Top Five Tuesday :: Counting Crows
Traversing This Desert Life, song-by-song, has me (Mr.) Jonesing for a Counting Crows fix, so it seemed fitting that they be the Top Five Tuesday artist this week. Narrowing it down to five songs, though, is a tough one, and it pains me to have to not include some of my favorites. But, I throw kisses at each one, knowing that they all stay with me in so many ways, Counting Crows being a band that is permanently part of my soul soundtrack. So here are my five, for today, with three sentences why.
5. Catapult
“We got little revolvers and stupid choices,
and no one to say when we’re done.
Well, I don’t wanna bring you down.”
Longing to be heard, to be connected to, to mean something to someone else, to mean something, that is the plea of this song, to me. Flailing around in this world, so often feeling so lost and alone, to be able to have a soft place to land with someone who matters to you, and who you matter to, is often as vital as air to breathe. But, sometimes we mess it all up, and sometimes we do not see what we have until it is too late, but then again, sometimes we wake up just in time to hang on for dear life.
4. Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby
“If dreams are like movies,
then memories are films about ghosts.”
One of my most favorite lyrics ever, the kind that stories, and tattoos, begin with. I close my eyes tight and play little films from my memories that star long-lost ghosts from my past on night’s when I struggle with sleep. These movies, they play out histories that never quite happened, acting out a series of “what-if’s” and “could have been’s“.
3. On Almost Any Sunday Morning
“I’m hungry like a wild waif,
or only child.
This lithium is heroin to me.
It makes it all withdraw,
all the anger and loss,
but it all keeps coming back in the morning.”
Is it better to feel, even if the feelings are painful, or is it better to be numb? You lie next to someone who is drowning in emotion, in pain, in uncontrollable need and feeling, and you weigh the choices, to ride along, to run away, or to suggest the elixers of the grey and motionless. The numb relief will only be temporary though, it always comes back again, one way or another.
2. Holiday in Spain
“We’ve got airplane rides,
we got California drowning out the window side,
we’ve got big black cars,
and, we’ve got stories how we slept with all the movie stars.”
Growing up in Southern California, and coming-of-age, in many regards, in Los Angeles, Hollywood specifically, there are many stories that could be told of car rides, airline tickets and movie star beds. Some of the stories I keep close to me, tucked away, part of a secret side of me that I do not share easily, while other bits and pieces find their way into writings and conversations. We all have so many stories to tell.
1. Murder of One
“You don’t want to waste your life.”
He stood outside my window calling up to me, asking me to let him in, professing his love in a half-drunk voice, half-singing every word. I was dwindling into nothing, fading into the walls, disappearing, but he could see me in all the muck and mire. Back then, he knew me in ways that no one would ever know me again.
