Holly Selph

Valentunes Day

  I love you. Ok, not really. I might not even know you, but even if I don’t know you, I might love you if I did. Or maybe I do know you and do love you. In that case, I’m not kidding. For you, I doodle stars on the backs of receipts with glitter ink when we talk on the phone. I spin in circles the minute we part until I am almost as dizzy as I am when I am with you. I give the olives from my drink to you even though I love olives too. I will play the low part of heart and soul, even though I like playing the high part better. I will glue maps of all the states between us together in case you ever want to find me. Or, I will meet you halfway. Even if halfway is the middle of nowhere, I will learn the difference between beefsteak and heirloom tomatoes, and then we will grow your favorite. I will answer your call at seven in the morning, even on a Saturday, so you can tell me the embarrassing thing that happened on your date. I will have a sandwich ready-- pimento cheese with mayo, lightly toasted and folded in half--when you walk in my door. We can have white wine, I don’t mind. Let me fetch you some ice cubes. I will buy you a cupcake, even though you can make your own for twenty-five cents. I will tell you the truth. I'll lie to you. Both at the right times. And, mostly, I’ll give you whatever part of my body you most need: a hand, a shoulder, an ear, lips, an elbow, eyelashes. And, if you seem kind and willing to tolerate indecisiveness at restaurants, my heart.

Usually, for me, one of the following two thoughts is provoked by Valentine's Day:  A) Why didn’t you send me roses, you cheap bastard? or B) Ugh. You sent roses. Now I have to pretend to like them, you sentimental sap. However, I think I will celebrate this year by offering Valentines in the form of songs, dedicated to ones who in some form I love: eros, philia, or agape.

Akron/Family- Love, Love, Love.  This one goes out to all of you, because we all should go out and love, love, love, everyone. Wouldn’t this place be nicer? Wouldn’t you be less lonely? Think how much easier merging on the highway would be. We could all just get where we were going without the mess. Just cars and love driving around, less horn honking and more “oh, look! birds are migrating up there. Must be time rake the leaves so we can take turns jumping in them.”

Simon & Garfunkel- April Come She Will.  This is for The Graduate, from the soundtrack. He is forever in my mind a solar system, little elliptical planets marching in line. I note the alliteration. He counts the syllables. All of them are inhabited by goldfish, palm trees, and out of the ground, string cheese grows like grass. All the moons are nice, but I am the goodnightest of them all.

You & Me- Dave Matthews Band. The way I see it, you are Goldilocks and I am Snow White. We’d be friends, but you’d be unsatisfied with the temperature of porridge while I’d be off eating bad apples. We’re fairy tale opposites, but if you & me unite forces, I think we could take this world by storm. I’ll help you get rid of all the things that are too big and too small until everything is just right if you’ll come along with me and these little guys. Help me find Prince Charming and get out of this glass coffin, and I’ll totally hook you up with Sneezy. Either way, there’s a lot of strange bears in this world. Let’s us stick together, you & me, want to?

 R.E.M. - Why Not Smile.  You sat with me for a long time. You sat with me so long that we started off in coats, then stripped to sundresses and flip flops, and then put back on our coats and shivered with our wine. Now, I will sit with you through all the seasons the world can try to conjure, even if there are new ones that require moon suits or meteor shower umbrellas. I can build an ark, and an igloo, and I can start a fire using just my fingertips and some matches. You’ll smile again. I won’t make you. You just will, all by yourself. But, until then, and thereafter, I’m pulling up a chair.

Indigo Girls- Lay My Head Down.  We’ve had enough red carpets, champagne, and flashbulbs. I’m ready to retire. All I need now is giant bed, some blankets, a television, someone to stoke the fire, and your head on a pillow next to mine. I’ll pour cheap wine if you grab the potato chips. Once we’re full, we’ll order pizza. Sometimes you can run off with a handsome man, but I know you’ll be back with me in the morning on a stack of mattresses, wanting a pair of socks and a swig of pickle juice. You and me, we’re the only solid things in this room.

