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Remember when this blog used to be about me writing? Yeah me too.
Writing has been difficult, almost painful, for the last year or two. Words used to fly through my brain at alarming speeds, seeming to choose themselves at will. At some point, and I can almost pinpoint when, though I’m too flaky to know for sure, it became a chore. I’d struggle for the right word, and words that were once interesting and fun to use evaporated.
Recently I’ve gotten a little itchy about writing again. I want to write something fiction, deeply, lovingly fiction. I used to be good at that. I’m sure I could be again. Out of practice I suppose.
I would like to start writing again and I was wondering if I have any readers who enjoy reading things and giving their opinion. I’d like to pull together a small but honest group of people willing to read and offer suggestions that I can trust. So if you’re a person like that, let me know.
Also, I just recently read through the first three books in Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series and I’m currently reading number four. Look for reviews coming soon.
-Sommer
Today is my birthday. I have turned 29 years old, which means only one more year with a 2 as a prefix and then….well then my girlfriend of the same age will be going on a cruise to the Mediterranean for a little “reinvention” which is done largely with big hats and bright cocktails.
Tonight Ryan has planned a birthday party for me, of which I only know a smidgen about. Enough, pretty much, to dress properly. We’re going to a resteraunt with friends, the resteraunt I had already picked out. Since I was 21 we have gone to the same resterant for my birthday, a Japanese Steakhouse called Kobe. I love Kobe more than any other place to eat, I think. But I’ve broken tradition and this year we are going to Genji Japanese Steakhouse. I enjoyed them about the same but for a bonus they have sushi. I can get lost in a plate of sushi.
Afterwards we are going to my dear friends’ house for a birthday party, at which I have no idea who will be there or what will be done. Though I am not above playing the “It’s my birthday and I want to play Rock Band” card 
I’m super excited about the party because I know nothing about it except that, when asked by my husband what kind of cake I like, I told him I won’t eat any cake that’s chocolate anything. That’s all I know I won’t have.
So, for my birthday, I have a bunch of new art to post. So with no further ado, here’s the first:
I hate painting rooms, soul sucking, physically exhausting, messy, smelly endeavour. Hate it. Hate it.
Which creates a certain sense of irony in my house when you consider how often I repaint rooms. I can’t stop myself. All I need is one good HTML click to benjaminmoore.com or sherwinwilliams.com and I’m done for. I think I have low color self-esteem: everyone else’s room colors are so much nicer than my own. Gotta have it. Now. This makes my husband insane because he likes consistency, sameness, everydayness that changing a room constantly does not lend itself to.
Yesterday, my best friend and I repainted my dining room/entry way/hallway/basement stairs from dark olive green to a color called Abingdon Putty by Benjamin Moore. The colors watch makes it look like a greenish putty color, like ecru, but the reality is not really like that at all. It’s much lighter and brighter than the color swatch, and a little more true on the online swatch, which I find hysterical. The actual color on the walls reminds me of Vanilla Ice cream, which I think should be the name of the color. It’s like swimming in a big bowl of the stuff. Absolutely delicious. Or vanilla creme. It’s so rich. There is depth to the color. “Vanilla ice cream?” my coworker said, “Isn’t that, well, white?” No no no not at all. There’s nothing “White” about this color. It’s got depth and dimension. I swear, its one of the most beautiful wall colors I’ve ever seen and set up next to the chocolate brown trim? My dining room is the color of dessert, I swear to it.
Still, these are the online color swatches, and they don’t match either color very well at all.
When it got dark out and the artificial light started hitting it, we discovered the slight green undertone come out more. It’s sort of a springy green color, a surprise. Always moving, always changing, always growing. it is actually inspiring me to bring the great outdoors inside and really play up the natural, growing world within design. Listen to me! I sound like an HGTV host.
Here’s a funny thing. When I was at Ace Hardware store buying my Benjamin Moore paint, the guy working told me to get Ace Hardware paint and have them match the Benjamin Moore color. Cheaper, and good quality paint. So I said sure. And you know what? Ace Hardware brand paint is absolutely amazing. I love it. One coat of this stuff was almost perfect. It’s thick and creamy with excellent coverage and about $10 cheaper than the name brand Benjamin Moore paint. I highly recommend this stuff. Paint match, you’ll be thankful you did. I never found anything great about the Benjamin Moore paint and I think it is ridiculously expensive. But I never found anything wrong with it either. I like Sherwin Williams paint the best, but my new favorite is the Ace Hardware brand. Also? No smell. Not at all. You couldn’t even tell we’d just painted most of the house.
