Blogging Like A Boss...

Not really though. For you see blogosphere, I've done it again. I've fallen behind on reading through the blogs of everyone I follow (you beautiful people, you) and once again, I'm at that terrible 1 month mark of missing out on random tidbits of information and great stories. By now, I think it's more than one month though. Oops...

I started typing up a whole spiel on why I get backed up on posts but I don't think I need to recount it here. It's simple. I work a lot. Also the letters "q," "a," and "z" are broken on my keypad from a wine spill from over a year ago. You wouldn't think these letters would be so important to use but "a" is in pretty much every word ever. Stopping to hit the "a" button on my on-screen keyboard is a nuisance that I've been putting up with for over a year now. Somehow I've been making it work, but I suspect that this weekend when I get paid is when it is time to finally address this problem and take my computer into the repair shop. Which I've been avoiding because they might keep it for DAYS and leave me high and dry without my writing resource.

Ugh, I sound like such a nerd here. Time to be a grown-up now and take care of important adult matters.

In the meantime, here's a fun question and answer session with me. I promise it isn't one of those terrible ones you find online where they ask you like 12 times if you have gone skinny dipping before and if you like the last person who texted you. BARF. This is mostly just a favorites list. Nothing too revealing...or is it?

Name: Heather

Where you’re from: STL, or Saint Louis if you didn't get what those initials meant. When I tell people where I'm from, the response is mixed. Most people can totally hear my Midwestern accent (it's something to do with how the vowels are lower than the consonants) and get it. A bunch of people have no idea where that is and mistake it for being in the Iowa region. Still some people say I look like I'm from New York (it must be all the black I wear that does it) and even more people don't think I'm even from America period.

Welp, I was raised in STL, land of Anheuser Busch, toasted ravioli, and where estate homes are regularly built in areas that contain Section 8 housing across the street.

Sexuality: Straight. With some celebrity girlcrushes (cough, cough, Eva Green, cough, cough).

Sex: Female.

Age: 20-something. I think I mentioned my age somewhere here before.

Biggest Passion: Writing. Writing is the torch that guides my soul to the places where it needs to be and where it shouldn't be. Writing is my best friend and biggest nemesis. Writing is the one area in life where I feel both highly talented and highly terrible all at once. It makes me feel completely at home and happy and just on the cloud 9 of producing incredible content. This is most evident when I'm writing dialogue between people. Then it can turn on me to produce an article so heart-wrenchingly awful I feel like I have no voice period or at least that voice is getting stupid on me and I don't want to look at it ever again. This is most evident when I write about something romantic.

Still my biggest passion though, no matter how many times it gets rejected or published. I do it for myself and that's reason enough.

Biggest turn on: I have many and the vast majority of them involve clothing. A crisp ironed men's shirt with pressed trousers and shined shoes will be the death of me. Menswear in general is my Achilles Heel...when worn on the right kind of guy. I'm also big on corsets, elbow-length gloves, stockings, and heels (for me, not him). Like a dominatrix without the whip and gag ball.

Single/Taken: Single, but seeing the world at large. Also, definitely not on board with getting married or having children anytime ever.

I will be that token awesome single girl at all of my friends' weddings, giving a meaningful toast, shouting out "awwww yeah this is my jam!" to the opening chords of KC and the Sunshine Band's "Get Down Tonight," having a drinking contest somewhere at the bar with the single bridesmaids who have all become my new BFFs, doing inappropriate dances with the groomsmen on the dance floor that will undoubtedly be the focus of that poor wedding video, having another drinking contest at the bar (this time with myself), several phone numbers from guys I will not remember in the morning, and going home in a taxi with one of my shoes missing.

Rad.

Biggest dream: I have a bunch and they range from semi-realistic to not even in a million years is that shiz going down. I'd like to have at least one book published by the time I'm 25. I'd like to travel through Europe and eventually settle down in London to work at an ad agency, surrounded by gorgeously accented British guys. Though I will also settle for working with Scottish, Aussie, or Kiwi guys as well. I'd like to time travel back to the 1920s and be a teenager then during the Prohibition Era. I want to create a series for HBO about a modern day royal family. I want to write a book based off of an idea I'm working with that would definitely get me in a lot of trouble to write about. I want to be in a commercial with the Pillsbury Doughboy. I want to create a non-profit organization for children. I want to pay off my entire Sallie Mae debt by the time I'm 30. I want to create a stock portfolio for myself and invest regularly. I'd like to be front row at an Arcade Fire concert and at a live taping for Katt Williams and his stand-up. I want to DJ with Paul van Dyk at Ibiza and also want to be the face for Lancome.

