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thesinglesjukebox · 7 years

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Tom Petty

He was the unlikeliest of pop stars in the hairsprayed and shoulder-padded MTV era, a thin-lipped, stringy-haired Florida ne’er-do-well whose toothy smile never seemed far from a sneer, whose band played swampy rock & roll with a pub-rock snarl and whose thin, scouring-pad voice sang anthemic highway-ready pop choruses about the feelings you wish you didn’t have and the bad decisions you have to learn to live with. It was a one in a million chance that a gang of dropouts and weekend rockers from Gainesville would ever amount to anything but a few not unhappy memories dating from the mid-70s; but Tom Petty was a one in a million talent, a clear-eyed writer with a knack for honeyed melodies that drew on the thirty-year history of rock to create songs so indelible and evergreen that it seems as must they must always have existed.

For many of us, born since his heyday, they have: Petty’s last Top-40 hit, “You Don’t Know How It Feels,” was from the 1994 album Wildflowers, which sounded thirty years old when it was new, but if it were a person would have graduated from college by now. But an unmatched catalog of perfect pop-rock songs stretching from the late 70s to the early 90s, many of which went unappreciated at the time, have gone on to a deathless life on classic-rock and throwback radio formats, peppered throughout movies and TV to underscore reflective or joyful or wistful moments, part of the ever-shifting tapestry of pop history that does what mass art at its best does: give voice to complex or transient emotions, unite us in shared enjoyment, remind us of beauty.

Here are some of the things we were reminded of this week.

Anaïs Mathers on

"American Girl"

something that's so close/yet still so far out of reach

I could tell you about being eight years old and seeing Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers with my parents at the old Miami Arena in 1995, long since torn down for a newer, shinier building. I could tell you about how my dad let me climb onto his shoulders when they played "American Girl." I could tell you how I waved my arms in the air while my dad sang along in thickly accented English. I could tell you about how Tom Petty records often played in our house not just because it was good music but because it was some of the music my dad listened to in order to learn English when he came to the US; Tom was clearer than most. I could tell you how I tried to keep my eyes open in the backseat of the car on the drive home as my dad hummed.

I could tell you about being a college freshman in Gainesville, Florida, sitting on the floor of some guy's dorm with him as we mixed vodka with Gatorade. I could tell you about how hot it was that night and how his AC window unit was doing us no favors. I could tell you how we listened to the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' self titled album and when we got to "American Girl", when it got to the end, this guy told me about how the song was about a girl who jumped off her balcony in the same dorm we were sitting in and swan dived right into traffic on 441. I could tell you how he was pretty annoyed that I was more interested in hearing about this urban legend (the dorms didn't even have balconies!) than I was in hooking up.

I could tell you about living in Gainesville a few years later just a few blocks from that dorm in an apartment that overlooked 441. I could tell you about being so depressed I couldn't go to class, about sitting on my windowsill eight stories up (no balcony here either) and smoking cigarettes while watching traffic. I could tell you how homesick I was for a home that didn't really exist anymore. I could tell you about how bright it was, even in a not so big place like Gainesville, and how on nights when it seemed like I wasn't entirely in my body anymore, I wanted nothing more than to push off that windowsill with eyes closed. I could tell you how it was only the thought of how 441 was so long that it extended not only from where I came from to where I was right then but to places I hadn't even seen yet. I could tell you how I climbed back into my bedroom and tried to sleep based only on imagery and promises made in Tom Petty songs.

I could tell you about when I finally left America. I could tell you all the good things about therapy and falling in love and Canadian healthcare but what hasn't already been said about them? I could tell you about how relieved I was to leave but how much my heart ached the night before I was set to cross the border as a landed immigrant. I could tell you how in a Days Inn in Buffalo, I took my own photo in front of an American flag my dad had packed with me. I could tell you what a relief it was to leave and how it broke my heart that I was right that there was a little more to life somewhere else.

I could tell you about how strange it is to be an American girl these days. I could tell you about wanting to turn your back on everything you once knew. I could tell you about how sad it is to grow up and realize everything you were taught was bullshit. I could tell you how much sadder it is to realize the privilege you have in that system. I could tell you how complicated it is to be OK with being an American girl. I could tell you that there is shame there.

I will tell you that Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers recorded "American Girl" on July 4th, 1976, the bicentennial of the United States. I will tell you that this song has the jangliest guitars I've heard played the way you might a new wave song: fast, danceable, hopeful. I will tell you that Tom Petty seems like one thing ("dad rock") to a lot of people; I will tell you that those people are idiots. I will tell you that Tom Petty is not only one of the finest songwriters and musicians of any period but he is exactly what we could want in an artist: open, curious, flawed. I will tell you that Tom Petty was open to growth, open to change, open to being wrong. I will tell you that this is almost more important than his music; the risk with which he lived and created is the most American thing I could ever imagine: being able to be wrong is being free.

Jonathan Bogart on

“Here Comes My Girl”

In the wake of the news, grieving in my particular way (listening through a Spotify playlist), I tweeted: “Have I ever felt an emotion that wasn’t expressed by Tom Petty in songs millions of people love?” This is one of the rare songs whose central emotion I haven’t ever really experienced, but that’s in large part because I’ve never felt a tithe as cool as Petty sounds here, drawling spoken-word verses like a redneck Lou Reed (or Clarence Carter) over a musical bed that is all tension and sparkle, beat poetry overgrown with kudzu and lit by burned-out neon. Of course beyond the affect, I know the feelings the verses express, intimately: “I ain’t really sure but it seems I remember the good times were just a little bit more… in focus.” Ain’t that the truth. “It just seems so useless to have to work so hard, and nothin’ ever really seems to... come from it.” It does indeed. But then Benmont’s piano stabs into a key change, and Petty’s relaxed voice strengthens into song, and “she looks me in the eye-eye-eye” and all that exultation and pride and joy and no, it’s gone. I don’t get looked in the eye-eye-eye, or the solidarity of thatlittlegirlstandingrightbymyside, or told “we gonna last forever,” and if I did I would certainly begin to doubt it. But I still keep listening to it, as though to teach myself how to someday feel it, to prepare my soul for the eventuality that the unspeakable hope (heaven, an earlier thinker might have said, and I can’t say they’re wrong) embodied in the crooning, crashing chorus might become fulfilled, somehow, in my hearing. "Here comes my girrrrl," Petty purrs, as dewy-eyed and shimmering as a lovestruck Merseybeat combo, and the posturing verses resolve into just another line, something to say to pass the time until love happens. All you need, they say.

