my careless contagion

Back to You by Selena Gomez seems like a typical pop song. It has some really strange pauses, which is really annoying. The video reminds me of a weird French movie or something, which is also annoying. The video is saying that the boy and girl will choose the same adventure they chose to abandon.  Since I've had so much time to think about these things, I may as well put as many down as I have time to write. Here's another art-imitating-life or life-imitating-art kind of things. How many people truly have someone they are still in love with but have no contact with? I think about myself, then I pause and consider all of the people I have known. Surely I'm not alone in this strange fixation. My heart loves a girl who is not mine. I'm not feeling sorry for myself. I'm simply asking, "How alone am I?" About two years ago, a woman messaged me on Facebook. She was asking about my oldest brother. The backstory is she was the reason my family moved from...

This song says a few things to me. Mainly it says I listen to too much Taylor Swift. Call it What You Want is an old-fashioned love song masquerading as a pop song. It's understated for Swift, and it feels both a little tired and a little at ease. Perhaps the tiredness is because she's been in love (many times) before, and perhaps at ease because this time it feels different.  I think one of the marks of finding the right person for you is you just forget about what other people think. It's not a "f*ck em" kind of feeling, though. It's just that you can't really explain to them what this person means to you. So you tell them they can call it what they want; it doesn't affect anything for you. There is a little bit of "my man is amazing" here, but also she doesn't feel like she needs to share the most intimate things with others.  Some of the lyrics convey a tired, boarded-up feeling, like she's weathered the storms of love and...

Taylor Swift's Wildest Dreams video also features Scott Eastwood, Clint Eastwood's son. He has the classic steamy romance novel cover look. The song seems to say that she knows he's going to leave her so she begs him to remember her a certain way. She's right. In the end, she sees him with a new woman. Even though he chases Taylor's character at the end, she knows it is best she leave him with nothing but memories. As she drives away, he is seen looking after her with a look of longing. It's easy to see the reflection of my own life in this song.  When Taylor sings, "Say you'll remember me standing in a nice dress, staring at the sunset, babe," I can only remember the love of my life the last time I saw her. I can see her in her nice dress, and I can feel her in my arms the last time we embraced. These words could have been her words for me. It was an epic ending to something wild and beautiful and perfect and over too fast. In the end, she l...

Making Believe is a cover song by Social Distortion (formed in 1978) on their Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell album (1992). It was written by Jimmy Work and was originally recorded by Kitty Wells and released in 1955. This song has been covered many times over the years. I liken music to a living thing, and living things have DNA. If you could look at Social Distortion's DNA, you'd see a lot of country music in there. Country music is basically folk music, so this further cements my theory that punk rock or hardcore is folk music as well. A lot of themes pop up in folk music. There are the murder ballads. There are the lost loves. There are the drinking songs. This song is about a lost love.  Mike Ness, Social Distortion singer, revealed a lot of his influences not only through his principal band but also through his solo work. His two solo albums, Cheating at Solitaire and Under the Influences, both released in 1999, show a rich body of influence on his punk rock mus...

I have new eyes. That's how it feels, at least. On October 4, I had iLasik surgery on both eyes at the Black Hills Regional Eye Institute. I have not experienced such clarity of vision since ... I don't know; it feels like forever. I remember when I got glasses at the age of 12 and walked out of the eye clinic and onto the town square. I looked up at the trees in the square, and I could see every leaf. It was like having an epiphany. It was like a curtain going up and seeing as far as I wanted. For the next almost 30 years, I depended on those glasses (and sometimes contacts). My vision without glasses was terrible, though; even reading a book in bed without them was nearly impossible. I could see clearly a few inches from my face and then everything dropped off beyond that. I was as blind as a freakin' bat.  After I sold my house and split the money with my ex-wife, I had a decent amount of cash laying around. Some of it I stashed away for an eventual move from thi...

It's one of the hardest things for the human mind to comprehend. A person who purports to be of one mind is found to be of a different mind, or several different minds. Duplicity is defined as "deceitfulness or double-dealing."  Our human ancestry should inform us of this great fallibility. Our race has shown itself to be more than capable of double-dealing. Acting is a daily contrivance. We all do it. We lie in little ways and big ways to smoothe our days out. We smile when we don't want to. We laugh at the same stupid jokes we've heard before. We pretend we're happy when we're not. Look at who we idolize in our culture — actors and actresses. But they do their jobs for lots of money. The rest of us act to survive.  The world was shocked by the news of Chris Watts' murder of his wife, Shan'ann, and his children, Bella, Celeste, and unborn baby boy. Friends and neighbors said they were the perfect couple. Smiling photos on social media furth...

Today is her birthday.  I wish I was there to pull back the covers from her sleepy head and kiss her tired cheeks and neck good morning. I'd whisper a "happy birthday" before the day even began.  It makes me smile to think of her enjoying her birthday, surrounded by her kids, maybe a family visit or well-wishes, too. And lots of friends wishing her a happy day.  It's Sunday, so I hope she sleeps in. I'd love to sleep in with her and wake to a lazy day full of stuff like a late breakfast, some sports on tv, maybe a brisk walk around the neighborhood or to the park and a hurry-home jaunt home to brace ourselves from the cold with hot chocolate.  I'd love to hold her on the couch with me, sit her on my lap, enjoy her lazy-day-crazy hair and just be.  All of this could have been. S he could have been mine. Our children could cuddle with us, piled on haphazardly in perfect unity, love, and devotion. My heart races when I think of us like that. My m...

