Leaving for a week’s vacation, leaving for Las Vegas. I will be back and posting on Sunday night or Monday morning. Take care and keep the music playing.
Heaven or Las Vegas :: Cocteau Twins
“Singing on the famous street.
I want to love me.
Am I just in heaven,
or Las Vegas?
It’s so much more brighter than the sun is to me.”
Warm Bodies (2013)
“Don’t be creepy. Don’t be creepy. Don’t be creepy.” ~ R
Trailer
“What’s wrong with me?”
It is not very often that I will watch a film and immediately lock onto it in a way that makes it certain that it will become, and remain, one of my favorite movies. When it does I know it, though, and am usually immediately burning to tell people about it. Warm Bodies, which I watched this afternoon, is one of those films. I could say that I should have known I loved it because a) I am a sucker for well-told stories of love, b) that I have always had a thing for good zombie movies, and c) that unexpected tales of human connection, especially when both music and love are heavily involved, are my cup of coffee (I try, but I never can get the hang of tea).
We first meet R, the only part of his name he remembers, wandering about his “neighborhood”, which his an overrun with zombies big city airport. R is our narrator, our limited guide into this new world order, and we get to see R’s version of this world from his perspective. It is impossible not to start to connect to R and his existential crisis he seems to be having. It is also not hard to miss the jabs at current society, especially when R waxes wistfully on how it must have been before, when we all could connect and express, told in his narration while we see flashes of what our own reality is often peppered with, people wandering nearly as aimlessly as R and his fellow zombies, locked and chained to our mobile devices.
Beyond R’s words and semi-tour of post-zombie apocalypse life, we are also gifted some great musical guiding, with the perfect first song choice of Jimmy Cliff’s Sitting In Limbo.
Sitting In Limbo :: Jimmy Cliff
We learn early on that R is fascinated by the trappings of humanity, and is quite the collector of various “human” things that he brings back to his airplane home. Music seems to be his favorite human thing, especially his record player and eclectic collection of vinyl records. R has a musical ritual of putting on a record side, sitting down in one of the airplane seats, leaning back and listening. I think it was at that moment, with R listening to one of his records (John Waite’s album, No Brakes), that I knew I was falling for this movie, and a little bit for R, too.
Missing You :: John Waite
This is the first song we hear R actively listen to, and it is also the song that plays in his head when he first sees Julie. She is half-kneeling, fully armed, and shooting zombies left and right, and in the midst of all the chaos and the clatter, and the flying bodies, Missing You starts playing and R begins to wake up.
There is the unfortunate moment when R kills Julie’s human boyfriend, something he tells “us” he wishes we did not have to see, and eats his brain, thus taking in memories of Julie. It is hard to know, at first, if it is the memories of a love once shared, or R’s reaction to love and memories (albeit someone else’s) that fuels him to save Julie, but save her he does, and thus a very human connection begins to form.
Music plays a big part in Julie and R’s connection, and is what seems to start to bring them closer. It is used in some instances to move the plot along, in a music montage sort of way, but it is not heavy handed or obviously manipulative at all. For me, it worked because the music choices felt genuine, as did the progression and pacing of their relationship.
Hungry Heart :: Bruce Springsteen
There is humor and heart in what happens, and it is honestly hard to resist R as we see music and love save him. I mean, don’t we all want to be saved by such things in this life? I know that I do.
Shelter from the Storm :: Bob Dylan
The movie, and the book it came from, has an obvious Romeo and Juliet story to it, to this there is no doubt. I mean, the lead characters are Julie and R, there is a balcony scene, and there is death and differences and star-crossed love, but it is done in a way that both pokes fun at the similarity, and like a good cover song, takes the original and makes it their own. This is the stuff of good young love stories that tie-in the supernatural aspects, and this film, and story, are everything the Twilight series was not. This has great writing, acting and a love story, that despite all the unreal scenarios and settings, is actually very believable.
I laughed, I smiled, and yes, I even cried, and when the credits began to roll I wanted more, not just of R and Julie, but of their friends, too (R’s friend, recovering zombie Marcus, played by Rob Corddry, and Julie’s friend Nora, played by Analeigh Tipton).
And, like most movies I add to my list of favorites, I loved the soundtrack.
Midnight City :: M83
Runaway :: The National
“Don’t be creepy. Don’t be creepy. Don’t be creepy.”
22 :: Lily Allen
“It’s sad but it’s true how society says her life is already over,
there’s nothing to do,
and there’s nothing to say.”
“Message keeps getting clearer,
radios on and I’m moving round the place.
I check my look in the mirror,
I wanna change my clothes,
my hair,
my face.
Man, I ain’t getting nowhere,
just sitting in a dump like this.
There’s something happening somewhere,
baby I just know that there is.”
