of cover albums and desert-island beasts
Saturday 23 October 2004 | I like a cookie
So even though I came up with the cover-album-for-N’s-birthday idea (”the best of the eighties, nineties, and today!”) over three weeks ago, I’m still too timid to ask Maman if I can borrow her stunning electric piano. I’m about ready to sell all I own to buy one of these…I’d rather have it than the Steinway, to be honest. Such easy firm ripe action and such a damn tone, a little bit off pitch as it should be—I don’t know how Yamaha does it but I ask no questions. I’ve agonized over the playlist and secretly practiced piano parts with earphones so Maman doesn’t have to hear: I’ve thrown out songs and added in others, so right now it is as follows:
- audioslave | like a stone
- billy joel | you may be right
- bruce springsteen | I’m on fire
- the cure | love song
- duran duran | come undone
- elvis costello | my funny valentine
- nickelback | figured you out
- nirvana | lithium
- radiohead | exit music (for a film)
- rufus wainwright | poses
- sheila e / prince | a love bizarre
- tom waits | rainbow sleeves
NB in my defense that 1) I covered “I’m On Fire” years before I was aware that Tori did too, and 2) I know that “My Funny Valentine” is Rodgers and Hart, but the Elvis Costello cover is the one N. knows. Though honestly I still think Matt Damon turned in a surprisingly definitive version in The Talented Mr. Ripley. I fear it’ll probably be just mostly silly, if that is I can work up the ovaries to do it.
If I force myself to think about what I’m so scared of—why don’t I just ask M. if I can borrow her piano for a couple of days, lock myself in the closet and wail away—the realest reason is that I’m afraid of additional positive attention from her. Isn’t that weird, and sad. The only thing I can compare it to is my dad admiring, suddenly and inexplicably and intrusively, some body part of mine I don’t feel he should even notice, eyebrows or toes or feet, and how ugly and contorted with rage and brittle I just as suddenly become. Or: how I absently went into the kitchen last night in navy lace hipster knickers (which I was wearing instead of the usual cotton ones because I didn’t want the elastic band declaiming JOCKEY to show above the waist of my trousers, which are hanging low these days for some reason, and the lace knickers are more low-slung—anyway—) and was getting my water bottle out of the fridge when my godmother said lugubriously, “Honey, when God was handing out bodies, he sure lingered a long time over yours.” Gakgakgakgakgakgak and I yanked out my water bottle and bolted for the relative safety of my room. I don’t want her to notice anything, I don’t want any comments whether positive or negative, I want to be ignored and to live my hours unmolested. Vai!
At length, Mrs. Glass heaved one of her premium sighs and returned her attention to Zooey, who, pushing at his cuticles, had pivoted a half turn toward the morning daylight. As she took in the lines and planes of his uncommonly spare unclothed back, her gaze gradually de-abstracted. In a matter of only a few seconds, in fact, her eyes appeared to jettison everything that was dark and heavy and to glow with fan-club appreciation. “You’re getting so broad and lovely,” she said, aloud, and reached out to touch the small of his back. “I was afraid all those crazy bar-bell exercises would do some—”
“Don’t, willya?” Zooey said, quite sharply, recoiling.
“Don’t what?”
Zooey pulled open the medicine-cabinet door and put the orange stick back in its niche. “Just don’t, that’s all. Don’t admire my goddamn back,” he said, and closed the cabinet.
Honestly, though? Honestly I think I’m trying to make up Something about Nothing, trying to stay wrought up in a way, because it’s all becoming so two-dimensional, house arrest in Pipe Creek. In a kind of Lord of the Flies way, where I have no motivation to do anything and no interest in anything—sufficient anhedonia and before you know it I’ll be sharpening a stick at both ends and hunting the Beast in the jungle. If that makes any sense at all, which I thoroughly doubt it does.
post your glowing encomium (or bitter philippic) »
Follow this heated, lively discussion through its very own feed; also, you can pingback or trackback from your own doubtlessly much more interesting site.