Joshua Radin- Star Mile.  I made the mistake of having two glasses of wine while writing numbers 1-5. And here I am, at number six. The good news is, you’re more afraid of reading this than I am of writing it. The good news is, if even after an entire year, you still don’t have a clue, I gave up long ago for you to get one. But, I can tell you where it is. If you turn to page 86, there is just one sentence and it is in this song. If you turn to page 57, there is another sentence and it is in the adventure I almost chose. But you won’t see me there. I am invisible. Invincible. Invisible.

Jack’s Mannequin- Swim.  One summer at midnight, we took off our clothes and dove into a pool. Only you and me. The others were too cold, too old, too sober. We dove for pence and dragged a life saver deeper and deeper to the bottom of the pool, determined to balance it by standing on top, underwater. It was a mission, and we considered ourselves champions at making something that was meant to float, drown. We kept our heads above water the whole time. We didn’t drown. We ran all the way back home barefoot on the concrete, towels wrapped around us like wings, things meant to fly but, oh, gravity, kept us down.

Tom Waits- I Wish I Was in New Orleans.  I beg your pardon, and cannot drink you under the table. But, you know, as long as we’re talking about what’s under the table, I’ll leave it like this: your socks probably have stripes. I probably have on high heels, maybe those black strappy ones. I bet I dropped my napkin, and it’s down there too. Someone probably sat here before us and dropped a coin or a crumb.  I’m not looking at any of that, though.

Tunesday, Part One Year Ago

Aimee Mann- Phoenix.  At this exact time last year, I was dancing with a golden retriever to Elvis' version of  Unchained Melody. I was supposed to be packing, but all I could do was dance around the living room knowing that I'd never see my dog again. The yogurt in the refrigerator was dated to expire after me. I felt sorry for it. It had so much hope. It was purchased by a girl who believed she would outlast it. I remember when he booked my flight home; he was on the phone: "February 12th. Phoenix to Atlanta," he said, and then, "just one way." He looked at me, shook his head, and mouthed, "so sad."  He chose this day because the 13th was a Friday, notoriously unlucky, and because the day after that was Valentine's, notoriously cruel to the unexpectedly single. I remember exactly what I wore February 12th, 2009 while I waited for him to change his mind. In a black dress, an orange coat, and a yellow handbag, I drank a beer on the patio underneath the orange tree and waited for him to walk outside and say something different. I brought my suitcase downstairs and when he looked up from his work, I waited for him to realize this was real and say something different. In the car, I waited for him to turn around and take me back home. On the plane, I pressed my forehead to the window and watched everything get small. I looked at the bottom of Camelback Mountain for a man with his arms outstretched to the sky waving for me to come back down.

Sean Hayes- Fucked Me Right Up.  So, maybe there is a theme. Every night for weeks, months, maybe, friends showed up at my house, often unannounced. They lit candles on my porch. They poured wine. They tossed packs of cigarettes at me and then held a flame to my lips. Indulge, they said, without saying anything. Sometimes, we laughed. Sometimes, mostly just the girls, they cried with me. Sometimes, no one said a word and the only sounds were exhalations, a glass setting down on the table, eyes shifting from one to the other before landing on the ground at a bottle cap, the moon, a shirt sleeve where a thread had unraveled and become the most important thing in the world.

The Mountain Goats- Moon Over Goldsboro.  It is February, 2008. Ryan and I are having breakfast before he flies back to Phoenix from Atlanta. He has been visiting for the weekend, and we are in our last hours.“I don’t speak pancake slang,” he says. I look up at him. He is studying the menu, genuinely perplexed.  Fortunately, I can speak this language, and I translate the meaning of breakfast for him as simply as I can: Breakfast is not the beginning, but the end. Breakfast is when you’ve made up your mind about everything and the only remaining choices in life are between the following species of pancakes: ww pancakes (whole wheat, for those who wish to live long, but enjoy nothing), bb pancakes (blueberry, for those who would rather have any answer, even the wrong one, than allow a question to dangle leaf-like in the air), cc pancakes (chocolate chip, for those who climb mountains for the thing at the top, those who expect cherries, and those who break promises.) In the end, we both choose toast. Sourdough. I eat everything but the crusts. He notices and exclaims, “good job with your toast.” This, I recognized, is bread slang, and means something that can only be translated with a cello.

