My mom and I took a wrong turn and ended up in Atlantic City once. It seems like the kind of place that you can’t envision anyone actually living in for any period of time, just passing through. I guess that’s how I’m feeling these days. Transient.

I realized something about this blog this weekend.

It doesn’t sound like me, because I am trying too hard to ensure that it doesn’t. And if it sounds forced sometimes, that’s probably because it is. I have been trying to imitate other people’s voices. And this is frustrating to me because it’s never going to work half as well as just using my own, right as it comes to me. This may not seem terribly important to anyone who is reading this, but it’s a pretty big problem.

I’m also feeling musically adrift again. It’s been happening more and more in the past few years. I still enjoy most of the same music that I used to, and most of my new discoveries are in the same vein, but I think the simple fact is that I don’t need music in the way I used to. I don’t need it to comfort me and embody my (mostly melancholy) feelings. The simple fact is I just don’t feel that melancholy anymore. The feeling has largely been replaced by some anxity, some momentary stabs of sadness, but I’ve grown out of the teen angst. I don’t see how this could be anything but good.

don’t get so uptight

I guess I haven’t really known what to say, and that’s why I’ve been gone for so long. But that’s not true. I’ve been writing like a crazy person, but none of it has made it here.

I’m finally starting to feel comfortable calling myself a writer. For the past few years I’ve felt as though this term was too hallowed and important to apply to me, but I’m growing into it, I guess.

Also, I just got an SLR, so this is me being even more of a hipster douche.

how to have a perfect moment

First, you are going to need some KBC beer. Generally it can only be obtained in the Upper Peninsula, although I did find it in a liquor store cooler in Westfield, Wisconsin once. If you do not have any KBC, the best you can probably do is some other local, craft-brewed beer. I guess even Sierra Nevada, in a pinch. It absolutely cannot be Bud Light (although Bud Light with Lime is a different matter entirely.)

photo credit to Brockit Photography, which I work for sometimes

Drink it. Get tipsy. Recycle the cans. Probably pee a few times, since alcohol is a diuretic.

You are also going to need some live music. Preferably a local or semi-local band, but a good one, one that’s put out a record or two. You know. It’s even better if you are at least somewhat acquainted with them, and they know you by sight, and you are in the front row.

Por ejemplo.

This was it. This was my perfect moment. We were talking about perfect moments at one point this summer, when some of John’s friends (and mine too, I suppose — I wouldn’t call them my not-friends, but they were really his first) were sitting in our living room, and Annelise, who was in Quiz Bowl with both of us, said that she had one in sixth grade, coming back from the annual Camp Nesbitt trip. She was sitting on the bus, surrounded by her friends, and it was a beautiful day and she knew that she would be home soon. This idea stuck with me, and eventually it allowed me to give a name to a sensation I’d never been able to categorize before.

John and I were at Farm Block Fest, in Ahmeek, Michigan. It had poured the night before and rain leaked into our hand-me-down tent, leaving us soggy and dispirited. But then, later in the day, the sun came out, and we decided to have lunch at the Fitzgerald restaurant (named after that ill-fated ship), and we swam in Lake Superior and I wore my graduation dress. It was already a perfect day.

Something about standing in front of that stage, outside, in the summer, surrounded by exuberant people, with the perfect amount of alcohol in my system and John standing next to me…I was so happy. These moments are always bittersweet because you can never quite tell when they’re going to end, but you know that these are the times you wait for on those terrible days. These are why you are alive.

I wish that I lived in a place with more vintage stores. I wish that writing didn’t feel like pulling teeth sometimes. I wish that my closet were more organized. I wish that I could make a decision about my next tattoo.

Because I cannot think of a better way to sum up this entry, here is some Ezra Pound. It was originally much longer, but then he cut it down to these two lines.

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

there’s thieves among us

Summer nights at the KBC. I don’t know why I look so disconsolate, and now I’m worried that I always look like this in social situations when I think that no one is looking.

Bonnaroo madness.

