Internal and External Circumstances (plus Metric, Dixie Chicks, Where the Wild Things Are and Lady A for music fix 2)

After a week of no posts and more retrospection than i’ve had in a while, it’s hard to come up with a way of organizing and making my thoughts easy to understand, so bear with me, I’ll try my best.

But first it’s weekly music time. First up, we have Dixie Chicks. I’ve loved them for about the past year, but it seems like this time of year is the time that I come to fall for them all over again. This song is called “Easy Silence,” and it is from their brilliant Grammy-winning album Taking The Long Way. The vocal hits me right where it hurts, and what’s more, the lyrics are stunningly multi-faceted.

So you don’t have to skim to the bottom for the meat of the post, I’ll start talking here, interjecting with musical goodies in between. I went to journalism camp this weekend, 4 days of intensive work on the very first website my newspaper will attempt to publish and make successful. This is so far out of my comfort zone it’s unreal. I have to learn an entirely new program and be one of the co-editors of something I’m not comfortable with-not yet anyway. This is something new for me: I’m such a control freak that doing something new is always something hard for me.

At the same time, I can’t begin to tell you how excited I am. I’m going to working with a team that I know and love (all 4 of the other staffers are very close friends of mine) and starting something new is always exhilarating. I am so happy that our new adviser is young and fresh, that she’s quirky and funny and I thing that is going to benefit us.

Speaking of exhilirating, I CANNOT wait to see Where the Wild Things Are. Maybe it’s just the Arcade Fire in the background, but doesn’t it look amazing?

Another thing I thought about at camp was the situations and circumstances I find myself in as I start my senior year of high school. This will either be one of the best or worst years of my life. So much of these past three years has made me realize that I am a stronger person than I think I am. But there are times where I realize that my insecurities and jealously make me feel like I’m suffocating. I can’t help these things, it’s just how it is, but I still feel like it’s my fault.

On a completely different note, congrats to Lady Antebellum for their first number one single, I think? Haha, this song makes me happy inside, and I don’t know why. Takes me back to last April when everything was so crazy, but at the same time all made some sense. It’s called “I Run To You” and it’s off their self-titled debut.

One last thing: when people say I hate my life, I think I realize what they are talking about. All they hate is the external circumstances, not really the internal stuff that happens. I’m depressed but I realize that my depression will probably be there for as long as I live in Houston, at the very least. It’s odd how simultaneously I am both comforted and freaked the fuck out by the idea that I won’t be living in Houston in a year. I think every teenager leaving their hometown feels like that. And I can’t be any more excited to see what happens next.

To finish this off, I will leave you with my favorite song of the moment. Last week, I gave you Emily Haines solo, this week I offer her in Metric. From their Polaris Music Prize-nominated album Fantasies this is “Gold Guns Girls.” Have a great week, and I’ll see you guys very soon.

~ “You cannot live on hope alone, but without hope, life is not worth living” – Harvey Milk