Concentration Camp Dream
by aaron on Jan.02, 2014, under Dreams
Last night, I had a dream that seemed strangely profound – at least parts of it. Some of it seems to be fueled by anime I’ve been watching recently, but the rest of it…well, you’ll see.
I was an eight-year-old boy, wearing a prison outfit, being filed into a German concentration camp during WWII. I was crying because I was scared and confused – why was I here? What could they possibly want with me? When I came to the front of the line, they asked me for my name and my nationality. I told them my name, and before I could continue, they interrupted – in French, they asked me: “Your last name is Schneberger? That sounds like a German name. Are you German?” Between sobs, I tried to tell them (in French) that I was German (in part), but they wouldn’t listen. They laughed off my plea, saying (again, in French) that with such a weak constitution, I must be Icelandic (????). Anyway, they picked me up and carried me, kicking and screaming, into a nearby bunker. They threw me on the top bunk, closest to the door, and on the way out, the guard told me with a wide sneer on his face, “This is where you will die.”
I started crying even harder, knowing that I would never escape this horrible place. Just then, a woman walked up to me and asked me (still in French): “I heard you speaking French to the guard outside. We French need to stick together. Don’t worry, we have a way out of here. You’ll be fine.”
(Here’s where it all starts to get a bit magical)
The lady disappears, and suddenly my perspective becomes third-person and I am watching her speak in front of a large council, begging them to summon the seven “old ones” to set all those in captivity free. The council was presided over by an old man with a long, gray beard and a tattered, arcane, red robe. After thinking for a moment, he quietly responded,”If it must be so, then it shall be done.” He clapped his hands together, and suddenly my perspective changed again.
Now I was looking at a dimly lit temple with large marble columns surrounding a massive statue of a goddess. The temple seemed to be in excellent condition, but the statue was strangely dilapidated – covered in cracks, stains, and creeping green moss. The priests in the temple calmly walked over the statue and stood around it in a tight ring, heads bowed in prayer, whispering an unknown incantation. The blemishes in the statue began to glow yellow, and I watched as the statue started repairing itself. It was then that I noticed a small roguish man cowering in the shadows of one of the columns farthest from the statue. He seemed to be salivating with greed, enticed by some unknown desire. Out of the shadows behind him came another man, let’s call him Reaper, who looked extremely similar to this character:
Reaper told the other man that now was his chance to steal the goddess’ power, to do as he himself had done years before. The rogue slowly nodded his head as he said, “Do what you need to do.” Reaper unsheathed a red katana he had been storing at his side and slashed horizontally, decapitating the man in one fell blow. Instead of falling to the ground, the man’s entire body disappeared. Just as it did, the goddess statue began shaking violently and a bloodcurdling scream rang out from an unknown source. The statue shattered all at once, leaving behind only a pile of white dust. A red cloud of energy congealed in its place, and it seemed to pulse with a seething, burning hatred. The startled priests bolted from the room, having no idea what they could do to stop the monstrosity that had been created. Reaper closed his eyes and lifted his arms above his head, almost beckoning the cloud to approach him. It enveloped him, and the two became one. They suddenly changed shape and grew into a monstrous black dragon, crashing through the ceiling of the temple and towering several stories above it. It swung one of its heavy claws as it leveled another corner of the temple, reveling in the destruction it was causing. But something was wrong.
The dragon put its hands up to its head and let forth an ear-splitting roar. It couldn’t control its own power. It started wildly changing shape (into monsters so grotesque and bizarre that it would take me paragraphs to describe them. Maybe I will at some point). It finally took the form of a hideous cross between a giant and a rotting schooner riding on top of a tidal wave hundreds of feet tall. The ship/giant creature howled in pain just as the wave began to billow outwards, destroying all in its raw primeval sovereignty. After my vision was flooded with water, it slowly morphed into a very different scene.
I was aboard the ship creature now, but it was no longer deformed. It had become a regular schooner, but it seemed to be broken into two equal sections, from port to starboard. There was a single narrow plank bridging the gap between the two halves. Additionally, the ship seemed suspended in some sort of purgatory. The ship was floating in a massive expanse of whiteness, white as far as one could see in every direction. Large snowflakes were slowly drifting down from the zenith, further compounding the surreality of the scene. I felt as though I had been hurled straight into the conflicted psyche of the monster, that I was there to soothe it and quell its torrential rage.
