4 posts tagged “sleater-kinney”

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1971, Harper). I sat outside the Beehive next to two women kanoodling over coffee and an unopened copy of Potter. I was reading Sylvia Plath with Sleater-Kinney blaring through my ear buds. I am Jack's riot grrrl lesbian sister. Tomorrow, I'm auditioning for a Heavens to Betsy tribute band.

I kid. Sort of.

I'm struggling with what I want to say about this book. You don't need me to tell you it's a spectacular piece of writing. It is feminist canon for a reason. It is also, perhaps, one of the most brilliant recollections of mental illness and depression. Plath is also witty and wry and wonderful.

Her Esther, and Plath by extension, would be a chore of a person to care about but I'd like to think I'd get her. Not that it would help anything.

[I've written and deleted a paragraph here three times. We're going to leave it deleted and start fresh.]

Suicide has been a prominent part of my life. I get those who ponder and attempt it. They call and announce their pain. They, generally, don't want to end their lives. They want help. Or to be heard. Whether doing suicide hotline in college or with friends and family in extremely hard times, those people have reached out to me.

Those who are successful at suicide...don't. They dissapear. They simply show up dead.

The two times I've felt intimately involved with someone who has committed suicide, I perceived them as intelligent and special as Esther is written. They saw the world differently. They found absurdity in what most of us consider normalcy. Their response to seemingly "normal" situations were generally so far outside expectation as to be both mesmerizing and often insufferable.

They also had incredible bouts of sadness and solitude. They came up with extreme ways to solve what they considered to be the problems of their lives and the world. They failed to get their desired changes at every turn.

And then they were gone.

I have a friend like that right now. This is her favorite book. She's the reason I read it.

And, I worry.

I wouldn't ever want to be trapped in the bell jar but it's not much easier being on the outside of it either unable to uncork it, smash it, or otherwise break free.

For the insight into what that mindset might be like alone, it is highly recommended.

For the style and skill with which Plath composes her signature work, it is a must.

Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time by Rob Sheffield (Crown, 2007). I sat in Lulu's Beehive this morning with my coffee and banana bundt amongst a sea of laptops, a painting of ducks that looked suspiciously like a picture in my own flickr photostream, and a friend's ex-boyfriend with another girl I knew but couldn't place. While I wasn't the only one with white buds in my ears, I was the only person cracking the spine of a book. The women that kept walking into the cafe were all cleavage and caffeine and cigarettes and a welcome distraction from the chapters about grief in this love letter to music and marriage and life. I kept catching myself staring too long at these ladies and thought, either I need to get laid or get loved.

Probably both.

I kind of hate Rob Sheffield for making me feel like all the relationships I've had in the past have been inadequate. I have never loved anyone like he loved his Renee. He doesn't even hide the feelings he had for her in ebullient metaphor or shlocky hyperbole. He just tells it like it is and it is wonderful and amazing and way shorter than it had any right to be. While I did blow through  the chapters focused on his loss and his dealing (or not dealing) because I don't quite have the emotional armor right now to handle more mourning, it's a beautiful love story all explained in terms I totally get -- song lyrics and beats and all the feelings and emotions that we associate with music.

There's probably a mix tape of my own that will come out of this that includes "Symptom Finger" by the Faint, "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)" by The Arcade Fire, "Mushaboom (Postal Service Remix)" by Feist, "One More Hour" by Sleater-Kinney, "Keeping You Alive" by The Gossip, "Misread" by Kings of Convenience, and "Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime" by Beck, almost all of which acted as my soundtrack this morning. Somehow, I don't own nor don't think I have ever even heard "One More Hour" by Sleater-Kinney and it is the one song he goes into detail about in the book that I want to know everything about. I can imagine the track in my head by his description. I can hear Carrie and Corin going back and forth. I've already attached an emotional response to it. I will love it. Even if I was deaf, I would love it.

Sheffield goes into great detail about the significance of Nirvana on his life and, in particular, "Heart-Shaped Box". I decided while reading that I'd add Joe Hill's (Stephen King's son) recent debut novel of the same name to my queue. While reading, I aped a line of his that he stole from some outfit a member of Pavement was wearing for a twitter message. I took down quotes, one for me that's a truth I'm going to keep for myself about love and loss and fear and the real agreement that people make to each other when they go into a commitment like marriage and one for you:

"Most mix tapes are CDs now, yet people still call them mix tapes."

There's a reason for that. I leave it to you to figure out why.

Highly recommended.

This isn't a proper music video, it's a selection from Burn to Shine 03 and it is maybe my favorite S-K song and I think it's better than both Entertain and Jumpers, the official videos from The Woods.

Sleater-Kinney 4-Eva!