every lament is a love song
by Stace on October 31st, 2011
filed under pretty things
i woke from a dream last night
i dreamed that you were by my side
reminding me i still had life in me…
i’ll carry on… – Switchfoot, “Yesterdays”
A decade ago, I was a completely different person than I am today. I was homeless in San Diego, far from home and scared, and a master at pushing people away. Suffice it to say that I wasn’t surrounded by a close circle of friends. Sure, I had a few, thank God. One of the girls I’d grown up with, Allison, had recently been diagnosed with brain cancer, just before turning 23. I remember the day I called the hospital trying to reach her mom or husband: Ally picked up. Though we’d both grown up and moved away, we’d always stayed in touch. And while we’d spent many a childhood hour in church, we’d bonded over rejected principles as teenagers, and again over shared discovery of who God actually was. Not knowing if I’d ever have the chance again, I savored every moment of that phone conversation. Ally was happy. She wanted more than anything to have a baby, but ultimately was in love with her husband and at peace with God, her illness, and whatever was to come of it all. We prayed together, said our “I love you”s and essentially our I-hope-this-isn’t-goodbyes, and left nothing unsaid. We had been there for each other for a great many things over our fifteen year friendship. It turned out to be the last time I ever heard her voice.
Ten years ago today, Ally died. Somehow, though I always knew it could happen, I must’ve been expecting a miracle. That someone I loved so much and had known for so long could just be gone completely blindsided me. Living in San Diego in a community of other believers helped, but it took the better part of the first year just to stop reaching for the phone to call her. Even at her memorial service, Ally’s mom & I lamented that the strangest part was that she’d want to go home and call her to tell her how much it meant that her friends had come from all over. I guess if you’ve not lost someone you love, this may sound strange. I knew exactly what she meant. I’ve long since stopped trying to reach out, but I’ll never forget that odd feeling.
I’m always cautious about my actions and my surroundings on this anniversary. I take the day off from work, school, everything. Sometimes people don’t understand this, and they want to give me that whole “look on the bright side!” rubbish. The truth is, I do. I do look on the bright side – three hundred and sixty-four days a year. In fact, on Ally’s birthday, every year without fail, I call all of my friends and make a special effort to tell them I love them. I never want to take the chance of losing anyone without them knowing how I feel. I also make a point to treat her birthday as a celebration of life. Because that’s true, I feel it’s appropriate, respectful, and completely warranted that I give myself the anniversary of her death to be sad. Truth be told, getting in touch with emotions like those isn’t easy for me. While I don’t think there’s anything wrong with tears, they don’t normally come easily to me, so this is the one day of the year I purposely seek them out. I give myself one whole day to miss my friend, and then I move on and enjoy Halloween, knowing it’s exactly what Ally would want.
Months after Ally’s passing, when my roommate and I had finally found a place to live, (and jobs!) we went to the movies. Admittedly, that pretty boy Shane West was in A Walk to Remember was reason enough for me. I knew nothing about the premise of the film, and wasn’t a big fan of romantic movies in general, but went anyway. Something someone said as we were headed for the theater tipped me off that it might involve a death, but I didn’t give it much of a second thought. When it turned out to be a story about a teenager with leukemia (who eventually dies), it was all I could do just to keep from sobbing out loud in the theater. As people were filing out when it was over, I just waited as the credits rolled, praying I’d be able to somehow pull myself together and just get home. I own the DVD now and if ever I watch it, it’s only on October 30th, because I know it will only ever remind me of my sweet friend and that very specific time in my life.