Clem Snide- Beard of Bees.  Here is the good news: Anything happens. Anything happens with or without you. Anything happens when you’re having a beer with a venture capitalist at a bar. Anything happens on a Tuesday morning when you walk into a tattoo shop on 2nd street and shake hands with Hector. Anything happens when you kiss the boy you loved when you were seventeen. Anything happens when you just sit with three girls and don’t watch football. Anything happens in New Orleans at the same time anything is happening all they way in Paris. Anything happens in the sky, just as anything is happening on the ground. The trick is not trying to make anything the shape of something else. That’s not a man waving down there by the mountain, after all. But it is a nice tree, a palm, and it was having a grand time with the wind.

Annuals- Brother.  My brother is now almost as tall as a skyscraper, but he’s much kinder than one. When we were young, a zig-zagged bathroom adjoined our bedrooms. A secret tunnel! When we would fight, our parents would separate us by sending us to our rooms, and one of us--usually Alex--would quietly sneak through the secret tunnel, knock and sorrowfully apologize for the hair pulling or the name calling or the usurpation of the remote control. Whomever apologized was always forgiven and the hours that followed were a joyful reconciliation during which we happily shared everything. “No, you can be He Man, and I will be Skeletor. I insist!” Once, during such a bout of camaraderie,  Alex burst into my bedroom with a green marker and wrote, AH! on my white door. This, he explained, was our initials and also spelled,  AAAHHHH! A genius discovery! The graffiti was our secret until I got in trouble for something. My father stood in my doorway scolding me and before I could swallow it I burst, “Alex wrote on my door with marker, and it won’t come off!” My father promptly forgot about my infraction, walked down the hallway and Alex, caught quite off-guard, was punished. When I walked through the secret tunnel to apologize, he was unready to accept. This was not the worst part of the betrayal. For the following two years, when caught doing something I ought not, I blurted, “Alex wrote on my wall!” and pointed furiously to the door. It was magic. Our father would instantly forget that I had done anything wrong, and he’d head down the hallway to Alex’s room and once again, lecture him about not drawing on the walls. When Alex would try to explain that he’s already been scolded for this, my father would remind not to interrupt. I’ve confessed this since, but I did try unsuccessfully to use it once more when I dropped out of college. I’ve walked through the secret tunnel and apologized, and have been mercifully forgiven, but let this be my public apology. I’m so sorry, Alex! I will play Monopoly with you, and I won’t cheat this time or make fun of when you do something dumb like let me trick you into trading Baltic for Boardwalk. You can even be the little dog! I will be the thimble.  AH!

Tunesday, Part Thursday

Do you know who I am not going to talk about glowingly? Animal Collective. Their 2009 release, Merriweather Post Pavilion, was given the top spot on every Best of the Year list on every indie music blog I read except for one, who boldly reduced them to number two. I downloaded a few tracks months ago, and I have tried to like it. I tried so hard that I was bordering on neurosis. What is wrong with me? Do I have a soul? Why does it hurt my teeth to listen to this? I can appreciate experimental music. I like The Books and Akron/Family, two bands that some of my friends refuse to classify as music. I realize at least a few of you are shaking your heads while I make the auditory equivalent of standing dumbly at a Jackson Pollack: This isn't art. A five year old could have done it.  Well, so be it. The optical illusion on the cover could be cool if it didn't serve to add to the pretentious message of the entire album: utter inaccessibility that accuses the listener of vapidity. Next time someone wants to subject music to an existential crisis, be innovative. Spare us. Say it with silence.