Jimmy Eat World's The Middle was released in 2001 on the album Bleed American. The lyrics to this song were important to me, as they spoke of peer pressure and the need to conform. I was at a point in my life when I really started missing my education. I was wondering if I'd ever get a chance to go back to school. I saw everyone moving on with their lives, getting real jobs, and I was just a hardcore kid paying the rent. So, too, Jimmy Eat World's A Praise Chorus spoke to me. I remember listening to this song when I was 24, 25, 26. So, when the song says, "Even at 25, ya gotta start sometime," I agreed. I felt like my time was coming, but I also felt it was too late to go back to school at the age of 25. And 26, well, that was really old. Here I am, 41 and taking classes. Clearly, it's never too late. These songs are important to me still because they reveal a lesson I started learning a long time ago. It doesn't help to compare yourself to...

What can I say about Justin Timberlake? He's highly versatile. He outgrew his boyishness but still retains enough to appeal to all sectors of his audience. Say Something features country star Chris Stapelton as well. In this song, he reminds me a little of Willie Nelson during his solo, as he's not always singing on time, just a little behind the beat. Collaborations seem to have the effect of maintaining and broadening an artist's appeal. It's usually a smart thing to do.  I want to talk about the song. The video is neat, too, and it's a somewhat unique idea. It starts out in the basement and follows JT through the building in a single take, building in intensity as it goes. There are a lot of possible interpretations for the song. I'll just talk about what it means to me.  Our world is full of noise. I'm currently reading the biography of author and lyricist Margaret Wise Brown, and even though she lived many years ago, she lamented the noise tha...

For my first 20 years, I thought I'd never be in a relationship and certainly never thought I'd have sex ... mainly because I thought I'd never be in a relationship. And I wasn't the kind of guy who could have casual sex.  Then I enjoyed sex (with all its ups and downs) in spite of myself and the many marital troubles I had for many years. I thought things would continue that way. Naturally, after my separation, the sex ceased. This seemed like new territory for me, but it was just a return to my pre-relationship life. I fought the idea that I've come to accept now: that I will never have sex again. Here's why. I can't, or won't, have sex with a woman I'm not in love with. There's only one woman I love enough to have sex with. She's not in my life. It's a simple equation. No girl = no sex.  Then there's the fact that I'm pretty sure everything stopped working down there. That's a new thing, too. Of course, I have ...

It's safe to say I'm driven. I'm not driven in an ordinary way. I haven't made anything out of myself in my 41 years. It's more like a personal drive, beating myself at something, having my way in some insipid way. It's important for a moment, but there's no real reason for it.  It's a pointless way of being driven. There's no payoff. It's not good for me. I push myself often to the point of fatigue and beyond. I've gone many years with little sleep, and to what end? Do I live in a comfortable house? Do I have a sizeable pension waiting for me? A home in the suburbs? I have nothing.  I have not failed to notice the never-ending stream of people in various media who are also driven. Many of them have horrible backgrounds, stories of neglect, abuse, hardscrabble upbringings, etc. At some point, and perhaps erroneously, I connected the dots. I believe abuse can often lead to being driven.  I watched the Netflix documentary of Quincy Jo...

Stop sounding so fucking sad.   This is a screenshot from American Psycho , a movie I've never seen. I've read the book, and that's enough, as I'm still disturbed by that book many years later. No work of fiction I've ever read has affected me like American Psycho . Bret Easton Ellis' characters are so devoid of humanity, it's unreal. Or perhaps too real. His books are about characters I don't care about, even hate. But they are compelling. It's amazing to read a book and not find a single character you enjoy or relate to. Sometimes my life has resembled his fiction, sadly.  There are a lot of reasons for me to feel sad. There are a lot of reasons for me to feel upset. Those reasons have always existed. Some will never go away. But, sadness is a choice. And, if sadness is a choice, then it follows that happiness is a choice. I've had enough sadness to last a lifetime. I choose happiness. I choose joy. I choose silliness and fun and all the...

I loved her with a love that was bigger than me. It filled me up until it leaked out in messy ways, embarrassing ways, lovely ways, little ways, big ways, and forever ways. I loved her with a love that could have swayed any woman, but she was not any woman. She was a ghost by the time I realized it was all over and done with. When she left the room, I was still picking out baby names for our love child. When she put me down and put me away, I was scrawling poetry for her across the sky.  I must have been exceptionally dull or blind because she made her escape while I was dreaming about our future. When I said I wanted to marry her, she must have been terrified. When I told her I loved her, I can't even imagine how she felt. She ran from me with a purpose and speed that equaled the love I felt for her. The more I loved, the more she shrank away.   If I could love her like this — even with the sadness mixed in — how could I love her if our hearts were one? It wo...

She's Out of My League is a comedy released in 2010. You can tell by the flip-phones. I've seen this movie before but watched it again because I needed a laugh. I didn't expect to see themes from my life portrayed before me so plainly.  Jay Baruchel plays Kirk, a good guy extraordinaire, a dorky guy with low self-esteem. Alice Eve plays the hot girl, a perfect ten who got out of a relationship with a very manly, perfect kind of guy (nicknamed "Foot Long") who was cheating on her. What makes the movie work is that you like both the main characters. And, they are relatable. We've all been in or contemplated a relationship with someone "out of our league."  The woman I'm in love with I've always had this opinion about: She's always been too good for me. As long as I've known her — stretching back to the fourth grade — I've felt this way about her. In grade school, I used to tease her just to see if I could bring her ...