Over the years, I’ve come across my share of songs that make me remember Ally. Today I planned to share my very favorite of these songs (the one from which this post gets its title and lyrics) as a video on my Facebook page, but discovered to my dismay that all that existed were cheesy photo slideshows made by fans and live performances with less-than-stellar audio. Rather than giving up, I decided to make one of my own. I didn’t know how, but it didn’t take long to figure it out. I’ll end my post with my creation, and hope that someone will enjoy it as I do. And now on with another year: Happy Halloween!
i remember you like yesterday, yesterday
i still can’t believe you’re gone
i remember you like yesterday, yesterday
and until i’m with you, i’ll carry on…
everybody's talking and no one says a thing
by Stace on January 4th, 2010
filed under let me entertain you
everybody’s making love and no one really cares…always something happening and nothing going on…there’s always something cooking and nothing in the pot… -John Lennon, “Nobody Told Me”
The very first time I can recall it happening, I thought it was an anomaly. I saw the movie A Walk to Remember on the big screen in 2002. Having just lost a friend to brain cancer, I sat sobbing quietly in the back of the theatre for a good ten or fifteen minutes as the credits rolled. Maybe it’s cheesy, but it struck a chord with me, and I loved it. I still do. (I’m also good at not caring what people think about what I like!) As far back as I can remember, I’ve been the girl who consumes books rather than reads them, so of course I wanted to rush right out to read the book. You know what they say, right? “The book was better. The book is always better.” I thought so too. (Kind of like how the sequel is “never” as good?) I guess the absolutes in these statements should have been my warning signs, but I fell for them like some kind of scientific fact. I hated the book (A Walk to Remember! It’s been a while, so I can’t even really remember the details as to why, but basically I remember feeling like the movie was much more modern and romantic, and applicable to my life. And let me just insist here that I am not the girl who goes “awwww” at every stupid “romantic” chick flick. I’m just not. I’ll change the channel (I won’t walk out or even have to return a DVD because, unless I really believe it’s going to be worth my time, I’ll wait for these kinds of movies to be shown on TV before I take my chances).
Anyway, what’s the harm if it only happens once? But it didn’t stop there. Being a huge fan of both Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling, I’ll admit I ate up The Notebook, too. There’s no getting around the fact that it’s an all-out gorgeous gush-fest, but hell…I know guys who can’t resist this one. Once again, I decided I needed to check out Mr. Sparks’ written version of the story, and I’m sorry to say, once again I was disappointed. So I decided to cut my losses and stop reading his books. I figured he had a great idea for a story, could write a book people who were not me would enjoy, and that the best of them would be made into movies I might like.
But it’s happening again, and it’s not just Nicholas Sparks. And the worst bit? It’s happening with increasing frequency! Especially because it’s not just movies anymore – there’s this new trend of turning book series into TV shows. I’ve been a lover of the Sex and the City series for many years. I really credit it with being pretty downright therapeutic in my life – it made me value friendships with women. Before I get carried away with telling you how much I love it, I have to say, I knew it came from a book that came from Candace Bushnell’s own real-life column in a New York City newspaper. I just didn’t get around to actually purchasing a copy of said book and sitting down to read it until very recently. Much to my dismay, I didn’t love it. It wasn’t much like the show at all! I wasn’t prepared to realize it wasn’t even a story of Carrie and Big – the thread that holds the TV shows and the movies all together. The only real theme of the book that become the mega-successful show and then movie(s), is sex. That’s fine, but it wasn’t really much of anything like a story I could follow, and felt disconnected and…kind of boring (at least by comparison). I think I knew that while there is a woman named Charlotte mentioned in the book, it’s not the Charlotte we know and love in the series (Kristin Davis’ character), but I didn’t know that Carrie wasn’t “our” Carrie, and even Miranda and Samantha aren’t the characters we love! In reality, Candace had written columns about several different people who the writers managed to converge into the four characters of the TV show. As a result, the book never gave me a chance to connect with any character. It was a huge letdown, and I never saw it coming!
Partly in the name of research, partly out of sheer curiosity of what all the fuss was about, and mostly on the recommendation of a dear friend who adores it (and my best friend who said it wasn’t well written but she enjoyed it), I read the Twilight series. I think it, too, is much better as a movie (or in this case, series of movies) than as a book (my thoughts on the books are a whole other blog for another day). Although I’ll admit, I’ve only seen the first movie as of yet, and it had some really clunky moments that felt awkward and/or really poorly written (particularly moments of dialogue). I digress.
