
• London is maddd expensive. At this moment, one British pound sterling is the equivalent of $1.656 USD. Better than it was last summer, but still.
• Before I grew up and got a dose of that little thing they call "reality," Columbia was one of my dream schools. Well, okay, it WAS my dream school. That and NYU. I didn't even bother applying to either for undergrad. I don't think I want to throw all my eggs in the London basket. But I also don't want to do/pay for the extra apps.
• The weather. I got depressed when it rained here for two weeks straight. How could I ever be okay in England?

I shouldn't be thinking about any of this, yet. I'm pretty sure after tomorrow (when I fail the GRE miserably), I'll realize once again that I'll be lucky to get into any grad program.

Meh.

"Time to Pretend"

I hadn't gotten to MGMT's Oracular Spectacular when I wrote about the music I was listening to 2 months ago, but I recently read this description of my favorite track by them and wanted to copy it down.

What makes "Time to Pretend" so universally liked (even by cranky indie rock purists) is its dazzling wire walk between smug, smartass irony and actual lust for the kind of fucked-up celebrity lifestyle that keeps Perez Hilton in bandwidth. MGMT's perfect sound was an evolution. The duo's earlier self-produced Casio-chintzy version of the song made no secret of then-college students Ben Goldwasser and Andrew Van Wyngarden's dry disdain. But Dave Fridmann's major-label-funded take two is something out of Hieronymus Bosch, a lush pleasure garden of melodies twining like naked limbs, guitars and drums distorted into dirty, Ecstatic grooves. It's all a little unsettling-- decadence always is. But MGMT pull "Pretend" off with the kind of conviction that standing on the precipice of stardom can give you. --Amy Granzin

Pitchfork Media's notes on the track, which they rated as #99 on their list of the top 500 songs of 2000-2009.

I told a friend a while ago that "Time to Pretend" is my favorite song by MGMT, even though most people prefer "Kids" or "Electric Feel." I said that I think most people interpret it as the singers' serious desire to screw around with their lives and have a good time while they're young, but I prefer to see it as a disdainful mockery of people who do that - or a weird mix of the two. I love how absurd it is, and how it bounds between being youthfully indulgent and angsty, artfully annoyed and celebratory. A lot of that is in the contrast between the music and the lyrics. Ms. Granzin pretty much read my mind, I'm convinced. I recommend it highly.

Also, I really dig Hieronymus Bosch.

I don't know if gin was around in 15th century Netherlands, but if it was, I bet Bosch enjoyed it.

"Self-sufficient." Well, that's one way of putting it...

In one sense, I really admire people who can just let things roll off their backs, who can just let go and move forward without looking back. People who never seem to lose, but to leave. In another sense, I wouldn't want to be like that, for fear of taking for granted everything I do have. How can you appreciate what you have if you never mind leaving it for something else?

To find beauty in that moment of loss and departure, for me, means reconciling the two. Appreciating that you're losing something great but having the strength to leave it for something new. It's a peculiar balance.

I wrote something about that once. Junior year I guess. Let me see if I can find it.

Mmm. Here:

I've come to the realization that I'm addicted to sunsets and Island Heights. They're such good company - sunsets I mean - silent, never the same for more than a couple minutes, warm, and so full of beauty, that they're incapable of failing to soothe even my worst mood. Of course, they leave one feeling rather lonely when they end and drain the rest of the color from the sky, but it's that way with people too - only with sunsets, you just have to leave them before they leave you. Thinking about it, I suppose that could work with people too, if you're self-sufficient enough. Or if the people are really bad company. : )

Yes, I did include the smiley face when I originally wrote that. I really was addicted to watching the sunset in Island Heights back then. In April and May, I'd go almost every night after dinner and sit there on my favorite bench in my favorite park and watch the sun set over the river. Sometimes I'd take pictures. Usually I'd bring a blanket and sometimes my mp3 player and would just stew. Depending on my mood, I'd either stay til dusk had passed, or I'd leave just as the sun disappeared below the horizon, before it got dark - before I felt alone again. Soon after that I discovered my preference for sunrises - you start off in the dark instead of ending in it.

"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."
- The Catcher in the Rye

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Now playing: Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins - You Are What You Love

No. 12

Forgot to post this the other day. Wrote it down on my cell phone at the Jason Mraz concert during the shortest set in the history of the world. Figured I'd copy it off my phone even though it doesn't really say anything because I haven't posted in ages..

so give me all you got
because I’ve never had enough.
lift this weighty cup of hate and love
to my thirsty lips and tip
it back to feed my cravings
and fill the holes that
hunger has gnawed in my paper heart
like earthworms through the dirt
beneath the soles of my
tired feet that tread
water churning slowly
flowing to and fro
full of froth and foam so sweet
it melts like whipped cream
in a mug of dark, rich cocoa –
nectar or ambrosia that
dripped off spilled saucers on Parnassus
into the sea to feed the starfish and the whales
and the men who sail on waves
that grow and build before they crash
and drown all things in a blanket of
glorious darkness, cold and smooth
sugaring the land to sweeten the future
triumphs of the next life to brave the waters,
who plans and makes and lives anew
amidst blue winds
that paint the world
in brilliant brushstrokes of
royal violet and gold
so pure it’s whiter than light
the platinum plated love cup
that quenches all.

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Now playing: Chris Ayer - The Revealing