tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8723839549568943462024-03-14T09:59:39.891-04:00In Bed With Amy WilsonAmy Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15529572149529654837noreply@blogger.comBlogger151125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-872383954956894346.post-63852019349738530032014-07-14T17:59:00.000-04:002014-07-14T17:59:00.144-04:00Twist and Shout: LeavingHello there --<br />
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I'm writing this sitting in the sun and drinking an expensive but VERY healthful designer juice. It's great! It's 4:30 on a Monday.<br />
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I'm here because I quit my job to pursue writing.<br />
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As I've mentioned a few times recently, this decision and ALL the rigmarole surrounding it have encouraged me to try to reduce my non-essential thoughts. . .that's the only way I can think of to say it, in my way. In others' ways I might say "managing my anxious tendencies" or "personal growth" or "Zen".<br />
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Actually I was talking to a friend of mine about Zen recently and he made an interesting point, which is that people who are into Zen things are so because they themselves are very un-. It's the same argument that another friend of mine posed when he mentioned William James and his theory that saints and sinners are closer together than either is to the middle. . .because saints and sinners have at least both thought about it, usually. It's also what I believe to be contained in the Italian term "sprezzatura".<br />
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This is the last blog post on <i>In Bed with Amy Wilson</i>, so what I am trying to do is to turn the camera briefly on myself. Of course this is a blog all about myself (I know) so it's probably not too necessary. If you want to know who I am, you could find out.<br />
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Or at least, if you want to know who I've been.<br />
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*<br />
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I'm very excited and happy about my decision to move to New York City. I write it like that because that's how I say it in my head, and every time I do it's a little shout in that way: new york CITY!<br />
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What can I say? I watched too many classic musicals as a child and too many Nora Ephron movies as an impressionable youth. And too many Woody Allen movies, except that that's not really possible.<br />
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When I am in New York I want to really follow one of my dreams, which is (semi-facetiously) to be a professional writer of emails about nothing in particular. In particular. But also of course, about EVERYTHING!<br />
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You may not know how seriously to take me when you read this blog, that is full of questions like "what is art?" and "the meaning of life?", and also full of semi-schlocky pop songs. That's a hard thing to explain. Let me say that I am very serious about finding meaning, even in small things.<br />
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If you're interested in keeping in touch with me, you can <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Pel-oKTVXi4BPJOwCY3cy1caLhmJDsCB9xwtth6WD-I/viewform">subscribe to my newsletter</a> and I will send you e-mails.<br />
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Here's one last song, by the artists that have unintentionally become a defining point for this blog. I am pleased to leave you on such a hopeful note.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/X_I4wtNPv5w" width="640"></iframe><br />
<b>The song:</b> Daryl Hall and John Oates, "You Make My Dreams"; 1981<br />
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Yrs,<br />
AW<br />
<br />
inbedwithamywilson@gmail.com<br />
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<br />Amy Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15529572149529654837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-872383954956894346.post-22151861325679033962014-06-30T18:15:00.001-04:002014-06-30T18:16:59.330-04:00An Experienced Girl: Keep MovingAs you know, I'm in the process of completely quitting everything that I've been doing for the past few years and moving to New York City to follow my dreams.<br />
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This is one of those things, where, if I had any sense of how difficult it was actually going to be when I decided to do it, I probably wouldn't have done it. Which is why I'm, deep down, glad I had no idea what I was getting myself into!</div>
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It will not surprise you to hear that this is hard. It's not really surprising to me either. What has been unexpected have been the ways in which it has been hard. </div>
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The move to NYC is just the (hopefully close to) final stage of what I understand to be a quarter-life crisis. A few months ago, a few stages ago, <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2014/02/twenty-seconds-to-comply-oh-uncertainty.html">I wrote about the difficult nature of uncertainty</a> and about the flip side of that which I had newly discovered and about which I'll just go ahead and quote myself: <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, FreeSerif, serif; line-height: 21.559999465942383px;"><i>Now that I am forced to be here by circumstances beyond my control, I understand the beauty and excitement of the present in all its terrible glory.</i></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, FreeSerif, serif; line-height: 21.559999465942383px;">And that's it. For a long time I've known about myself that I tend to dwell either on the past (depression) or on the future (anxiety) and that I spend most of my time swinging wildly between these extremes (it's called 'cyclothymia'). It's only because I'm so profoundly worn down by the insane stress of a move like this that I'm able to be that upfront about it on a public and permanent forum like this one. But it's also because I'm so profoundly worn down by the insane stress of a move like this that I'm able to say, what of it?</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, FreeSerif, serif; line-height: 21.559999465942383px;">*</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, FreeSerif, serif; line-height: 21.559999465942383px;">The interesting thing about slowly disconnecting all the cords of my life has been that I've really had to realize what I am not. Clearly I'm not my radio show, because that's over. I'm not my job, because that's over. I'm not my blog, because that's going to be over too. I'm not my apartment, because I'm leaving. You see what I'm saying.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21.559999465942383px;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times New Roman, Times, FreeSerif, serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/PnwDkT0lUWI" width="640"></iframe></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21.559999465942383px;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times New Roman, Times, FreeSerif, serif;"><b>The song: </b>Aretha Franklin, "Who's Zoomin Who"; 1985</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21.559999465942383px;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times New Roman, Times, FreeSerif, serif;">It's <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2014/02/dont-run-your-jive-on-me-integrity.html">another one</a> from Aretha Franklin's 1985 album <i>Who's Zoomin Who?, </i>which she has said she made because she wanted to do something that sounded young. It does indeed sound young to me, even with the glaze of time, but also wonderfully world-weary in a way that Aretha Franklin sells so well. It also has that great classically-80s cheese in its sound and that's something I'm into right now. I enjoy walking down the street listening to this song and planning how I will zoom New York City, and these plans mostly involve actually zooming (roller disco, which is definitely coming back if I have anything to say about it).</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21.559999465942383px;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times New Roman, Times, FreeSerif, serif;">I've said a few times on this blog so far that I've come to believe that maturity is constituted from a mix of toughness and vulnerability. Or more precisely, that's how my maturity will be constituted. I find myself often in the middle of these things: toughness and vulnerability, past and future, anxiety and ability, etc and etc. (Peppermint vs. Spearmint, Wheat Thins vs. Triscuits, Dog People vs. Cat People) There is a bi-polarity in my nature that leads me to create these theories and to see the world in these terms.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21.559999465942383px;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times New Roman, Times, FreeSerif, serif;">That being the case, here's the other side.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21.559999465942383px;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times New Roman, Times, FreeSerif, serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/m3-hY-hlhBg" width="640"></iframe></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21.559999465942383px;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times New Roman, Times, FreeSerif, serif;"><b>The song: </b>Whitney Houston, "How Will I Know"; 1985</span></span><br />
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These songs are similar, released in the same year and produced by the same person, the legendary <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narada_Michael_Walden">Narada Michael Walden</a> (who is responsible for many of my favorite gloriously cheesy songs of the 1980s and 90s). But where Aretha's "Who's Zoomin Who" is confident, Whitney brings her trademark poignancy to "How Will I Know". How will she know? Well, most would say "she just will".<br />
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In my experience, it's not that simple. Self-knowledge is a harder thing to master than most people give it credit for. Give themselves credit for, I should say. I do think it often takes a major life event to move it along.<br />
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In that way, I could consider myself lucky. It's an opportunity. Although I'm losing my sense of who I am, as defined by external things, I know that I'm gaining something ultimately more important. Which is, the strength to be right in the middle of things and to know nothing more than that I exist here.<br />
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Yrs,<br />
AW<br />
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inbedwithamywilson@gmail.comAmy Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15529572149529654837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-872383954956894346.post-25276221793870218592014-06-16T13:45:00.002-04:002014-06-16T13:45:58.407-04:00The River's So Pretty, The Air Is So Fine: TravelingThis was an unreleased demo version of Paul Simon's song "Something So Right", which is <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2013/01/because-its-such-unusual-sight-pursuit.html">a song I posted</a> when I was preparing to travel to Singapore around a year and a half ago. In that entry I described the dawning realization I was having that "happiness" is something more than the lack of unhappiness. I don't exactly remember the state of mind I was in when I wrote that, but I think it most likely had something to do with the values and beliefs I've been turning over for quite a long time now: things like self-determination.<br />
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Now I'm preparing to go to New York City and look into the eyes of random strangers and convince them (and myself) that me living in their apartment is a great idea. "Apartment hunting". But really more like "life hunting" or "future hunting". But also just "current moment hunting" -- looking for a place to land. At the same time it means a lot and it means nothing at all. This is a common contradiction I find.<br />