I’ve always loved vampire lore, dating back (I think) to my 8-year-old love of The Lost Boys. Can you blame me? Jason Patric, Corey Haim, Corey Feldman, and Kiefer Sutherland? What’s not to like? I still love it! Anyway, so with all the fuss over Twilight, there were two other vamp series that spawned TV shows. I heard from a lot of “Twi-hards” that they thought either (or both) of these shows smelled a lot like Twilight. After doing a little research, (if you can call Amazon that!) I discovered that both were written before the Twilight books. I was curious to find out more. The Vampire Diaries came “first” (although before that, of course, came Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, and many others), followed by the Southern Vampire Mysteries (also referred to as the Sookie Stackhouse series or the True Blood series), and eventually, Twilight. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not insinuating that because one came before the other that it “invented” something the others later used (although I’m not ruling it out, either). I was just curious, and wanted to know which came first, and check the others out, as I’d done with Twilight.
I had heard a lot of buzz about True Blood and since it was on HBO, I opted to watch it first – I knew there would be more room for creative liberties with a show like this on a cable channel than a network, and everyone I knew was watching it. I rented the first season on DVD and was quickly sucked in (pun sheepishly intended). Naturally, my next move was to give the books a chance, too. I think there may be something like nine of them, so I figured I’d just start with the first one or two and see what I thought – if they were terrible, I’d probably give up after that. They’re not terrible, but…they’re not great. They’re “mediocre at best” (as Delores would say), and there’s a lot more softcore porn in them than I really need. They’re really quite silly, and not so much my cup of tea. I made it through two of them, and called it quits. So, there it is again: the TV show is better! Really?? What is the world coming to?!
And then the CW started advertising a marathon for The Vampire Diaries while the show was on hiatus for the holidays. I hadn’t seen it, but had seen all the advertising of what looked like Twilight: the TV show, and was pretty curious. (Call it research!) I’m not often one to start watching a new series mid-season – if I’ve missed the pilot, I’ll probably wait for the first season on DVD to catch up – so I set my DVR to record them, and again enjoyed it much more than I expected. (This time, the gorgeous vamp is a grown-up, and at least according to me, easily more beautiful than even Rob Pattinson…no small feat.) Admittedly, this one’s designed for a younger crowd than is True Blood – it’s much more along the lines of Twilight, except that the main girl character is, well…likable! If I compare the two side by side, I much prefer TVD. The bookworm in me is constantly needing to be fed, so I recently brought home The Vampire Diaries: The Awakening – the first book, of course. It took me just a little over 24 hours to read, because it’s simply written. And guess what? It’s lame! It’s so much like Twilight in the sense that this gorgeous, mysterious, old-soul “teenager” strolls into town, no one knows anything about him, and he and the heroine fall instantly and deeply into a love for the ages. Without so much as a hello, I might add. Blech. I want to read more, I must admit, if only in hopes of discovering that this series is capable of redeeming itself. I want epic. I want bloodshed. Hell, while I’m at it, I want plot and character development. I want to know why characters fall in love with each other when they do! I don’t give a shit about happy endings. I don’t know if I can really bring myself to commit any more money or time, but I’m curious as hell…I need my faith in the written word to be restored. Is there hope?
What is it with this trend? What does it say about us that our society has become a place where books are complete trash and we turn them into TV shows? And then, of all things, they’re good TV shows? I gotta hand it to the powers-that-be of these shows, because the idea that “the book was better!” was a concept that I really did put stock in, and they’ve got me doubting it. Does this mean that our literary world is imploding, or at least decaying? Can just about anyone write and publish a book (and sell it), while TV shows have to be decent to get made? I’m starting to fear (or dread!) the idea of reading a book that begat a TV show or movie. What if it disappoints me much in the ways these have? It’s happened enough times now that I’m thinking I should leave well enough alone and enjoy my silly fun TV shows, wherever they’ve come from, and stick to reading books I know I’ll like – the memoirs, basically. Still, I can’t help but wonder…how did this happen? What does this it mean? The movies (or TV shows) are better than the books?! Strange days indeed.
nobody told me there’d be days like these…strange days indeed, strange days indeed…