Rebecca Gowns on

“The Waiting”

I had a feeling that my baby would come early, but she didn't -- she made me wait. I kept checking the validity of my pregnancy as it progressed, and as soon as I hit 36 weeks, I was more than ready. I woke up every morning and thought, "This is it. Today could be the day." I had my hospital bag packed; our parents on speed-dial; my to-do list was empty. I dutifully attended prenatal yoga classes every week and watched the room shift week by week as the other women started to disappear. "She was past 9 months," the yoga instructor would say of a disappearing woman, "so we probably won't see her anymore. It was just her time!" The chorus of "The Waiting" kept coming back to me, a distant refrain that grew louder and louder. "You take it on faith, you take it to the heart. The waiting is the hardest part." Like all of Tom Petty's songs, the melody is simple, the hook grabs, then you realize, when you look a little closer, that it's made from strange glass. It's the ballad of the bad boy gone good, the absence making the heart grow fonder, the time that stretches between each date with someone who's really special. And then, as I pulled up the song and unpeeled the verses, it came to me through another lens: a song from a parent to the child on the way. Where did these words come from? What I'm struck by the most now is the bridge — "Don't let em kill you baby, don't let em get to you / I'll be your breathin' heart, I'll be your cryin' fool" — a vulnerable plea almost buried by guitars, but when you hear it, it's gutting. These are exactly the words I was thinking of on the surgery table, when I saw my daughter for the first time. She was a week overdue, and the hardest part, oh, all the hardest parts, just fell apart as I kissed her face. When I look back at those long hours of anticipation, this song will always be the score.

Thomas Inskeep on

“You Got Lucky”

In the fall of 1982, I was in 7th grade, and thanks to a contest at school (which involved selling tickets to a “variety show” put on by the parents of the band and choir members in grades 7-12), I won my first stereo of my own. It was a Panasonic boombox (very similar to this one), and I was very quickly in its thrall. I was already a huge fan of American Top 40, and now, whenever I was in my room after school, the radio was on, tuned to the local top 40 station. Top 40 radio as 1982 became 1983 was a fascinating thing: there were still plenty of soft, AC/pop records on the charts (from “Baby, Come to Me” to “You and I”), along with a heavy dose of AOR from the likes of Journey, Don Henley, Sammy Hagar, and John Cougar — but there was also the creeping influence of Britain’s new wave, as Culture Club and Duran Duran were each on their first US hits, and A Flock of Seagulls their second. And while Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ “You Got Lucky” was ostensibly AOR — by this point Petty, alongside the likes of Cougar and Bob Seger, was one of the kings of “heartland rock” — this single was different, too. It was the first of Petty’s singles I remember knowing when it was out, and it opened with (and was based around) eerie keyboards from Benmont Tench. “You Got Lucky” sounded futuristic in a way that, say, “Jack and Diane” didn’t, and it was fitting that its video (whose concept was the band’s own) echoed the prior year’s Mad Max, because this wasn’t regular old meat & potatoes rock ’n roll. This sounded unusual, especially to a 12-year-old whose musical tastes were just forming. I’d often play the radio low, after I had to turn out my bedroom light, listening to every bit of top 40 magic I could before falling asleep, and “Lucky” sounded even better, and eerier, at night, like a transmission from somewhere distant, coming to me through the night sky, bouncing off the stars. I’d later learn that being synth-based, it was a bit of an outlier in the Petty catalog, but in a way that makes it even greater. “You Got Lucky” is still one of my favorite Tom Petty songs, and it still, 35 years later, sounds better (long) after dark.

Ian Mathers on

“Don’t Come Around Here No More”

