Hi Darling Ones,

Last night The Youths came over for dinner. We ate pizza and watched the Stevie Nicks’ episode of VH1 Storytellers from 1998.* For the record, both of my viewing companions were born after this episode aired on VH1. In fact, I don’t even think either of them even knew what VH1 was. They for sure didn’t know what Storytellers was, because I told them.

Of The Youth’s many charms their love of Stevie Nicks is probably on the Top 10 list. They sat enthralled through the entire episode listening to Stevie Nicks talk about Prince and writing Landslide and Rhiannon during the same trip to Aspen.

After the show we sat and talked about music and Maxwell tattled on Sonya.

“She doesn’t like Pearl Jam,” he said.
I winced because that’s sacrilegious in our family.
“I don’t really like grunge,” she admitted.
“Her favorite grunge band is Babes in Toyland,” he said.
“THAT’S NOT GRUNGE!” Sonya and I shouted in unison.

The grunge discussion led us to watching Nirvana’s Unplugged in New York.

As the show started up I said to them, “I was your age when this came out.”

Both of their heads snapped to the right to look at me and as they stared at me with no small amount of horror my hair turned to mildew and my bones to dust.

“Wow,” Maxwell said. “I keep forgetting how long ago the 90s really were.”
“Yeah,” Sonya said. “They were like thirty years ago.”
“So the 70s were like fifty years ago?” Maxwell asked.
Sonya shook her head yes.

I would have said something by lips had curled into my toothless mouth as my skin wrinkled and turned grey right before my eyes.

Anciently yours,
Jodi

P.S. The song “All Apologies” always reminds me of my college newspaper days where we would constantly change the line “I wish I was like you easily amused” to be a kind of burn on whomever was in the room. It was nerdy and fun.

P.P.S I was inadvertently super social the last few days and today I’m paying the price in sheer exhaustion and foggy-headedness.

P.P.P.S. I also got super obsessed with finishing BFK’s magic lantern blanket and thus ended up watching a lot of TV and writing zero things.

 
*Thanks to the Great Socialist Streaming Revolt of June 2020, I now have all the things. Like all of them and one of them has a bunch of episodes of Unplugged & Storytellers and when I tell you it’s the best thing to happen to me since GSSRJ20, I am not kidding.

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I like to believe my obsession with Edgar Allan Poe & O.Henry began in junior high. That feels right for some reason I can’t explain. But my memory won’t even let me buy into that, because I’m pretty sure I didn’t read Poe until 10th grade English class. I’m getting a distinct 10th grade vibe from thinking about “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Perhaps The Cask of Amontillado was 11th grade?

Regardless, I fell in love with Edgar Allan Poe and O. Henry sometime in the 80s. I bought like the equivalent of each of their Greatest Hits at Waldenbooks in the Northtown Mall and felt super grown up and mysterious about it. Before that, all my babysitting money went solely to Sweet Valley High Books and records. It was a rite of passage.

Also, I think Ed & O came along at the time in my life where Jodi Hanson, Sister #2, and I became a little obsessed with the dark arts — ouija boards, seances, anything that had to do with haunting. Really, it was Jodi & Sister #2 who were super obsessed, I just went along for the ride because I had nothing better to do.

That summer between 10th and 11th grade was spent holding “seances” with Jodi & Sister #2’s friends, learning to read tarot cards (also purchased at Waldenbooks), and watching “Witch Board” every weekend. It was a very zeitgesity movie that summer because, it starred Tawny Kitaen and Patch from “Days of Our Lives.” This was also the same summer Whitesnake’s “Here I Go Again” was a huge hit.

Sister #3 is still scarred by this phase of ours, probably because she was nine.

Do all teenagers go through this? Or was this solely an 80s phenomenon brought on by the Satanic Panic?

Are you still with me here? You’re gonna be totally bummed how this ends, but I don’t really care. I was having a bad case of the sads this morning and writing this has kind of jarred me out of it.

