Music

Every time I listen to Ani's Little Plastic Castles album, it hurts my heart. I hadn't listened to much of her music, despite being an angsty feminist college grrrl with occasional "well, maybe I should date women?" inclinations. It came to me--from a boyfriend, actually--as I graduated from collegeand struck out for Chicago, and it has come to perfectly encapsulate the dreams, expectations, and feelings I have about the city.

I'm not much for lyrics. They're always the least important part about a song for me. When people include lyrics in their writing, I generally skip over them, because they don't resonate with me. But in "Deep Dish," I searched the lyrics particularly because it's a Chicago song. And this struck me:

this is only a possibility in a world of possibilities
there are obviously there are many possibilities
ranging from small to large
before long there will be short
before short there was nothing
when there was nothing
there was always the possibility of something becoming what it is

The album makes me feel like I'm walking alone at night in the middle of a deserted street in Rogers Park, walking towards the lake, my head back, my arms wide, embracing everything. A cool summer night, and I am perfectly alone, and perfectly full of contentment and the kind of experiences that make you gasp and say, "so this is what it's like to be alive!" It's enough of an overwhelming feeling that I can't listen to the album around other people, because they'd never understand why I choke up or suddenly become somber.

In truth, the album made me want to be a person I never was, and gave me dreams about the kind of life I'd live that wasn't a reality for the kind of person I am. So my life never lived up to the fantasy, and it took a while to realize that my life worked out exactly the way it was supposed to. So I'm not the kind of person who has lots of angsty politicos for friends, and I didn't live in a spare, dusty apartment with an intellectual cat, a fouton, and millions of books. No candles stuck in wine bottles, and dinner parties where we debated all the Deep Subjects. When it hurts that I am not the type of person I wanted to be, I try to remember that type of person wouldn't own a purple velvet couch. One purchased new, anyway.