We are going to finish the second coat tonight and begin to put the rooms back together. Once I’m done with that I’ll post pictures. Art on my walls? Can’t wait! Before the walls were just too dark green to hold my art very well. There was too much weird contrast. Now? Can’t wait.
We have lived in this house for a year and a half and it has always felt almost finished but never complete in any room. All the rooms remain somewhat disorganized with no style, and nothing felt finished. We made the worst mistake a home buyer can make in that we painted all the rooms before we moved in. I hated most of the colors after we moved in and Ryan hated some of them (but is mostly indifferent to these sorts of things). So for a year and a half the house never felt complete. The olive green is still one of my favorite colors, but it made the dining room, hallway, entry way feel closed in and the artificial light turned the green a yellowy pea color. I never hung up any art, I never finished the rooms. I hated it. Now? I love it and it finally feels like home. It feels like a space I live in and not one I avoid. I can hang up my art, I can move some pieces into the room to finish it off. After a year and a half…it feels like us. I’m so in love.
-Sommer out
There are some brilliant, intense people in this world, but while we live in an era where everyone is special and no one is special and there is plenty of money all around to support talent that is both mediocre, out of this world, and really, really shitty, few people really stand up and out. With so many voices, it is all too easy to be drowned out by the clamoring masses. Sure, places like YouTube have made it easier for the little known creative director to really show off and do experimental things, they are one in a zillion amongst crapcrapcrap. Who else would like the era of Everyone is Special and Everyone Wins to be over? Man, do you remember when poets were household names and writers of philosophy were widely read?
Thankfully there is brilliance at the end of the tunnel, if only you can wait it out that long. Most of it can be found right here in your internet home, cherished and blogged about to your heart’s content. I’ll tell you my favorites, how about yours?
I about peed my pants when I discovered this artist. Her name is Jayme McGowan and she’s absolutely irresistible. There is something about the faces of her creations that does it for me, not to mention how very much I like circus themed art. I’ve purchased three of her prints, three from her circus group (two are shown below) and oh, how I want to own the fourth too. I can hardly wait till they show up. The originals, I have no doubt, are beyond beautiful. She creates in 3D paper, which is both very easy and very hard to pull off. The cutting out and gluing down of paper pieces is easy. The concept and execution is fundamentally difficult. That’s why I can’t say enough about artists like this. You can, literally, feel yourself climbing into them. How cool is that?
2. Abney Park
Steampunk. This is either a beloved subculture or one that is completely foreign in every sense of the word. Steampunk is a subculture that combines the romance of steam technology- think goggles, dirigibles, brass and oh, steam, with Victorian elegance and dreamy literary references. Military coats combined with long drawn Victorian dresses, tall hats adorned with cracked leather goggles. It is a world wholly its own in which many people trespass and carry on. There are many conventions, many fairs that tip its hat to this genre, and most Anime conventions and Comic Cons can be see filled with them. I love them something terrible. (Check out the book “Court of the Air” by Stephen Hunt for my current foray into the Steampunk genre)
Well it’s not just creative clothing and funny accents that gets us there. It is also music like Abney Park which is so very rich in texture, story and sound. And let’s not forget to mention how incredibly good looking their lead singer is. Particularly their newest CD, the songs are filled with the clicks and whistles of steam technology, rubbed with the velvety goodness of romantic, dark, foreboding vocals and delicious stringed instruments. I get a little warm just talking about them. They even have a track on the deliriously beautiful Mirrormaskmovie by Neil Gaiman.
3. Bitey Castle- Brackenwood Movies
Ooooh. I love this man. Adam Phillips is so brilliant I want take him home and devour him. I found Bitey Castle several years ago when he’d just started his film “Waterlollies” and honestly, I thought the man would never finish. But it’s done now and it’s fantastic. They are all fantastic. They are short flash movies and so worth the time.
I check on my vegetable garden nearly every day, and every day I come away a little sadder. The storm that rocked us so heavily last weekend left most of my plants in tatters. I mean that literally, the leaves of my cabbage looked like the clothing of a poor orphan in 18th century London. My tomato plants, while miraculously still standing, look battered and war torn. One plant is growing two tiny tomatoes, but otherwise not a single new growth as far as I can tell. I wonder if they will grow at all.
My pepper plants are doing alright, I suppose. Some of them are growing peppers, though some of them remain tragically barren. Some of my basil plants struggle just to remain up right, while some are still growing, plodding along with strength and guile. I haven’t harvested any of them yet, though I very much want to.
