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The 12 best songs of 2012

December 20, 2012

Well, I decided to do another year-end, best-of list for 2012 — mostly so that when a song I like starts to get hideously overplayed, I can smugly point to my list and declare the song to be “so last year.” (I’m looking at you, Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know,” which you might remember from my Best of 2011 list.)

I can’t seem to find a theme in my favorite songs this year. It seems like an even split between delicious throwback synth trash and modern lovelorn singsongs. Maybe the theme is just that these songs are awesome?

Wild Belle • Keep You

I am obsessed with this lead singer. She sounds like Billie Holiday, if Billie Holiday got too stoned to find her way home on an achy summer night in Jamaica. Which she might have. I don’t really know.

Jack White • I’m Shakin’

Catchy song + ugly sexy. Also, Jack White can do no wrong.

Divine Fits • Would That Not Be Nice

Aren’t they cute? Don’t you want to drink canned beer with them and kick things?

Father John Misty • Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings

Maybe someday I’ll have the courage to tell you about the long, terrible, lonely bender in which I ended up barefoot and half-naked at the Roosevelt in Hollywood. Until then, there’s this song.

Icona Pop • I Love It

I dare you to listen to this throbbing, ridiculous song and not dance. It’s so sleazy and fun. Reminds me of slathering myself with glitter and staying out with my girlfriends all night long.

The Lumineers • Ho Hey

This track makes me nostalgic for something that hasn’t even happened yet. It’s like the way “Empire State of Mind” makes me all wistful for those days I lived in Manhattan. Except I haven’t lived in Manhattan.

Grimes • Oblivion

You know that feeling when you eat too much chocolate and your mouth has been oversaturated with sweetness and your belly is beyond full? This lovely synth-pop song is one tiny truffle away from that.

Dr. Dog • Lonesome

I wish Dr. Dog had been around when I lived in Appalachia. It would have made the time pass faster. Or, at least, the parties better.

Japandroids • The House That Heaven Built

This track is proof that nobody needs no stinkin’ bass! The effect is kind of rusted and beat-up, laced with bourbon and sweat. I just want to go on a road trip through Kentucky with them.

Major Lazer • Get Free

The first time I heard this song I laughed out loud. Something about it felt so preposterous and random. And then the tune settled into my head, and now I love it more each time I hear it.

Blood Diamonds • Phone Sex

At this time next year, I’m sure I will regret putting this song on the list. But as for right now, I like it. It’s like a short-term hallucinogen.

Carly Rae Jepsen • Call Me Maybe

This is more than a song. It’s total pop perfection. Also the video is funny. It doesn’t look dumb and Instagrammed like every other music video these days.

What am I forgetting? Which songs were your favorite this year?

Morocco photo dump

December 18, 2012

It’s a rare cloudy day in Palm Springs. I’m cross-legged on my bed, the dog snoring beside me. I have half a cup of lukewarm coffee on the nightstand. The cat is prowling the room, unsettled.

I’m doing my best to will myself to Morocco right now, but my teleportation skills could use some work — because I am still perched on a purple afghan, instead of sitting in a crowded and richly-colored souk, waiting for my mint tea to brew.

These photos of my recent trip to Tangier, Fez, Marrakech and Casablanca will just have to suffice.

Two halves of a minute

December 17, 2012

I am sitting in a lecture about sentence structure and style — how to connect fragments to gain momentum, build suspense, create meaning. This is part of my MFA program in creative writing. Twice a year, all the students and faculty gather at a resort in Rancho Mirage for intense workshops, lectures and meetings. It’s a surreal and unbelievably lovely landscape for school — swimming pools, lush citrus trees, conference rooms with silver pitchers of ice water on every table.

Here I have been writing like crazy. I am turning inward and immersing myself in my own transition. My body is longing to conceive something. A story, a book, maybe a child.

It is halfway through this lecture that my phone’s calendar sends me an alert: Today I am ovulating. For the first time in our lives, my husband and I have moved beyond the discussion phase, and we are actively trying to start a family. I downloaded an app to my phone that alerts me to my most fertile days, and today is one of them. I wonder if I am already pregnant.

One moment later I receive another notice on my phone, this one a breaking news alert: Police respond to reports of shooting at elementary school, several dead. More reports follow, and I learn the incident at a Newtown, Conn. school claims 26 victims, 20 of them children.

Two messages, both within one minute of each other. One is about life, one is about death, and the combination makes me wonder what I’m doing here. Not just in this room, but in a time and a culture with such severe juxtapositions. I wonder how a single minute is big enough to accommodate both longing for a baby and grieving lost children.

I also wonder about my husband and our decision. We want to introduce a life into this world — a world that can be tricky, senseless and often cruel. Yes, I know there is immense beauty on this earth. I’ve traveled a lot, and I’ve seen it with my own eyes. But I also know that there is a brutality and wildness that can never be tamed, no matter how hard we all try.

I think about the balloon release my class had when I was in the third grade. Each student wrote letters, asking for pen pals. Our teacher helped us attach our messages, wrapped in plastic, to the string. All of us stood on the playground, releasing our balloons into the great big sky all at once. As much as I wanted my balloon to find a home somewhere else and go someplace I had never been, I wanted it back as soon as it floated beyond my reach. It was too fragile, too special. And it turns out my instincts were correct — my balloon ended up tangled in some telephone wires just outside Huber Heights, Ohio.

Are my husband and I selfish to want this? How in the hell can we create something so fragile, so special only to release it into a chaotic and unstable world? What’s the sense in that? Would you let the balloon fly away if you knew it was so easy to pop?

I am sad, and I am ripe, and I don’t know if my questions have any right answers.

I text a friend, a fellow student, and say I am having trouble processing the shooting tragedy. He replies: “The world is so complicated. Dark on one side, sunlight on the other.” He attaches a funny story along with it, just something that makes him laugh. It is his birthday, and he is trying to smile even though the darkness seems overwhelming.

My friend and I attend the next lecture together. We are here, putting fragments together, trying to construct a story that makes sense.

PHOTOS: To Market in Morocco

November 15, 2012

ANOTHER photo series of Morocco? Yes. It’s not my fault Morocco is so damn photogenic.

This is a collection from some of the souks and bazaars in Tangier, Fez and Marrakech. I barely bought anything because I didn’t even know where to begin!

PHOTOS: Magical Moroccan Doors

November 13, 2012

“Once upon a time, a little girl was raised by monsters. but angels burned the doorways, and she was all alone.” — Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke & Bone

One of my favorite YA books is “Daughter of Smoke & Bone,” a story in which doors are the bridges between this world and the magical realm of Elsewhere.

Nowhere but Morocco would I believe that to be true. Because the doors in Morocco really do promise magic. They are doors with curves and exquisite design. They are rough and humble with ancient dirt, and they burst with vibrant color. They contain secrets but they also open with great potential — behind these doors you can find snake charmers as easily as devout pilgrims in prayer.

Take a peek.