In all the tributes to Tom Petty since his death, people keep (understandably) coming back to the clarity, consistency, and quality of his songwriting; something about it seems to have dated less than many of his contemporaries. I know as a little kid growing up in the “Free Fallin’”/“Into the Great Wide Open” days, when radio or MuchMusic would play “Don’t Come Around Here No More” the clearly, uh, stylized (and so impossible for young me to peg to an era) fashions in the Alice in Wonderland-homaging video combined with that evergreen nature of Petty’s talents meant that it took me a lot longer with him than with many of his peers to actually understand that he’d had a lengthy, productive career, and not just an amazing clutch of out-of-time hits. Now, older and with more of a basic grounding in the production sound of various decades, the relative datedness of those stiff electronic drums (or at least the treatment given to Stan Lynch’s drums, once you look at the credits) and co-writer Dave Stewart’s forebodingly sleazy electric sitar seems like it should date “Don’t Come Around Here No More”, but as more than one admiring musician has noted (cf. here for some examples), it still doesn’t. It’s like, to take an example that otherwise has very little in common with this song, the way the Stooges used sleigh bells on “I Wanna Be Your Dog” — a totally incongruous element in the band’s sound that, by virtue of the strength of the song, sounds in this one context perfectly natural. One of the amazing things about Petty-as-craftsman was that you could get such an off-kilter, hugely loved, emotionally compelling song out of such disparate parts; a song called “Don’t Come Around Here No More” from an album called Southern Accents you might think would dip into politics somewhere, but it’s based on the time Stewart crashed at Stevie Nicks’ mansion after a party and woke up to hear her telling off recently ex-boyfriend Joe Walsh with the title phrase. Which then turns into Petty (a close friend of and potent collaborator with Nicks, and that’s where we’ll leave it for this blurb) giving an amazing performance, his voice sounding authentically strained throughout as he groans and wails and moves through arch disdain, richly self-mocking sarcasm, genuine sounding ache, pained fatigue, and several other examples of the densely textured, often unsung, totally quotidian emotional registers he could summon so effortlessly. Like so much of his work, it feels like a magic trick; rare are the singers or songwriters (let alone both) who could do so much, not with so little (never forget that the Heartbreakers are one of the greatest bands-as-indivisible-units ever forged, and his own talents were staggering) but with so much that just seems standard or normal. The flashiest thing about “Don’t Come Around Here No More” (even that sitar feels totally normal by halfway through) is the memorably creepy video, yet another example of Petty being one of the only acts at his level to consistently come out with actually really good videos, probably because he was willing to put them in the hands of others and had seemingly no ego as to how he came off (neither the snide, vaguely murderous Hatter here nor the pathetic creep in “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” were particularly good looks, which only made him seem cooler — he got that he not only didn’t have to always be the hero, but that it would get boring and honestly weaken the emotional storytelling in his songs if he insisted on it). There are probably dozens of Petty songs I could have picked to illustrate just how amazing (and, thankfully, loved) he was and in such often unassuming ways, but I kept coming back to “Don’t Come Around Here No More” because, no matter what the emotional truth of the situation that inspired Stewart and Petty in the beginning or even whatever Petty brought to the performance, this is for me maybe the strongest example of Petty willing to appear potentially wrong, cruel… hell, petty. More than many of his peers Petty seemed to realize that great songs can’t and shouldn’t just be aspirational, that we need songs just as much (or even more) when we are feeling uncharitable, wounded, disdainful, and so on. Plenty of people have given us indelible songs, but Tom Petty might have been the only songwriter at his level of prominence who covered as much of the emotional spectrum in doing so.

Anthony Easton on

“Southern Accents”

I am ambivalent about Tom Petty in the ways I am about most classic rock, acknowledging the talent and skill that they display, but never quite thinking that they are for me. Americana’s ambivalent relationship to country gives me more room to interleave my own fears of labour and of working class desire on a history that plays with a generic geography. The South is never generic, the politics are never quite clear, but the clarity is about overlapping crises of very specific locations.

Patterson Hood talks about the crisis of specificity in an obituary for Petty, about how he is not really sure about how to be southern, or what the negatives of being in the South are, he talks about the gap between expectations and reality, between representation and the failure of those representations to represent: “Doing what I do, I am often asked about my favorite Southern rock band. It’s a term I always hated (and used it with that in mind as part of a title for one of Drive-By Truckers’ albums). The question is usually prefaced with another, framed as a simple choice: Allman Brothers or Lynyrd Skynyrd? The correct answer for me is R.E.M. and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers...”

This song is an argument for the South — which is slow, local, interior — a ballad with a tight harmony, a deconstruction of the sweetness of the South (“that drunk tank in Atlanta, just a motel room to me”) and a reification of southern instinct (how he sings about his momma). It’s not the line about Orlando that makes it local, or even how he talks about his mother, but how it threads the needle between Stephen Foster and the Allman Brothers, between hymnody and Michael Stipe’s lonely baritone.

This was a title track for an album from 1986. There are things that must be said. I wonder whether the oranges in Orlando would be picked by someone less pale than Petty. Whether the drunk tank would be as hospitable if he weren’t white — or to someone who is quite local, whether all the accents of the south are as laconic as Petty’s. He had the Stars and Bars decorating the tour for this album, and he apologized for that oversight (and oversight is a politeness) more than a decade later.

All of that said, maybe the most southern thing about the song is that the South is constructed as a narrative of nostalgia. That one always seeks to return to a South, if one is white, if one can afford that desire. It is a song that was written, in a grand historicised style, by a man from Florida who was living in Los Angeles. It is about the idea of Florida as a metonym of the South, of the South as a metonym for this swamp of nostalgia that can only be written about outside of the actual, material swamp.

Maybe that’s why it’s so perfect.

John Seroff on

“Spike”

Part of what made Tom Petty an artist whose work survived comfortably into the new millennium is that while his songs reflected the perspective of an affable and genuine Southerner, there warn't a lotta peckerwood in him. That's clearest to me on "Spike," a misfired 1985 Heartbreakers single about a young punk frequenting a shitkicker bar. It's fun to hear Petty gleefully set up the genesis of the tune in this 2012 live performance of "Spike" as if it's his own personal Alice's Restaurant, drawling wise about "hippie killers in The Cypress Lounge." Can there be any doubt about where Petty's sympathies lie? Surely he knew the firsthand frustration of being thought "another misfit, another Jimmy Dean," laughed out of the club for being a white trash, would-be new wave poseur in a leather jacket. But Petty was more than petty; there's a meaningful final reel twist of sympathy for the redneck when our narrator comes around to asking the punk with the leather jewelry more and more seriously to tell him about life. In the end, this backwoods Budweiser guzzler cops that maybe he "need me a dog collar too, boy." All this over the train track chug of drums, a twangy lean guitar and a trotting organ nipping at the singer's heels like an old hound dog. "Spike" never quite got the radio toehold that its psychedelic, sitar-driven album-mate "Don't Come Around Here No More" did, but I happen to think it has aged better. It's sharp, catchy, demands a little hard fought insight from its subject and, perhaps, from the listener. Anyways, in an American South divided by the urban and the unemployed, what message could land more squarely true than that the future ain't what it used to be?

