Moods – Goofy

Have you ever been in one of those goofy moods where seemingly everything is funny? Where you feel more hyperactive than normal, and all you want to do is have a good time? Yeah, I get those sometimes. When such a thing happens, I usually try to encourage that mood with an equally goofy soundtrack. More often than not, that means I’m going to pop in The Sunlandic Twins by Of Montreal. But in the interest of variety, I’ve assembled what I feel is playlist that is goofy enough to stand on its own. Hopefully it will keep you in that goofy mood of yours.

Moods – Depressed

There’s a difference between being sad and being depressed, and that mostly has to do with the state of mind of the individual. You see, when you’re sad, you typically want to be happy. However, when you’re depressed it often means that you’re more than willing to stay in that state of depression. Of course, I’m speaking specifically of the “teenage angst” form of depression and not the more serious medical condition.

So for all those teens out there who are willfully depressed for the attention they receive, here is a playlist to feed that depression. Just what Dr. Cale ordered! There are some songs to make you numb, some that make you angry, but all of them should do the trick!

Moods – Jumbled

Sure signs there’s a problem: the glazed look in one’s eyes, the mumbling, the clear look of trying to figure something out. The questions and comments randomly thrown out there: is it? Isn’t it? Which way what? How did you…” I don’t get it. I followed the directions but it still doesn’t work. I don’t understand what you’re talking about. Can you run that by me again? You’re not making any sense. I just don’t get it. *^#$&! (times about 100). Maybe if the directions were a little more elaborate. Just tell me what’s going on.

Jumbled happens about fifty times a day for me and I imagine for everyone else too. There’s no good explination for it, usually. I’m either not paying attention, not paying enough attention, don’t care, not listening, don’t want to do it whatever it is, have forgotten something important, or it’s someone else’s fault. Sometimes it can be a problem and sometimes it ends with a “Eh, whatever” or a victorious “OH! I got it!” Either way, it works itself out and I’m free to move on to the next endevour. Whatever it is, though, it leaves me in a state. One where words lack, my mind won’t stop spinning at a million miles an hour and allow me to focus, and I hit the “forward” button halfway through each song that iTunes spits out for me because it just doesn’t fit my mood.

Jumbled, as defined by Websters:

1. to mix in a confused mass; put or throw together without order
2. to confuse mentally; muddle.
3. to be mixed together in a disorderly heap or mass.
4. to meet or come together confusedly.
5. a mixed or disordered heap or mass
6. a confused mixture; medley.
7. a state of confusion or disorder.

Fitting for the day and for the exact mood I’m in, a play list built from hitting the forward button…because sometimes jumbled just happens…

Moods – Forgotten

Coming up towards the end of our salute to Alternative Rock, I flip idly through the records I keep of every MP3, cd, and vinyl album I have. Thousands upon thousands of listings, in alphabetical order of course, serve to remind me of something: there’s a lot of forgotten music in the Alternative genre.

They come to me in snippets sometimes, these songs that I always catch the tail end of while flipping radio channels or when I catch “Pretty In Pink” on some forgotten cable channel. I always had much love for Iona and could never buy into the idea that James Spader was a high school boy, but the soundtrack always made up for that. These forgotten Alternative songs pop up while I’m watching those “teen dramas” I sometimes favor. There’s Joan telling Adam she’s not crazy even though she sees (and talks to) God on Joan of Arcadia while The Flaming Lips play in the background and Grant Lee Phillips popping up at least 4 times a season on the Gilmore Girls. It’s apparently hip and very retro to use Alternative Music in shows like that and I when I hear them, I always say to myself “I totally forgot about that song.”

My problem is I never remember to seek them out and give them another listen. Not today, though. I’ve been keeping a list this entire month of songs I’ve forgotten but wanted to give a listen to again. Some of them I still love, like The Cardigan’s “My Favorite Game” and “Closing Time” by Semisonic. Some of them I wish I’d never heard, like “Dead Man’s Party” by Oingo Boingo and “Laid” by James. People forget that Alternative Rock covers so, so much musically and to overlook them is almost criminal. Just because you hear it on a Soft Rock station doesn’t mean it’s Pop, not every time.

I’m just waiting for the day when it’s official that these songs are considered “Oldies” and take the place of Elvis Presley and The Byrds on Oldies stations across the country.

