Fifi picked out my/Frances'/xixi's bridesmaid dresses!

ah, so excited!

(now all I need is a wedding date, haha--and maybe an exercise routine)

for Dale.

For Dale (photos and artwork) by Leslie Albanese is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

oh!

Congrats to Dale and FiFi on their recent engagement!
Do we look Brady Bunch or what?


Photo of Leslie Albanese & co. was acquired from Nick Bowsher's wedding photo booth. Please contact the post-author, prior to use.

a musing on bodies//feelings.

Maybe everyone will tire of hearing about my sleeping habits, but I haven't gotten real rest since I've come back to Athens (on the 31st) and I don't know why. And I've remembered every dream--sometimes multiple dreams per night--which is a little uncharacteristic of me. Last night's was really disturbing. I was caught in military state/ Thomas Pynchon novel crossing. At one point, I was badly beaten in a library; my father rescued me, but was later attacked at a road checkpoint, right in front of me, for listening to music. I felt so helpless. (I should probably call him). The whole dream was really invasive.

Lately I've been practicing making non-prescriptive, non-judgmental observations. I'm typically pretty attune to others (though, I certainly have my failures), but I'm pretty lousy at letting my own self just-be, at letting my own self feel whatever it is that I am feeling without feeling badly for feeling badly, and without holding onto Joy that is not mine to have--just to experience. And right now I'm in the midst of a shift, I think: one that I cannot fully understand, which makes it hard. I do not mind external challenges (or even carrying intense feelings/emotions internally) as long as I can understand them somehow.

I felt crazy Saturday night. I literally had six invitations to do six different things with six different people but for some reason none of them felt right. I think I just wanted to stay in and get work done, but then I felt guilty for that--like: it's a Saturday and it's the first week back, there must be something wrong with me if I do not feel like being around people. (Which is ridiculous, right? We're all entitled to feeling introspective). And suddenly I felt like a visitor and I felt really lonely for no real reason and it wasn't until I skyped Dale and verbalized it that I was able to recognize how silly and broody it all sounded. He's right: I'm just always diving for lobsters.

Then, yesterday evening, out of no where, my period started--10 days early. And I laughed because suddenly I was able to understand it all: the emotions, the sleeplessness, the acute tingling numbness in my fingers and toes...
I think I'm just a super-sensitive listener when it comes to my body. I can't drink caffeine--not even a single glass of green tea--without feeling jived at night, and stiff in the morning. And I try to pretty consciously recognize shifts in hormones that truly do effect my feelings (without apologizing for those shifts/feelings), but this time I didn't see it coming.

I do not know where this is going, really, except to point to the obvious: human bodies are magical (but confusing) things.


musing on bodies//feelings. by Leslie Albanese is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

diving for lobsters

relentlessly.
every time.

(Will I ever stop taking myself so seriously?)

photo by Leslie Albanese is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

sound to touch like music to feel.

I'm just going to go ahead and project that Arcade Fire made last.fm's #1 most played for 2010. Either way, they're my #1.

Hearing Arcade Fire for the first time was like learning what music could be for the first time. It was my Freshman year in high school (so sometime '04-'05?). Dale was home (either already on OU's big holiday break, or for a weekend or something), and he, Frances, and I were driving his beat-up white Geo down Rt. 736, playing Neighborhood #2 (Laika). I think I owe my fascination with Régine Chassagne to Adam Torres (Adam, I don't know I ever told you that?), who likely introduced Dale to Arcade Fire in the first place. Hell, Adam, I think you introduced Dale to Southeast Engine, Joanna Newsom, and Neutral Milk Hotel, too-- who were all passed down to me through him around the same time. In a weird way, those 4 artists + oddly enough, Roman Catholicism, were what kept me strong for some of the hardest things I've faced to-date (all of which sort of compounded in those early years).

Funny--I've watched my musical tastes refine subtly each year--in high school I was jamming out to a lot more Brit-pop and a lot less banjo--but those 4 artists (plus a few others--Ryan Adams, Modest Mouse, & the old-folkys I inherited from my folks) have remained constants for a really long time...

Drew and I had a conversation about music the other day, and about "staying on top of the scene" so-to-speak, and I've gotta say: as much as I love discovering new music (it's a hell of a feeling), part of me doesn't mind humbly playing and re-playing the same familiar artists I've been in love with forever. Music isn't an image. It shouldn't be exploited to project some status of "hip-ness." Music is a feeling. It's always been a feeling.

Actually I listened to an old Radiolab the other day on Musical Language (which--side note--did a fascinating re-visit of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring), and in the episode this psychologist, Anne Fernald, describes sound as touch. Science confirms it: hearing is the act of sound vibrations touching our ears in different places, at different frequencies. I guess, internally, I took it a step further (the podcast doesn't go here, but it could, I think):
If touch is the action that gives the result of feeling (like looking is the action that results in sight, for example)-- and if sound is touch...
wouldn't music be the feeling that results from the action of touching (sound)?

It doesn't really work when you analyze it, I guess. That's the funny part. Feelings shouldn't be deconstructed by literary devises or critical theory--

(oh, this is a head/heart thing, isn't it?)

sound to touch by Leslie Albanese is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.