My friend directed me to a band last night that I could not ignore.

It is not a band for everyone, but looking at them in specifically in artistic terms, they are a band for me.

Ambient, almost glitchy, noise under recordings of voices. Not necessarily singing, but speaking, and they create a symphony out of these words.

It’s like the musical equivalent of found art.

And it makes me want to go on long walks, find wide expanses of grass in a park on a windy day, and write something worth reading out loud.

John Hughes died yesterday.

Last night, being bombarded with the fact when I went online, I needed to take a moment to stop and reflect upon the significance of the filmmaker that this man was.

Middle-aged, white, and relatively well-off in the ’80s, John Hughes made a series of films in the years before my birth that have factored so importantly into my non-white, not-so-well-off, and distinctly non-male character development that it’s actually a little bit embarassing.

In his construct of the ideal movie heroine (as portrayed by Molly Ringwald), I know that I was not the first person to find a blueprint for acting out my adolescence.

Hughes’ hand can be seen in most teen dramas produced since his era, most notably the films that glorify the misfit, defining their journey as the journey that matters the most in the end-all experience of high school. In John Hughes’ world, there does not exist a place beyond 12th grade. That might explain a lot of my eighteen-year-old panic when I embarked out into the real world, being finally without my most worthy frame of red-haired reference.

I see a lot of John Hughes in Can’t Hardly Wait and 10 Things I Hate About You. More recently, there is something very Hughesian about Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist and Charlie Bartlett and especially, so much, in Juno. The love and care that a filmmaker is willing to spend on a character wearing black and unhappy with the state of their surroundings. The willingness of writers and directors to help these characters find each other against all odds, and maybe be happy at the end of a 95-minute film for having discovered the other.

Last week, desperate for a Pretty In Pink afternoon, I was remarking to my mother about how strange that filmmaking fact still seems to me. In high school (even in the ’00s), it was the demands of the blonde and beautiful that proved to be the rule. The margins in the high school experience operated quietly and begrudgingly. We wrote blogs with awful poetry, tried to get as far away from the HS campus as humanly possible, and came home to John Hughes movies. Because in those movies, those margins were still the heroes. Even in The Breakfast Club, Allison Reynolds (as played by the amazing Ally Sheedy) proves to be way more badass than the simpering princess played by Molly Ringwald (though she is still an excellent dancer.) John Hughes took the time to spread the margins across the screen, showing them in full color and movie lighting, not without flaws but yet eventually reigning over their own experience.

I am forever grateful for these escapes into a world where the beautiful are ignored for the marginally attractive, and where Sam Baker actually gets a red-plaid wearing Jake Ryan in the end. It’s apparent to me that these films were those that paved the way for Lindsey on Freaks and Geeks and that Julia Stiles as ’90s riot grrrl Kat owes much more to Andie Walsh in Pretty In Pink than she does to even Shakespeare.

So, John Hughes. I watched his films last night, watched them this morning, and will watch them when I am finished writing this. Because, even a year and more away from the confines of my high school, I still need to be reminded that my experience was not singular–and that stuck in the freeze frame with Simple Minds blasting, the misfits and geeks and crazy kids are still much more happy than the beautiful and stupid ones. At least for that one moment.

10 Reasons The Films of John Hughes Cannot Fade Away

1)Molly Ringwald’s suberb dance moves. (The Breakfast Club)

2)Jon Cryer performing the most impassioned lipsynch and dance of Otis Redding of all time. (Pretty in Pink)

3)Yes, Molly Ringwald gives Ally Sheedy that Psychedelic Furs makeover, but it’s entirely obvious that she didn’t need it to get Emilio Estevez to make out with her. (The Breakfast Club)

4)Watts. (Some Kind of Wonderful) 
    Duckie. (Pretty in Pink)

5)Farmer Ted. Pretty much every single thing out of his braces-filled mouth. (Sixteen Candles)

6)The fact that, even though it is entirely infuriating that Andie eventually ends up with Blane, the audience is still okay with it. Because Duckie is okay with it, and what Duckie wants, the audience knows Duckie should get. (It really would have been awesome to see those two kids kiss, though. Possibly would have been the best movie kiss ever.)