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In my current job, which I am leaving in a few weeks, I plan and deliver fundraising events. In learning how to do this, in using the skills I already had, I've figured out how to wind up and swing. When you plan a fundraising event you plan and plan, you prepare, you think through everything that might possibly happen -- but then a moment comes and you have to just execute. Make it happen.<br />
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I can't help but feel that this might be that moment for my own life. The wind up has taken a long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long time. Probably it started when I was given <i>Slouching Towards Bethlehem</i> to read in high school and decided that I wanted to be an essayist, a career path for which there is no clear course. And as you do when you have an ambition like that, I've just tried to always take the next logical step.<br />
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On that rope bridge of happiness right now I am very much in the middle. The next step, the next step, the next step.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/R8-Fwd_XzUY" width="640"></iframe><br />
<b>The song:</b> Paul Simon, "Let Me Live In Your City"; recorded 1973<br />
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Yrs,<br />
AW<br />
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inbedwithamywilson@gmail.comAmy Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15529572149529654837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-872383954956894346.post-42012325482409683852014-06-06T15:23:00.002-04:002014-06-06T15:23:28.319-04:00The Night's Gonna Be Just Fine: So GoodI sort of glossed over it in my last entry (I was feeling sad and thus not inclined to share when I wrote it), but I posted the song <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2014/06/it-seemed-taste-was-not-so-sweet-ch-ch.html">"Changes"</a> by David Bowie because there are a LOT of changes happening in my life right now. Many of my closest friends are moving away, which is a complicated sadness because I am also moving away, and many of the things I have occupied my life with (like my work and my radio show and my apartment and even this, my blog) are ending.<br />
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It's like graduation all over again, which leads me to believe even more strongly in the circular nature of life and time.<br />
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AND in the circular nature of music, as I continue to be rocked and rolled by the resurgence of the disco sound.<br />
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Which is why I am so pleased to hear this song, by the ghost of Michael Jackson, on the radio.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/7NIXlRBWevo" width="640"></iframe><br />
<b>The song:</b> Michael Jackson, "Love Never Felt So Good"; 2014<br />
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I've written before about <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2012/12/and-wonder-if-you-are-watching.html">my interest in Michael Jackson</a> and what he represents about talent and the nature of childhood. I think there's much more to say about him, culturally speaking, and about the strong reactions he inspires in people. It's been fascinating (if that's the right word to use) to watch the arc of Michael Jackson's public image change so much even in my lifetime as an observer, from his trials in the 1990s to various delicate comebacks to his death and the re-imagining of his life that happened after.<br />
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It would be easy to forget in all the discussion of the man himself that he was a brilliant musician. And brilliant often in a seemingly natural way -- from the way his voice stutters and glides like a heartbeat or a breath to his dance moves, like water. But we truly know that his brilliance did not come easily. To say the very, very least.<br />
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I love "Love Never Felt So Good" because it feels like the past, the present, and the future AT THE SAME TIME. (Circular nature of time. Also, there's nothing like a great piano groove.) And my favorite thing about Michael Jackson is that, even with everything else he was, he was someone who truly understood how good it feels to just DANCE. To dance in a way that feels inevitable, like there's really nothing else to do.<br />
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And that is true in my experience, that sometimes there really is nothing else. So to that end I'd like to share a few more of my favorite Jackson tunes, just in case you happen to need them too.<br />
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"When the world is on your shoulder/gotta straighten up your act and boogie down": <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xrd3lSn5FqQ">"Off the Wall"</a>, 1979<br />
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"Where did you come from, baby/And oooh won't you take me there": <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYXqwbtkkeM">"P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)"</a>; 1983<br />
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And BONUS JANET: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDfwbIHMaJw">"Come On Get Up"</a>; 2001<br />
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Come on, get up!<br />
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Yrs,<br />
AW<br />
<br />
inbedwithamywilson@gmail.com<br />
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<br />Amy Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15529572149529654837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-872383954956894346.post-42648233245486047892014-06-02T09:04:00.000-04:002014-06-02T16:05:41.421-04:00It Seemed The Taste Was Not So Sweet: Ch-Ch-Ch-As are many people, I am fascinated with David Bowie.<br />
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Something that fascinates me about him is his aura of untouchable cool (which nobody can deny). It's interesting to consider rationally, particularly when you factor in all the many insane (and theatrical) things he's tried over the years. Many risks. Which seem to have a higher-than-normal rate of payoff. I would bet it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.<br />
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I'm just throwing that out there.<br />
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I'm interested in the places where David Bowie, bastion of untouchable cool, shades into the un-cool. I already kind of went there once with <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2013/10/gee-my-lifes-funny-thing-plastic-soul.html">"Young Americans</a>", Bowie's self-admitted attempt at "plastic soul".<br />
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Even though I've apparently made part of my life's work into an informal course of study in soft-rock apologism, I'm certainly not immune to the threat of "uncool". When I remembered this song and felt that I should post it here, my first self-reflexive thought was something like, "oh not THAT Bowie song. . ."<br />
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Because why? Because I worry about not showing the serious thought behind the soft-rock apologism, and also about showing it too much. Because I don't want to come across as a dilettante who only knows the greatest hits.<br />
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This worry has been slightly at the back of my mind for around ten years now, since I was buying "skuf" CDs at Everyday Music on Burnside Rd in Portland Oregon and first faced the ineffable fear of . . . something . . . when I brought my music choices to the counter clerk. (Music choices often being along the line of old Squeeze albums and ABBA Gold.)<br />
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Let's not pretend it doesn't exist, that fear.<br />
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I used to think that fear and worry were an essential part of the Amy Wilson engine, and even <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2012/08/and-i-i-am-feeling-little-peculiar.html">wrote about something to that effect</a>. I chalk this up to a basic confusion in my soul between the feeling of running away from something and the feeling of running toward something.<br />
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I am going to tell you I like this song, and you're free to think I'm a dilettante who only knows the greatest hits. I don't like that thought, but I don't like this thought any better: that I could tell you my favorite Bowie song is the bizarre disco epic <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY77zDzNmYw">"Station to Station"</a>, or that I know exactly where to put the "wham bam thank you ma'am" in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLnPd7lzT4g">"Suffragette City</a><u>", </u>or I could just say something about <i>Low, </i>and you might think I DO know anything about anything.<br />
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What I know and what you know and what you know I know -- actually I feel none of that matters. It might be nihilism, or maybe it's pop.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/pl3vxEudif8" width="640"></iframe><br />
<b>The song: </b>David Bowie, "Changes"; 1971<br />
<br />
Yrs,<br />
AW<br />
<br />
inbedwithamywilson@gmail.com<br />
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<br />Amy Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15529572149529654837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-872383954956894346.post-13292066534304355562014-05-07T19:06:00.000-04:002014-05-07T19:06:00.557-04:00Just Turn On The Music: Good EndingsToday was my last Turn it Up with Amy Wilson on WCBN and this is the song I played to end it and this is what I said about it.<br />
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"It's been really great being on the radio. I've had this show in varying timeslots for two years and in this timeslot for one year. I think next year probably would have been the one-year anniversary of being in this timeslot.<br />
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And I was so, so very excited to get this timeslot and very happy to keep it for such a relatively long time, because I had been doing the late night -- the 3am-6am when I started out, and then the late night, which is a much different vibe. I remember the first time I came in to do a morning show I realized that the type of music I would want to play, and the type of music that people would want to hear, would be much different. Because it's sort of, it's Wednesday, hump day, you're trying to get through the day, trying to wake up and all this stuff. It's been really really cool to have this time, two hours a week, to share the music that I like and am exploring with all the listeners of WCBN.<br />
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And I'll take this opportunity to say: thank you so much to everybody who's ever called, or IMed, or e-mailed me, or in any way gotten in touch to say that the songs that I've played or the things that I've said have touched them or helped them see music in a different way. That is so meaningful to me -- it's really, I can't put it into words, but I'm so appreciative of everybody who has listened and I'm very very much -- I'm grateful to everybody who has reached out to let me know that my show has. . .made an impact on them. That's what anybody wants to hear! So, thank you very much -- thank you very much for listening to Turn it Up with Amy Wilson.<br />
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I've got one more song left to play! I usually don't plan out my shows very strictly in advance, but this song I knew I was going to play as my last song on this show. I still remember the first song that I ever played on WCBN -- this won't be the LAST song that I ever play on WCBN so I shouldn't get TOO tearful about it. . .I'm actually doing What It Is on Friday so you can hear me this Friday at 8pm, so. . .I'm not gonna get too, too far down the rabbit hole of emotion but -- I remember that the very first song I ever played on WCBN when I was doing my training was the song 'That's How People Grow Up' by Morrissey. The more I think about that, the more layers of meaning it seems to have. . .<br />