As I arrived on the scene, a young blond boy sobbing heavily ran across the planks and up a staircase that lead to the deck of the ship. I felt as though the boy was the embodiment of the ship’s regret, of his last lingering humanity. I don’t know who I was at this point, but I felt compelled to chase after the boy, to nourish the men’s final hope at becoming human again. After I began to race forward, a large two-headed dog jumped out in front of me, blocking my path across the plank. His two heads snapped and chomped relentlessly, as though they hungered voraciously for that which dared to retain hope for the little boy.
Sadly, that it where the dream ended. I’m not sure what would have happened next. Eventually, I might write how I think it might have gone.
MGMT’s “Time to Pretend”
by aaron on Nov.04, 2013, under Lyrics I Love
I’m feeling rough, I’m feeling raw, I’m in the prime of my life.
Let’s make some music, make some money, find some models for wives.
I’ll move to Paris, shoot some heroin, and fuck with the stars.
You man the island and the cocaine and the elegant cars.
This is our decision, to live fast and die young.
We’ve got the vision, now let’s have some fun.
Yeah, it’s overwhelming, but what else can we do.
Get jobs in offices, and wake up for the morning commute.
Forget about our mothers and our friends
We’re fated to pretend
To pretend
We’re fated to pretend
To pretend
I’ll miss the playgrounds and the animals and digging up worms
I’ll miss the comfort of my mother and the weight of the world
I’ll miss my sister, miss my father, miss my dog and my home
Yeah, I’ll miss the boredom and the freedom and the time spent alone.
There’s really nothing, nothing we can do
Love must be forgotten, life can always start up anew.
The models will have children, we’ll get a divorce
We’ll find some more models, everything must run its course.
We’ll choke on our vomit and that will be the end
We were fated to pretend
To pretend
We’re fated to pretend
To pretend
Yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah
Comments:
I feel that this song has a pretty obvious message: living fast and dying young is an attractive prospect, but it carries with it grave consequences. This message is prevalent in many party songs, so it is not intrinsically interesting. What I feel saves this song for me is the melancholic, nostalgic bridge:
I’ll miss the playgrounds and the animals and digging up worms
I’ll miss the comfort of my mother and the weight of the world
I’ll miss my sister, miss my father, miss my dog and my home
Yeah, I’ll miss the boredom and the freedom and the time spent alone.
As a person on the cusp of outgrowing childhood, this part of the song always gets me. It conveys a twinge of sadness that scares me. This, combined with the endless drudgery of it all :
There’s really nothing, nothing we can do
Love must be forgotten, life can always start up anew.
The models will have children, we’ll get a divorce
We’ll find some more models, everything must run its course.
On a bad day, it makes me feel like I was fated to pretend…
Guster’s “Come Downstairs and Say Hello”
by aaron on Oct.23, 2013, under Lyrics I Love
“Come Downstairs And Say Hello”
Right in tune with “Dark Side of the Moon.”
Someone, someone could tell me:
Where I belong;
“Be calm, be brave, it’ll be okay…”
On New Year’s resolutions.
By this time next year,
Lips move, they say:
“It’ll be okay…”
“Tomorrow I start in a new direction.”
One last time these words from me,
I’m never saying them again.
And I shut the light
and listen as my watch unwinds…
“Tomorrow I start in a new direction.”
I know I’ve been half-asleep,
I’m never doing that again.
and soon its going to change in a new direction.
Every night as I’m falling asleep
These words repeating in my head:
To come downstairs and say, ‘hello.’
Don’t be shy, just say ‘hello.'”
“Tomorrow I start in a new direction.”
I know I’ve been half-asleep,
I’m never doing that again.
I look straight at what’s coming ahead
and soon it’s going to change in a new direction.
Those words repeated in my head.
Comments:
I love this song for many reasons.
First, I think the first two lines brilliantly summarize the main problem of the narrator of the song (and the problem I have felt many times when listening to this song):
Dorothy moves to click her ruby shoes
Right in tune with “Dark Side of the Moon.