7)That kiss, in front of the car’s headlights, with Andie and Blane? No matter how much I didn’t want them to be together, that kiss still made even me weak in the knees.

8)The neurotic ball of adorable nerves that was Cameron was so much easier to root for than Ferris Bueller. At the end, when Cameron finally gets his, I always smile. (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off)

9)The utter ridiculousness of the whole of Weird Science is still somehow endearing. I think it has everything to do with how adorable Anthony Michael Hall was.

10)Jake Ryan? In that red shirt? With those eyebrows? And those eyes? Leaning against that car? Still the hottest thing that ever lived. (Sixteen Candles)

Oh yeah, and also:

The tunes. Nothing better than the tunes.

I have spent many hours drafting playlists and mix lists. Thinking of the perfect lyric to fit after the perfect song, constructing messages and moods and maybe painting a picture of a moment so it will last on a burned disc that won’t outlast time.

I love collecting songs from other people too. My roommate and I used to have conversations all the time, trading perfect songs for very specific moments.

One afternoon, we spent an hour or so with a back and forth of songs that reminded us of boys. Boys. We pointed out the lyrics that mattered, the memories tied to them, why the song lifted just so that it would be caught in our collective memory.

Months later, I downloaded one of the songs because when she played it on her iPod it made me want to cry. Making me want to cry isn’t necessarily a great feat, but the way that this song tugged around my lungs was so specific that I felt I needed it.

This song reminded me of people I have kissed, of people that I want to kiss, of people that I would later kiss, or never kiss no matter how badly I’d want to.

It was an all-encompassing map of even events that hadn’t passed, applicable to every moment and heartbreaking in the want that rises while the song plays.

It’s feels universal even with specific details of another man’s love for someone that I do not know. I can claim this lovely lilting, night-time song without considering the singer at all.

I desperately want this song to be able to fill out lists for ages and never get old.

“Part One” by Band of Horses:

the bottom the earth i have to fall
but you really caught me
you really caught me, dear
at the bottom where I’d fallen.

and slowly dear ask that you dance with me
here with the shades down
lights off

when i didn’t know you
and everything i do
done badly

now I’ll love you always
even when i say
you distract me.

and sit out tonight in some strange place
if we have no friends here
well i had a few to begin with

to wake next to you in the morning
and good morning to you.
how do you do?
hey, good morning to you!
more covers for you.
sleep soundly dear cause i have to go.

and I’ll love you always.
when we leave this place
and drive back to Carolina
and down to Savannah and
stay

I have established that this summer has been long and hot and slow and seemingly filled with dust (but that might just be due to working in a fruit stand.)

So, to combat the heat and the boredom, I love devoting some time to finding Yakima songs. “Sing! Captain” by the Handsome Furs, Beirut songs, most things by Modest Mouse. Things that make the time pass in more interesting and occasionally poignant ways. I chalk that up to the persistent eighth-grade nerd of a poet that my brain still hosts.

Imagine my delight when I stumbled across an 88.5 treasure on iTunes today while buying random things to fill up a fifteen dollar gift card.

And in finding it discovered in retrospect that a song I had been listening to at odd intervals over the past five years or so ended up being the perfect song for my summer now, nineteen years old and ready to leave.

“Car” by Built to Spill.

It’s an antidote, an anecdote, many of the things I have fought to express and forgot to include.

I rather appreciate it.

You get the car
I’ll get the night off
You’ll get the chance to take the world apart and figure out how it works
Don’t let me know what you find out
I need a car
You need a guide
Who needs a map
If I don’t die or worse I’m gonna need a nap
At best I’ll be asleep when you get back
I wanna see it when you find out what comets, stars, and moons are all about
I wanna see their faces turn to backs of heads and slowly get smaller
I wanna see it now

I want specifics on the general idea
I wanna think what I should know
Want you to do me what to show
I wanna see movies of my dreams
I wanna see it when you get stoned on a cloudy breezy desert afternoon
I wanna see it untame itself and break its owner
I wanna see it now

Oh. Yes.

Recently purchased tickets for Grizzly Bear playing the Moore Theatre in Seattle on October 16th.

All the more reason to look forward to being the hell back in Seattle.

Grizzly Bear:

Grizzly Bear. Like Professors.