Edgar was probably my very favorite writer until I discovered John Irving in 1991. However, I must admit O. Henry was much more influential. I’m only a little ashamed to admit that every shitty teenage short story I wrote had a surprise ending. I thought I was so clever. I apologize to anyone who ever read any fiction I wrote in high school, you deserve 33 million mad props for not crushing my fledgling writer’s spirit. If it weren’t for you I wouldn’t be online rambling right now and ending this post with a Stevie Nicks video. Cheers to you high school fiction readers who only offered praise and never criticized, you made me what I am today!

So as I was saying Edgar was my favorite writer for about four years there and my very favorite piece of Edgar’s writing was “Annabel Lee”. Of course. It’s one of the random bits of poetry I have committed to memory. M.E. Kerr only intensified my love for “Annabel Lee” by mentioning it in a few of her books. God, I loved her books.

Because I had the sads today, I went in search of Stevie Nicks hoping that would cheer me up. See she was kind of already on my mind not because I’m obsessed and going through this phase, but because two very different people serendipitously mentioned her when I least expected it last night. First my friend Kurtis tweeted about having “Landslide” stuck in his head and then roughly 10 minutes later as I was listening to the Mindy Kaling book, she mentioned how that very same song makes her cry.

See? Stevie is everywhere. Don’t fight her, just give in.

So imagine my delight in the middle of my sads to discover this! That’s right it’s Stevie Nicks singing the Edgar Allan Poe poem “Annabel Lee.”

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I have this conversation and ones very much like it a lot. A lot. A lot A lot. I am a fickle music lover, which might come as a surprise to readers of I Will Dare who think I only yammer on about the ‘Mats, Liz Phair, and Stevie Nicks. But if you had to deal with me in the world outside the computer you would know that I have never matured past the “my new favorite song” fifteen-year-old phase of music-loving when every thing you hear is the best thing ever for about 10 minutes.

My love burns intense and quick and it is shallow as sin. I make no apologies. I do, however, like to make confessions. So here I present you with a complete list of my very favorite songs for past 30 days, in chronological order.

Editor’s Note: I started to write this post when I felt like mold last week when it was snowing in May and never got around to finishing it until right now.

Jake Bugg, “Two Fingers”

The drums in this one caught me the moment I heard it on The Current. Also the way he sings “I got out, I got out, I got out.” I listened to this song over and over before giving the whole, not too shabby album, a shot.

Stevie Nicks, “That Made Me Stronger”

I know, you’re all, enough with this fucking song it is so March, but I had a crisis of writing faith and had to double back for this one on like a Wednesday & Thursday in April.

Metric, “Gimme Sympathy”

I spent all day today talking, arguing, and/or writing about Rock & Roll. It was a glorious. I forgot why I’m telling you this. Oh, I remember, because I heard that the new Vampire Weekend record has songs with a lot of proper nouns and I don’t like that because it makes me think the band is just pitching to be included in a commercial like that awful song that includes the words Kia Sorrento in it. But if a song mentions band I like, then I’m all over it. See: Drive-by Truckers, “Carl Perkins’ Cadillac,” The ‘Mats, “Alex Chilton,” and First Aid Kits’ “Emmylou.” I stumbled on this Metric tune after I got tickets for Rock the Garden.

Also, the answer is The Rolling Stones. Always The Rolling Stones.

Lissie, “Shameless”

The Metric song only got a few days as my reigning very favorite song because it was usurped by this song by Lissie, someone I’d never really paid any attention to until I heard this song on the radio.

Lissie, “Cuckoo”

And now we come to “Cuckoo” which is my current very favorite song. In fact, is usurped “Shameless” after about twelve hours. I’ve listened to the Lissie album “Catching a Tiger” in its entirety seven times since I discovered it on Friday. I’m nothing if not obsessive. This song is my favorite because I love the line “I fell in love with being defiant.” I’ve woken up singing this song every day since I heard it.

The post A Very Short History of My Very Favorite Songs From the Past 30 Days appeared first on I Will Dare.

So, if you know me you’d probably agree that for the most part I’m kind of a curious cynical skeptic with a dash of conspiracy theorist thrown in for good measure. Only my conspiracy theories usually involve companies and how everything is a marketing ploy and not so much nefarious deeds by the government. I mean, we all know that government is up to all kinds of nefarious deeds all the time, right? Have you seen Congress lately?

rimshot.