I admit, I was not fully prepared for the life of a gardener/farmer. It is taxing. I cried over my damaged garden more than I think some of my neighbors cried over their broken fences, damaged houses and uprooted trees. Perhaps I am too emotionally invested. I don’t mind eating their fruits, but I am sorely wounded when mother nature gets callous.
The Fourthof July came and went this year with little, excuse the pun, fanfair. I’m not big into fireworks, I find them noisy and annoying as most of the people in my city set them off for a week before the holiday and at least a week after, so you’re always entreated to banging and booming. The cats get fidgety, and there is always so much debris and waste littering the sides of the road. I don’t get it, I’d rather just grill food and celebrate that way, if at all.
I have purchased a few new books that I will aprise you of.
Two of them are by Jane Austen. “Sense & Sensibility” and “Pride & Prejudice” I have seen many a-movie that these books have been made into, but I haven’t read them, which I deeply regret and feel a sense of shame at having not even tried to read them. I love the time period and all the authors in it, and I love Jane Austen. So I have no idea what took me so long. I have read “Northanger Abby” which is a real treat to read. Parodies of the time period are funny and I enjoy them. I can’t help it.
The other is a surprising find. When I was at The Bookworm getting my new David Sedaris book signed, I looked over their sci-fi section while I was waiting. It was ridiculously small, smaller than any of my bookshelves at home and embarrassingly understocked, but they did have one new book that I was curious about. I liked the cover art, which I think does it for me when it comes to finding books I’ve never heard of. It is sort of the color and texture of tea stained parchment with a pencil and ink drawing of a hot air balloon with a boy clinging to a rope as it flies high into the air. I attempted to commit the name of the book to memory so I could look it up when I got home, but of course the moment we left the store the book’s author and title flew right out of my head.
That is, until I discovered it, again, inside the Boarders bookstore last night. Having a 25% off coupon helped with the decision, and I got it right away, lest I forget the name again. It’s called “The Court of the Air” by Stephen Hunt. It is absolutely delightful. “A fantastical tale of high adventuring, low-life rogues, and orphans on the run.”
Seriously, I don’t think our society uses the words “low-life rogues” nearly enough as it is.
Yesterday I came in to work around 8:54 and there was a post-it note on my desk in front of the keyboard. It was from one of the night shift women, the one who doesn’t talk to me even if I say “hello, how are you?” She is also the one that comes rushing in minutes after she’s supposed to be at work, late and blubbering about some excuse or another. Traffic is her favorite, sometimes she throws in an accident or a bad light. Every day she works she’s late. I know this because I can’t leave till she gets there.
I never bothered to complain about her, though, to the boss. She’s never very late, only a few minutes, 10 at most. It seemed like a petty thing and only really irritated me when I had things to go do, like pick Ryan up at the bus stop.
Anyway, enough back story. The Post-It Note.
Basically, it said that I’d left my chair in the middle of the room and that I need to make sure I push it under the desk before I leave.
I actually had to read it a couple of times. It was written with angry tone, accusing me basically of doing it on purpose. I’ve never, in my whole life, considered the state of my roll-y chair and of all the things I could do to this woman to make her life hard, leaving my chair in the middle of the room is not part of any master plan.
She also makes it sound like our room is very big. It’s not. It’s about the size of my dining room, if that gives you an idea. I didn’t push it 6 feet and leave it, “Muahahahaha-ing” as I walked to my car. Likely, I stood up and walked out, and it was not tucked under the desk. It should also be noted that usually the girl who takes my place moves over to my desk because I’ve got the double monitor thing going on. I’m guessing that she didn’t move over or didn’t move over fast enough, because my Mad Genius Plan of Villainy worked so well against her.
I think the irony is that I wasn’t going to complain to our boss about her coming in late because I thought it was petty. I’m alarmed that she didn’t stop herself and go “I wonder if this is really all that important in the grand scheme of things?” though likely, she believes I do it on purpose.
So if you ever wondered what the depths of my dastardly-ness really were….now you know.
I do not like writing reviews of anything, and to be honest I’m not very good at it. When I do find something I want to share with others and hopefully encourage them to pick up too, I immediately receive a gut, irrational feeling that my encouragement of the product will not only keep people from picking it up, but will some how inspire those same people to believe I am a tasteless, culture-less, fraud. Most of the time, the objects of my affections are well worth checking out, but I always feel like I’ve done them more harm than good. The irony, of course, is that I spent two years being paid to write reviews for a newspaper twice a week. No, seriously.