Josh Langhoff on

“I Won’t Back Down”

Behold the Annunciation: In early 1990 I got musical advice chiefly from Breakaway magazine, the adolescent boys’ indoctrination ministry of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family empire. Their reviewer was a kindly dad type and an enigma. He told me to avoid Paula Abdul’s “Opposites Attract,” because of the line “She makes the bed/ and he steals the covers”: clearly Paula and the Wild Pair were sleeping together, rendering the song off limits for Christian teens. A reasonable reading; but even so, thoughts arrived like butterflies. What if Paula Abdul was supposed to be married to the Wild Pair? By quoting this troublesome line in Breakaway, wasn’t the fatherly columnist soiling boys’ minds as thoroughly as if we’d listened to “Opposites Attract”? In fact, the sexual implications of the line only occurred to me because of this fatherly columnist’s advice! After which they continued to occur to me, daily. Again and again.

So when the columnist recommended Full Moon Fever, and particularly “I Won’t Back Down,” whose summer of ‘89 radio run I’d missed, I was intrigued. He speculated that some of Bob Dylan’s “Christian principles” had rubbed off on Petty; I’d only recently learned how to pronounce Dylan’s name. “Look!” I said excitedly to Mom, jabbing my finger at the magazine I’d stuck in her face, “Breakaway says I can get the Tom Petty tape!” That was good enough for Mom, who really had nothing against secular music — particularly oldies radio, which we enjoyed together during her crossing guard shifts. Upon purchase, I was surprised to learn “I Won’t Back Down” contained the word “hell,” which I wasn’t allowed to say lest I trivialize the place and spend eternity paying for the privilege. I also found puzzles I couldn’t solve — songs about Zombie Zoos and Micanopy, mysterious romances that appeared briefly and then drifted off like cattail fluff. On the Christian tapes Mom put in my Easter basket every year, forthright literalism was a given. With Petty it seemed merely an option, to be discarded on a whim.

“I thought that it was maybe just too direct,” Tom Petty once said of “I Won’t Back Down.” “There isn’t really anything to hide behind here, you know?” Which probably explains why the Christian reviewer recommended it. But listening to Full Moon Fever daily, again and again — in my room with the door closed, or on the Walkman while Mom ran errands and practiced the organ — I never heard the song as an anthem. Repeated scrutiny simply forced “I Won’t Back Down” further down inside me. Singing the song in public, with other people, seemed as gauche as Soldiers for Christ using a metaphor. That dry opening march of guitars, the build into the explosive chorus harmonies, the tuneless way Petty pronounced the song title (fun to imitate in the shower!) were all private pleasures, to be treasured up and pondered in my heart. As Mary said upon learning her son was adored by multitudes: “Huh. Weird.”

Jessica Doyle on

“Runnin’ Down a Dream”

The Florida Turnpike features some of the dullest driving in America: miles upon miles with no exits save to the white-grouted, Dunkin-Donuts-equipped rest centers, and nothing in between to lay your eyes on save the occasional landfill or billboards informing you, for the 33rd time since you left Kissimmee-St. Cloud, that a baby's heart starts beating at 18 days. The last time I drove the Turnpike I had two kids in the back seat and thus couldn't put "Runnin' Down a Dream" on; it would have been irresponsible; my foot would have put the gas into bad-mom territory as soon as I heard those opening chords. The song isn't actually set on the Turnpike, like I self-absorbedly thought — Petty mentions trees — but I have the two linked together: because to have the career he had Tom Petty had to get the heck out of Florida. The United States, the southern half especially, has been justly criticized for its longstanding love affair with cars and the nature-chewing, community-leveling highways built to accommodate them; and maybe I should be condemning "Runnin' Down a Dream" for its unabashed embrace of the promise of traveling on your own, even if there isn't that much to look at outside, even if there's no one else in the car. Petty wrote plenty of songs later about discovering that there was not, after all, something unequivocally good waiting down that road. But listening to those guitars, and his voice as if he's telling you his story at sunrise after returning your lighter, it's easy to rejoice in the going; as if even a desultory drive down a lonely highway could be an adventure.

Gin Hart on

“Free Fallin’”

"Free Fallin'" is a perfect aphorism. Petty's mild-mannered opening strum and supine vocals offer a kind of blankly evocative space. The mind spores and the spores bloom, emanating across a succinctly yet thoroughly located Los Angeles. You find yourself there on the map by the naming: Reseda/Ventura/Mulholland — they signify themselves, need not be described. You ride through at a near-miraculously spooky hour, the streets devoid of traffic. You could drive fast but don't, letting the heat and the haze impress themselves upon you, the unified field of sheer atmosphere allowing each plot point (map pin) to sprawl through, dig in.

Genius dot com calls this escapism; I can't agree. Even though the first chord switches on a projector in my head, the whir of which I can almost hear, which unspools a film I can almost see. (It'll be useful to note that I have aphantasia. I lack the capacity to visualize... this song makes me feel as though I can grope my way into mind-sight through my feeling-sense, they way Toph can "see" through her seismics. This is visceral every time. Click, flicker, whir). Cinema in its social modality is, sure, joined at the hip with collective fantasy, sure sure. But do you feel unfettered to think of the facts of a life, your life, and not be able to grasp onto them? To know you had and lost sweetness, a girl who's crazy bout Elvis like you are ("my picture of Elvis was... was the American Dream" [btw my personal actual feelings re: Mr. Presley are more like this])? To know you're the villain in the story, and your villainy derives from your apathy, and your apathy is what makes you wanna write her name in the sky? It's wanting to want, which is wanting to stand on something solid. Heartbroken girls have it good — heartbreak as a fetter but also as a certificate of humanity. Proof of being someone, somewhere — gravity, ground.

Los Angeles is mastodon of place and plurality and pavement. If you're there, but not there, if you're above and in the sky and, without a parachute, falling, you're either death-doomed to splat or damned to a perpetuity of disorientation. Petty and Lynne's vocals soar through the chorus, describing the plummet of unreadiness. Tumbling and repeating and ultimately fading out, gonna leave. this. world for a while.

