mtadkins

Previously: “Happy “xx day” [Update, 2018]”

I think it’s possible that The XX have held ‘favorite band’ status for me maybe longer (speaking in terms of consecutive years in the top spot) than any other band… & in a bit of goofiness a few years ago I tried to recognize that by tweeting & posting a bunch of links on the anniversary of the day I first heard their debut LP. Around that same time in 2012 I had started running (lost over 40lbs! w00t!) & during my very first half-marathon I srsly needed all the hype I could muster, so I pumped up the jams while lumbering around Eugene, OR. At the starting line, however, I made sure that as the mass of people raced out of the gate that I started with “Intro” blasting into my ears…

Now, 9 years later its admittedly silly to mark “xx day” on my calendar & to get all wistful & nostalgic of that time, but it seems like their songs are inextricably linked to how I felt then, who we were hanging with (all distant now, as everyone has moved on.), & the stark, lovely emotions that the band taps into. For me, at least… Maybe it was a passing fancy for some, but (to paraphrase ‘Our Song’, for the walls I hide behind, they just walk through…

Also, the band has been remarkably — consistently — great, & each release since that debut has been chock full of great songs. I’ve now seen each tour, & the live shows have been beautiful moments. They’ve got a few great covers of others’ songs, but maybe tops for me is this Beyonce tune:

Happy xx day, y’all.

xoxo, ~ m

Arduinos, LEDs, motor shields, oh my.

“I Wish I Was” by the Avett Brothers.

( the wafting wistful wanting of this plucks a lot strings for me… a bit of nostalgia, bit of warmth, & some melancholy really in harmony with the tender lyrics. A banger, as the kids say. )

~ m

2019 has already started piling up #books. Looking forward to reading (& writing) more this year.

• A Bit on the Side, William Trevor
• Black Hole, Bucky Sinister
• Diving Makes the Water Deep, Zach Savich
• Sympathy, Olivia Sudjic
• Rabbit & Robot, Andrew A. Smith

Sometimes its just all so much, & the only thing that makes you feel better is reading a flowery screed railing against the no-good-terrible-evil-thing that we all see, yet is still making our lives collectively worse.

David Roth has some choice words re: our (clearly sliding into elderly dementia) ‘President’:

Trump is so relentlessly dishonest and so plainly diminished and so sorely overmatched that, at this point, he can only be taken at his word. …

If he appears to be confronting an emerging truth that makes him look bad with a flailing childish insistence that Actually The Opposite Is True, it’s because he is. If it looks like he’s numbly ventriloquizing the rancid words of one of the aspiring genocidaires tasked with writing his more high-flown addresses, it’s because he is. ….There will be no new work done until he’s out of this job, not just because the venal and idiotic criminality that has defined his life belatedly appears to be catching up with him but because it simply isn’t in him to do new work, and because his current job transparently doesn’t matter to him at all. He’ll believe that he’s getting away with it—that he’s winning and commanding and leading—until the cuffs close or the lights go out, and he will always act that way. He will spend the rest of his life trying to demonstrate that he was right about whatever it was that he said or did before.

There is no reason to overthink any of this.

Source: You Can’t Get There From Here