music is my parachute

[devi]

BeeCDs and dinner makings
Originally uploaded by bluedevi

Yesterday was a bleak sort of day, despite the crisp autumn sunshine. I was out of sorts with work, and apprehensive about money, and kept veering towards the dangerous here-be-dragons shores of "what's the point?" in relation to my non-work projects, and in general it was the sort of day where the whole mechanism of living seems a bit much and you just want to be asleep. It was like my brain had been running for too long without a reboot and now was full of cruft, memory leaks and zombie processes, and desperately in need of a defrag.

(Someone will now tell me I need a different operating system.)

But I got home to find a parcel of music and goodwill from beecd, put the first of the three CDs on and started cooking lasagne while waiting for Dan to come round, and there was a moment when I just stood back and looked at the objects on the counter and thought it was ridiculous to be glum when I was this absurdly lucky.

I'm not supposed to talk about the CDs in detail till everyone has got theirs, so we can all listen to them without preconceptions, but the two I've heard so far have been fantastic.

So it seems like a good time to do jinty's earworm meme...


The Clash, This Is England, while walking down the Cowley Road to Tesco. In particular, I've got my motorcycle jacket but I'm walking all the time.

Yesterday morning I woke up with a rather good mashup earworm. Part was this bit of Parabola by Tool: twirling round in this familiar parabola/spinning weaving round each new experience/recognise this as a holy gift and celebrate this chance to be alive and breathing (Tool are weird. Sound of a thrash-metal band who love to mess with time signatures, lyrics of a wide-eyed blissed-out hippy. At least on this album). The other part was As Above So Below by Klaxons: the dance of the cosmos shows/as above so below. Totally different genres, but they both make me think of geometry on a massive scale.

I got Horse And I by Bat For Lashes months ago on one of ultraruby's YouSendIts, and I knew people were saying she was a bit Kate Bush/Tori Amos/Björk so you'd think I'd have gone mad for her right away. But no, I listened to it a couple of times, it made little impression and I forgot about it. It smouldered away in the depths of my iTunes until a couple of weeks ago, when it leapt out and mugged me. It's gorgeous, and it keeps earworming me with It sang to me, this is yours to wear/your choice is made, there's no turning back.

(Crikey, look at me with my head full of Mercury Prize nominees. I am Ms Average, the woman on the Clapham omnibus. And I don't even listen to the radio much.)

Up On Hill Farm by Hamilton Vs Hamilton is my theme for Truck. I didn't hear it there, but it's on the Truck CD, and is actually about Truck, and it's a floaty acoustic thing which sounds as if it's drifting across a field, and captures the mood of those two days perfectly.

I routinely get earwormed by old hymns from Charismatic prayer meetings. They come up from the depths of my memory like bubbles of marsh gas. There's the one that goes I have decided to follow Jesus, I have decided to follow Jesus, I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back. Round and round and round. Hmm, bit of a no-turning-back theme emerging there. And the one about the Apocalypse that ends We shall reign with him forever, men and angels shout and sing, all dominion shall be given to the family of the King. Um, yes. I'm going to count all that sort of thing as a single earworm.

And the last is another oldie: after Dan and I had a conversation about 80s fantasy movies which ended with us watching Legend (oh dear! Unicorns! Tiny, tiny wee Tom Cruise!), I got earwormed by Dance Magic Dance from Labyrinth. And also the "Through dangers untold, and hardships unnumbered, I have fought my way here to the castle..." speech.

I'm inevitably going to remember many much weirder ones as soon as I post this.


I hardly ever tag people for memes, but I want to know about other people's earworms. So, with the usual caveats about no obligation to do this, I tag, hmmm... undyingking, puritybrown, inannajones, braisedbywolves, miss_newham, parallelgirl and minnesattva. And anyone else who wants to, obviously.