Ian Mathers on

“Zombie Zoo”

Maybe it’s because I grew up in such a sarcastic family (where, crucially, it was used both for humour and to express affection), but a lot of the Tom Petty songs that others seem to take as being fairly straightforwardly negative I read as a little more…. not necessarily positive, but let’s say multivalent. I know I’m not the only person my age to assume that making fun of something and loving it can coexist without friction (and I know that problems that can lead to, but that’s another blurb). When you combine that with me being not-quite-eight when Full Moon Fever came out and my mom picked up the CD and I started playing it obsessively, you get a little kid who wouldn’t realize for, uh, at least a decade that many people think of “Zombie Zoo” as a song where Petty officially becomes a grouchy old man, sneering at the punk kids. Now, I guess I’d point out that if that’s the way he felt, 1989 is kind of a weird year to start taking potshots at punk (being both too late and too soon) and that the less positive lyrics here feel more to me like rueful remembrance of what it’s like to be a kid than some sort of damning indictment. But when I was less than a decade old I mostly would have just told you that 1. the synthesizers sound like a baseball game 2. a “zombie zoo” sounds like something out of a video game i.e. awesome 3. this was probably the song on the album I most wanted to put on repeat and jump up and down to, three minutes at a time. I’d find out later that the Zombie Zoo was an actual club Petty and company walked past or went into one night (I can’t track down the anecdote) and were slightly nonplussed by, and that the line wasn’t the evocatively ungrammatical “painin’ in a corner” but in fact “painted in a corner” (which is probably better, and again speaks to the sympathy I feel like Petty clearly has for his “target,” but I still have a sentimental fondness for my mishearing). And now I can appreciate the steady gallop and sturdy construction of the song and Roy Orbison’s backing vocals, but one thing hasn’t changed: especially for a star as resistant to quick-changing notions of “cool” as Petty was, I’m not at all convinced that “you look like Boris Karloff and you don’t even care!” was intended to be insulting instead of admiring.

#Tom Petty

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unorthodoxsavvy · 7 years

Text

Taggity-Tagged

Wowie so I got tagged by my friend Ginny, or @dead-nightingale to answer these 92 truths about yourself (myself). And at the end I’m going to tag 25 people.

Here we go!!

THE LAST

1. Drink: Hot Chocolate

2. Phone Call: My boyfriend last night

3. Text Message: “When I was trying to fall asleep last night, Cece was walking on my side and trying to find a spot to lay down on me. And then this morning she laid down on my stomach and I was petting her.” from my boyfriend.

4. Song You Listened To: I’m listening to “Wanting More” by Memphis May Fire.

5. Time You Cried: Sunday.

HAVE YOU EVER

6. Dated Someone Twice: No, haha, no one makes that mistake twice

7. Been Cheated On: No

8. Kissed Someone And Regretted It: No.

9. Lost Someone Special: Yeah. On my birthday.

10. Been Depressed: My entire life??? Okay, kidding. But yes, I have PDD.

11. Gotten Drunk and Thrown Up: No, I don’t drink.

LIST 3 FAVORITE COLORS

12. Metallic silvery-blue.

13. Black

14. Aqua

IN THE LAST YEAR HAVE YOU

15. Made New Friends: Only like 50, give or take.

16. Fallen Out of Love: Yeah, but not completely, and I was still willing to try and right myself because I know it was all just because of the amount of confusing things going on at the time.

17. Laughed Until You Cried: Probably?

18. Found Out Someone Was Talking About You: Yeah, and I thought it was fucking hilarious.

19. Met Someone Who Changed You: Yeah................................. let’s not talk about that right now

20. Found Out Who Your True Friends Are: This year was the year of finding out who my true friends are lmao. And sometimes I was wrong. I’m glad my real friends pulled through despite my doubts about them.

21. Kissed Someone On Your Facebook: The day I own a Facebook is the day I’ll send myself to a Nunnery.

22. How Many of Your Facebook Friends Do You Know in Real Life: Seriously? Let Facebook burn in the pits of hell.

23. Do You Have Any Pets: Yeah, I temporarily have a pet cat, I have an old doggo some of you might know named Bailey, I have Marian, of course, my gecko, and a fish named Vic. We used to also have Kellin but we don’t have Kellin anymore.

24. Do You Want To Change Your Name: Yes. My middle name can burn in the puts of hell next to Facebook.

25. What Did You Do For Your Last Birthday: Shit what did I do? Uhhhhhhhh.... let me ask my boyfriend. Well he doesn’t know either. OH! I remember: I made a weird cake with cookie dough and stuff and we had other cake and I went to Boston for a Teen Author convention and also my mom’s best friend died and I cried on my boyfriend a lot. I think I kind of blocked that day out of my memory.

26. What Time Did You Wake Up: 8:30ish

27. What Were You Doing at Midnight Last Night: Watching Gintama lmao

28. Name Something You Cannot Wait For: WARPED TOUR, PRIDE, and LOCAL AGRICULTURE FAIRS! And for me to actually get a job.

29. When Was The Last Time You Saw Your Mother: Between 10-11 last night.

30. What is One Thing You Wish You Could Change About Your Life: Getting a job :’) plz someone hire me :’) I know I’ve only applied like 2 places but like c’mon

31. What Are You Listening To Right Now: Chemical Kids and Mechanical Brides

32. Have You Ever Talked To a Person Named Tom: Yes, I have.

33. Something That Is Getting On Your Nerves: People flirting with other people and me whoops. Me flirting with other people. Myself. People. Trump. The not-so-slow decline of humanity. My own saltiness rn.

