Mundane photos of flowers, tea, and kittens for September’s Monday mix. But the playlist is something different, a contrast. It’s a back to school special if you will, an homage to my collegiate rotation a decade ago. Though, admittedly, it suits me just as much now as it did back then. It’s rock & roll driven, a little dirty, and my kind of classic. It belies some the delicate femininity of my current work, arguably. True colors and all of that. Roots, at the very least. From the power pop of my early twenties’ smoke breaks as a cocktail waitress to juke box favorites from blurry pool hall haunting days to gin in the bathtub reading Husserl college evenings. These are the songs that colored my ugliest mistakes and coltish days in New Orleans.
This play list reminds me of my painter boyfriend’s unwashed Levi’s when I was 21 and of our vinyl collection spilling out all over the living room floor in the cheap apartment we could barely make rent on. It reminds me of how clever, clever the mind can be, how it can glamorize the most pitiful moments of our lives. And how, in a both/and paradox, those moments really were as epic and free as they seemed while still being sad, silly, and desperate all the same. This playlist reminds me that where I come from isn’t all bad. There was art and love in those dive bars and darkened streets. But also a lot of self-deception and idiocy. Most of all it reminds me to thank my lucky stars for where I am today. I worked hard, but sometimes hard work isn’t enough.
Sometimes you need a miracle, friends & family, and opportunity. I was blessed with all of those things. Not everyone is. Those things aren’t enough to save someone and not having them isn’t enough to kill you, but it was a grace I had without deserving it. A break I was afforded due to no virtue of my own. I was lucky. Remembering those drug fueled days of my twenties reminds me of that. I know a lot of lucky people with all the resources in the world die out there. And a lot of people with absolutely nothing overcome. But I was a lucky person that tried to make the most out of my good fortune once I got my act together. That’s the long and short of it. And I still love rock & roll.
02 milktape mondays | when we were young – click here to get the playlist!
My name is Beth, Elizabeth Evelyn to be exact. A native Tennessean, I was born in the South.
I am the author behind Local Milk Blog.