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I'm not sure that this one will have that same sort of resonance but who knows.<br />
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It's the song 'Give Life Back To Music' by Daft Punk from their album <i>Random Access Memories</i> which came out last year. It was notable to me because it was very interesting watching the album be successful in both WCBN/the alternative/non-commercial radio scene and on Top 40 with that single 'Get Lucky'. It was the first time I've ever seen that happen, and I don't think that I'll see it happen again for a while. It really, uh, showed me the -- what it means to be a true crossover, what it means to make things that are meaningful to a wide variety of people.<br />
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And I think that the way Daft Punk got there is by making the music that they wanted to make and, nothing else, and doing it exactly in the way that they wanted to do it. So I'd like to play this song for a few reasons.<br />
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One of which is that sort of sentiment, of doing what you want to do with authenticity and courage -- something that I try to do in my own life, on an ongoing basis. It's so much easier said than done.<br />
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And also because of the element of fun. This song is the opening track on the album <i>Random Access Memories</i>, and as you'll hear (if you're not familiar with it) it's a very fun song. And it's about the fact that music is about fun -- and entertainment. Life should be fun, most of the time. And music can help you get there.<br />
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It's kind of what I wanted to say all along with my show, Turn it Up with Amy Wilson. That's what I've been saying for the past two years. Thank you SO much for giving me the opportunity to say that to all of you.<br />
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So, with that said, I'll go ahead and play the song. This is 'Give Life Back to Music' by Daft Punk. I'm Amy Wilson. You're listening to Turn it Up with Amy Wilson on WCBN."<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/IluRBvnYMoY" width="640"></iframe><br />
<b>The song:</b> Daft Punk, "Give Life Back To Music"; 2013<br />
<br />
Yrs,<br />
AW<br />
<br />
inbedwithamywilson@gmail.com<br />
<br />
<br />Amy Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15529572149529654837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-872383954956894346.post-57869744896632345972014-04-14T16:56:00.001-04:002014-04-14T16:56:37.310-04:00To Change This Lonely Life: A Constant ExperienceHi friends.<br />
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I'm here today to talk about men.<br />
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This may seem like a strange choice, given that I spent my weekend basking in the glory of Cher and Pat Benatar who just came through Detroit on Cher's Dressed to Kill tour. But when you see it in a certain way, the way in which I see it, this Cher/Pat Benatar experience was basically a worship at the altar of the modern feminine goddess. (I was thinking this even before Cher's final number, which saw her floating in a ball of white glitter over the audience and singing <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FBFVLunYA4">"I Hope You Find It"</a>.)<br />
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Much of my life is a study of the modern feminine. Simply because, that is what I am.<br />
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But clearly there is not one without the other and for as much as I love women I also love men, taken as a whole. Even though, taken as a whole, they make that hard on me.<br />
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Like any 26-year-old single girl, I've had my fair share of ups and downs in the dating world. But I don't think it's classy to talk about them in public detail, because I am a LADY DAMN IT. (I think I will ascend to a new level of ladyhood when I take Cher up on her recommendation of Saturday and start drinking Dr. Pepper mixed with Perrier. But, I might not quite be ready for that.)<br />
<br />
In any case, this blog is about music.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
Pat Benatar was amazing. She opened with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgNqQ6rFGQo">"Shadows of the Night"</a> and it was a truly transcendent rock and roll moment, I felt like Lester Bangs. And I gained a new appreciation for that song and for Pat Benatar generally and for super-dramatic eighties love-rock that drips tortured emotion with every guitar line. The power ballad.<br />
<br />
It gets very hard to date sometimes, much of the time, because it has so many more downs than ups. On Saturday Cher prefaced a certain song by saying that real "dyed-in-the-wool Cher fans" tended to love it, and I was nervous that I wouldn't know it or love it. But it turned out to be <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U6z9XeoVPU">"Heart of Stone"</a> which yes, is one of the more earnestly ridiculous of her songs and is definitely a song for people who have wayyyyyyy too many feelings on a regular basis which is just another way of saying "dyed-in-the-wool Cher fans". Don't you sometimes wish your heart was made of stone?<br />
<br />
I sure as heck do. I can have a somewhat reserved manner in person, and certainly in writing, so I don't always know if people know that I am an intensely feeling girl. (Intensely feeling and intensely thinking, it's a strange life.) This blog probably helps people know that, which is part of why I write it.<br />
<br />
It's been a rough time for my feelings recently, now that I know I am leaving Ann Arbor and moving to New York City. They're getting a real workout. And they weren't exactly hanging in a dusty closet before, if you catch my meaning. But I have enough life perspective to know that the pain of failed things fades away.<br />
<br />
My first love/heartbreak left me two things: my appreciation for the duets of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, and a very soft spot for Foreigner. (It was also a good time for Cher in my life, the heartbreak part at least.)<br />
<br />
So what I feel now when I listen to "Shadows of the Night" and remember Pat Benatar's thigh high plaid socks is actually not new, just the awakening of something a man gave me a long time ago.<br />
<br />
Like I said, there's never one without the other.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/raNGeq3_DtM" width="640"></iframe><br />
<b>The song:</b> Foreigner, "I Want To Know What Love Is"; 1984<br />
<br />
Yrs,<br />
AW<br />
<br />
inbedwithamywilson@gmail.comAmy Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15529572149529654837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-872383954956894346.post-75762846497301798032014-04-06T12:12:00.000-04:002014-04-07T12:51:45.994-04:00To All of the Wildest Times: Full Speed AheadObligatory introductory statement: I am in the process of quitting my current life and moving to New York City to follow my dreams. It might just go at the top of every post because it colors every day of my life.<br />
<br />
If you're a follower of this blog you know that I love old pop music.<br />
<br />
But I also love new pop music, particularly when it's really good. I'd say that discovering a new pop act I really love is one of the best things that ever happens to me and here's why: people who are making great new pop music ALSO love old pop music.<br />
<br />
So it's like all things coming together for me. The sounds of the past I love plus the sound of the current day which I also try to love plus the sound of the future which I am really trying to figure out. (And about which I alternately wildly between "terrified" and "exhilarated".)<br />
<br />
And this band is just a dream come true. It's three sexy Jewish girls who can dance AND play the guitar, and who sound like everything good that came out between 1975 and 1995. AND their last name, and the name of the band, literally means LIFE.<br />
<br />
The more I become interested in Culture the more I see how much Culture is driven by what the boys like. That's largely cool with me but I also want -- and this is all -- for there to be a place for what the girls like.<br />
<br />
I can't speak for all the girls but I can speak for myself, so I can say: I LOVE THIS BAND. I also love Lena Dunham, and Mindy Kaling, and Cecily Strong. And Duchess Kate Middleton. And Best Coast, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, Janelle Monae, Valerie June, Robyn, and Drake. I loved the movie <i>Her </i>and I love that the Muppets are coming back.<br />
<br />
These are the things that look and sound like the future to me, and I just want to go toward the light.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Ljg6g7BAdQo" width="640"></iframe><br />
<b>The song: </b>Haim, "If I Could Change Your Mind"; 2013<br />
<br />
Yrs,<br />
AW<br />
<br />
inbedwithamywilson@gmail.com<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Amy Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15529572149529654837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-872383954956894346.post-56177609652976310442014-04-02T13:16:00.002-04:002014-04-02T13:16:19.331-04:00His Heart In Every Line: Think About ItI find myself introspecting a LOT these days, partially because it's the beginning of what seems like could be the most profound spring in a long time and partially because I am preparing for <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2014/03/in-my-lifetime-im-still-not-right.html">a major life transition.</a><br />
<br />
And these things are combining in a strange way, kicked off by my recent urge (which I now understand to be seasonal) to binge on the music of <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2013/03/keep-those-records-playing-another.html">Sam Cooke</a>. I didn't address it in that entry of a year ago because I think I wanted to keep it light, but Sam Cooke is a tragic figure. So handsome, dashing, debonair, and talented; killed too young in uncertain circumstances; a great and soulful singer who wrote one of the best opening lines in pop and protest music -- <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbO2_077ixs&feature=kp">"I was born by the river in a little tent/and just like the river I've been running ever since"</a>.<br />
<br />
Given that it is also Marvin Gaye's birthday, and just past the 30th anniversary of his own tragic death, I thought of him too.<br />
<br />
And I thought of Jackie Wilson in whom I became interested recently, perhaps the most troubled of all, a person who could never find his feet in life.<br />
<br />
These troubled people, musicians and artists, leave behind a record of themselves. But unlike their counterparts in the world of rock and roll, the songs they left behind don't necessarily tell the story of their difficult personal lives. Sam Cooke is remembered for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOho-r-oBog">"Cupid"</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSoPeZMHMf4">"Twistin' The Night Away"</a>, Jackie Wilson for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcwqCmEi9Jc">"Higher and Higher",</a> Marvin Gaye for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6QZn9xiuOE">"Let's Get It On".</a><br />
<br />
It's not a bad thing per se. This is the nature of pop music. But the more I get to know and love pop music, and it's such a big thing that I'll be getting to know it and love it for the rest of my life, the sadder I feel about the immeasurable distance that can exist between a happy song and a happy singer.<br />
<br />
It's just one of the saddest things. And I see the connection to my own life as I continue to balance my own struggles with mental health with the pursuit of successful creativity and happiness, and as I continue to know and love people who are doing the same.<br />
<br />
You can't get bogged down in these thoughts; 95% of the time you have to dance to the music instead of thinking about it. But today, I want to grieve a moment for all the people who made great pop music and suffered about it. Not for their music, but for their lives.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/FrkEDe6Ljqs" width="640"></iframe><br />