34. Most Visited Website: Google

35. Elementary: Like elementary school? There was cool art on the pillars outside the office. I met my best friend there and had my first kiss in elementary school. Someone threw a brick at my friend’s head. I was smol and had long blonde hair. Someone who I’m now friends with pushed me and I fractured my wrist and the school told me I was exaggerating and didn’t even tell my mom what had happened and she said that when she reached for my arm to like help me out of the car I would pull away and finally she took me to the doctor’s and found out and she was pissed at the school. I got stuck in the playground. Field Day was fun. I miss the sketch playground they had.

36. High School:

Freshman Year

What to heck I actually have friends, I’m popularish? People don’t treat me like shit? Boys are flirting with me? I have drama? What? I’m so confused. I’m going to just stick with playing with the animals in the barn and crying over the fact I forgot to put my seatbelt on the first time on the tractor. The Golden Trio.

Sophomore Year

First real boyfriend

Traumatic experiences ----->emo

Junior Year

I’m emo

DNT TOUCH MEH

I LIKE GIRLS??????????

Wow that fanfiction though

Wow I have a crush on a Trans Guy? Guess I really am bi

Wow I’m dating a Trans Guy (it needs to be caps in my head, sorry lol) Guess I am bi but also can we appreciate what a cute fucking bean he is???

Omg! Full time Natural Resources Student! The Dream Come True!

Depression

Anxiety

Senior Year

I hate you all

I hate you too Emory

If you don’t want to hang out with me that’s fine but don’t expect me to hang out with you.

Wow all my friends desserted me.

What friends

Oh those friends

Yeah they aren’t my friends today

Wow I’m some elite choir student

My choir teacher is still sketchy af

My natural resources teacher is actually letting us pick him out an outfit to buy at GAP.

My natural resources teacher’s wife is actually letting us browse for like an hour and 45 minutes in Barnes and Nobels looking for That Gay Shit

We didn’t find That Gay Shit but I bought a Fun. album and DAPGO so that’s pretty much the same thing

I’m pretty sure we all just outted ourselves to our teacher’s wives

Wow I’m making an album

Wow I’m not taking any real classes I’m just passing the time cuddling dogs

Wow friends from Freshman Year throwback

California is Gay

Boston wasn’t supposed to be Gay but we snuck into Pride

I cried a lot during graduation because at that point a bunch of people were horrible to me and I couldn’t take it anymore but then also my teacher got me a scholarship and I cried during that too

Let’s party and stay up at school until 5:30am

37. College/University: What’s college

38. Hair Color: 50 shades of cool colors but not green

39. Long Hair or Short Hair: Shorter than a Corgi’s tail

40. Do You Have A Crush On Someone: Yeah, and I really wish I didn’t.

41. What Do You Like About Yourself: Gay

42. Piercings: Over my needlephobic body

43. Blood Type: Does anyone actually know this? I’d kill someone before I’d let them near enough to me to find out

44. Nickname: Savvy

45. Relationship Status: (If you didn’t get this by now, I’m dating @ancient-hero)

46. Zodiac Sign: Libra af

47. Pronouns: She/her

48. Favorite TV Show: Fairy Tail

49. Tattoos: I waaaaaaant but neeeeeeeeedles

50. Right or Left Hand: Righty

FIRST

51. Surgery: None

52. Piercing: Ears in 3rd grade

54. Sport: Dance

55. Vacation: Gosh idk I was probably still in the womb

56. Pair of Trainers: What? How about first pair of Converse? I like that better. My first pair of Converse was in like 6th grade and my friend was like “ohmigod, how have you never owned a pair of Converse before? They’re your shoe.”

57. Eating: What does this even mean?????? How about this: the first time I ate blueberry pie, it was heavenly and I was in Maine and now I love blueberry pie.

58. Drinking: Let’s talk alcohol.I said I don’t drink, and that’s true. My first alcohol was this year, my mom gave us champagne. That doesn’t count as drinking, we all know that.

59. I’m About To: Keep writing this post. And doing all the other tags I’ve been tagged in, and then try and schedule them so I don’t flood people with useless info about me. I might take a break though because I’ve been here almost an hour.

60. Listening To: Bulls in the Bronx.

61. Waiting For: A Sign A Job Me to stop catching feelings Warped Tour

62. Want: Warped Tour!!! (And more specifically to actually know bands and songs playing more than I do now. I’m trying to crash course myself in bands like a week before again)

63. Get Married: YES YES YES

64. Career: Music Video Producer and Storyboarder and Filmer

YOUR TYPE

65. Hugs or Kisses: Hugs

66. Lips or Eyes: Eyes

67. Shorter or Taller: Ahhhhhhh I’ve had a bit of both idk which one I like better maybe shorter cause I’m short anyone “tall” towers over me

68. Older of Younger: Older

70. Nice Arms or Nice Stomach: ??? A girl is a girl?? A boy is a boy?? I don’t like buff people? I like squishy people??

71. Sensitive or Loud: Both! I want both, dammit! I can’t take just one or the other, it won’t work.

72. Hook Up or Relationship: I wouldn’t know.

73. Troublemaker or Hesitant: Once again, both. Either of a lot is too much. I feel like most people I’m comparing are polar opposites and that’s why things haven’t/aren’t working.

HAVE YOU EVER

74. Kissed a Stranger: NO BUT I WANT TO (just not while dating anyone)

75. Drank Hard Liquor: Still no

76. Lost Glasses/Contact Lenses: Who owns a pair who hasn’t? If you own either you have.

77. Turned Someone Down: Lmao no

78. Sex on First Date: Nooooooooo

79. Broken Someone’s Heart: Once again, hasn’t everyone? And if they haven’t, they will.

80. Had Your Heart Broken: Once again, hasn’t everyone? And if they haven’t, they will.

81. Been Arrested: No, but had the cops called on me, yes.

82. Cried When Someone Died: Yes, on my birthday, in my kitchen, on my boyfriend.

83. Fallen For a Friend: I don’t fall for anyone seriously who isn’t a friend.

DO YOU BELIEVE IN...