A person is applying the: “turn on, tune in, drop out” mentality to escape from their problems. Dorothy is escaping from her nightmarish Oz by clicking her shoes in tune with “Dark Side of the Moon”, an album by Pink Floyd. The song progresses by proposing what I always hoped to hear when I was in one of these moods “Be calm…be brave…it’ll be ok”. But the song acknowledges that it doesn’t happen, that it could have happened:
Someone, someone could tell me:
Where I belong;
‘Be calm, be brave, it’ll be okay…”
The song continues to drive home the point that media provides a point of solace by saying that the voices on MTV have lips moving, saying “It’ll be ok…” The way this line is delivered has always echoed the superficiality that condolences have carried in my opinion. The singer delivers this line so ephemerally that I believe it parallels perfectly the short-lasting effects “It will be ok” has on my psyche.
The first “chorus” is very interesting and very, very, profound in understanding the meaning of the song:
To tell you the truth, I’ve said it before
“Tomorrow I start in a new direction”
One last time these words from me
I’m never saying them again
and I shut the light
and listen as my watch unwinds…
The first three lines are especially important, because the narrator makes a vow to change soon, he says that he will change starting tomorrow. He echoes the call to action in the beginning of the song “no more…living underground on New Year’s resolutions”. And he says that this is the last time he will say these words. Then, he describes the act of shutting off the light, a night time prelude to sleep, a symbol of what is done each and every day. Then, he listens as “his watch unwinds”, that is, he is a passerby to his life passing before his eyes while nothing changes. The pace of the song changes here significantly – it picks up to show the passage of time.
The next stanza confirms the foreshadowing in the chorus, as the narrator repeats what he said he would never say again. But there is an added thought, something new to the mix. He states:
Every night as I’m falling asleep
These words repeating in my head:
And then we receive the climax of the song, the take-away message:
“Voices calling from a yellow road
To come downstairs and say, ‘hello.’
Don’t be shy, just say ‘hello.'”
We are told that the narrator can still break free from his escapist mentality, we see that he can choose to rejoin reality and just “come downstairs and say hello”. And this message is delivered with an homage to the imagery in the beginning of the song, to the image of Dorothy trying to come home.
The song ends by repeating the chorus again, cluing the listeners in on the fact that the narrator is still working on living in reality, on not tuning out the world. (There is also a subtle change from “these words” to “those words”, indicating a change of tense) We are left with a beautiful, peaceful, image (which is close to my heart since dreams hold such value to me):
Every night as I’m falling asleep
Those words repeated in my head.
Italy Trip – Roma, Roma, Roma!
by aaron on Oct.23, 2013, under France
I’m going to try out a slightly different style for this post about our second day in Rome. Again, I will upload the pictures later. You know the drill!
General Thoughts about the Day:
Awesome Tourist Sites We Visited:
More to add later (like descriptions)
Colosseum – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colosseum
Roman Forum – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Forum
Palatine Museum – http://www.historvius.com/the-palatine-museum-735/
Spanish Steps – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Steps
Trevi Fountain – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trevi_Fountain
Pantheon – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon,_Rome
Santa Maria Sopra Minevra – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Maria_sopra_Minerva
Four Rivers Fountain – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fontana_dei_Quattro_Fiumi
Sant’Agnese in Agone – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sant%27Agnese_in_Agone
Sant’Andrea della Valle – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sant’Andrea_della_Valle
Musei Capitolini – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitoline_Museums
Food:
For breakfast, we tried to go to Victoria Emmualle 2 square (or something like that) because Deanna had read that they had a market there Monday to Saturday 7:00 – 2:00, but we saw nothing of the sort. There was a weird lady with a witch-cackle of a laugh. So that’s something. Anyway, since we couldn’t eat there, we went to a small caffe place right alongside the square. Three Chinese people were working there when we arrived, which I only mention because I was impressed that they knew Chinese, English, and Italian at the very least. I got a cheap caffe ( 0.80 euro), Deanna got a small cup of juice, and we both got croissants. French croissants are way, way better. Seriously.
For lunch, we ate at a crappy-ish food stand in the metro station near the coliseum. We each had half of a pizza, and they were pretty good. Greasy, but good. Not nearly as good as the pizza the night before.