Music that will not hurt your teeth:

1. Fun.- All the Pretty Girls.  A few months ago, I was sitting at a bar in Atlanta with my friend, Brittany. At the time, she was seeing a guy who was running sound for Fun.  They were playing at The Drunken Unicorn and he suggested we go to the show, but we were camped out with Bloody Marys and declined. I regret this decision almost as much as I regret the time I ate a lemon Starburst while hanging upside down. This song recently won an Independent Music Award for best pop/rock song. If that weren't cool enough, one of the judges was Tom Waits. Lots of instruments. Lots of harmony. More fun than a noseful of candy. 

2. Midlake- Bandits.  Midlake  just released a new album, The Courage of Others, this year. After reading reviews that said their previous release was their masterpiece, I bought the whole thing. It's gorgeous. I am so in love with this band, I want to write them letters with a quill feather by candlelight. I want to bake them cakes that taste like Jethro Tull. I want to pull up a log around whatever fire they've built in the woods and pass around a bottle of whiskey and name the shapes in the smoke. Pieces of this song are symphonic, then layered harmonies reminiscent of Crosby, Stills, and Nash build into a crescendo replaced by an electric guitar solo, and then back to one lone voice, a flute, and a story. I want to go weave something now.

3. The Magnetic Fields- You Must Be Out of Your Mind.  Stephin Merritt is one of my favorite songwriters. None of his songs sound alike, but once you get the hang of The Magnetic Fields, you'll know one when you hear one. I'm partial to the three volume album 69 Love Songs about which Merritt has said, "69 Love Songs is not remotely an album about love. It's an album about love songs, which are very far away from anything to do with love." This song is from their latest album, Realism, released last month. This song is jangly. You'll be able to sing along during your second listen. That's not a bad thing. If you're unfamiliar with this band, and decide to venture into their catalog, be forewarned. You are going to think WTF a few times, in letter form. You will involuntarily clap your hands, grin, and think, “what the fuck?” in unabbreviated form. I dare you to close the curtains, put on, "For We Are the Kings of the Boudoir" and not do a Medieval dance. Not that I did.

Sufjan Stevens- Chicago.  Paste Magazine  named the album Illinois the best album of the decade. I am so proud of them for this. I have nothing against U2 or Radiohead, but seriously, lie down, Rolling Stone, and roll over. I picked this song because it is quintessential Sufjan, but this album is so good, he put out a whole other album of the outtakes from this album, and it is just as pleasing. Included are three other versions of this song: the acoustic version, the adult easy listening contemporary version, and multiple personality disorder version. There is a song on Illinois called, “They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back from the Dead!! Ahhhh!" Yes, I had to copy and paste that. 

Deer Tick- Smith Hill.  You’re in a small, unfamiliar town in Pennsylvania, just passing through, but not sure where you are going to end up. After hours on the road, you book a room at a motel with a neon vacancy sign. Next door is the only bar in town. Outside are motorcycles and trucks with American flags peeling from the bumpers. You walk in, sit in a booth alone. Bearded locals are drinking domestic draught with cherry pie at the bar. A yellow-skinned chain-smoking man is playing pool with a woman who has a faded tattoo on her calf. You stare out the window. Your beer arrives in a mug. This song comes on, and in unison, the bar patrons begin to sway back and forth, knocking their glasses together. The sorrow of it all becomes celebration. Everyone sings along. It is an anthem. When it’s over, you look away from the window. No one has moved, and you wonder if you were swaying back and forth, sloshing beer to your left and right, cheersing the stale air, and even if you were, did anyone notice?

Deer Tick- Friday XIII.  Same band, only in this song the singer conjures Johnny Cash, if Johnny Cash drank a shot of Kevn Kinney on the rocks, and by rocks, I mean actual gravel. Liz Isenberg sings June to his Johnny. 