This makes me extra excited:

Also, we have amazingly good seats.

October cannot come soon enough.

My summers are spent trying to distract myself from the lack of routine that no school leaves me with. Days without construct are days that drive me crazy. It’s just that there is something entirely welcome about knowing I need to be somewhere at a certain time, and then planning the rest of my day around that given fact.

So during the summer, I am overwhelmed by the expanse of open time that lays before me.

I need to conjure up activity and find ways to fill minutes upon hours upon days upon weeks. Working a few hours a week helps, as does trying to set a time to do some type of physical activity in the mornings.

But past that, I spend my time walking. I put on shoes with sensible soles and pick a direction.

It’s not the beating of my feet upon concrete for hours that is difficult, but more picking the song to accompany the walking rhythms.

I listen to the mixes that I have made for other people, trying once more to examine the messages I am sending. “Does this say too much? Am I coming on too strong and too far?”

Mostly, I try to find songs are beautiful. Songs that match the Yakima sky at sunset, and the stars at night.

I am searching for the right words to follow the unexpected breeze against my ankles, wondering if it is the right chorus for watching the white toes of my sneakers while I walk to grassy hills and wound streets.

These are songs for writing in my head the words that I consistently forget to write down.

And they need to be perfect to their purpose.

These are the perfect songs for a perfect walk at 8:14 on a thursday night:

1) Soft Shock (acoustic)-The Yeah Yeah Yeahs

2)Shift-Grizzly Bear

3)Blood Bank-Bon Iver

4)1901 (sayCet remix)-Phoenix

5)Elephant Woman-Blonde Redhead

6)Funeral-Band of Horses

7)Cherbourg-Beirut

8)The Clockwise Witness-Devotchka

9)The Beat Dies-The Raveonettes

10)F***ed Up Kid-Kevin Drew

11)Dramamine-Modest Mouse

12)Sing!Captain-Handsome Furs

13)Penicillin (It Doesn’t Mean Much)-The Velvet Teen

14)I Gaer-Sigur Ros

15)We Own the Sky-M83

The last one in particular.

Even if the video looks like an Urban Outfitters ad.

Songs to save me from summer listlessness.

I miss reading books for profit.

Last summer, the night of my orientation for college and the day before I got my tattoo (these were all momentous occasions), I met my first college friend.

Sidenote: Her name is Kendra. She is also awesome.

We stayed up for hours in our borrowed dorm rooms, talking about the same grab bag of subjects that we continue to talk about now. Music, music, movies, books, politics, boys, jokes, music.

So, we were talking about Beirut. And she says to me, “If you like Beirut, you’ll totally like this band Grizzly Bear.”

It took me a few months to get the CDs and start listening, but the second I started paying attention, I realized she was right.

I love Grizzly Bear.

I loved them more after seeing this:

There is something hauntingly beautiful about their work. It’s not a typical occurence to hear four part harmonies executed so wonderfully on indie radio, and I really appreciate the distinction.

Add to this the fact that “All We Ask” is insanely perfect for any possible moment I have had this summer and I have to give Kendra some insane credit for her immediate assumptions about me.

Both Grizzly Bear and Beirut need to get their asses up to the Northwest soon, by the way. Just saying…

This absence is my testament to finding someone awesome to kiss in dormitory basements with only two weeks left in the quarter.

And in summer living two states away.

This long space in-between entries is my ode to coming home and being too bored to do absolutely anything.

And then going to San Francisco for a week and having my mind blown.

This post is about my new love for Daft Punk.

And this song. It’s wonderful. A gift for taking too long and being so distracted.

I have listened to only one album for the past three days.

For Emma, Forever Ago by  Bon Iver.

I’ve listened to it reading and writing and speaking and listening and watching and feeling.

And it is all those things I’ve wanted for these moments.

Coming to the end and watching things stop and trying to see far enough in the future to not make the worst decisions.

I’ve enjoyed this man’s voice, soft, and consuming.

I remembered today that there is this Bright Eyes album (“I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning”) that I adore.

Somehow that fact had slipped my mind.

It might even be one of my top ten favorites.

In any case.

Here’s a lovely video for the first track off the record:

These are all good things to take a moment and remember.