For dinner, we ate at a nice-ish restaurant near our host’s place. Deanna and I never really had an anniversary this year, so we treated this dinner like it was the anniversary dinner we missed out on. Needless to say, it was amazing. We had a caprese di buffalo, a bruschetta, a calzone, some awesome pepper and cheesy noodles, and two desserts. One of the desserts was a chocolate cake with ricotta cheese, and it was pretty good. What was the other dessert, you ask? Well, my friend, it was a tiramisu with five different kinds of berries – a red berry I don’t know, a similar green berry I don’t know, raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries. A red sweet sauce was poured over the berries. I’m not sure what it was exactly that made the tiramisu so heavenly (but I think it might have been the unknown berries), but all I know is that I absolutely loved it! As did Deanna. Both of us greatly preferred the tiramisu.
Italy trip – Arrival in Rome!
by aaron on Oct.23, 2013, under France
Sorry readers out there for not posting more often! Since I have such a steel trap, I’ll definitely just retroactively describe what’s been going on for the past month or so. Don’t worry!
Anyway, Deanna and I have begun our exciting trip to Italy! The internet isn’t too great here, so I will just add the text for now – the photos will come later.
Our trip began on the morning of October 22. We woke up, did last-minute packing, then headed out from our room in MontFerrand. We got some pastries from the local boulangerie on our way to Jardiland ( http://www.jardiland.com/ ), the spot where we had agreed to meet with Jeff, the driver for our “covoiturage” to Lyon. It was a dark and windy morning, and after sitting on the bench waiting for Jeff for about a half hour, I decided that I wanted to bring my sweatshirt along on the trip in case it was going to be cold. So I ran back to the room in MontFerrand, grabbed the sweatshirt and some other important papers, and ran back to Jardiland. It was only 8 or so at that point, and Jeff wasn’t supposed to show up until 8:10, so we weren’t too worried. Jeff ended up being a bit late, but we found him nonetheless. Apparently another woman was traveling with us, so we all introduced ourselves. Deanna and I sat in the back while the woman sat in the front with Jeff. In hindsight, this setup might not have been ideal, because apart from the first 30 or so minutes, the front became the “French area” and the back became the “English area”. I didn’t want it to happen that way, but once they started talking they never really made much of an effort to include us. I listened for quite a bit of their conversation. I remember that they were talking about underage drinking and how they thought it was a growing problem in France. Anyway, the trip was rated as taking about three and a half hours, but it ended up being maybe one and a half or two. After arriving in Lyon, Deanna and I got our grub on at Mezzo di Pasta, a French attempt at Italian pasta (like Noodles & Company in America). We waited a while before deciding to finally buy the train tickets to go to the airport (it was only 12:00 at this point and our flight wasn’t until 3:20). The train tickets were 12.50 euro each! Seemed like a ripoff…
We did all the normal airport stuff and made our way to the gate. It was only 12:40 or so at this point and the entire gate was deserted. So Deanna napped while I played some Plants vs. Zombies for about 30 minutes. Then we bided our time until we could board the plane at 3:00.
The plane ride was mainly normal, although I would say that the view was gorgeous as usual. The in-flight instructions were interesting because the crew was all clearly French, but most things were broadcasted in both English and French. Sometimes in Italian also. We landed in Rome right on time, somewhere around 5:00.
After making our way into Rome airport, I walked up to a man at a Tourist counter to ask him, in Italian, where we could find the bathrooms. He pointed us down the hallway, to the left. I was very satisfied that he understood me. The classes had helped me somewhat, apparently. After that, we bought the Rome Passes and tickets for the bus to Termini station. The bus ride was ok apart from a screaming child in front of us (whom the parents did not even seem to try to calm…). Deanna and I were surprised to see how shabby the outskirts of Rome were. There were dumps, shantytowns, and dilapidated buildings galore. I suppose all that makes sense though.