I guess it has something to do with the words one must use to convey the product. Some people can do it flawlessly and not sound like a pretentious fool. I can’t, and I think most people can’t. There are very few acceptable ways to say “This thing is great, and you should check it out.” Using metaphors, similies, and anecdotes only makes us sound like jackasses. If one needs a thesaurus to write the review, and one needs a dictionary to understand it, you’re in trouble.
Getting to the point, I just closed the book, literally, on David Sedaris’ newest book “When You are Engulfed in Flames.” I bought it at the book signing recently in Omaha at a nice little book store called The Bookworm, which has a darling cafe inside it, but an alarmingly large romance section and a pitiful fantasy sci-fi section. My friend and I had seats near his podium, which was all well and good, but it felt like 120 degrees in the tiny store and I spent most of the time feeling like I was melting.
He read from the book, he read from his journals, he read a new story that will go in a new book soon enough. He was charming and tittery and very funny. He has one of the best reading voices I’ve ever heard. His stories are wonderful, but when he reads them they take on a life of their own.
I met him, briefly, so that he could sign my book. Our conversation was mostly inane, and I felt bad that he had to find a topic of a 2 minute conversation for all 300 of us. I couldn’t help but get the distinct impression, while he was reading and while he was signing, that he would much rather not have been doing either. That he would be quite content if we’d just by the book and go home. In the front of the book he signed it to my name, and drew a picture of what I suspect might be Abraham Lincoln, though it is impossible to be sure, with a word balloon saying “Franks are for winners!” which might sound absurd but at the time he had just been given a hot dog by a little servant girl though the line of people waiting to get signed was denying him the ability to eat it. I suppose that was less haunting than the girl before me who, from what I gathered was enjoying her birthday, and he offered her a gift. A condom, but only if she used it for “back door” fun. She promised. After she left, he asked me if I thought it would be used with the boy she was waiting with. I have to admit, I wasn’t prepared with a sharp enough answer and merely suggested that it could go either way.
The book circles around the topic of death slowly. The vignettes told always have something to do with death and dying, though very few are directly related to a special death or dealing with death or anything like that. And of course they are funny, which makes them nearly absurd as they circle the drain. I could say something writerly and clever like, “Like sipping a good martini with close friends while discussing the lack of merits of those not invited…” but I’ll just feel like a jackass and probably sound like one too. The book is great and it’s funny and worth reading. It does not feel like a memoir, it feels like fiction, though it is more like exaggerated non-fiction. It’s not too glib, and it is very pretentious and will make you feel better than everyone else too. He talks a lot about living in other countries, a lot about death, a lot about his companion Hugh. He talks about smoking and quitting, he talks about his Greek grandmother and passing gas and airline flights. He discusses drugs and drinking at length and yes, even manages to make addiction histerical. They all work together remakably well, and I can’t help but wondering if after so many memoir books, he’ll eventually run out of stories to tell because certainly a man cannot have so many grand adventures without eventually imploding or dying of an overdose.
So read it, won’t you?
It was early 1900 at a boarding house on the island of Azzurra. The lady Maria Antonia Farace raised a garden of lemons while her nephew became the proud owner of a post-war bar in the same area. Using what they said was a recipe handed down through their family, they began offering complimentary shot glasses of a daring, brightly colored lemon liqueur they called Limoncello. After dinner, the travelers would sip what Maria called a “digestivo,” and the word of the delicious lemon drink soon spread across Capri.
Or wait! Perhaps it was Vincenza Canale and his Inn with those travelers! The truth is, the history of Limoncello is as varied as the people it comes from. Sorrento, Amalfi, Capri…it doesn’t matter the location, they all have similar stories and legends of it’s mixed and varied history and perhaps they are all correct. Whosever grandma originally bottled the stuff is a mystery and will likely always stay that way. The good news is…we have it to make for ourselves, and that’s what I want to talk about.
Limoncello is an incredibly smooth, sweet, delicious drink that is meant to be sipped with dessert after dinner from tall thin shot glasses. It is particularly good with Italian desserts, but drinking it with any kind of chocolate dessert will pair very well too. Making it is quite simple, though all you really need is time and patience. I started my first batch last night, and it was fairly time consuming but not hard. I’m going to tell you how to get your first batch started as well.
