Sometimes my snap judgments are totally stupid and prevent me from experiencing lots of beauty, saying I don't like Antony and the Johnsons for the past year just because I really did not enjoy their video for "Hope There's Someone," saying it perhaps just to have an opinion on the matter and fortifying that opinion by my behavior just for the sake of consistency, so never actually listening to him in any serious fashion, but man, to everyone I told that I didn't like them, I understand if you thought that I was an idiot or had bad taste or no soul, because you would have to not to appreciate this album, I Am a Bird Now.
Adele bought the LP yesterday and it was playing when I got home from work, from leaving work early and walking home from the subway in the start of what was supposed to be a big snowfall, but turned out to be nothing. The snow was falling in front of streetlights and I was already revising something I had been saying earlier like a jerk, that I hated it when it snowed, because who could not be moved to glee at the start of snow and seeing it pass in front of sources of light and gently falling on you and thinking of earlier moments in your life when this, falling snow and the likelihood of no school gave free reign to your desire to play and to live, when all this is stirred again by the sight of snowfall it renders all that earlier tough talk a lie, a silly, silly lie.
I came out of this snow already so happy and so sad and so everything all at once and this album was playing and like my earlier back pedaling of what I had said about snow, I realized that this is such a perfect sound and it made me so happy, seemed the perfect soundtrack to that moment. I was, in fact, said when she changed it after it was over to play another record she had got that day. There is this one song, "Fistful of Love," that I have been playing over and over again today. It is so fucking beautiful I don't even know how to go about talking about, other than that it has me alternately swaying around my living room, slow dancing with myself, in love with the feel of how these new pants Jamie gave me hang off my hips, from that to sitting and eyes watering trying to sing along with it. It builds so perfectly from this slow song to this slow song with horns and it is so magical, so this melancholy soul song. It is like so many things I have heard before, but like so many things I have heard before and loved.
Last night, I tried to play Risk with Adele and Gregg, and though I had been so excited about playing this game for the first time, no one knew how to play and no one was really eager enough to learn how to, and so the game ended right after we had set up the board, everyone giving up all at once. Gregg took some pictures of my bedroom and then some of me, and I was so uncomfortable and pained during this because I am comfortable in my own skin until I become aware of it. Until a camera is pointed at me or someone talks close to me and insists on making eye contact. You may have noticed this, but when I talk to people most openly, I don't look directly at them. Sometimes I hate the fact that we have these human bodies. I don't like that I have to feed it to be comfortable, that I can't read sometimes because my hunger distracts me, don't like that my skin frustrates me, don't really like any part of it until I am dancing or until I get a boner and play with that.
The Princeton Review ran out of work last night and they don't get their next shipments of tests in for a week. They may call some people into work before then, so hopefully I will be one of those, but otherwise, now I am forced to worry again about my finances. Because now this next paycheck will be less than half of what I thought it would be, which is going to make paying rent a struggle and means I am going to have to live more frugally right as I was about to go on a spending spree with this week's paycheck, ignoring rent and buying things I really want, and instead paying with my next check. The list I had been making in my notebook, like a little Christmas list, me being my own Santa and Christmas being this pay day, this Thursday: one of those Italian stovetop coffee makers that make really thick brews, a nice winter jacket, boots for when it snows, a monthly subway card, the year end Artforum, a humidifier, more jazz records from The Thing, tickets to see Grizzly Bear this Friday. Really, the only necessary thing in there is the subway card, and if I didn't get all those other things, rent would not be too much of a problem this month, but ugh, how I want them, and how less special this early Christmas/payday will be - it will be just a bunch of ill fitting clothes I never plan on wearing, one of those Christmases.
Today was sunny and the little bits of snow on rooftops around me glowed and everything looked so beautiful from these windows with this record playing and this Philip Roth book I am reading.
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