By the Way

I just rediscovered Built to Spill's cover of "By the Way," a gorgeous Heavenly song. I'm not sure which version I prefer, except to say that the Built to Spill version has this whine to it, this sadness and need that doesn't quite come across when I listen to Heavenly.

I've been thinking about music a lot lately. Listening to Kaia in bed a few nights ago, I was reminded of high school -- lying in my old twin bed, my walkman resting on my stomach while I listened to mix tapes, mainly songs by Kaia, Tattle Tale (fuzzy sounding and always, always cut off), the Butchies ("Heartfelt" from Are We Not Femme?), and "Fuck It" by Delta Dart, whose tapes I would order through an Australian zine distro. But Kaia, always Kaia. I remember hearing "That's Mr. Baby to You" for the first time, long before I would even understand how much it really meant, hearing her say, "It’s gonna take so much time to undo what you did to me and this is a big fuck you for every name and every shot you took." It was something I needed to hear, just like I needed to hear Tattle Tale singing about recovery from sexual assault (for years that line from "Erica" was all I could think about, wrote it over and over in my journals and on myself, sweated it off when I was trying to escape my own skin) and Kathleen Hanna singing about the importance of living, of continuing to live. When I am alone in the car, when I'm feeling homesick, when I am scared or sad or angry, I still hear those songs, still draw on them, find myself singing, "Does that mean my body must always be a source of pain? No, no, no, no, no, no, no," reminding myself, that it is possible "[to turn] cursive letters into knives."

When I was in high school, I wanted to give these songs to people, wanted to show them these sounds because I could not, would not, and still won't tell them about myself. But I still draw on memories, seeing Bonfire Madigan in high school, walking home from downtown Willoughby after a night that I thought might be signaling the beginning of something singing "Carrie's Song" by Tiger Trap, and I guess I don't know why I'm writing this except for the fact that I'm seeing Mirah next weekend and Kaia at the end of the month and all day, all week, all of my life since I was 15 years old has been too tiring and too complicated