The evening was cooler than the time of year would predict and I was standing there beside you, shivering. I had forgotten a jacket, had been nervous when I left, trying to wear a mask on my face that would not give away where I was going. No one knew where I was, no one would ever really know all of the story of us. You took your coat off and wrapped it around my shoulders, and I could hear you humming this song softly.
We had dinner by the ocean, the waves crashing off in the not so distance. You asked questions I was not prepared to answer yet, eyes wide, warm, always a smile tucked somewhere in the golden brown hues. You reached for my hands and held them, softly tracing unsaid words on my palms. I stumbled over my words, wanting the reality of this to be something I could write, re-write. You just smiled and said, “we can make this work, I just know that we can.”
At your place we took turns picking music to play. I picked up one of your many guitars and handed it over to you, “play what you were humming earlier“, and you indulged me. I sang along with you, our voices colliding, time stopping for just mere moments, for us. I knew you would be leaving, going on another tour, and that when tomorrow came I would have to go home to my family. This could never be more than that night, we could not, would not, fall in love.
Later, as we lay in each other’s arms, this song playing off or your record player in the other room, I knew that I wanted nothing more than to be yours. I slept in your arms, deeper than I had slept in years, or would for many to come. The dogs slept at the foot of the bed, curled up as close as we were. The sun woke us up early that morning, what was meant to be our last morning, and you pulled me in closer and whispered “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
In that moment, that morning, before we both had to leave, I believed in in the words you had said the night before, and I believed in the real possibility of us.
I guess I was wrong to believe. But darling, I know how hard we would have tried.
Dancing in the Dark :: Pete Yorn
Story Re-Writes
(by me)
Beneath the surfaces of love,
interlocking webs lie,
tangled and varied in direction,
latching on and letting go.
Sometimes the synapse fires,
inducing benevolence,
belief.
At other ends the water leaks in,
laced in doubt,
as we begin to sink.
Miles pass between us,
even while sitting side by side,
and the soul is seen waving,
mailing a postcard home;
wish you weren’t still here.
Then we struggle upstream,
break the mold while wet,
unformed,
and we carve our initials,
into the glued up cracks,
repairs from the fall.
The fog will return again,
our feet slipping off stones,
and on better days,
the parachute opens.
No one ever said it would be easy,
slips,
because some cliches,
write themselves,
indelible.
So, we memorize and fluctuate our tones,
remind each other we are electricity,
that we begin to connect,
only when we let each other,
disengage.
Electric Bird (live) :: Sia
“Aha this kiss you give,
it’s never ever gonna fade away.”
I remember a particular day, sometime in the Summer of 1987, sitting in the backseat of a friend’s car with this song blaring out of the speakers. The beach was just outside the window, though it was still too foggy to see the water. I could smell the salt in the air though, as it swirled around my blowing hair, all the windows down as we drove into an unknown adventure.
I do not recall where we were going, or much of the day and night’s activities. I know that the company I was keeping were made up of more acquaintances than friends, girls I worked with at my first retail job, a small clothing store tucked into the corner of what used to be The City Mall. We did not exchange many words between us, and I do recall being grateful for the music as I was still fraught with the limitations of shyness, back then.
Music has always been saving me, in big and little ways.
Anyhow, for whatever reason, and despite the forgettable nature of most of that memory, anytime this song plays I am reminded of that day. I have other memories to other songs of OMD, but this is this is the one stuck to this song.
Enola Gay :: OMD
Bang a Gong (Get It On) :: The Power Station
“Well you’re built like a car,
you’ve got a hub cap diamond star halo,
you’re built like a car, oh yeah.”
I never quite knew what a hub cap diamond star halo would look like, or what to make of it at all, but as we waited at the side of the stage I knew it did not really matter. The guitar riffs, the bass vibrations, and the way they moved and made magic with their fingers, it unleashed feelings that confused and delighted me. I was younger than I looked, even though I felt older than I could have ever been mistaken for. Music was our shared secret, it was our religion, and we worshipped at its feet.
The bands would change, as would the music that moved us. I would hear the original a few years later as I stood outside of a Sunday night club in the cold on a Hollywood side street. The music was pulsing out of the closed doors, muffled but we could feel it. Each time the door swung open we could feel it wash over us, beckoning to us, promising stories to be confessed, or kept hidden. He was underfed, dark and darling, and when he came over to me my breath hitched. He was asking everyone for money to get in, but when he reached where he stood he leaned in close, and whispered “dance with me inside.”
Bang a Gong (Get It On) :: T-Rex
“Well, you dance when you walk,
so let’s dance,
take a chance,
understand me.
You’re dirty sweet and you’re my girl.”
We danced together, off and on, for many nights to come. He unleashed a wildness in me that I would have sworn belonged to another girl, not me. He played music on my skin, pulling out of me never heard before lyrics and lines. He said I was his dearest dark darling from Wonderland and that I made him want to sing. He was my Neverland twist of fate that I never should have fallen for, but fall I did. He danced when he walked, and his touch made me sing.