You’ll need some items to get started. Here, I’ve purchased two glass jars with seal rims. They were $6.99 each from Cost Plus World Market. Sun tea jars work well too, but stay away from plastic jars or jars that had something in them previously that wasn’t limoncello. You’re going to be letting this sit for 4 months, any residue that is left over is going to taint your limoncello.
I’m only making one batch right now, but my second jar is going to be started next month and will be a double batch for Christmas. Limoncello makes an excellent Christmas present when given in beautiful little sealed jars with personalized tags. Cost Plus World Market has many wonderful sized jars that work well for this.
Next you will need the alcohol. Here’s where things get a little controversial. Everyone who makes Limoncello has an opinion about what kind of alcohol to use. Some will die saying you can only use Vodka. Others will decry heaven saying that you must use Everclear grain alcohol or go home, heathen. They are both right, in a way. Traditionally, the drink was made with grain alcohol…OR Vodka. But the Vodka at the time was not quite so commercialized and low proof. Limoncello is meant to be kept in the freezer, and these days, Vodka will freeze, at least partially, in the freezer if it isn’t high enough proof. And if it is high enough proof, it is made with potatoes which will change the taste of your Limoncello! The best way to make this drink is by using BOTH alcohols. You don’t need a super high end Vodka, Smirnoff works well, which is what I’ve been recommended to use. These two bottles together cost a little less than $30.
You’re also going to need lemons! You’re also going to need a vegetable brush of some kind to clean them and a good vegetable/fruit cleaner. Commercial lemons, no matter how organic, come to you covered in a wax and chemicals which keep the lemons looking their brightest and best the longest. You have to get that crud off. The trouble is you can’t really see this stuff, so you’re just going to have to scrub them well and use the vegetable cleaner, it’ll help. Scrubscrubscrub, you don’t want that junk in your drink.
Also, beware of Sunkist lemons. I didn’t realize that Sunkist stamps their lemons with a green stamp that is harder than hell to scrub off. Fortunately, I only bought 5 of that kind. How many lemons do you need? Well, that’s also a good controversy. Some say you need 10 for one batch, or 15, or 20. And they should be organic. I have 15 organic lemons, and 5 non-organic because the organic lemons were pretty small with thin skins. Here’s a quick lemon lesson: The lemons you can buy in the store are nothing like the lemons you buy on the Amalfi coast from roadside vendors that are used to make traditional limoncello. You’ll never get limoncello like they do because their lemons are just better for it. They have super thick skins that have a high level of lemony oil in them. Our skins are very thin. So I’ll say 20 is better, but if you can get good sized lemons with good thick skins, 15 will work too. I think 10 is probably not enough.
After you scrub your lemons clean, it’s time to peel them. I used a potato peeler, but you can use a knife if you want to, though I don’t recommend it unless you are very good at using it. The potato peeler will make sure you don’t dig too deep into the skin when you are removing the lemony outer skin. Beneath the yellow skin is a white substance called the Pith. The Pith is very, very bitter and you want as little of it in your limoncello as possible. It’ll alter your limoncello making it bitter, and no one wants that. So using your potato peeler, remove the yellow skin without getting the white stuff. Any white stuff that sticks to your skin, use a knife to scrape it off. This is the time consuming part, but you want it done as good as possible.
Here’s another controversial subject to talk about. Some people say peel it, others say zest it. Anyone who says you should zest it is an idiot. A lot of the oil is going to stick to your microplane as you zest, for one, and you want it all to go into your drink. For two, zest is so tiny and broken apart that filtering it all out is going to be time consuming and you may never get it all out and you don’t want anything grainy in your finished product. Save yourself time and heartache and just peel it. The bigger the slice the better.
Here’s what you’ll have when you’re done with all that. You can already see the alcohol turning yellow. This is only 1 batch, though next time I”m going to make a double batch and fill the bottle.
Here’s where it gets fun. Make a label or a tag to throw around the neck of the jar that tells you want date you made it and what date it will be done. From the day you make the jar, count of 4 months. That’s when it’ll be ready for the next step.
Four months?!?!?! Yes my friends, four months. Honestly, if you could leave it alone for a year, that’d be even better. This is definitely a drink that gets better and better with time. Anyone who tells you it will be ready in two weeks or two months is, well, being honest, but they are mislead. You could have it ready in 2 weeks or 2 months, but it isn’t going to be very good, it’s definitely not going to be authentic, and you might as well go buy a commercial bottle of limoncello, that’s about what you’re getting. Trust me, put it away for 4 months. Do it. Don’t open it before 4 months. Every day or every couple of days, give the bottle a good swish to move the alcohol around and re disperse it. If you can keep it in a cool dark place in your basement, that’s best. But if you’re like me, you don’t have a cool dark basement in the summer and you will need to keep it in your fridge. Some say you shouldn’t keep it cold, and maybe you shouldn’t, but cold is preferable to hot which is what it would be in my basement. Oh if only I were blessed with a root cellar.