After arriving in Termini station, we were baffled as to our next course of action. My French sim card was only valid until the end of the day, and we needed a phone in the next few days to call our hosts and to call the next driver for the covoiturage we were taking from Rome to Florence. We wandered around the station for a while hoping to find a 3, an Italian phone carrier like Verizon, because we knew they were offering a nice deal, but to no avail. We stopped in a cybercafe and paid for 15 minutes of internet to search for the store, but even after going to one of the “supposed” locations in Termini station, it was nowhere to be found. We finally settled on Wind, another Italian phone carrier. We stood in line for about 45 minutes to finally be helped by one of the Italian cashiers. I spouted out all the info I could think of and asked for advice about what we should do (in Italian). The cashier ended up recommending a certain package to us that seemed like a deal, so we took it. Essentially, we paid 20 euro for a sim card, 250 minutes, 250 sms, and 2gb of data for a month. I thought that sounded like plenty, and the data especially was enticing since I really wanted a reliable way to have a good map of Rome on hand at all times. There was some trouble activating the sim card, finding the pin code for it, and getting the data to work, but by the next morning we had finally gotten it to work. After following the map we had taken a picture of back to the cybercafe, we made our way to the host’s apartment on Via dei Latini.
We were shocked by how big the place was! Essentially, the host Caterina is renting us an empty apartment for the next few days! Crazy. After dropping our stuff off, I collapsed into bed and fell to sleep almost immediately. Deanna was kept up by the ambient noise and by the neighboring apartments (because some tenants were talking almost right outside our place).
And thus ends our first day in Italia!
Vampire Weekend’s “I Think Ur a Contra”
by aaron on Oct.18, 2013, under Lyrics I Love
“I Think Ur A Contra”
That you and I
Could tell each other everything
For two months
But even without hope
With truth on our side
When you turn away from me
It’s not right
I think you’re a Contra
I think you’re a Contra
And dear Contra
I think you’re a Contra
My revolution thoughts
Live in lies of desire
I wanna trace them to the source
And the wire
But it’s not useful now
Since we both made up our minds
You gotta watch out for yourself
So will I
I think you’re Contra
I think that you lie
Don’t call me Contra
Till you’ve tried
You wanted good schools
And friends with pools
You’re not a Contra
You wanted Rock’ n’ Roll,
Complete control
Well, I don’t know
Never pick sides
Never choose between two
But I just wanted you
Never pick sides
Never choose between two
But I just wanted you
I think you’re Contra
I think that you lie
Don’t call me Contra
Till you’ve tried
Stone Sour’s “Sillyworld”
by aaron on Oct.18, 2013, under Lyrics I Love
“Sillyworld”
Freedom’s just a word
When someone takes your word away it’s seldom ever heard
So take a sentence full of things you’re not supposed to say
Carry on, but don’t write it down or you’ll be gone
Love is just a song today
Love is just a song
When someone takes the song away
you seldom sing along
So take those lyrics serious and sing your life away
Carry on, but don’t write ’em down or they’ll be gone
All we ever do is talk
We like to ride but we never walk
We make it so damn easy
We get bored
Why can’t anybody see what’s good for you is good for me
I can’t take your sillyworld
I can’t take your sillyworld no more
Peace is just two fingers now
Peace was just a phase
When someone put it on a shirt
you knew to count the days
So take those fingers tape ’em up and shove ’em up your ass and carry on
but don’t try it now cause peace is gone
All we ever do is talk
We like to ride but we never walk
We make it so damn easy
We get bored
Why can’t anybody see what’s good for you is bad for me
I can’t take your sillyworld
I can’t take your sillyworld no more
We fight our instincts
We go to extremes
We fight our instincts
We go to extremes
We fought a lot [x13]
Something Corporate’s “Konstantine”
by aaron on Oct.18, 2013, under Lyrics I Love
Konstantine
I can’t imagine all the people that you know
And the places that you go
When the lights are turned down low
And I don’t understand all the things you’ve seen
But I’m slipping in between
You and your big dreams
It’s always you
In my big dreams
And you tell me that it’s over
Wake up lying in a patch of four leaf clover
And you’re restless, and I’m naked
You’ve got to get out
You can’t stand to see me shaking, no
Could you let me go?
