Music is my...

My childhood was all about gangster rap and the best Duran Duran mixtape in all of the Southside of Chicago. My mother was versatile in her musical tastes: she grew up on blues and r&b and funk music in the 60's and 70's. Somewhere along the line, she picked up a strong love for progressive rock and early hard rock: Pink Floyd, REO Speedwagon, Led Zeppelin, The Who, etc. The list goes on. In fact, it was this love of rock music that brought her and my father together. Imagine: being two black kids in high school on the south side, in the heart of Englewood, bonding over a "Dark Side of the Moon‟ LP. Pretty fearless, I must say. And I have the two coolest parents to ever step foot in Lindblom High School.

And then they had a kid. A relative joked that said kid would come out “white” because of the parents' musical tastes. Psh. I say that relative was just jealous of my parents' awesomeness.

In 1993, I got my MTV. And it was good. It was all R.E.M. and Blind Melon and Smashing Pumpkins and Stone Temple Pilots. Who needed fresh air and cruel kids making fun of you when you had Kurt Loder and John Sencio and every other MTV VJ from the greatest decade of the 20th century?

Long story short, I have a soundtrack for just about every event in my life. Name any 90's song (preferably a top-40 hit, pop or rock…I was a tween, after all) and I can tell you where I was and how I was feeling. I grew up and went to college and it freaked me out. And I needed a release. When I wasn't drinking cheap vodka or “bitch drinks” I was laying in my crappy dorm room bunk bed listening to music. There were six albums I had on constant rotation those four years of undergraduate studies and whenever I hear these albums, these songs, it takes me back and reminds me of how I was able to keep it together. A big test? No worries: Jimmy Eat World is there for me. Project due yesterday? Just take a deep breath and pop in some Incubus. In no order of preference, those albums were:

Room for Squares- John Mayer
Morning View- Incubus
Clarity- Jimmy Eat World
Gold- Ryan Adams
Is This It- The Strokes
Long Gone Before Daylight- The Cardigans

Yes, at first glance, it is a very mainstream, vanilla mix of music but the impact they‟ve had on my life goes beyond what anyone thinks of John Mayer and his infamous “penis” remarks or Jimmy Eat World and their “emo” label.

Following my breakup from Mr. Always Late Man, I immersed myself in John Mayer, listening to “St. Patrick's Day” on my headphones in the dark until I fell asleep…or until my adorable guy friend Pink came to my door, demanding that he give me a piggyback ride to the campus radio station at 1am.

My best friend mentions that she's interested in the Strokes and by chance I receive a copy of their album in the mail the next day. So it became hers. And it soon became one of our many freshman year soundtracks, along with Ten Yard Fight, “Love Gun” and the “Granola Bar” song. We would also ponder why anyone would go to Wichita while walking to the train station, since Jack Black proclaimed that he was going there in “Seven Nation Army.”

When I had to walk to the train station solo, it was me, Brandon Boyd and his “Aqueous Transmission.” It took me a while to get back on the Incubus train, as an unfortunate encounter with my first roommate ruined their sweet poetry for me. I played “Aqueous Transmission” during the first few days of our living together and she admitted that she liked the sound; several days later, she became the biggest c*** on the planet. Suddenly, I wanted nothing to do with Incubus. But I was glad to rediscover them, as one of the girls down the hall was quite possibly the world's biggest Incubus fan and we now had something to talk about.

Ryan Adams came into my life during my senior year of college but I didn't fully appreciate him until I suddenly found myself spending many weekends alone, even when Mr. Always Late Man and I were still dating. There were some days when I just didn't want to pay for gas just to get him to come and see me. So with my best friend off with her man and my 2nd roommate watching “Third Watch” (which would soon become our show, every night at 9pm on A&E), Ryan Adams and I would make a date, singing “The Rescue Blues” and bidding “Goodnight, Hollywood Blvd.”