In 4 months you’re going to pull it out, scoop out the lemon pieces with a slotted spoon, and start filtering the drink with a funnel and some coffee filters. You’re going to filter it with about 6 coffee filters (wetting the filters first before pouring the alcohol through) You should get everything out of the drink leaving it a lovely uniform shade of yellow. You’re going to make a syrup with 6 cups of sugar and 5 cups of water which will be added to the alcohol and set aside at room temperature for about a week or two. Then…well then it’ll be ready to bottle. I’ll have some large bottles that go into my freezer for every day drinking, and I’ll probably bottle a couple of small bottles for friends and family to try.
Drink responsibly! This stuff is strong! Sip it slowly, don’t drink a lot of it at a time, enjoy it with dessert. If you’re under 21, you’re not even allowed so just move on.
When 4 months comes, we’ll return to this subject and I’ll show you the pictures of how I make the syrup.
The Midwest, my home, has been pummeled near to death in the past couple of weeks with storms. I’ve never been particularly afraid of storms or tornadoes, though I spend an awful lot of hand wringing hours worrying about my house, my yard, my garden, my deck, my dad’s house, my grandpa’s house, but never about lives being lost. I suppose that when you grow up with a particular threat you are so deeply trained how what to do you never worry about “making it through” only that your house doesn’t get imploded in the process. Tornadoes always seem to be more of a nuisance, a part-time villain instead of a mastermind.
In any case, there we were, husband and I, curled up beneath a table in our basement. I was watching tv, which was crackling and fuzzy after the cable went out, and the husband was reading a novel. Outside wind was howling, rain was trashing, the weather man was telling us to ignore the fact that the sirens weren’t going off and to get into the basement right away. The scare tactics reminded me of George Bush and his security threat colors. Did we ever get out of security threat orange? I forget now.
Many hours went by and when it was over, there was a lot of damage but not really to our area. Part of our downspout came off. Our little bell pepper plants went nuts with excitement and started sprouting peppers all over the place.
Iowa is flooding. I’m glad that I’m not in Iowa. I’m close but no water issues for me. I wonder what it would be like to watch water levels engulf my house.
I think I’d rather just have a tornado take it all in one fell swoop.
Just a little bit of music.
August 14, 2008 in Commentary | Tags: ipod, music | Leave a comment
When I lived in Boston, my roommates gave me no end of heartache when it came to chiding me for my taste in music. My taste was never good enough, and more than once was proclaimed the reason for my datelessness. Really. My musical tastes.
I always sort of liked things I liked, with no real knowledge of why I might like them. I especially become wrapped up in songs that play at the right moment in time, as a pre-destined soundtrack to my life. That is why there are a few artists who are a sincere pleasure as well as a deeply painful thing to listen. POE is one of those. Oh I love her, but her music got me through a tough time in my life. A dark time.
Anyway, I’m still somewhat new to the life of an iPod owner, so I decided to throw up a list of my next randomly chosen songs. Yeah, there is a wild difference between some of these, that is for sure.
1. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Crow Jane
2. Rasputina - When I was a young girl
3. Black Tape for a Blue Girl - The Lie Which Refuses to Die
4. The Damnwells - What you get
5. Linkin Park - Shadow of the Day
6. Hole - Use once and destroy
7. Ben Folds Five - Battle of Who Could Care Less
8. Guns n’ Roses - Don’t Cry
9. Abney Park – She
10. The Cure - Pictures of You
11. Cursive – The Recluse
12. Pixies - Tame
13. Mates of State - Middle is Gold
14. Voltaire - Brains
15. The Damnwells - I’ll Be Around
16. Grasshopper Takeover - Pressure
17. Dido - Honestly OK
18. Radio Iodine - Manic Girl
19. Eurythmics - Sweet Dreams
20. POE - Haunted
I’ve been thinking about what music does to writing. I love listening to music when I need inspiration, but I hate listening to it when I’m writing. My brain starts singing and I can’t concentrate. I’m listening to music right now, and am curious to see the typos I’ve created by trying to type and listen at the same time. Shame on me.
-Sommer