<b>The song: </b>The Commodores, "Nightshift"; 1984<br />
<br />
Yrs,<br />
AW<br />
<br />
inbedwithamywilson@gmail.comAmy Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15529572149529654837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-872383954956894346.post-83474494245161931722014-03-25T21:12:00.000-04:002014-03-26T16:29:01.219-04:00In My Lifetime I'm Still Not Right: ReinventionI feel that this announcement can hardly follow the Conscious Uncoupling heard 'round the world, but I have one to make:<br />
<br />
In just a few months, I'll be leaving my current job and location and moving to -- where else -- New York City. I'll be another 26-year-old half-Jewish girl from Oregon going to the big city to pursue her dream of becoming a cultural critic/pop music theorist . . . and I can't wait.<br />
<br />
<i>In Bed with Amy Wilson</i>, this current project, will exist until roughly mid-summer at which point I will officially end it. (Officially!) In a very real way this blog is the outward expression of a particular time in my life, the time of living in Ann Arbor and figuring out what my ambitions are. As a person I have difficulty dealing with change which is why I am attracted toward clean endings rather than fizzle-outs. If things have to change, I want to stamp them with a big rubber stamp that says: "CHANGED".<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
Because I've been dealing with this major life change, deciding to make it and taking the steps to put it in motion, my taste in music has gone decidedly earnest. (Even more so than usual.)<br />
<br />
I've also been exploring the field of what I would call "humanistic science", prompted largely by the re-boot of <a href="http://www.cosmosontv.com/"><i>Cosmos</i></a> which has been airing recently (and which will continue for many more weeks so you should watch it, no really, I'm not getting paid to say that or anything, just want to fly the flag for Science).<br />
<br />
The genius of Carl Sagan, and of the whole group of people and projects he inspired, is to use the principles of science to bring people together in a quasi-spiritual fashion. To generate wonder about the natural world. To increase awareness of the central contradiction of human life -- which to my mind is that we are, at once, the smallest and least significant things imaginable, and also the most complex and beautiful.<br />
<br />
(And to convince everyone that we should stop shooting at each other and start building spaceships!)<br />
<br />
These two threads in my current mind come together in this song, which is nominally about reincarnation but I take more to be about the continuity of life more generally. In other words, that whether we are aware of it or not, we are all part of something larger than ourselves.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/dI1keSSwdcI" width="640"></iframe><br />
<b>The song:</b> Indigo Girls, "Galileo"; 1992<br />
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*<br />
<br />
Although I know I am part of something much larger than myself, and made of star-stuff, and all that, one can only hold those thoughts in one's mind for so long and so my relationship to pop music and to this song is essentially self-centered. (Is that a bad word? It's just what I mean.)<br />
<br />
Thus when I listen to it I can't help but think of this tiny reincarnation I am about to face, of shedding a few old layers and gaining some new ones in the tremendous and varied environment that is New York City.<br />
<br />
When I end <i>In Bed with Amy Wilson</i> I plan to continue to document and share my life because that is something I enjoy doing, and my medium of choice will be Instagram. I have a tiny profile there already under the name <a href="http://web.stagram.com/n/showmehowever/">showmehowever</a>. I am attracted to Instagram for this purpose because it is such an elegant medium, a new form of communication, and I hope to do there with pictures what I have attempted to do here with songs.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCWd4uKrIbOEDHtWvIke-4QFe_VSha_tvaokxyT-pHhwp_XdxqYj01HpzvlQZSrlT5giUrG5kSJJaml7LQq_e2upAdlTCphlZ5Hi8lA7sOkezCaZB3xaIpIRAMq9bELHBV7Gb9W0rAMwU/s1600/curtainsinsta.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCWd4uKrIbOEDHtWvIke-4QFe_VSha_tvaokxyT-pHhwp_XdxqYj01HpzvlQZSrlT5giUrG5kSJJaml7LQq_e2upAdlTCphlZ5Hi8lA7sOkezCaZB3xaIpIRAMq9bELHBV7Gb9W0rAMwU/s1600/curtainsinsta.jpg" height="400" width="400" /></a></div>
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But that's all in the future. There are a few songs left in this time!<br />
<br />
Yrs,<br />
AW<br />
<br />
inbedwithamywilson@gmail.comAmy Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15529572149529654837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-872383954956894346.post-26158869312992060332014-02-26T08:40:00.000-05:002014-02-26T12:50:26.155-05:00Don't Run Your Jive On Me: "Integrity"This past Friday I, with the help of a few friends, put on a show called the "Zodiac Dance Party" which was an experience I will never forget.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmvq45kQVWylky8tEOI3NzhgrGxX7QIDnPu-gJz0g2zXZV0mOT9pX99SWv8IBHYKz-cUHae9jbbagEkfGxSVtYX2qWkPVW3n-XrZ887t7QIT4x2U8P5h47C2kEA-jCI2ns1TdpeevRnic/s1600/zodiacnew.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmvq45kQVWylky8tEOI3NzhgrGxX7QIDnPu-gJz0g2zXZV0mOT9pX99SWv8IBHYKz-cUHae9jbbagEkfGxSVtYX2qWkPVW3n-XrZ887t7QIT4x2U8P5h47C2kEA-jCI2ns1TdpeevRnic/s1600/zodiacnew.jpg" height="640" width="497" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Design by <a href="http://thewackattack.com/">Rachel Auriemma</a>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I called it Zodiac Dance Party because a) I didn't want to obscure the fact that it would be a party, with dancing, and b) I wanted it to sound somewhat mystical and yet also somehow so dorky that no-one would believe it was really sincere. BUT IT WAS.<br />
<br />
(Because this is who I am.)<br />
<br />
The bulk of the music was provided by my friends, The Votaries (of Rock and Soul), a group of talented graduate students whose version of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HldHtBxNK6k">"This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)"</a> is now located deep in my heart.<br />
<br />
But some of the music was provided by me, in the form of a dance playlist to which I devoted way too much blood sweat and tears (because that's also who I am).<br />
<br />
And this is a song from that list that didn't get played, so I'm going to play it here. I think it says what I want to be about.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Qttsrf8JjR8" width="640"></iframe><br />
<b>The song: </b>Aretha Franklin ft. Dizzy Gillespie, "Integrity"; 1985<br />
<br />
Firstly, looking up the exact date this was released reminded me of a thought I had the other day which is that, I would like the chestnut that there was no good music released in the 1980s to be retired. There was SO MUCH GOOD MUSIC IN THE 1980s. It is maybe one of the most interesting decades for music (to me). So that's that rant.<br />
<br />
But more specifically, I want to say that I love this song. Partly because this whole album, <i>Who's Zoomin Who</i>, is a testament to the force of nature that is the great Aretha Franklin, who was 43 when she recorded it. I feel that she sounds her age in the best way, in the way that <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2012/08/well-men-come-in-these-places-and-men.html">Tina Turner</a> sounds her age. In the way that has such confidence and a feeling that she has earned what she is telling you.<br />
<br />
This song, which features jazz great Dizzy Gillespie on trumpet, was written and produced by Aretha herself. I can't name another dance jam on the subject of integrity (but if you know of one I would like to hear). Like <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2014/01/just-little-close-to-me-figuring.html">authenticity</a>, "integrity" is something I have been thinking a lot about lately. It is comforting from me to hear from Aretha, who has really lived, on the topic.<br />
<br />
I increasingly think that integrity is one of those things, those bright lines, that separate those truly make it in the world from those who don't. And I guess I should clarify what I mean by "make it in the world" which is not in this case a matter of material success, but more about the ability to <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2014/02/twenty-seconds-to-comply-oh-uncertainty.html">stay in the present</a> without being overwhelmed too often by <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2013/05/and-everything-looks-worse-in-black-and.html">the never-ending pain-in-the-ass-ness that is life.</a><br />
<br />
I also think that integrity and authenticity are both not actual destinations but more the hills shimmering in the distance, that seem to get only a little bit closer as you continue walking.<br />
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But, as I have learned in the past few weeks listening to it, this song is a fantastic one to walk to. (If you turn it up.)<br />
<br />
Yrs<br />
AW<br />
<br />
inbedwithamywilson@gmail.comAmy Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15529572149529654837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-872383954956894346.post-219631590944119442014-02-19T23:04:00.000-05:002014-02-20T13:04:35.935-05:00Twenty Seconds to Comply: Oh, the UncertaintyI really don't like not knowing what's going to happen to my life. If I had my way I would plan out every step for the next three years and then everything would go according to plan. (And it would probably be, I can admit, boring.)<br />
<br />
But, without being too specific, I'll say that I'm in a period where not-knowing is more common than knowing.<br />
<br />
AND I HATE IT. Really. I'm struggling with it mightily. I get scaly patches around my eyes like a sick puppy or something. My stomach hurts on a near-constant basis. I cut bangs and they are refusing to lie the way I want them to, like they know it will drive me crazy and they're doing it on purpose.<br />
<br />
But like I said in a previous post about <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2013/12/i-want-it-to-be-you-but-i-know-its-me.html">the quarter-life crisis</a>, I also have the perspective to understand that this is just a passing moment -- and maybe, in hindsight, will seem (like other passing moments I've experienced) to be glamorous, exciting, maybe even fun.<br />
<br />
That's a big maybe. It's also possible I'll always look back at this period in my life and think UGH.<br />
<br />
THE POINT IS THOUGH, I have no idea how I'll look back at this period in my life because I have no idea how anything is going to turn out. And that's the crux of the problem, the thing that keeps my goat-y Capricorn self up at night. But what I am starting to see is, isn't this how it's supposed to feel all the time? Not this stressful all the time, I hope, but isn't this the goal, the thing I'm working toward, the thing I know intellectually is important to try to do: live in the present.<br />
<br />
Now that I am forced to be here by circumstances beyond my control, I understand the beauty and excitement of the present in all its terrible glory. The vibrancy of it.<br />
<br />
This song became famous ten years ago in the movie <i>Garden State</i>, which everyone loved when it came out and now would hardly admit to loving. Because it's self-indulgent, and pretentious, and not as innovative as it thinks it is. But we didn't know that at the time. Or at least I didn't.<br />
<br />
Circumstances beyond my control -- scary. But necessary?<br />
<br />
I watch <i>The Bachelor</i> religiously and this season have been captivated by a contestant named Sharleen, a beautiful 29-year-old opera singer with self-awareness, a natural sense of reserve, and a moody temperament. She's a real lady. And what she did this past week, which you may have heard if you run around on the internet, was leave the show because (for some strrrrrrange reason!) she didn't think she could get engaged to The Bachelor after knowing him only for nine weeks. She liked him but she knew it wasn't going to work out so SHE broke up with HIM. Which is a rarity on a show that is pretty much designed to throw a big fish hook into the cheeks of young women.<br />