84. Yourself: Yes.

85. Miracles: Yes.

86. Love at First Sight: It’s called lust, look it up.

87. Santa Claus: No, sorry.

88. Kiss on First Date: Sure, that’s cute.

89. Angels: No

OTHER...

90. Current Best Friend’s Name: Olivia. Best friends since Kindergarten. Just with a few gaps and rough patches.

91. Eye Color: Blue

92. Favorite Movie: Stand By Me

Wow I need a break before I even tag anyone.

Okay, so after everyone’s read through all this nonsense, here is to whome I bestow this task:

First off I probably owe @ancient-hero to be tagged since he’s mentioned so much.

@articulate-mess, @teatowelhowell, @sleepyphil, @danisthirsty, @weirdkidstories, @fondan, @pocketcow, @memory--ghost, @mymagnificentself, @gods-not-on-a-flatbread, @cushionstaxk, @xloonaticbloodx, @liabilitylester, @kendellisnotonfire, @smoltheatrekid, @softcharizard, @vgetables, @thebookofmadison, @infidany, @i-craft-ladders, @alecdoesnotmakepie, @astonishowell, @deadpan-trashcan @smolphaniel

Wow, okay, cool. Obviously if you don’t want to do it I’m not going to fly to you and kick down your door and make you. So, have fun, do the thing if you want, sorry if not, and have a nice day!

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aloneandunreal · 4 years

Text

july 30, 20

i haven’t posted in a bit. i don’t know why i’m deciding to post now. i guess because i’ve been feeling a bit nostalgic (once again). just know that i’m always feeling sentimental about something - every damn day. before i go on, though, i’m just going to mention that it’s my sister’s tenth birthday today! i can’t believe she’s been around for a decade already. kind of mind blowing.

anyway, this band called fog lake came on shuffle the other day and it made me think of the days i was really into them - i was about thirteen or fourteen. i remember the summer before my freshman year, i sat on top of my roof and listened to music, watching the sunset. i wanted to be like one of those indie kids in the films, as i always do. the last time i was on the roof was on my fourteenth birthday, at exactly 12. i was up on the roof with my cousin, as she was sleeping over the night. we listened to music and just had a weirdly fun time, even though we were on the damn roof at 12 A.M. it makes me smile thinking about it, especially thinking of the person i was then. i know i always say this but i honestly always am. the person i was then, the people i knew then, is so different than now. but at the same time, similar. i still get nostalgic about dumb things as i did then, and i still want to be one of those cool high schoolers like in the movies, though my time is almost up now, whereas then it was just beginning. at the moment, i’m listening to hey there delilah. my cousin and i listened to that song when we were on the rooftop for some reason; we were listening to throwback songs. the song really makes me so sad for some reason. this song and fog lake are really making me sad, thinking back on eighth grade and just my past self in general.

it’s sad thinking how different the world is now, with coronavirus and all. if i told myself 3 years about all that’s going on now, i don’t even know if i’d believe it. speaking of corona, my school announced that we’re going to be doing all virtual for the fall semester. i don’t exactly know how to feel about that. i’m happy, but at the same time, it’s my senior year, and i know it’s basically ruined now. it’s not going to be a normal year. but it’s not like i’d do anything different this year, though. nothing crazy, i probably wouldn’t put myself out there.

i’m thinking of my freshman year, and the seniors then. it’s weird thinking that that’s now... me. but i won’t have a year like they did, because of all that’s going on in the world at the moment. i kind of wish i could have a normal year. the whole thing with zoom is just going to cause me so much anxiety, having to see myself on camera. but at the same time, it’s not as bad as going to school at 6AM every morning, starving and tired for 7 hours. but yeah, i don’t know how to feel about it just yet. it’s abnormal. never happened before, so i don’t know how it’s all going to turn out. i’m still worried about college and all, and i feel like i have so much to worry about, but right now i don’t think i want to write about that. it’s exhausting, honestly. i am genuinely terrified though, as i’ve probably mentioned in every entry before this.

things i’ve been remembering in specific and have felt nostalgic about are as follows: my eighth grade graduation, the girl i was best friends with in seventh grade, and the end of ninth grade. i don’t know why these events in specific. i’m going to go through each one in specific, i don’t know why. i just feel like it i guess. i like going over memories over and over again and making myself sad... Ha Ha.

firstly, was my eighth grade graduation. that was the day i began talking to one of my online friends who quickly became one of my really good online friends. i’ve spoken about her in past entries, and we’re no longer that great of friends anymore. just different people now, i guess. anyway, besides her, i remember going to the high school, which is where the graduation would be held. before it started, i took pictures with my friends that year. my girl friends, and then these two boys i was kind of friends with. colin and aaron. aaron moved, and although i gave him my number, he never texted me so that was the last i ever saw of him. then colin, we lost touch in high school. haven’t really spoken since eighth grade. i took a photo with them, saying something stupid as we took the photo. god, i was so cringey then. anyway, then the graduation happened, all of us being sweaty stinky teenagers in a hot auditorium just waiting to get out of there. then we left after some more goodbyes, and i remember this one boy i was friendly with said “bye ava!” and that was it i believe. what i don’t understand is why i’m thinking about this, it’s not a huge moment in my life. nothing crazy. but thinking of each person and our history is what makes me sad. some of those people, it was our last time speaking to each other. and now, my last graduation is coming up. it’s crazy how much i’ve changed since then.