From this list, I know what's attainable and what isn't. And honestly I think the time travel '20s one has some real potential to occur.

Favorite colour: Ivory. I'm so white my favorite color is an off-white version of white.

Favorite drink: Sex on the Beach. It's really cliche and girltastic but they put cherries in it and it's pink so...

Favorite type of music: Film scores, '80s dance, and British pop stars.

Favorite band: Arcade Fire.

Favorite singer: Liv Kristine. She's the lead singer from Leaves Eyes and has the voice of an angel. The first time I heard her, she nearly put me in a trance. Liv's voice is glorious- I cannot stress it enough.

Favorite tv show: Sex and the City. This show is pure comfort food to me.

Favorite actor: I'm a big fan of the raw rage and insanity that Klaus Kinski brings to the screen. I've been into Kinski since high school and it isn't easy to compare him to other people. I will also see pretty much anything with Viggo Mortensen, Jon Hamm, and Robert Downey Jr. in it.

Favorite actress: I really, really love Marion Cotillard. I think she's just smashing.

Favorite movie: Edward Scissorhands.

Favorite books: The Great Gatsby and Franny and Zooey are the two books I have a hard time envisioning not having read in my lifetime.

Something random: I am extremely talented at gift wrapping. I take it quite seriously when picking out wrapping for presents.

Love to you all,
Heather

Destination: The Suburbs

This is a late post for me since this album released on August 3rd. Apologies for it, but as with all Arcade Fire albums, I need a week of solitude with frequent listenings.

And as per usual, I fell deeply in love with it.



I've been listening to the Arcade Fire since the tail end of my senior year of high school. The first song I heard by them was Rebellion (Lies) and the change in tempo at the 1:50 mark (or the dropoff as I call it) was remarkable. I'm not the most spiritual girl in the world, but this album was truly a deep listening experience. I couldn't bear the thought of waiting to order it online, so my mom and I went on a Borders journey that was like my version of finding the Holy Grail to find the first album, Funeral. I listened to it obsessively, likewise with the second album Neon Bible. Enjoying the theatrics in songs like Black Mirror and the teary wistfulness of wanting in Crown of Love. During autumn, I used to go for walks energized with Keep the Car Running as my background song and in the winter, running through the snow with Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels) seemed perfectly placed.

They're my favorite band of all time. My music taste is prone to change without warning often, but the Arcade Fire holds too much of my heart in their music. It seems to me like Win Butler and Regine Chassagne (the husband and wife singing duo leading the seven member band) know far too often what I'm thinking and how I feel.

With the new album, The Suburbs, we literally went back to the suburbs. A place that I haven't lived in for years, but lately felt the pull in my heart to return to. Simply for the safety of it. It stays simple and quiet and safe. Of course, the safety of it all reminds me of just how bored I was there, but these days, when nothing in my life feels like it will stay still or not be unpredictable for one moment, I miss the safety of nothing occurring. I think the band understood this feeling of growing up, of losing innocence and in my case at least, desperately clinging to it in small ways.



I love the title track The Suburbs for capturing all of these feelings perfectly. It's as though they reached into my heart, dumped the contents onto a table and made music out of it. This track segued into Ready to Start, a fast paced song about being with someone versus just being alone (there are a lot of interpretations to this song, but I came away with this one.) "I would rather be wrong/Than live in the shadows of your song" is one of my favorite lines.

Rococo, a glittering gem of a song, is about culture and how we're so obsessed with appearance and fixated with getting it just right, but really losing the point in the process, if we ever understood it at all. It makes me feel like smashing everything related to pop culture and throwing it all away because in the end, what it is all about? Why can't we just be without appearing or pretending to be? It's deep, I'm telling you. Very thoughtful to say least.

Empty Room thrives in a whirling frenzied beat while Half Light II (No Celebration) brings more celebration than you'd think (I imagine it being lit with candles.) Month of May is now on my own personal life soundtrack. The entire song sounds like a race to the finish. 2009, 2010/Wanna make a record how I felt then/When we stood outside in the month of May/And watched the violent wind blow the wires away. It sounds exactly like how I wanted to be this fully published accomplished author by then, but could not due to lack of inspiration and other sidetracking items.



If you listen to one song on this album, make it Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains). Damn. This song is too powerful for words. Just the lyrics alone arrest me in the fact that they are everything I've ever heard in my head over and over, and that I know I'm not alone in this feeling. Not now, not ever.

"They heard me singing and they told me to stop,
Quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock,
These days, my life, I feel it has no purpose,
But late at night the feelings swim to the surface.
Cause on the surface the city lights shine,
They're calling at me, "come and find your kind."

Love to you all,
Heather