Music sounds better live. It just does. Something about the immediacy, and the lack of producers and recording equipment and mp3 formats and space and time and all of the other things separating you from the artist. And so, with this in mind, we drove 2,000 miles in the past week, to one of the biggest music festivals in America.

Not everything was wonderful, including car troubles and our 7-hour wait in traffic before finally being able to get in, but all of this seemed to disappear on Friday morning when we woke up in our tent, almost smothered by the heat, and set about figuring out our schedule for the day.

The thing that the nice, crisp SPIN and Rolling Stone and NPR pictures of Bonnaroo don’t show you is that living in close proximity to 69,999 other people for four days gets disgustingly smelly and grungy, especially in the heat. The dumpster and Port-a-Potty and sweat smells followed us pretty much wherever we went. I usually take pretty meticulous care with my appearance, out of habit and a touch of OCD if nothing else, but there was little I could do here. Any and all makeup melted off of my face within a few minutes, and modest, (fashionable) attire was just too hot to keep on for very long. Swimsuits were really the only option. So, John and I wandered around the 700 acre farm like perspiring, unkempt zombies, our Camelbaks strapped to our backs, not in search of brains, but rock n’ roll.

Let me just say that, while we do have overlapping musical tastes that made the trip worth it in the first place, there are some differences also. My current obsession with The National is not shared by John, nor my long-standing love for Tori Amos. In our last few minutes, he ran to watch Against Me! while I inhaled a bottle of Dasani near one of the Budweiser stands. But, with some tolerance and give-and-take, we made that shit work. I didn’t see a single show that I didn’t enjoy, and I think he can say the same.

My favorite, by far, was the Dead Weather. I wasn’t really expecting this; I like their albums, and I respect good ol’ Jack White as a modern rock institution, but, much like I need to temper Led Zeppelin with some vagina music every once in awhile, the Dead Weather always came off as too testosterone-heavy. This was possibly due to the fact that Alison Mosshart, of The Kills fame, can sound oddly like Jack White, and when they do duets on Dead Weather albums, sometimes you can’t tell whose voice is whose. (It’s eerie.) She never seemed like enough of a presence; she was always getting drowned out by the bass, or the kick drum, or some other guy’s voice.

On stage, though, she was astounding and powerful. She was unlike any female musician I have ever seen before. Not open and earnest, like Ani DiFranco, or playful and mischievous like Tegan and Sara. Not sultry and in-control, like Tori Amos, although she was very self-possessed. She was just wild. She threw everything into that performance, and you could tell. It was hot and miserable out in the audience, and I don’t imagine the stage was much different; she was wearing dark jeans, a black camisole of some kind, and a leopard-print jacket. (Jack White is very into color schemes, and all of the male band members were just wearing black and white; she, however, was allowed the leopard print. It certainly helped her stand out.) She was very quickly soaked with sweat, and her long dark hair was disheveled and stringy. You would think that this would be an unattractive look, but it really, really wasn’t.

My camera is shitty, but I think you get the idea. She also gave Jack White some of the sultriest looks ever seen on a Jumbotron, but I was too slow to catch them.

So that was my favorite part. I told John that I thought it was cool because The Kills never would have attracted the same kind of stadium audience; they would have been in one of the smaller, more intimate tents, and her performance might just have seemed over-the-top and odd. But there, in the stadium of Bonnaroo stages, with the Dead Weather, she was absolutely amazing.

Other than the Dead Weather, I think Regina Spektor might have been my favorite, despite our hour-long wait in miserable heat to see her.

I was so sad to leave. This had been my dream for years, and now it was over — all that was left was the long, arduous drive back to Upper Michigan (slightly tempered by a visit to our friend Lauren in Elizabethtown, Kentucky.) I don’t have much besides these pictures, a Regina Spektor t-shirt, and a few other things — my dirty wristband, my water-soaked festival guide. But now I’m back, and everything feels just a little bit different.

I do think I want a new camera for my birthday, though.