<br />
But Sharleen, an artist, understood something that I feel that I now understand better after watching her, which is that you have to be able to break your own heart. I shy away from typing things like that because I don't want to feel like a pithy statement on the inside of a Dove chocolate wrapper, but as I wrote <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2013/02/clock-strikes-upon-hour-and-sun-begins.html">a year ago</a> I increasingly believe these things are cliche because they are true.<br />
<br />
That was the first anniversary of this blog, and this is now the second. If I didn't think this blog would last a year when I started it, I certainly didn't think it would last two. But here I am, still chronicling in my own sideways way this period of my life that is defined more by not-knowing than by anything else.<br />
<br />
In that entry about "I Wanna Dance with Somebody" I left a note to my future self. I said that I thought maturity was becoming comfortable with a mix of toughness and vulnerability. I allowed for the possibility that my future self would think that was ridiculous, but bet on the fact that my future self would still think "I Wanna Dance with Somebody" was an awesome song.<br />
<br />
And, I do. And I look back at that past self (not so very long ago, but still) and I like that she liked that song, and chose it to mark an anniversary. I think it sums up very much of what I have learned, which is about the idea of not wallowing.<br />
<br />
This year the song is not quite as sassy, but retains that same quality of authenticity and vulnerability. I want to say to my new future self, who will someday be my present self, who will someday be my past self: I still think you were right, but it's fine with me if you were wrong.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/13WAhlE02ew" width="640"></iframe><br />
<b>The song:</b> Frou Frou, "Let Go"; 2002<br />
<br />
Yrs,<br />
AW<br />
<br />
inbedwithamywilson@gmail.com<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Amy Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15529572149529654837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-872383954956894346.post-661353647814799882014-02-07T18:09:00.002-05:002014-02-07T18:20:54.864-05:00Hopefully Learning: "More Than This"Because I love this video.<br />
<br />
Because this song reminds me of my dad. (A guy who has very interesting taste in music, as I plan to write about more soon.)<br />
<br />
Because of <i>Lost in Translation </i>and Bill Murray.<br />
<br />
Because it's beautiful.<br />
<br />
Because when I crave this song, there's no other song that will do.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/kOnde5c7OG8" width="640"></iframe><br />
<b>The song: </b>Roxy Music, "More Than This"; 1982<br />
<br />
Yrs,<br />
AW<br />
<br />
inbedwithamywilson@gmail.comAmy Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15529572149529654837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-872383954956894346.post-31664738912760301062014-01-29T19:44:00.002-05:002014-01-29T19:46:31.457-05:00Being Good Isn't Always Easy: CoolSomething I wrote<a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2013/03/so-tell-me-now-and-i-wont-ask-again.html"> almost a year ago now</a> is this: "A<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, FreeSerif, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21.559999465942383px;">s I get older I find myself facing more and more of the emotionally complicated moments of life.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, FreeSerif, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21.559999465942383px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, FreeSerif, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21.559999465942383px;">These experiences have led me to believe that, when I do occasionally get a break from complicated concerns, I should spend that time experiencing things I find to be simple, beautiful, and good. With people I find to be beautiful and good. (But never simple.)"</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, FreeSerif, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21.559999465942383px;">And, man. Time is moving so fast and so slow for me. On the one hand, I feel that the me-of-ten-months-ago had seen NOTHING of "emotionally complicated moments", bah! On the other, I know she had, and this world-weariness in the me-of-today is only its own form of immaturity.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, FreeSerif, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21.559999465942383px;">Regardless, I stand by what I said. And ever more so.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, FreeSerif, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21.559999465942383px;">To me this song is a neatly wrapped package of sexy coolness, like the highest-end ice cream cake you can imagine.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21.559999465942383px;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times New Roman, Times, FreeSerif, serif;"><b>The song: </b>Dusty Springfield, "Son of a Preacher Man"; 1968</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21.559999465942383px;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times New Roman, Times, FreeSerif, serif;">It was Dusty's last Top 10 hit for nearly twenty years; her next one, "What Have I Done To Deserve This?" I posted on my blog, <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2012/11/you-always-wanted-lover-i-only-wanted.html">a long time ago</a>. I also featured her song <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-past-is-my-shadow-my-shadow-is-you.html">"What Do You Do When Love Dies?</a>" when someone broke into my apartment and, for a few days, it was the only song I wanted to hear. (And I still don't exactly know why.)</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21.559999465942383px;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times New Roman, Times, FreeSerif, serif;">Long story short, I truly love Dusty Springfield and I often find myself turning to her when I want to feel settled in my emotions rather than distressed by them -- when I want, in other words, to be okay with having feelings.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21.559999465942383px;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times New Roman, Times, FreeSerif, serif;">This is a VERY valuable function of music, in my mind. I mean, maybe one of the most valuable.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21.559999465942383px;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times New Roman, Times, FreeSerif, serif;">I also have to say, on the subject of experiencing things that are simple and beautiful and good with people who are beautiful and good:</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21.559999465942383px;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times New Roman, Times, FreeSerif, serif;">I miss a friend who used to live in Ann Arbor and has since moved to Ukraine. When she lived here, there were a few late nights when one or both of us felt restless. So she'd pick me up in her car, which I will affectionally call a "jalopy", and we'd make a trip to Meijer.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times New Roman, Times, FreeSerif, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21.559999465942383px;">Like all establishments that are open 24 hours, Meijer has a special character late at night. It also has air-conditioning, a good thing in a Michigan summer. We'd browse the DVD aisle and sometimes I'd buy something impulsively (my vast collection of romantic comedies can attest to this). Or maybe the makeup section. Or maybe the baked goods.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times New Roman, Times, FreeSerif, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21.559999465942383px;">The point was, we were together and we were not where we didn't want to be. One of these nights, driving back, my friend put on the <i>Pulp Fiction</i> soundtrack and she skipped it forward to this song. Windows down, very late and very warm, we zipped down Packard Rd turning this song up and singing along -- which is a very hard thing to do if you care about sounding good, which fortunately we did not.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times New Roman, Times, FreeSerif, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21.559999465942383px;">I had already loved this song but now I'll love it even more, because it is inextricably linked to a moment. That's another one of my favorite things that music can do.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times New Roman, Times, FreeSerif, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21.559999465942383px;">Yrs,</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times New Roman, Times, FreeSerif, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21.559999465942383px;">AW</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times New Roman, Times, FreeSerif, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21.559999465942383px;">inbedwithamywilson@gmail.com</span></span></div>
Amy Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15529572149529654837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-872383954956894346.post-57252891407470586312014-01-19T23:45:00.000-05:002014-01-20T12:58:01.322-05:00Just Turn Around Now: In Plain SightI enjoy being able to truly listen to a song that I have heard a billion times, and to hear it for what it is, if it is a great song. It's not something I can always do though, more like a magic-eye puzzle where the picture pops in and out depending on how I angle my head.<br />
<br />
Anyway, I enjoy doing this and I also really enjoy, when I can, doing this with other people. Like pop music group therapy. Perhaps this is my mission in life.<br />
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*<br />
<br />
This is a song that is highly associated with cheesiness, but I don't think it's in itself a cheesy song.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/ZBR2G-iI3-I" width="640"></iframe><br />
<b>The song: </b>Gloria Gaynor, "I Will Survive"; 1978<br />
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This song was not set up to be a hit, but became one due to the sheer force of its nature. Originally released as the B-side to a cover of a Righteous Brothers song (hello 1978), it was more popular with DJs than the A-side -- a factoid that I cannot help but love. Unusually for a disco song at the time, Gloria Gaynor had no backup singers and her voice was left at its natural register, not pitched up.<br />
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These things I learned from reading the Wikipedia article about "I Will Survive". What I know for myself is that this song is a universal anthem of self-respect, an underrated theme in pop music and culture. I also know that this song is one of a very few that is recognizable to the great majority of the population within about 5 seconds of it starting. I think it is, truly, a great song.<br />
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And I love this video with the dancer on her skates who just spins and spins. Is that what self-respect is, disco pants and a spotlight on an empty floor? Seems like it could be, to me.<br />
<br />
Yrs,<br />
AW<br />
<br />
inbedwithamywilson@gmail.com<br />
<br />Amy Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15529572149529654837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-872383954956894346.post-37636969179531486122014-01-14T15:54:00.004-05:002014-01-14T15:54:56.622-05:00Just A Little Close To Me: FiguringHello. There seems to be something in the air about Fleetwood Mac today.<br />
<br />
I appreciate this because I've been thinking recently about how dearly I love Fleetwood Mac and how this love seems to be -- like my things about <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2013/05/because-you-made-me-winner-with-your.html">Motown</a> and <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2013/12/but-i-havent-got-stitch-to-wear-happy.html">Morrissey</a> and my attraction to the scent of bay rum -- one of those things in myself that is a signpost, a marker of something that I am.<br />
<br />
