"One can never be sure if it's good poetry or bad acid."

You know those songs that you hear randomly and you never manage to run across them again? And yet all the same they manage to define a series of events?

When I had just graduated high school, my parents took my sister and I on a trip to Paris. We lived in an apartment in the student district for a week or so. I remember lying on the couch, the open window allowing that specific Parisian wind to blow and billow my skirt out about my knees. I had discovered French MTV, and with it, a rather captivating (i.e. creepy) music video by a band called Indochine. Upon my return to America, I searched and searched for the song, with zero success.

Until today, just now! I finally found and purchased the song on iTunes, and have included the video here.

It Might Get Loud.

Dear, Sweet Jesus, I must see this film.

Tightly Contained

Today has been filled with further unpacking, my new flatmate moving in with her six-week old, yet-to-be-named kitten, and other lovely surprises like the discovery that the sound of water dripping in the walls of my best friend's room was NOT water dripping, but the hive of yellow jackets drilling . . . whatever they drill. Watching the premiere episode of Project Runway and a nice large ice cream cone made us feel a bit better, however. As does this new Metric video.

Stardust

like I'd forget to post about the 40th anniversary of Woodstock. Seriously.

dark moon

suck on that, Jacob Black.

Movie thoughts: Into the Wild

When I came home from Oxford at the end of June, I was filled with a deep desire . . . to watch television. We didn't have a TV in Oxford and six months without any sort of random television programming left me a bit stir-crazy for the wonders of Starz and HBO. Thanks to jetlag, I would plop down on the couch at odd hours of the morning to see what would peak my interest. Each time, I ran across Into the Wild. I was already incredibly interested in watching the movie, which in turn only further encouraged me to read the book of the same title by John Krakouer.

It was the first movie that I out and out loved a character played by Vince Vaughn, discovered my love (girl crush!) of Catherine Keener, grew addicted to Kristen Stewart's heartbreaking, natural, understated performances, and felt a deepening respect for Sean Penn.

This is mainly because of the subject. There is a mountain of debate about Christopher McCandless and his journey to spurn society and rediscover simplicity through nature. Krakouer's book delves into his story, and a journey shrouded in mystery and tragedy. The book, and McCandless, seems to divide people into two very distinct opinions: those who felt that McCandless was a hero, going out to living deliberately and actually DO all of the things intellectuals and existentialists only dream about, and in contrast those who feel that McCandless overindulged himself, and foolishly ignored the superior knowledge of others for his stubborn and ungrateful fool's errand.

Krakouer's book traces a delicate line between these factions, and Penn's film is a phenomenal triumph of that line. His cinematography, the flow of the film, and precious captured moments glorify nature in a passionate way--one can imagine that this vision is what McCandless was searching for in his quest. It shows his idealism, his intelligence, and his perseverance. But in his refusal to contact his parents, his dismissal of the concerns of his new friends, Penn also shows his stubbornness and pride.

What is most devastating, I think, is the relationship so abruptly severed, so swiftly and strongly formed, and then taken away. The characters that he met along the way, who so quickly loved this charismatic kid. Tracy Tatro, played so delicately by Kristen Stewart, brings me close to tears every time. This kid, with a crush on a boy, who has to eventually find out that he died? I can't even imagine it. The same with Catherine Keener's character, a loving hippie named Jan who sees her estranged son so vividly in McCandless.

It's not my place to judge the situation, but I do believe very deeply in something that Wayne (Vince Vaughn) says to Emile Hersch's McCandless: "It's a mistake to get too deep into all that kind of stuff. . . . Can't be juggling blood and fire all of the time!"