Take a look inside my heart

I made a new playlist for my iPod the other day.  I just needed something a bit upbeat and at the same time soothing, so I threw a few possibles at iTunes and then edited it down.  I ended up with quite a mixture of songs, including the following:

1) Solitude Standing - Suzanne Vega  

This song sounds determined, strong and yet, equally, sad.  It has an opening reminiscent of the beginning of the "Fraggle Rock"  theme, but then turns melancholic to the same extreme extent that  "Fraggle Rock" becomes almost nauseatingly chirpy.  (Though, don't get me wrong - I love Fraggle Rock.) The cyclical bell-like keyboard loop in this song is entrancing, almost hypnotic.  And everyone knows Suzanne Vega has the most haunting voice ever.  No-one else has come close to that timbre.  It's slightly unnerving to hear a voice like that sing something so dark.  When I know things aren't right but I need to keep going anyway, this is the perfect song.

2) Dub Be Good To Me - Beats International feat. Lindy Layton 

Because cheesy songs were necessary too.  And even this one has a dark side, a sort of lazy, humid summer vibe, circa 1990.  And for a very humid summer here in Prague, it's perfect.

3) Right Here, Right Now - Fatboy Slim  

Another track with energy but also a background of melancholy.  The strings do it for me everytime.  Travelling across town on the metro today, feeling shattered and isolated, (what I really mean is lonely) this was just what I needed.  Nothing like a song called 'Right Here, Right Now' to get you to at least try to enjoy living 'in the moment'.

4) Long Summer Days - EMF 

This is a little-known album track.  Yes, I had an EMF album.  (It was called 'Schubert Dip')  I love the crazy rock guitars and pointless background noise-like samples. You can sing the bassline, probably to 'na, na, na,' because the melody itself is irritatingly insistent.  It sounds desperate, hopeless and angry.  And Mancunian.

5) Ur Train - Leila (Arab) feat. Luca Santucci  

Like a metronome, this song beats time with a childlike harpsichord sound that runs throughout the main part of the song and makes you think of being on a conveyor belt, in some kind of toy factory made by lunatics.  I don't know, it's entrancing, the lyrics are about not being able to get away from someone you left and it just epitomised my jumbled up thoughts through my 5 hours' sleep haze this morning.

6) Good Luck - Basement Jaxx

This is so unlike me.  I don't normally listen to stuff like this.  The strong R'n'B vocals, the crazy pop sounds, the shuffley, trendy drum beat.  It's so not me.  And yet...  It somehow makes me feel better that I can pretend to be normal and conform by listening to this song and having someone in mind when I do so.  Does she really sing 'good luck in your new bed'?  I think so.  And that's exactly the thought I had to deal with.  

Knowing ex-partner was not only moving to a new country and a new home, and indeed, a new bed, but that his new partner had already taken my place in his bed before I knew about it was hard to cope with.  Was it inevitable that I would then get a text from him just as I was standing on the edge of the platform in a metro station today while listening to this on headphones?  And was it also inevitable that I would burst into tears at that moment too?  I guess so.

7) All I Wanna Do - Dannii Minogue

I don't want any disdainful tutting at this choice, ok?  I think we all like a bit of cheesy, totally pop, completely nonsensical upbeat music now and then, don't we?  And just because Dannii Minogue's worn a few dodgy outfits in her time and had a bad press all-round in comparison to her sister, is it really necessary to be ashamed of occasionally listening to songs she sang on?  If so, I don't care.  This song is stupid and dreamily silly but fun and even has a bit of rock guitar thrown in at the last minute, so it can't be all bad, right?  

In anycase, it's what I used to listen to when I first discovered the feeling that there might genuinely be hope that I could actually have a second relationship in my life after the drawn-out period of the break-up of the previous one.  I'm usually a total cynic, so it was nice to indulge in something quite the opposite.  (Mind you, the, 'I may not be the innocent girl that you wanted me to be', does still make me inwardly cringe.  Didn't Britney Spears sing something similar and equally fatuous?) 

So as Dannii sings, "take a look inside my heart, tell me what you think you see," my reply about me and my 'heart', I think, would be:  a jumbled up mess of despair, confusion, grief, annoyance and somewhere deep down in a place I rarely acknowledge or admit to, a trickle of unfounded optimism.

Rain and anonymity

The clouds came back today.  So did the rain, briefly.  It's so strange, because I had been thinking what an exceptionally long time it had been since it last rained and how unlike England that is, and then today it rained.  But it didn't last long.  It doesn't seem to rain here in the same way it does in London.  It's been winter and yet it's been months since my lovely red and white polka dot umbrella saw the light of day.  It's extraordinary to me.  I've been so lucky that I've had both heating and a lack of miserable, rainy weather here over the winter.  I can't quite take in how much easier that aspect has been, compared to what it would have felt like to go through winter in London.  Don't get me wrong, it's been crushingly cold, but it hasn't been quite so cloudy and grey.

Not that any of this stops me from longing, aching for a holiday.  The idea of spending even just a few days in a row, pottering about would be blissful.  Or to have time to go to a cafe for a chance to sit and think.  In my fantasy life, I would have gone to the bookshop cafe today, bought a few books on art and photography and spent the rest of the day listening to Maxime le Forestier and Yann Tiersen and  covering notebooks in lots of cut-out pictures from magazines and putting up new photos on the wall.

Maybe it's ok that I don't have my fantasy life just now.  Maybe I needed a reminder of just how easy I have had things in terms of the weather at least, so that I can 'count my blessings', as it were.  I've also still got my health and I haven't come down with another cold yet. (Though this is tempting fate, surely, and I'll no doubt wake up with a runny nose and a sore throat tomorrow...)

And on days like these, maybe the best thing to do is accept the gloom and listen to a few Leonard Cohen and Suzanne Vega songs.  Time to slip into a black silk nightie, get into bed and read a couple of fashion magazines and pore over the hopelessly glamorous darlings of high society and be glad I don't have the burden of an impeccably well-kempt image to maintain.  Ah, anonymity is bliss...