There’s a lot of greatness out there and I’m confident I’ll rediscover it as time marches on. Hopefully, this play list will inspire you to seek out those songs you’ve forgotten and give them a whirl to see if they do stand the test of time…

Forgotten, as defined by Websters:

1. to cease or fail to remember; be unable to recall
2. to omit or neglect unintentionally
3. to leave behind unintentionally; neglect to take
4. to omit mentioning; leave unnoticed
5. to fail to think of; take no note of
6. to neglect willfully; disregard or slight

Moods – Dark

I used to have a friend in high school who was the antithesis to everything popular: she wore all black, she kept mostly to herself, she favored dark black eyeshadow and red lipstick, and her hair color changed from one week to the next. She smoked cigarettes, quoted Edgar Allen Poe, and liked to watch things die and/or decompose. Her name was Tiphareth meaning “Spear of the Sun”; when I found out what her name meant I thought it amusing that she was given such a bright name when there was nothing bright about her. Her family was normal, lived in the suburbs, didn’t practice Witchcraft, so I never understood where her personality came from.

Tip, as we called her, is fondly remembered because of the music she listened to and subsequently introduced some of it to me. She was known for creating these mixed tapes and handing them out to random people. They always hand written track lists and always had some sort of dead, dried rose attached to them. They were never peppy and they were never anything that even came close to cheering a person up, but they were thoughtful and well put together. They were classic Alternative mixes and they were all titled, in numbered order: Dark Sounds 1 – whatever number it was she got to when she finally finished her project. If she ever did. I’d like to think that Tip is still out there somewhere making mixed cd’s and giving them to random people.

I lost track of Tip my senior year, when she went have to a little Alternative baby and came back before graduation. There was an entire school year of our friendship she missed and as life does when you are that age, things changed. We still talked but she kept her distance and when graduation rolled around and I was preparing to give my Valedictorian speech, Tip jumped up on stage and handed me Dark Sounds #56.

While my mood isn’t necessarily dark on this chilly and overcast day and the music isn’t the classic definition of dark, I am often reminded of Tiphareth and her Dark Sounds mixes when thinking about our little salute to Alternative here at Audio Overflow.

So this is for Tip, wherever she may be…

Dark, as defined by Websters:

1. having very little or no light
2. radiating, admitting, or reflecting little light
3. gloomy; cheerless; dismal
4. sullen; frowning
5. evil; iniquitous; wicked
6. hard to understand; obscure
7. hidden; secret
8. silent; reticent
9. a dark place

Moods – Nostalgic

In keeping with our theme for this month…my play list comes from our collective list of the Top 25 Alternative Rock Albums.

Nostalgic, as defined by Websters:

1. a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one’s life, to one’s home or homeland, or to one’s family and friends
2. a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time
3. something that elicits or displays nostalgia.
4. A bittersweet longing for things, persons, or situations of the past.
5. The condition of being homesick; homesickness.

What do you remember when you listen to albums from the past? Do you think about that wedding dance you witnessed or that time you played a touch football game with your friends in a muddy field? Do you remember getting your driver’s license or that time you ditched 5th period Chemistry to make out at the end of the hallway with a guy you were pretty sure didn’t really like but turns out he did? Do you think about high school or college or even middle school in a montage form, snippets of your past hurling from the depths of your mind to the forefront of your thoughts, causing you to smile in brief recognition? Are they painful memories, some of them? The breakups, the failures, the time the popular girl teased you because your hair didn’t look just right?

I don’t like to fall into those periods of nostalgia. Not really. There’s a lot buried in my head I’d really rather not think about and sometimes those things are better left to remain in their cranial burial plot. I know as well as anyone else, though, that that’s one of the powers of music: it has the ability to snap you back to a time that is no more and can leave you planted there until it moves you on to something else. Music has the power to remind you of the good and the bad. We all do it, assign songs and albums to certain times in our life. If you thought about it you’d realize you probably have a soundtrack to your life comprised of songs you love and hate. One of the powers of music is to be categorized like that and we do it without even thinking about it. There’s a song there, in your heart, in your head, in the depths of your memories that you just can’t shake.

On a personal level, Oasis reminds me of summer time driving on winding roads, windows down and singing along to “Wonderwall” even though I really didn’t like it. I didn’t like it, but there was something to it that made me listen. Still does. The Killers serve to remind me of friends I no longer have and no longer wonder about; not all friendships stand the test of time and really, do I truly care about where my “best” friend from 1989 is now if I can’t even remember her name? Portishead is for kissing in covert locations and miscellaneous sexual encounters. It always has and always will be, though my mind does tie Portishead’s “Dummy” to a long, cold, snowy driving venture in Oklahoma one winter. I cannot listen to Tori Amos’ “Winter”. There are maybe three songs total in my vast collection of music I cannot listen to, though I love them, and “Winter” is one of them. “Winter” makes me lay my head on whatever available surface there is and sob like a baby. I left a Tori Amos concert once for that reason; I just couldn’t deal with it. On the other hand, “Silent All These Years” is so powerful and so strong that it reminds me of very empowering moments in my lifetime and those were lessons I was glad to learn.

Then there’s The Counting Crows. Images of my arm being grabbed as I walked away from an argument to make me the recipient of a kiss I wasn’t expecting, the first time I gambled in Vegas, a secret told and never spoken of again. “Monkey”, first presented to me on a mixed tape with a note.