For the most part I let my logical cynical skeptical self run the show here. Sometimes I let my inner new age hippie doofus out, like when I’m convinced drinking more water will help everything from a stupid backache I had most of the week to a could-possibly-be-allergy-related headache. By the way, it totally worked. The new age hippie doofus believes in things like positive energy and karma and vibes and harshing buzzes and shit like that.

Above all else the new age hippie doofus believes in signs from the universe. She would say “God” but the inner cynical skeptic is all “there is no God, dumbass.” And the NAHD is all “what if. . . ” So if people ever ask me about things like that I claim devout agnosticism.

The universe gives me signs. A lot. Maybe because I am listening. For instance, one of its favorite signs to send me is playing The Replacements on the radio while I am tuned in. That’s the universe telling me everything’s going to be swell that day.

The other day the universe sent me a doozy via YouTube. Here, I’ll show it to you:

As you can see that’s one Ms. Neko Case singing with My Morning Jacket. The song they are singing is a cover of the Tom Petty & Stevie Nicks’ duet “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around.”

You see where this is going, right? Probably not, because you are not the same kind of crazy that I am. I will spell out to you the myriad ways this is a sign from the universe and what it could possibly mean.

First, it ties into the whole Stevie Nicks thing I’ve got going on.

Second, I should tell you this video came into my life on the same day from two very different sources. One was a comment on a post I wrote about Liz Phair. And the other was from my pal Wolfdogg who is super pumped about the Bob Dylan, Wilco, My Morning Jacket show this summer (as am I, it’s been far too long since I’ve been to an actual concert. Like maybe 2009 when I lost my last real job and decided I was a total pauper and could not spend money on frivolous things like concerts, but dude, Wilco and Bob Dylan at Midway Stadium? That shit cannot be denied no matter how broke you think you are).

Third, and this is the most important one, a cover of this very song features quite prominently in the longish fiction piece I’ve been writing (140 pages – 40,000 words so far). AND Neko Case has a small cameo in the piece though it is unrelated to this song.

What could this all mean? It means, clearly, that writing this book is the exact thing I’m supposed to be doing now and that when I finish I will sell it and it will be published and the movie rights will make me a bajillion dollars and Stevie Nicks will sing a song on the soundtrack.

What else could it possibly mean?

In other assorted goochers. This is what my WordPress dashboard looked like before I made this post.

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But this is not about Ann Wilson or Johnny. This is about Stevie, the high priestess of all that is good lately, and specifically this song:

It’s called “That Made Me Stronger” and I heard it for the first time a few weeks ago. Maybe it was last week. The passage of time means nothing to me. What I remember is that I had dialed up Stevie Nicks in Spotify and I hit play. I was listening to her entire catalog one song after another, just letting it soak into me. I was also working or writing and let most of the songs pass through my ears without much thought or comment, until this one came on. I think it was the word write. I am attuned to it.

So I repeated the song a few times and listened to they lyrics, falling in love, of course, with the chorus
Well, you know me better than I know myself
Will you write this for me?
He says, “No, you write your songs yourself”
That made me stronger, it made me hold on to me.

At the moment I said “I’m going to pretend she wrote this about Tom Petty.” I liked the idea of him bolstering her up when her confidence was shaky. That’s what friends do. I wanted them to be like real, actual friends. Does this matter at all in my real life? No. But in the longer piece of fiction it matters a great deal.

Of course because my brain is kind of an asshole and kept taunting me. “What if it’s about Don Henley or Lindsey Buckingham?” Somehow that mattered to me and since I’m roughly 72% compulsive corrector and a little bit of Irish, I had to go search out the truth of my fan fiction as soon as I was done working.

Guess what? I was right! She did write it about Tom Petty and that makes me ridiculously happy. And the only reason I typed all this is that I sing this song to myself every morning the second I wake up. It’s my subconscious’ way of reassuring me that what I’m doing is right and the thing I should be doing.

Also, I wasn’t entirely sure I could crank out a whole post about how I put peanut butter on banana bread this morning and it was the best thing to happen to my mouth since, well, yesterday when I got this delightful tangerine lip balm, but anyway, it was a life altering discovery and the fact that I haven’t eaten every crumb of that banana bread is a testament to my grown-uphood.

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