As I am still kind of experiencing <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2013/12/i-want-it-to-be-you-but-i-know-its-me.html">a quarter-life crisis</a>, I find these markers valuable because they give me something to hang on to. But because I also eventually want to leave my quarter-life crisis, I am moved to try to understand this in terms beyond myself.<br />
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The Motown thing is about the fascination of glamour and style and collaboration, not to mention the endlessly (to me) interesting idea of singing about sad things in a happy way. The Morrissey thing is about productive self-absorption, and about being open with your esoteric sources of inspiration. Bay rum just smells like goodness. And Fleetwood Mac is a group that uses high skill to make interesting, yet accessible, things.<br />
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All of these boil down even further to a word I first used on this blog on March 4, 2012 and not often since then, a value I increasingly pursue in pop music and in life: <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2012/03/key-to-my-peace-of-mind-sunday-song.html">authenticity</a>. I felt afraid to use it the first time around because it seemed, I don't know, maybe self-evident? Maybe taking on something I didn't know if I wanted to or was ready to take on?<br />
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It's a slippery thing, but I think it may be the most important thing. The last time I wrote about Fleetwood Mac I said, <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2013/10/i-just-want-you-to-feel-fine-another.html">"This blog is about relationships."</a> I still think that's true, but I also think deeper down this blog is about authenticity: not only songs that exemplify it, but my own search for it -- stumblingly, and over time.<br />
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*<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/q2p6OnSTN28" width="640"></iframe><br />
<b>The song:</b> Fleetwood Mac, "Never Forget"; 1979<br />
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"Never Forget" is interesting to me because it is off the 1979 album <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tusk_(album)">Tusk</a></i>, their majorly ballsy follow-up to mega-hit <i>Rumours</i>. Nobody really liked <i>Tusk</i> at the time but now I think everyone probably loves it, just because it is very hard not to love. As an album, it's a little strange and off-kilter. The songs don't seem to be in the right order. And you're not really quite sure what it's <i>about</i>, thematically, at least not in the same way you are sure that <i>Rumours</i> is about love and its dissolution. (Maybe <i>Tusk</i> is about the dissolved pieces.)<br />
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And it ends with this song, written and sung by Christine McVie who may be the least appreciated member of the band (including by me). At her best, her contribution to Fleetwood Mac is this fatal sweetness, a sweetness that seems too much to be real. In this song, "the stars must be my friends to shine for me" and "just remember that love is gold" sometimes stick in my throat because, like it or not, I am still a product of my time and my time just does NOT get down with that kind of un-self-conscious dreaminess. (I wish it did, though. I read recently on some strange person's Internet blog [no, not this one] that soon we'll all become more comfortable with mysticism and move away from the obsession with logic, science, and reason. He offered no evidence for this naturally, but I believe it wholeheartedly because I want to.)<br />
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But whenever this song comes on, a little burble comes up in my heart and I feel like I should look up at the sky just to see what's going on out there. This is a decision I never regret.<br />
<br />
Yrs,<br />
AW<br />
<br />
inbedwithamywilson@gmail.comAmy Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15529572149529654837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-872383954956894346.post-91471167868949169862014-01-02T17:13:00.001-05:002014-01-02T17:13:12.553-05:00And Women Make Mistakes Too: "New Year's Resolution"As I mentioned in my last post, I'm a little sad that I didn't have more time to focus on Christmas music here when it was seasonally appropriate. There's so much to say! I don't know what any of it is yet, but I guess now I have most of a year to figure it out.<br />
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HOWEVER: I do have one more seasonal card up my sleeve. And oh, it's a good one. Get ready.<br />
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<b>The song:</b> Carla Thomas and Otis Redding, "New Year's Resolution"; 1967<br />
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From <i>King and Queen</i>, Otis Redding's last studio album, and one of my current (and recurrent) favorites. A song like this could easily be cheesy or gimmick-y, but this one really does it for me. Maybe because in my interpretation, it's not actually New Year's at all. It's March or something, and they're just wanting to start over somehow. I like that. I do that sometimes. And why not? A new year can start any time you want it to.<br />
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Here's to this one.<br />
<br />
Yrs,<br />
AW<br />
<br />
inbedwithamywilson@gmail.comAmy Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15529572149529654837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-872383954956894346.post-42506230126293647282013-12-26T03:42:00.001-05:002013-12-26T03:42:47.565-05:00But I Haven't Got A Stitch To Wear: Happy Birthday to MeI still feel a bit remiss about not having written more about Christmas music this year, as this is one holiday to which music -- and particularly pop music! -- is closely tied.<br />
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However, time marches on and, as is always the case in my life, I have to swoop directly from Christmas-thoughts to birthday-thoughts. My birthday is today. December 26. And it always has been!<br />
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Last year on this date I posted <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2012/12/i-was-wasting-my-life-always-thinking.html">a Morrissey song</a>, and my half-baked thoughts about the nature of aging (as seen through the lens of my continuing interest/obsession in modern monarchies).<br />
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Incidentally that Morrissey song, "That's How People Grow Up", is an amazing song and also holds the personal distinction of being the very first song I ever played on air at WCBN. Not unintentionally.<br />
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I think it would be a fun tradition to, as long as I have this blog, do the Morrissey thing on my birthday. Not least because a birthday should be a day of self-indulgence (in this case intellectually AND aesthetically, whee hee) but also because it should also be a day of self-honesty. And when I am truly being honest with myself, I see that my Morrissey "thing", my "thing" about Morrissey, is pretty revealing.<br />
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I have now been 26 for approximately 26 minutes. I can already sense it will be an interesting age. Old enough to know how young I actually am, and young enough to worry that I am getting old. But one thing I am (thankfully) realizing as I get older, at the rate of approximately one day per day, is that once you've been through enough environments and iterations as a person you start to get a sense of what about you is the environment and what about you is you.<br />
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When I was a twenty-year-old creative writing major, it made sense for me to love Morrissey -- albeit, even then, in a somewhat self-consciously nostalgic, wet-behind-the-ears sort of way. (It was, after all, not that long ago objectively speaking.) But it was always me who loved him, and that knowledge is the kind of thing I now think is precious. Which knowledge? That this, is just, who I am.<br />
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If you know anything about Morrissey you know that this is maybe his chief quality: being exactly who he is, this being a melodramatic individual who teeters between pitiable and completely insufferable. But also! Also, well-read. Great with wordplay. With a totally unique voice. A presence. Some pretty snazzy dance moves. And -- and THIS is the kicker -- an actual sense of humor about himself.<br />
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I just love him, and love can forgive so many things. I don't mean any of this to say that now that I have reached the venerable age of 26 that I've decided to indulge all my flaws henceforth in service of Being Myself. That idea is pretty horrifying to me. What I do mean to say however, is that in the grand slalom race that is life, it is an excellent feeling to know at least what shape my skis are.<br />
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Why pamper life's complexities when the leather runs smooth on the passenger seat?<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/OzexP58si0w" width="640"></iframe><br />
<b>The song:</b> The Smiths, "This Charming Man"; 1983<br />
<br />
Yrs,<br />
AW<br />
<br />
inbedwithamywilson@gmail.comAmy Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15529572149529654837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-872383954956894346.post-86272003327653635722013-12-15T15:55:00.003-05:002013-12-15T15:58:52.251-05:00Who Have I Become: Growing UpHello!<br />
<br />
It has been a long since I have written to you, which I could explain but the explanation doesn't matter.<br />
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What matters is that over the past few weeks, I have had much cause to feel that a) I may be having a quarter-life crisis and b) I am experiencing a lot of personal growth. As anyone who has been through a personal growth spurt will know, it is often unpleasant and often makes one sort of an unpleasant person. Like the teething of the soul.<br />
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I don't think I'm fully teethed at this moment, and maybe won't be for a long time. But I do feel a lot better than I did at this time last week.<br />
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As always, music is a valuable tool for this sort of thing and the music I've been focusing on is the extremely recent EP <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fade_Away_(Best_Coast_EP)"><i>Fade Away</i> by Best Coast.</a> If you asked me to sum up the moment of mid-twenties uncertainty in which I currently find myself, the instability and the low-level angst and the problems that I objectively know are not THAT bad but that feel bad, I'd say, "listen to this."<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/ClS402whwPA" width="640"></iframe><br />
<b>The song:</b> Best Coast, "Who Have I Become?"; 2013<br />
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Because when I listen to it, I realize that this is just a passing moment, and I can see the beauty in that.<br />
<br />
Yrs,<br />
AW<br />
<br />
inbedwithamywilson@gmail.comAmy Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15529572149529654837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-872383954956894346.post-71724703271556469882013-11-28T19:17:00.001-05:002013-11-28T19:17:53.479-05:00Nuh Nuh Nuh Nuh Nuh Nuh Nuh Nuh: Ode to JoyThe above is my best attempt at representing in words that line that we all know how to hum, which came to me out of the blue when I was in the shower today, which is Thanksgiving.<br />
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It took me a few times through to remember what it was, as it was just one of those things that occasionally comes through on the radio receiver in my head. Although I am working on my skills to appreciate classical music, they are not very good -- and so I think it appropriate that, of all the classical pieces that could come to me as an idea for a blog post, it would be this one. It IS a pop song, after all. Interpreted and re-interpreted many times, too commonly heard to be really listened to, but one of the musical themes that shapes our lives.<br />