P.S. I know it’s not Tuesday.

Tunesday

I grew up in a home where I was often rudely awoken by repetitive scales played on a grand piano. Once her hands were warmed up and I was storming up the stairs, my mother would have moved on to Chopin. I would know my parents were going to the symphony when the hallway smelled of perfume. While my mother finished dressing, my father would play Rachmaninoff. This was the sound of playful impatience. I learned how to fall asleep even when the windows were buzzing from my brother practicing  drums. Once we were teenagers, there was a constant flow of boys in shaggy hair and flannel shirts marching up and down the stairs carrying amps and guitars. They’d play Nirvana for hours, stopping only to smoke cigarettes. Sometimes neighbors who lived a quarter of a mile down the street would say to my parents, “Alex is really getting good!” One summer, an unmarked police car staked out the house for weeks. There was so much constant coming and going of suspicious looking teenaged boys and pretty girls, I think neighbors thought we were running a drug ring. In a way, we were. Down in the cave of the basement, under fluorescent lights, music was growing up the walls.

Since I am the black note in my family, I spend an immoderate amount of time hunting for perfect songs. I read music blogs. I subscribe to several podcasts that send me free mp3s daily. I’m almost ready for my own radio station. I can’t play music, but if you could hear what I compose in my head, you’d want to take that Grammy away from Taylor Swift and hand it to me. Thus, I’ve decided to share my musical findings with you. Every Tuesday, I will offer you a small, well-groomed list of songs. Also, is an iTunes media player from which you can listen to a clip and purchase the songs I’ve jammed about.

Without further ado, here is your first communion:

Beach House- Zebra.  Once I lived inside a soda bottle. The glass was thick and vaguely green. Shapes in the world were either very small or very large. Sometimes I would see eyes the size of moons peer inside, but no one let me out. One day, someone turned the bottle upside down and I tumbled out, a little sticky, but otherwise unharmed. I didn’t fall in love with him at first, but then he pointed to a skyscraper and said, “one day we will dance up at the very top and we won’t be afraid.” He always wore green jeans until he gave them to me, and said, “always remember me.” I do. We never danced on top of the skyscraper, but if we did, it would be to this song. Him in green jeans, me in soda pop.

 Elvis Perkins in Dearland- 123 Goodbye.  I saw this band hours after I had landed in New Orleans. Elvis Perkins is the son of Anthony Perkins. His mother was killed in one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11th. He opened his show by saying, “let’s get this one over with” and then he played this song. He keeps trying to say goodbye. Ready? 1, 2, 3...I’m going to really do it this time. Eventually, he does. Eventually, we all do. It isn’t easy, is it. 

The Low Anthem- Charlie Darwin. This album, Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, is the product of 23 instruments, many of which you’ve never heard,  passed between three people. One of them is a NASA technician and classical composer, another is a folk musician and painter, and the other is a Jazz bassist and baseball scholar. Intrigued? Buy the whole album. Right now. Then, go to NPR and watch them play live. During “This God Damn House” one of them puts down a horn, dials one cell phone from another, whistles and moves them closer and further apart to create reverb that somehow sounds completely organic and entirely otherworldy. Genius.

The Long Winters- The Commander Thinks Aloud. When the Challenger exploded, I was in third grade. I had just done a report on Christa McAuliffe. She was my hero. The television my teacher had rolled into the room was malfunctioning. She was pressing the buttons and checking the plugs when the principle came in and took her into the hallway. When she came back, she was crying. By the time they brought in a working televison, the space shuttle was reduced to smoke. This song is about the Challenger disaster. Listen to it in the car, driving fast, windows down, and loud.