I didn’t think so
And you don’t want to be here in the future
So you say the present’s just a pleasant
Interruption to the past
And you don’t want to look much closer
Because you’re afraid to find out all this hope
You had sent into the sky by now had crashed
And it did
Because of me
And then you bring me home
Afraid to find out that you’re alone
And I’m sleeping in your living room
But we don’t have much room to live
I had these dreams in them I learned to play guitar
Maybe cross the country
Become a rock star
And there was hope in me that I could take you there
But damnit, you’re so young
Well, I don’t think I care
And if I hurt you
Then I’m sorry
Please don’t think that this was easy
Then you’d bring me home
Because we both know what it’s like to be alone
And I’m dreaming in your living room
But we don’t have much room to live
And Konstantine is walking down the stairs
Doesn’t she look good
Standing in her underwear?
And I was thinking
What I was thinking
We’ve been drinking and it doesn’t get me anywhere
My Konstantine came walking down the stairs
And all that I could do is touch her long blonde hair
And I’ve been thinking
It hurts me thinking that these nights when we were drinking
No, they never got us anywhere, no
This is because I can spell confusion with a ‘k’
And I can like it
It’s to dying in another’s arms and why I had to try it
It’s to Jimmy Eat World and those nights in my car
When the first star you see may not be a star
I’m not your star
Isn’t that what you said
What you thought this song meant
And if this is what it takes
Just to lie with my mistakes
And live with what I did to you
All the hell I put you through
I always catch the clock
It’s 11:11
And now you want to talk
It’s not hard to dream
You’ll always be my Konstantine
My Konstantine, they’ll never hurt you like I do
No, they’ll never hurt you like I do
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
This is to a girl who got into my head
With all the pretty things she did
Hey, you know
You keep me up in bed
This is to a girl who got into my head
With all these fucked up things I did
Hey, maybe, baby
You could keep me up in bed
My Konstantine
You spin around me like a dream
We played out on this movie screen
And I said
Did you know I missed you?
Did you know I missed you?
Did you know I missed you?
Did you know I missed you?
Did you know I missed you?
Did you know I missed you?
Did you know I missed you?
I miss you
And then you bring me home
And we’ll go to sleep, but this time not alone, no, no
And you’ll kiss me in your living room
I know
You’ll miss me in your living room
Because these nights I think maybe that
I’ll miss you in my living room
We don’t have much room
I said does anybody need that room?
Because we all need a little more room
To live
My Konstantine
Snow Patrol’s “Spitting Games”
by aaron on Oct.18, 2013, under Lyrics I Love
“Spitting Games”
And left a note at your bedside
I’m far too shy to speak to you at school
You leave me numb and I’m not sure why
I find it easier to sit and stare
Than push my limbs out towards you right there
My heart is bursting in your perfect eyes
As blue as oceans and as pure as skies
I struggle for the words and then give up
My heads up with the birds on the t-hut
A little piece of mind that I know better
Than the plain disgrace of all my letters
But after that the floodgates opened up
And I fell in love with everyone I saw
Please take your time I’m not in any rush
And it’s in everything I ever write
It’s not as if I need the extra weight
Confused enough by life so thanks a lot
Lonely written words for company
Just raise the roof this once and follow me
Snow Patrol’s “How to Be Dead”
by aaron on Oct.18, 2013, under School
“How To Be Dead”
No you don’t know what happened
And you never will if
You don’t listen to me while I talk to the wall
This blanket is freezing, it’s been out in the hall
Where you’ve had me for hours
Till I’m sure what I want
But darling I want the same thing that I wanted before
So sweetheart tell me what’s up I won’t stop no way
Please keep your hands down
And stop raising your voice
It’s hardly what I’d be doing if you gave me a choice
It’s a simple suggestion can you give me sometime
So just say yes or no
Why can’t you shoulder the blame
Coz both my shoulders are heavy
From the weight of us both
You’re a big boy now so let’s not talk about growth
You’ve not heard a single word I have said…
Oh, my God
Please take it easy it can’t all be my fault
I haven’t made half the mistakes
That you’ve listed so far
Oh baby let me explain something
It’s all down to drugs
At least I remember taking them and not a lot else
It seems I’ve stepped over lines
You’ve drawn again and again
But if the ecstacy’s in the wit is definitely out
Dr. Jekyll is wrestling Hyde for my pride