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Like many people, all I really know of this song is that main line. It might be because of the name that this song comes to me in moments of idle happiness -- of THANKSGIVING, one might say -- but I also think there is something special captured there.<br />
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All I want to say here is, good job Beethoven. And good job to the people behind this very cool video featuring visual accompaniment. And Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/ljGMhDSSGFU" width="640"></iframe><br />
<b>The song:</b> Ludwig van Beethoven, "Symphony No. 9 (Fourth Movement)"; 1824. Performed by the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra.<br />
<br />
Yrs,<br />
AW<br />
<br />
inbedwithamywilson@gmail.comAmy Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15529572149529654837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-872383954956894346.post-37215206280615261652013-11-25T18:49:00.001-05:002013-11-25T19:10:06.104-05:00To Let You Know I Can Really Shake 'Em Down: Keep It LightThis song I would put in the category of, things you've probably heard too many times to actually hear.<br />
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But it's SO GOOD.<br />
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(For a long time, it was in that category for me too.)<br />
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Interesting things about this song:<br />
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1. It's Motown, but really does not sound like it at all. Mostly due to that squeaking, soulful vocal line (which is SO great).<br />
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2. Not only is it Motown, it's one of the few Motown hits actually written by Berry Gordy himself!<br />
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3. Not only was it written by Berry Gordy, in his frenzy of writing he became convinced that this song had to be recorded immediately if not sooner (it seems like he did this a lot). It was supposed to go to the Temptations, but he actually literally could not FIND the Temptations, so grabbed another group and had them do it instead.<br />
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Which is a very charming story and only feeds my Martha-Reeves fantasies of being some unassuming office-type in the corridors of Hitsville USA and being called in to pinch-hit as a backup singer on what turns out to be a mega-hit and then having a whole fabulous life filled with sparkly dresses and doing for a living what I currently do only in the privacy of my own home, ie perfecting my snapping-along technique to the music of the Four Tops.<br />
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AHEM. In any case, I love this song. If only because it reminds me to remember that life goes a lot better if you can dance about it. Incidentally these dance moves look a lot like mine although I can only hope to one day be this stylish.<br />
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But isn't there something just so endearing about these relatively unpolished moves, particularly with the distance of time and our current culture of HD hyper-quality? I think so. This is so much of what I love about watching Motown artists: they truly are having fun, and it shows.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/2vTEstU1MRk" width="640"></iframe><br />
<b>The song:</b> The Contours, "Do You Love Me"; 1962<br />
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(After all, she may not love him any better now that he's got a rockin' Twist, but you gotta know that'll serve him well.)<br />
<br />
Yrs,<br />
AW<br />
<br />
inbedwithamywilson@gmail.com<br />
<br />
PS Important research for this post came from the excellent blog <a href="http://motownjunkies.co.uk/">Motown Junkies</a>, which is a must-read for any fan of Motown or of intelligent, unpretentious, serious writing about pop music. Thank you, Motown Junkies!Amy Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15529572149529654837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-872383954956894346.post-61223999726190879052013-11-14T15:56:00.000-05:002013-11-14T15:58:53.735-05:00Don't Stop Let's Party: The Fame MonsterI am very interested in fame.<br />
<br />
Not so much for myself, although I do fantasize several times a week about being on <i>Dancing with the Stars,</i> but certainly as a concept and one that affects all of our lives regardless of what we think our level of buy-in to mainstream culture is.<br />
<br />
Without a doubt one of the most interesting commentators on the subject of fame these days is Lady Gaga, not least because she has always made it explicit that she IS interested in commenting on fame through her image and music. (Some of my other favorite mega-famous women, like <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2012/07/at-movies-with-amy-wilson-katy-perry.html">Katy Perry</a> and <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2012/03/all-papers-had-to-say-was-that-marilyn.html">Rihanna</a>, are less obvious about it.)<br />
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Although in this day and age, it seems that everything is a comment on itself. I think that's why I appreciate when it's made explicit, because there's got to be a straight line to something in order for me to feel motivated to navigate the maze of meta-commentary.<br />
<br />
There was a time (roughly 2009) when Lady Gaga was mega-famous the first time around and it was au courant to discuss which was your favorite Lady Gaga song. (Either it was au courant or I have some very indulgent friends. Or both.) Sometimes I would say <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niqrrmev4mA">"Alejandro"</a> (which IS a really good song) but in my heart of hearts I always felt that this song was the alpha and omega of Lady Gaga, the one that would endure to show people what she was all about.<br />
<br />
It's still too soon to make that call but at least in my opinion, this song holds up.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/6nIvBI2_hSY" width="640"></iframe><br />
<b>The song:</b> Lady Gaga, "Paparazzi"; 2008<br />
<br />
First off, ooh this song is still REALLY catchy is it not?<br />
<br />
Secondly: "Paparazzi" links romantic obsession to cultural obsession by blurring the lines in the figure of the amateur paparazzo/fan who only knows she wants to possess, somehow, the object of her attention. It doesn't seem to really matter how. In this song, the song itself, Gaga plays the obsessor. In her life at the time, she was the obsess-ee.<br />
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Which is I find her latest single such an interesting follow-up to "Paparazzi".<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/A3jzMyYgPQs" width="640"></iframe><br />
<b>The song:</b> Lady Gaga ft. R Kelly, "Do What U Want"; 2013<br />
<br />
Like "Paparazzi", this song compares the public (fame) with the private (sex). As such, like "Paparazzi", it works both as a pop song and a statement, depending on how deep you're in the mood to think when you hear it.<br />
<br />
She pushed this song to greater heights in three ways:<br />
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- By collaborating with R Kelly, an artist whose image currently epitomizes (fairly or not) the washed-up. This is why I really believe and respect him when he says "we're laying the cut like we don't give a fuck", because I think not-giving-a-fuck is precisely what R Kelly needs to do right now. That's the only way back.<br />
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- By referencing Marilyn Monroe, the ultimate touchstone of poisoned fame. (For more on that, see <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2012/03/all-papers-had-to-say-was-that-marilyn.html">this somewhat crazy post I wrote forever ago about Marilyn, Rihanna, Tupac, Kanye, and "Candle in the Wind"</a>.)<br />
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- By, in the opening lines, providing at least the illusion of a glimpse into her personal life. Lady Gaga has always been, for better or worse, a highly constructed celebrity. What she says about herself rarely has the ring of truth. But Lady Gaga has always been out to shock, and to engage in meta-commentary, and to provoke conversation. I believe she's reached a point of fame -- and what's more, that the culture has shifted such between 2009 and 2013 -- that the most shocking and provocative and au courant possible move to make is. . .simple honesty.<br />
<br />
To me this song feels like mega-hit. I'm interested to see if it is.<br />
<br />
(Writing this post reminded me of a relatively similar, although less cultural and more personal, entry about Eminem's songs "Lose Yourself" and "Till I Collapse". <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2012/12/a-plaque-of-platinum-status-is-whack-if.html">Read it here if you like</a>.)<br />
<br />
Yrs,<br />
AW<br />
<br />
inbedwithamywilson@gmail.comAmy Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15529572149529654837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-872383954956894346.post-12276091928734088812013-11-04T23:31:00.000-05:002013-11-05T13:32:02.134-05:00Tell The Truth: "A Woman's World"It seems that I always turn to Cher when I want to brush on the topics of <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2013/02/if-you-can-give-it-i-can-take-it-self.html">feminism</a> or <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2012/06/theres-only-one-way-up-so-your-hearts.html">humanism</a>. The reason for this is two-fold: for one thing, Cher is one of my favorite women/humans of all time, and secondly, she represents something that is important to me.<br />
<br />
Given that she has been mega-famous continuously since 1965, it seems to me there's no denying that Cher is a living legend and a force of nature. What's truly remarkable about this in my eyes is that her chief talent seems to be "being herself".<br />
<br />
I don't mean that in a derogatory way. This is what makes her singing and songs resonant -- they seem to be reflective of something true, something she has lived. And if you've seen her acting in <i>Moonstruck</i> (which I hope you have), you'll know that she brings unforgettable transparency to that character. (The incredible writing of John Patrick Shanley is also a factor in what makes that movie SO GREAT, it must be said. "I ain't no monument to justice! I lost my hand! I lost my bride!")<br />
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Cher is always willing to be herself, but what's more, she has a sense of humor about that self. For instance, do you know that she once starred in a mini-production of <i>West Side Story</i>. . .playing all the characters? It's completely insane and brilliant. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNhIgvqEHRo">Watch it here.</a><br />
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And I have complete confidence that Cher will be Cher until the day she disappears from this planet in a cloud of purple glitter (I'm pretty sure she won't "die" like the rest of us). A confidence that is reinforced by her most recent single:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/JjPWL-23w-w" width="640"></iframe><br />
<b>The song:</b> Cher, "Woman's World"; 2013<br />
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The song may not be your taste, but please give it up for a 67-year-old woman who wears a gigantic headdress made of cut-up newspapers in the video for her ENTIRELY CREDIBLE club song.<br />
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The amazing thing about "Woman's World" is that it sounds so like a Cher song, but it also sounds like a 2013 song. This tells me Cher can adapt to the world as it is, which is something that I admire in everybody but particularly in people who are on the older side.<br />
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Cher is one of those artists, like <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2013/02/love-is-losing-game-entirety.html">Amy Winehouse</a>, <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-past-is-my-shadow-my-shadow-is-you.html">Dusty Springfield</a>, and <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2012/10/im-always-running-behind-times-just.html">Joni Mitchell</a>, for whom I feel my appreciation is uniquely colored by being female. It is hard to be a woman.<br />
<br />