Later on, after I got to live with the mixed tape that was called “And Stuff Volume 1” for a little bit, in a weepy 3 a.m. conversation, it was the first time I learned that someone had assigned a song to me. That I was forever burned in someone’s memory musically and always would be. I’d been doing it myself for so long, assigning songs to people, places, and things, that I was secretly thrilled to know that someone else did it too. It felt like such an honor and it still does, really. I’m always secretly giddy when I find out now that someone relates a song to me, remembers me by it. While I don’t like to fall into fits of nostalgia, it is nice to know that every so often, when a play list spits something out randomly, I’ve invaded someone’s thoughts. Even for a brief moment. Forward it, delete it, rewind it, play it on repeat 20 times, I’m there and someone is thinking about me. Maybe nostalgia isn’t such a bad thing after all.

“Monkey,” he whispered in my ear at 3:01 a.m., “is you. For me, it’s all you.”

So, whatever they remind you of, enjoy the memory. I only hope I’ve sparked something you’ve long forgotten with this play list…

Moods – Brooding

A little poetry:

My heart is sad, my hopes are gone,
My blood runs coldly through my breast;
And when I perish, thou alone
Wilt sigh above my place of rest.

“An Wilt Thou Weep When I Am Low?” by Lord Byron, 1808

Brooding, as defined by Websters:

1. preoccupied with depressing, morbid, or painful memories or thoughts
2. cast in subdued light so as to convey a somewhat threatening atmosphere

Brooding isn’t something I do often. I personally prefer to ignore whatever thoughts I have in my head and to push them so far back into a place in my mind where they virtually don’t exist. I let them fester there until they either make me sick with stress, go away, or work themselves out. Brooding is dwelling and I don’t really like to dwell, but alas it happens. I have always associated brooding with poets like Lord Byron and D.H. Lawrence who appeared to be overwrought and depressed with some unknown event in their past. That somehow makes the process a masculine thing, when really, brooding is for everyone. While it doesn’t feel ladylike and genteel, it is a process for those who can’t forgive others, who let their problems weigh them down, and who certainly can’t forgive themselves for any wrong doing.

It is a process for those of us who like to punish ourselves in fantastic mental ways.

You can brood about a million things, from the lover who cheated on you to the type of shoes to wear with today’s outfit to the time you were 5 and shoplifted a pack of gum while your mother was grocery shopping. You can work yourself into a frenzy over death, over taxes, over the moment you screwed up your first kiss. You can hurt yourself over and over again with the pain of hurting someone you love, the loss of breaking a favorite tea cup, or that time you didn’t stop to help someone in need that always stuck with you. You can mull over the flaws you hate about yourself, the horrible things someone once told you when they wanted you to know how they felt about you, and that one time you did something most people would consider socially unacceptable.

Brooding is where those eternal should have, could have, would have thoughts are played out. It’s not a bad thing, but it isn’t always the easiest experience ever. How that plays out musically I’m not sure, but I do know I’ve put together this week’s play list chock full of songs that I think fit brooding, my brooding mood, most perfectly.

Brooding is an all encompassing emotional thing. Why shouldn’t the soundtrack for it be the same way?

Moods – Sickly

I said to Cale the other day via email “I would really like to take a bottle brush to my throat and scratch it. Horrid graphic, I know, but I want every one to know how miserable I am.”

Itchy, raw, even itchier…my poor throat. All I wanted to do was scratch that itch.

I’m not sure he really wanted or needed that graphic. I’m not sure that anyone that got an email from me that day really needed that graphic, but I shared it because I could. I shared it because I was downright miserable for days with a sore throat. In fact, it wasn’t until yesterday that I regained any sort of voice and when I do speak, my voice fades quickly.

I have to be able to talk. I’m the “talky” type. It’s in my blood to yap. Stupid sore throat.

Here’s what I don’t get about “flu season”: you’re sick. Your kids are sick. Your spouse, girlfriend, boyfriend, grandma, great aunt Jane are all sick. Why do you still insist on carting them around creation where they drop their used Kleenex, sneeze without covering their noses, and cough while trying to speak, polluting the non-“flu season” air with their disease? There honestly isn’t enough hand sanitizer in the world that’s going to keep your illness at bay, yet there you are, willingly spreading it as you go to the movies, the post office, the grocery store, or just…anywhere. And why — why — do you always have to say “Oh, I’m over it, you won’t catch it?” when we all know you aren’t over it and you’ve given it to about 45 people before me. I mean, are you so miserable you have to make everyone else miserable with you? Do you like watching people suffer? Is this your revenge for being picked last in grade school Dodge Ball?

Clearly, being ill makes me a little cranky too. But really, I stayed home sick, why couldn’t everyone else?