The Cardigans didn't come into my life until my junior year. I had discovered a new music service on the interwebs and it was one of the bands recommended to me. “Couldn‟t Care Less” was the first song that I played from “Long Gone Before Daylight” and it's so haunting and beautiful and depressing and soothing that I found any reason I could to listen to it. However I discovered that the absolute worse time to listen to it was while I was drinking, as all of those qualities that made me love it suddenly became my worst enemy. I‟d go from singing along to sobbing uncontrollably, even if I wasn't depressed enough to identify with the lyrics in the song. Halbastram and I were in our first year of dating and everything was wonderful, so the song meant nothing too personal to me. But it has that effect to make you feel it deeply no matter what, and I still feel the same way to this day.

For the remainder of my college days I wouldn't find any music that would have a huge impact in my life, although I still enjoyed discovering new music and rediscovering my old favorites. However, the first few months of Grad School would remind me of the importance of music during some of my most stressful and depressing and even exuberant moments.

To be continued…

When life was sweet...

I’ve been here for about eight months and I haven’t fully adjusted to the Kansas lifestyle. Just what that entails, I have no idea. I suppose it means that I haven’t gotten used to the lack of public transportation and classy dining options and better shopping options. Does this make me a snob? Perhaps. But regardless of how screwed up Chicago is policy and expense wise, it’s still a world-class city and still the place that I still identify with, despite the fact that I lived in the ‘burbs for eight years after graduating from high school. It was refreshing to know that whenever I needed a getaway from the SUVs and spoiled kids and American Eagle hoodies, I could hop a Metra train and go spend a ton of money in touristy-trap downtown Chicago with my mother and little sister.

Our downtown visits had a pattern: we’d arrange to meet around noon, since we had to plan around the Metra’s arrival time (which ran every hour and took about an hour and 15 minutes to get into the city from my town). I find my mother at her bank’s Gold Coast branch, she’d hit the ATM and then we’d head over to Carson’s. Once Carson’s closed (a move that deeply upset my mother), we had to find alternative department store pickings. So to Macy’s we’d go. There we’d spend way too much money on designer underwear and shoes and then decide to find a place to lunch.

And then comes the problem: after spending our hard earned dollars on our designer underwear and shoes, we’d be low on funds and therefore unable to dine at the classier establishments. As a result, we’d find ourselves having to choose a chain restaurant, a move that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, considering that we could pay less for the same food outside of the city center. Bennigans? Always a good choice, until they closed. Friday’s? That usually works, although it’s so far down the Mag Mile that we’re usually exhausted by the time we get there. Popeye’s? Always solid.

Following the food, drinks and laughs we’d head back out to do more shopping, preferably at a music or book store. We’d stock up on cds and/or magazines and realize that it’s soon time for us to depart, as I have to catch the Metra on its own cuckoo schedule.

(For anyone who is thinking of stalking us, please be aware that we’ve since switched up our routine. Shazaam.)

But despite the monotony and the routine, I would gladly give up this Kansas lifestyle to have it back. I miss the diversity, the rudeness, the Tina Turner impersonators, the homeless people who would get angry if you only gave them change, the hookers riding the train and so much more. Well, I could do without the hookers on the train, since I’m confident they weren’t wearing any underwear and I didn’t feel comfortable sitting anywhere they might have been sitting.

Grody to the max.

All in all, Chicago is a great town. There’s something for everyone and if you have a strong desire to blow through a ton of money, it’s definitely the place to be.
I’ll see you soon, you awesome city, you.

Restart 1.2.3.

It's been almost a year...a whole year. And so much has gone on. I said so long to Illinois, so long to Chicago, so long to that bus-driving business and hello to my new life in graduate school. Studying political science is indeed as stressful as you might imagine. It's hard to keep personal ideologies out of objective studies but it always makes for interesting classroom debate. This large campus environment is still pretty alien to me but it's great for people watching, but not in that creepy BluBlockers sunglasses-wearing way. The term is almost over and I got a shiny new computer so hopefully I can keep up with this writing business. Shazaam.