That feels like a controversial statement to make, although I am not quite sure why. Perhaps because it carries a huge weight of implication: that it's hard to be woman because men make it that way, or that it shouldn't be hard to be a woman any more because of the 1960s, or that (the old chestnut) the feelings that give rise to the idea that it's hard to be a woman are because of an individual woman's personal failings instead of something universal or systematic.<br />
<br />
I don't know that I'm trying to make a political statement, and I certainly don't want to make a statement of victimhood. I know it is also hard to be a man; I have read novels. My theory is, and it's not exactly groundbreaking but okay, but my theory is that it's just hard to be a person and the way in which it is hard is determined by what kind of person you are.<br />
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This is why I respond so much to Cher's music, which contains not only her trademark message of self-actualization but also the exhortation to join together instead of working apart. Speaking personally, that's the only thing I've ever found to make it easier.<br />
<br />
Yrs,<br />
AW<br />
<br />
inbedwithamywilson@gmail.comAmy Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15529572149529654837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-872383954956894346.post-44535709567674229582013-10-29T19:19:00.001-04:002013-10-29T19:20:38.964-04:00Gee My Life's A Funny Thing: Plastic SoulHi friends.<br />
<br />
I just came back from a brief trip to Scotland.<br />
<br />
Scotland is a great and very beautiful country and it was hard to want to leave it. In the days since returning, I have been trying to fall back in love with America (since this is where I live). Generally I do love America, albeit at times in that peeking-through-my-fingers way that is actually pretty typical of love now that I come to think of it. But, as I said, Scotland is a great and very beautiful country and it was hard to want to leave it.<br />
<br />
My preferred method of traveling is two-fold: a) pretend I live there and b) get productively lost. If I had my way, I would spend most of time in foreign countries walking down the street and peering into the lighted windows of grocery stores. I am glad that I usually travel with other people who make me do things like go to museums and hike. It's not that I don't enjoy doing those things; I do. It's that left to my own devices, I would wander around and have exquisitely melancholy thoughts for the length of my entire vacation. I need to learn to limit my tendency in that direction, I think.<br />
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In any case, I did a tiny bit of this when I was in Scotland, and I walked down the street at night, and I peered into the lighted window of this pub that had not real bookshelves but bookshelves painted on the walls, and I found that really charming, and I put down my exquisite melancholy and I went in.<br />
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As I was sitting in an armchair in this pub, reading a book about the young Queen Elizabeth II and gazing at the painted books on the wall and thinking the moment could not get any more perfect, this song came on softly in the background.<br />
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There are many music-y things to say about this song. One music-y thing I didn't know is that it was Luther Vandross who suggested the arrangement for the backing vocals (which I think is very cool). I'm not sure I really want to say music-y things about it though.<br />
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I want to play you this song, because it came on at the exact right time for me. It's a bridge back to that moment, but also a bridge back to real life.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/ScVi_L817ec" width="640"></iframe><br />
<b>The song:</b> David Bowie, "Young Americans"; 1975<br />
<br />
(It's also just a great song, which is what this is all about. Plz enjoy. And maybe, turn it up.)<br />
<br />
Yrs,<br />
AW<br />
<br />
inbedwithamywilson@gmail.com<br />
<br />Amy Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15529572149529654837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-872383954956894346.post-21968771064349039562013-10-11T19:14:00.001-04:002013-10-11T19:23:33.815-04:00I Just Want You To Feel Fine: Another Time AroundContinuing the theme of <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2013/09/baby-go-on-and-live-tell-it-like-it-is.html">songs that have been featured here before</a>. . .<br />
<br />
This song was featured, again in sort of glib making-a-point kind of way, in <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2012/02/tackling-greats-fleetwood-mac-rumours.html">the third entry posted here on <i>In Bed with Amy Wilson</i></a>.<br />
<br />
That entry was about Fleetwood Mac's seminal album <i>Rumours, </i>and I still mostly agree with what I said although it is more than a little bit agonizing to revisit something I wrote a year and a half ago. Just because that is the nature of writing things, I think.<br />
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When I wrote that entry about <i>Rumours</i>, my blog was very new (less than a week old) and I was obsessively in love with it. My blog, I mean. I hope that doesn't sound hopelessly self-absorbed to say. I wasn't in love with what I was writing in the blog, but with having a blog in the first place. It's so simple, a very small thing, but powerful.<br />
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As I have <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2013/02/clock-strikes-upon-hour-and-sun-begins.html">mentioned here</a>, when I started this blog I was just coming off a breakup. Although it was painful, like all breakups, it wasn't so bad all things considered (much like <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2013/10/sometimes-i-told-you-you-was-beautiful.html">the one I mentioned the other day</a>). What it gave me, mostly, was an insane drive for self-determination -- as in, the desire to have a deliberate hand in what I thought and presented to the world. Hence this blog, and <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2013/05/because-you-made-me-winner-with-your.html">the radio show</a>, and the leopard-print dress I happen to be wearing today, and all the other trappings of independent womanhood I have acquired in the last eighteen months.<br />
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When I started <i>In Bed with Amy Wilson</i> I called it that because at the time, I lived in a very small apartment with two other people and we didn't really have a living room so I spent nearly 100% of my time when I was at home in my bed. Just sitting on it. Listening to music. Having thoughts. Hanging out with friends. The name of the blog was supposed to have sort of a, "hey, welcome to my world!" sort of feeling to it.<br />
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Now I have my own apartment and a purple squishy couch that I love, and that's where I spend the vast majority of my time when I am at home. If I started my blog today it would be called <i>On the Couch with Amy Wilson</i>. I kind of like that name better, partially because of its allusion to mental health which is becoming something I write about more, but <i>In Bed with Amy Wilson</i> it will stay.<br />
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I often wonder why I have this blog, and in dark moments I really do berate myself for having it. As anybody with an <a href="http://inbedwithamywilson.blogspot.com/2013/06/im-just-trying-to-find-decent-melody.html">obsessive-leaning mind</a> will most likely understand, I have a drumbeat of negative adjectives that strikes up when I least expect it and then becomes so constant as to be almost unheard. "Self-involved" is one of them, I won't mention the others because I try not to encourage them. In any case, I do sometimes wonder what right I have to present what I think to the world and then I remember, oh yes, the same right anybody else does.<br />
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*<br />
<br />
<i>In Bed with Amy Wilson</i> is nominally about pop music, but I think that means it can be about everything else as well. One of the other things it is about is relationships, although I very rarely mention anything or anyone specific. I don't do that because I want to be vague or dramatic, and even if I did it probably wouldn't work very well. . .for instance I have been writing about break-ups and such recently, so if you were inclined to look beyond the surface you might think "Hey, she's going through a break-up!". Nope. I am not. Just living. And sometimes, in the course of living, things come back to you in less than chronological order.<br />
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When I was in high school I went through a HUGE Joan Didion phase, and something Joan said that stuck with me was this: writers are always selling somebody out. I felt then, and feel even more strongly now, that that doesn't necessarily have to be true, at least not in the way that she means it. As I get older I become much more aware of the value of other people's stories, and the arrogance I would display in thinking I have any right to tell them without express permission. This is why I keep things general on my blog, and also why I talk about myself.<br />
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Because I don't think Joan is wrong, exactly. I do think writers are selling somebody out. My goal is for the only person I sell out to be me. For the only stories I tell to be mine. And for this, somehow, to contribute to the general pool of stories and experiences that I firmly believe enriches all of our lives. That's the only thing I'm comfortable with -- the only way I can justify writing and speaking in public the way I have done -- it's how I define independence.<br />
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*<br />
<br />
This blog is about relationships, for everything that means. One of the most special ways it is about relationships is when something I write here feels true to somebody else. (And they tell me about it. Otherwise I can't know. And that's okay too.)<br />
<br />
Somebody once said to me about<i> In Bed with Amy Wilson</i> that when she read it, she felt that she was reading something that truly Got what it is like to be a mid-twenty-something woman. That comment meant more to me than almost any other I have received, about anything. At the time I didn't think of this blog as being a particular reflection of mid-twenties-ness, or womanhood, but I've since realized that I don't have to try to make it a reflection of those things. It just <i>is</i>.<br />
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That is one of the most important and most difficult lessons I have learned as a writer, and I guess you could say as a person too. The lesson is that the more you try to make something a certain way, the less likely it is to turn out that way. And the way things turn out to be is so often impossible to understand in the moment.<br />
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When I read that old entry about <i>Rumours</i> I feel very acutely what I felt when I wrote it -- which was a burning compulsion just to write SOMETHING in this blog, to maintain the momentum needed to actually make this a thing that exists and not just another addition to the graveyard of forgotten projects that is the Internet. Like all relationships, my relationship with my blog was most intense at the beginning and has since (not faded, but) deepened into something slower, and more real, and more indicative of the value of commitment.<br />
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And so I feel I understand this song so much better than I did when I wrote about it the first time, when I thought of it as merely snide. I now see it as something much more profound. As Stevie and Lindsey sing, "I don't want to know". . .because I don't HAVE to know. Not right now, at least.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/P-NB7HHRpVo" width="640"></iframe><br />
<b>The song:</b> Fleetwood Mac, "I Don't Want To Know"; 1977<br />
<br />
Yrs,<br />
AW<br />
<br />
inbedwithamywilson@gmail.comAmy Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15529572149529654837noreply@blogger.com