So in honor of my disease, whatever it may be, a play list of songs about the various ailments that one can find themselves victim to. Of. Songs about drugs, seizures, heart attacks, and the desire to just be sedated until it all passes…I only wish I felt less sickly to enjoy it as much as I’m sure some of you will.

Sickly, as defined by Websters:

1. not strong; unhealthy; ailing.
2. of, connected with, or arising from ill health
3. marked by the prevalence of ill health, as a region
4. causing sickness.
5. nauseating.
6. maudlin and insipid; mawkish
7. faint or feeble, as light or color.

Moods – Weak

It’s February 14th and we all know what that means. It’s Valentine’s Day. Super-market card aisles are flooded with people looking for just the right card, tables are hard to get at even the dingiest of eateries, and floral delivery men are working double and over time to get those deliveries out before the end of the day. I imagine there are a lot of women swooning right now, or will be later, and there are men who are feeling awfully obligated to show up with some sort of flower/candy/gift combo. I also imagine there are a lot of unhappy people out there; the lovelorn, the shy, the lonely, those of us who think Valentine’s Day is just another day.

That’s right. I’m a woman who doesn’t really get all excited about Valentine’s Day. “It’s just another day” I always say. Don’t get me wrong, I like hearts and lace and pink and candy and flowers just as much as the next girl. I like love well enough. It’s got its ups and downs and weird turn of events I can sometimes do without, but I like it well enough. Being in love is nice, I’ll be the first to admit. I’m just not the kind of girl who needs a specific, targeted day to be reminded that love is grand and someone is enamored with me. If it works correctly, I know pretty much all the time I’m very much loved and wanted.

I have other reasons for not liking Valentine’s Day. It leaves me weak. It breaks down those protective barriers in my head and makes me think about things I’d rather not think about. It makes me weak and grumpy and thinking about all the people I’ve ever loved, who have loved me, who I wished had loved me, whom I wish I didn’t love. Some good, some bad, it never fails, Valentine’s Day rolls around and there they are, parading through my head.

Weak, as defined by Websters:

1. not strong; liable to yield, break, or collapse under pressure or strain; fragile; frail
2. lacking in bodily strength or healthy vigor, as from age or sickness; feeble; infirm
3. not having much political strength, governing power, or authority
4. lacking in rhetorical or creative force or effectiveness
5. lacking in logical or legal force or soundness
6. deficient in mental power, intelligence, or judgment
8. not having much moral strength or firmness, resolution, or force of character
9. deficient, lacking, or poor in something specified

So here it is, a mix I call It’s Valentine’s Day Everywhere But In My Heart, dedicated to the lovelorn, the obsessed stalkers, the men who are at this very moment caving and paying for a very expensive piece of jewelry, those who are too shy to ask someone out, those who want to end their relationships but won’t because it would be cruel to do it on February 14th, the multitudes who will be engaging in a one-night stand at the end of their evenings, those who send themselves flowers and candy so that they don’t look left out, and those of us who think about love in good, bad, and ugly ways on a day meant for celebration of how we feel. We’re all weak in one or another, especially when it comes to love.

Moods – Impatient

“Why are you tapping?” I think I’ve heard that question about 9 million times in my lifetime, mostly because tapping indicates I’m severely irritated and on the verge of being very angry. Pens. I like to tap pens, especially when I’m on the phone. Anyone who knows me well knows this.

I have another version of tapping, though, one where my feet never stop moving. Or I clap my hands together in a fast paced silent kind of way. I am known for my infinite patience, but sometimes, when the mood strikes, I can be the most impatient person ever. I like lines. I like traffic. I like waiting, in general. There’s something peaceful to it. It’s sort of a down time between events and sometimes I need that down time.

I am, currently, the most impatient person ever. I’m waiting on a bank transfer, I’m waiting on Fed-Ex, I’m waiting to see someone I very much want/need to see, I’m waiting for it to be warmer, I’m waiting for my beloved desktop to come back so I can use Vista instead of XP, I’m waiting for bed, I’m just…waiting. And. Waiting. Makes. Me. Want. To. Type. Like. This. I do not like being impatient. It isn’t a good color on me.

Conversation, while trying to write this, with a person that is as impatient as I am: (and greatly enough, impatient because of me.)

“OMG. How do you do the impatient thing?”
“I throw things.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t throw things. I have terrible aim.”
“I’ve already replaced a phone because of you.”
“And the other day I hurt my foot and nearly broke the Treo.”
“How did you hurt your foot?”
“I threw the Treo and it hit my foot.”
“Why did you throw the Treo?”
“You weren’t listening.”

Impatient, as defined by Websters:

1. not patient; not accepting delay, opposition, pain, etc., with calm or patience.
2. indicating lack of patience
3. restless in desire or expectation
4. impatient of, intolerant of

Impatient, as defined by me:

*!@#*%^