Taurus Top 5

We're on the month of Aries. I don't have to say it's my favorite month because I happen to be an Aries, so I won't discourse much on it.

In Kabbalah it's said that the first twelve days of Aries are like preambles for all the other months of the year; it's like they're the first fields where we'll settle our battles, like the recognition of territory. Kabbalist Isaac Luria created a guide to the first twelve days of Aries, each day corresponding to a sign from the zodiac. Yesterday, the 22nd, was Taurus day and we were supposed to “avoid being comfortable” by “listening to others, embracing discomfort, actively sharing with others, avoiding complacency.” My soundtrack for such a day [that started with a stressing walk to the bank and was adorned by a sleepy class and internet troubles] might not have much to do with the essence of Taurus day, but these songs helped get through the day by sometimes reconnecting me to the good part of things, in other words, the Light.

5. “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” by Judy Garland

I closed the day with a screening of one of my favorite musicals, Meet Me In St. Louis. This lullaby-esque holiday song has a so obvious sorrowful tone that it often hides the sweet optimism contained in the lines. The marvelous and magically beautiful Judy Garland, as Miss Esther Smith, sing about living the moment and enjoying the happiness of Christmas, forgetting the troubles of life that will surely melt away in the future.

4. “Peach Trees” by Rufus Wainwright

It’s amazing how this song sounds fresh to me even when I’ve listened to it a million times. Wainwright performs it with an ailment and emotion that the sad lyrics become somewhat soothing after a while. It’s a song that not only grows on you but also grows itself, feeling like a giant wave that is to crash on a shore of resignation. The lines “’cause I’m so tired of waiting in restaurants/reading the critics and comics alone” [that happen to be some of my favorite lines ever written] ends in a delusional and magic meeting with James Dean. For a stressed and heartbroken person they bring nothing but hope.

3. “Like A Virgin” by Madonna

What’s to say about a song that goes: “I was beat, incomplete/I’d been had/I was sad and blue/but you made me feel/yeah you made me feel shiny and new/like a virgin/touched for the very first time”? I guess it’s enough said.

2. “Vibrate” by Rufus Wainwright

“My phone’s on vibrate for you”. Waiting, anticipation, suspense. These things alone are enough to make an Aries stressed, not because of others but because we still wait. If you read my latest posts you’ll notice my mind and heart have been waiting for the next best thing to happen. I know I should not expect the Universe to always give me what I wish - I’m working on that – but this song translates a lot of this kind of depressing feeling that has been hanging on me for a while. The Britney Spears mention in the lyrics is very witty and I’m sure the melody is inspired, if not totally sampled, by Bach.

1. “On The Radio” by Regina Spektor

This song goes about human behavior, of how we live our days trying to make it right, connecting one fact or thrill to the other - sometimes losing ourselves in the process – but always companied by memory. On Aries day [the 21st] we were supposed to “remember the past to avoid repeating mistakes” and though in the rapid pace and careless life of ours we do repeat craps we are always aware of them. Spektor’s song juxtaposes actions getting a kind of stream of consciousness/life rhythm: “no, this is how it works/you pear inside yourself/you take the things you like/and try to love the things you took/and then you take that love you made/and stick it into some/someone else’s heart/pumping someone else’s blood/and walking arm in arm/you hope it don’t get harmed/but even if it does/you’d just do it all again”.

Romantically Lame

“If I kiss you where it’s sore? Will you feel better? Will you feel nothing at all?”

Funny, the other day I found a text I wrote more or less a year ago. It’s called “Drunk” in which I say about getting drunk to ease the pain. I loved coming across it because it’s a proof of my rut: I realized that from late Feb to March I get into a needy bitterness that is often triggered by heartbreak.

Back then I taped myself to a more dramatic soundtrack, read: Kylie’s Put Yourself In My Place and Drunk. This time I have extremes, both hurt of course but one is a bit romantically lame while the other is more moving on-ish.

Lame things first. Regina Spektor’s Better has been into my mind ever since I went back to Conquista to get the rest of my stuff. The quotation on the first paragraph is from it and this song has a little story. As you know January was a marvelous month for me; in one of my sunset viewings with The Cigarette Club I [now] remember starting to feel the sentiments I’m today willing to leave behind. Everybody [but Bel] was there; Eder was there. It was a lovely dusk with beautiful scenery, cute reencounters, cigarettes and flirtatious smiles. In Diego’s car Regina Spektor’s Fidelity started to play and I offered my CD that contained the Begin To Hope album [which was never returned till this date]; and there she was swaying one of the prettiest sunsets I’ve seen so far while certain things had their commencements.

The other song is Cardigans’ Erase/Rewind, which I posted about already. “Better” is romantic/lame [in a good way, I must point out] because it’s my masochism wanting to hold things that are probably expired. Although it’s not so simple to erase and rewind [I’d say it’s impossible without the help of Miss Alzheimer and Miss Lobotomy], Dido already testified that “it’s high time you left it there.” So I sing “Erase/Rewind” to try to wake up the strong independent Samantha Jones in me who just shakes the crap off and moves the line on. But instead, I think I can’t have him kissing where it’s sore, so I daydream and feed ego.

If in the end I decide to waste time and compare the situations [this and last year’s heartbreaks], I could say that last year I was in way better position. Because at least back then I was drunk. Note to self: buy booze Lucas.

[Song: Better – Regina Spektor]
[Song 2: Erase/Rewind – The Cardigans]