Rock and Roll

After just finishing an article about Kings of Leon in Rolling Stone, I find a music video of theirs among the free offerings in the airplane music fare. It is called “Use Somebody” and the song, along with the music video, is raw grit.
The vocals start with reluctance, almost as though the words are too painful for Caleb to say. And yet, he fights himself to say them, as the rising guitar echo the duality of his reluctance and his driving need to say what he must. Caleb’s voice is desperate, and the rock and roll gravel simultaneously tears you to shreds and raises you high, a veritable crowd surf of vocal emotion. The guitar hooks, the bass and drum combo dare your heart to beat out of their relentless rhythm.
The rawness of their music is perhaps best reflected in this song and video. In this song, besides the grunting rawness of rock and roll grunge, is genuine pain in the juxtaposing images of them on tour, running the gamut of their brutal life, with the more mundane images of them playing pool, getting stoned, being stoned. But the song’s desperation give the quick shots the fire of tequila, the slow smoky ones the sensual headiness of scotch. The relentless fervor of mindless pushups, showering off post concert grime, memories of performance. Quiet moments of prayer, arms encircling one another.
The potency of the contrasting images pummel you with the reminders of the power of rock and roll. The hook-line-and-sinker pull of this fantastical hedonism is that it has a dark side, and the most frightening things about it is its ability to beckon nonetheless. It is the siren’s song: pleasure and pain inextricably intertwined.
Kings of Leon achieve that in this song: the pleasure-pain, the dark underbelly of loving, longing, destroying yourself in the process. The demons they’re outrunning might destroy them, and perhaps you in the process. If not for the honest moments of pure heartbreak. Those, my friend, will save your soul.

See also: Almost Famous

The Adventures and Misadventures of Sweet Dee

My boss grumbles. At me.

It’s frustrating when you’re trying to take dictation for him (does one take dictation? Do dictation? He dictates. I type. My sole purpose in that office is my fast fingers. I have nightmares about falling and breaking them. I will be out of a job) and he grumbles and mumbles under his breath at me. It’s awfully hard to hear what I’m supposed to type when he’s muttering intelligibly. I’ve never been good with foreign languages. I’m always afraid of asking him to clarify what he’s saying; the phrase “poking a sleeping dragon” comes to mind.

But I must. I must hear what he is saying. Otherwise he’ll make his grumbling louder, and ANGRIER when I get it wrong.

What is a meek, timid, girl-who-wants-to-stay-employed to do?

By the way, nothing makes you feel worse than having a boss making you feel idiotic all day, answering innocent questions with such “well, DUH,” expression and tone that teenagers in the vicinity would squirm with jealousy. The incompetence and self righteousness rises in waves, and you are so sure that you are so much smarter and this is so not worth your time. Then imagine discovering something you really and truly did. And it was stupid enough to qualify you the village idiot du jour.

Also, I discovered that I am incapable of eating salads neatly. Either that, or I don’t cut my veggies small enough. Off to finishing school for me.