5. Pearl Jam- The End.  I almost waited a few weeks to add this. If I had, you would know enough of my musical sensibility to be surprised that I’d include a Pearl Jam song. I loved them when I was sixteen. Ten had just come out, and they had the two o’clock slot at Lollapalooza. During Black, Eddie Vedder  disappeared from the stage. Someone near me pointed to the sound wall at the back of the lawn. There was Eddie, standing on top, thousands of people away from the stage. He stretched his arms out, and as the crowd gathered, fell backwards into their arms. I got an elbow. He floated on top of a sea of people and then was lifted back on stage where he finished the song. That was the most rock and roll moment of my life, the trust it took for him to fall like that, to be carried by strangers who could have taken him anywhere. It was performance art. I was sixteen. Everything had meaning. But, then I fell off the sound wall.  A few of my friends are still die hard Pearl Jam fans and have urged me to listen to Backspacer. Yesterday, I heard this song for the first time. It didn’t take me back to my adolescence. Pearl Jam is relevant now. I should have known, Eddie, to trust you with my ears like you trusted me with your elbow in the summer of ‘93. 

If you have a suggestion of something I should include in Tunesdays to come, feel free to email me at love@hollyselph.com . 

How To Play the Saxophone

Recently, I had a saxophone hanging from my neck. I realize this sounds as though I was soaping up in the shower one morning, looked down, and discovered I’d sprouted a brass wind instrument overnight, but this is how I recall it, sans soap and water. I wasn't sure what I was expected to do with it. It was too heavy to wear as a necklace, and couldn’t possibly qualify as a musical instrument if I'm the one blowing into it.

I had a Real Live Musician™ instructing me, so I did as told as best as I could.  I put my fingers on the "pretty ivory colored things"(I'm five in musician years), wet the reed with my lips, and blew. This resulted in a sound usually heard when whales mate, only not quite as sexy. 

I know enough guitar chords to play Bob Dylan songs. On top of that I know two others. I can read music, given the time to point to a note and mouth, "Every Good Boy Does Fine." When I was six, I gave a violin performance at the mall. And last but not least, I share 50% of my DNA with a drummer. I should be able to rock the sax. Right?

Apparently, it's a little more complicated than that. One must properly wet the reed with her tongue, pull her lips around her teeth and apply just the right amount of pressure before she begins to blow. Simultaneously, her fingers must press the right buttons at the right time. The experience  served mostly to make me question my abilities in other areas, but I figured I must have learned something. Those who can't do, teach, yes?

This is a lesson in playing the sax, no musical ability required:

1. Make your lips the shape of kissing something dangerous: a palm tree, an octopus, someone you can never have.

2. Wrap them around the mouthpiece as if keeping something fragile safe in the cave of your mouth: a butterfly, a secret, someone you love enough to have, but no longer want.

3.  Embouchure: The most difficult part is in believing that air has pitch without the application of your vocal cords. Think of the last time you actually made a wish over a cake filled with a number of candles. Think of the wish has having tone. Think of the last time you blew all the fur from a dandelion. It's lower, that note, than a wish. Now think of making fog on a window. This note is almost soprano, but not as much as, say, the air of relief. 

4.  Force: Don't just exhale. Exhale with faith that you no longer need your arms. They are now their own entities, annelid, and can function independent of you. Let go of the handlebars or the reigns or the other things you've lead them to believe are necessary to the survival of your balance. On the contrary, do not blow as you would into a balloon. Attempting to manipulate the shape of a saxophone is an insult. The relationship should be symbiotic. Don’t give up your shape, either.

5.  The remaining instructions are technicalities like, "put your fingers on the pretty-colored ivory things." I know nothing beyond this point except that it must involve naming the lines and interpreting the spaces between them, that sharps and flats are likely involved and this complicates rumored truths like Every Good Boy Does Fine.

6. This has been a lesson in making sound out of air, something out of nothing. If you expected to actually be able to play music, I apologize for misleading you. However, if you are anything like me, you have been wondering what to do should you ever encounter a saxophone in the middle of the road. This is your first chord:

Greet it like a stranger who might one day love you, like a lover you will walk away from once you've become, from yourself, estranged, like a friend you keep by never telling him who you really are.