second is the girl i was best friends with in seventh grade. i’ve spoken about this before, so i’ll try not to go too much into depth. i miss her sometimes. we’ve always had this on and off type of friendship. we lost touch in eighth grade, and found different groups. we still talked, but it was obvious we were separating. ninth and tenth grade, nothing. this year was when we started speaking again, and it was nice and all, but not really the same as it once was. and i mean, obviously. we’re not twelve anymore. but thinking back on it, the peak of our friendship, makes me sad. i’m her friend i guess, but we don’t speak all too much since quarantine happened. she has another friend group anyway. honestly, i feel as if it’s my fault we drifted apart. i was so caught up with some other girl in eighth grade, and kind of just forgot about her. and now i’m not exactly friends with either of them. i wonder what would have happened if i hadn’t jumped on this other girl; if i had focused more on our friendship, that was more important than this other girl who is not even in my life anymore and was a toxic friend anyway. i wonder. maybe it wouldn’t be any different. i’ll never know, that’s for sure. all in all, i just miss our old friendship sometimes. i was thinking back on seventh grade, and first of all, god there are so many memories. but one in specific i’ve remembered is the end of the year. i was working on some project in my science class, incredibly bored, so i decided to make a google doc. it was basically a letter for my sister and myself for when she / i got older. i wrote questions like “are you still friends with ___?”, “did you start dating anyone?”, “do you still like [band]? you better!!” and some other (depressing) stuff i won’t get into as it’s not really important. that was almost five years ago, and i can answer those questions now. though i am not happy with my answers. i wish i could have fulfilled twelve/thirteen year old me’s little dream of what she wanted to become in high school... but i don’t think i did. and now it’s over. high school. i still have this year, but i don’t know how much opportunity there will be since corona and all. sorry, seventh grade me. i really let you down, huh?

lastly is the summer before my freshman year ended. i remember i basically failed all of my finals or got D’s on them. that year seriously sucked academics wise. before i failed said finals, i remember my dad drove me to school to take them, and i was listening to blue monday ‘88 by new order and mr blue sky by electric light orchestra. i don’t know why i remember that. that’s also around the time i smoked weed with this girl i was once friends with... but that’s a whole other insane story. thinking of it, i have a lot of stories from middle school and high school, whether they be good or bad. i always thought i didn’t have any, and it was 100% bland, but to be compeltely honest, it wasn’t. there are some fun memories out there, whether they involved school or not. even though i didn’t get to live my indie kid dream, i still had some memories that i’ll look back on. they’re not as interesting as some peoples’ but they’re memories nonetheless.

to speak on the present, i’ve not done too much. i remember at the beginning of the summer i said i was going to try and write my own story. that never ended up happening. i also got accepted into the national honor society which i can’t really believe for some reason. i accepted the invite, though incredibly anxious considering there’s a lot i need to do in order to stay in the national honor society. it’s making me really anxious, but since of covid, i probably won’t have to do as much as they want me to. for example, they want me to do 2 or more clubs / sports / activities. which i do NOT want to do, considering being social makes me incredibly anxious. i know it’s dumb, but i can’t help myself. these are the times when i wish i was normal, and wonder how i’m going to get by in the real world. will i be able to? i don’t know. but other than that, not much has gone on. i’m practicing for SATs since i missed them (was supposed to take them the weekend before my school shut down... so annoying). i’m taking them in late september but i don’t know if that’s going to happen or not. who knows what will be going on by then in the world. so yeah, i’m worried about a decent amount of things. and it sucks. but it’s summer, so i’m going to try my hardest to not dwell on it too much.

there’s plenty of memories i could go on about, like the times in freshman year i used to skip class with my friend and one time we went outside to the courtyard and took ‘aesthetic’ photos. or the time i was obsessed with this one boy in my friend’s digital photography class who was a senior at the time - don’t even ask why i was so obsessed with him. i still don’t understand why. i remember before school ended i listened to your graduation by modern baseball and thought of him, knowing i’d never see him again. god, i’m already starting another one of my dumb rants about stupid things and people who don’t even think or care about me. i’m just sad about it. so many different things; going over them in my mind. i don’t know when or if i’ll ever get over this whole ‘i’m sentimental and feel nostalgic about every single thing that’s ever happened in my lifetime.’ i don’t know why i dwell on these things, they’re the past. they won’t be coming back. i can’t change anything, or go back to them. sometimes i miss the people or just the experiences i had in some of these memories, even if they weren’t the best memories. i always glorify things and make them seem better than they actually were. i’ve said this ten times already in previous entries, but i remember in seventh grade i specifically said “this was the worst year of my life” but now? now i kind of want to go back. for whatever reason. go back in time to that year, that time of my life, the friends i had, the life i had, the teachers i had, the things and activities i did. i want to go back and taste these memories one last time. not just seventh grade - but whatever i’m feeling sad about.

anyway, i’m going on and on about nothing now. i’m just damn sad about this at the moment, and this being my last year of high school makes it worse. it’s all about to end - the kids i have known since childhood, the memories i’ve made since elementary. they won’t be gone technically, but they’ll be distant. i’ll be moving on to different things when i graduate. college, i guess. this will all be in the past, and i don’t know if i want to let it go. i never want to let anything go. each year i get sad about the past year, for whatever reason, even if it was boring. for example sophomore year. it was boring but thinking back on it, there still were some memories i go back to in my mind and kind of want to go back to. even this year i feel sad about sometimes. the beginning of it, more specifically. god, i am so stupid. anywho, i need to end this now. writing this and listening to sad music honestly has just made my feelings more prominent and i am just more sad now than i had been before. i feel dumb but i just felt like writing about this for some reason...plus, i haven’t written in AWHILE.

that’s all for now i guess. i’m sad. the future is so uncertain, and i guess that’s why i always go back to the past, and reminisce on it. by the way, i don’t know how amazing my spelling and grammar will be considering i’m tired (it’s 12:38am - not too late but i’m tired for some reason) and don’t reread this over / edit it. okay, bye for now. this was really dumb and basically just me ranting and going on about the same things i always go on about, but i just felt like getting it out. bye..

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