Listening to Tw…

Listening to Two Suns album by Bat for Lashes [My favorite lyrics from each song]

“Drive my heart drive my heart into the burning heart’s desire, lonely dreams do you hear me calling in my blue dream? a dream of love is a two heart-ed dream” -Sleep Alone

“If I had you here we are here together, I’d be boy and you’d be girl, beautiful” “calling moon on moon shoot the big bad hand that will track me to your door so I don’t see no more” “This wide world is a big bad hand pushing on my back do you understand? …where’s my bear to lick me clean feed my soul milk and honey” -Moon on Moon

“Under our blue skies our movie skies I found a home in your eyes and we’ll never be apart” “When the fires came the smell of cinders and rain perfumed almost everything we laughed and laughed and laughed and in the golden blue the car you took me to and set fire to my heart” -Daniel

“Look at this and look at us wonder all we’re wondering I don’t like to say we’re lost drive my best with needing us build a light into the sky…looking down make me a queen, all the sorrow that I’ve seen” “If I ever come back down find a man who takes me back through the wound and through the war until the time that came before” “Mother father’s childless woe, arrow of light for every boy and girl” “Peace of Mind” -Peace of Mind

“Be proud when you die when you wand’rer glitter your eyes for the town tell every last boy that you’re my man, try not to let you down til the siren come calling driving me evil, evil I’m a heart-breaker loved you the same way I do but I’ve got so much wickedness and sin” -Siren Song

“There’s a place in Moscow there’s a place in Moscow it’s not a place I’ve seen but I’ve been there in a blue dream down the ocean road past a sign that says good love town to a darkness where the stars do drown, where the stars need to be free” -Pearl’s Dream 

“This queen of hearts dancing on her throne but I need sorrow like baby sorrow is my drug if I ever find that place they call good love” -Good Love

“Show me moonlight, on the sunrise, I’ve seen so many planets dancing, I’ve seen too many people hiding, show me sunset and I won’t forget I am one of two planets dancing, I am one of two planets dancing” -Two Planets

“Never fall in love with attention ’cause you can see with your own eye all the pretty faces and sorry words will take away your pride”  -Traveling Woman

 

Bat For Lashes is truly magical in this album. Every song verse sounds like tangible rich imagery from a dream combined with adages and fairy tales. Goodnight world. Remember to be magical.

“You Gotta Be bad, you gotta be bold, you gotta be tough”

Here’s a throwback to the 90’s with an inspirational song that I think everyone can relate to.
I’ve been putting it on replay since the terror that plagues all college students has began. Finals. It’s that time of the year.
Rather than focusing on what I should be doing (power of procrastination, people) I’ll talk about how the institution I attend aka Smith College, has shaped me in my 2 years here. Also here’s some advice for you college prospects and current undergrads (that you definitely do not have to heed).
Just my take on things, in lyric line order:

1. “Challenge what the future holds” – think about your future, what major you have to declare, the professors who can guide you, and what doing your work no matter how painstaking it is at the moment, will bring good things (but alas you’ll see them at the end of the semester, year or when you graduate). Includes more fun/sometimes troublesome things like relationships, how they will last or not, that party you can skip to study up on something…..

2. “You gotta be bad, you gotta be bold, you gotta be wiser” – related to #1 in challenging yourself sometimes to not procrastinate (irony of my blogging during necessary study/sleep time), the way you think, the way others think (it’s okay to disagree and people will respect you if you present yourself in a respectable manner not to mention you deserve to be respected regardless of your opinions as long as they aren’t racist, sexist or homophobic but again, just my take on things). Be bold enough to say yes to that coffee date with that cute guy or girl, and say “I can do it” when you apply to that internship for the U.N. It’s okay to say “no” to your friends when they ask you to pregame before a party if you’re not up for it or the party in the first place, and your friends should respect you for it. Think about things in the long run and how your decisions as of now will impact you.

3. “Herald what your mother said/Reading the books your father read” – Coming from a different culture, okay, three (look up third-culture-kid for those of y’all who don’t know) as a Kiwi-Chinese immigrant to the U.S. and after undergoing that arduous process known as assimilation, I finally learned American culture and went through years of American schooling. That schooling never taught me much about my own Chinese culture, I might add, nor how parts of the Transcontinental Railroad was built on Chinese labor and many Chinese died while doing so. The U.S. government’s thank-you was the Chinese exclusion act of 1882, I might add, but that’s a whole other story I will blog about. Anyway, back to Des’ree and giving advice. I respect my parents so much more now that I know parts of their histories (perks of being an East Asian Studies Major) and reading what they read as well as more due to complications of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. Respect your parents, folks. They brought you into this world and there might be some parts of themselves they don’t share with you, such as traumatic experiences and it is definitely hard to understand them when there’s a generational gap and you are not learning the same things they did X years ago (not that parents are easy to understand, that’s another blog-worthy story).

4. “Love will save the day” – Amen. ’nuff said. Love yourself and you will love others (the others can come later) but loving yourself is an arduous process. Which brings into the question of love itself. There are many different forms of love like self-love (which I fully promote), love of God, love of mankind, love of living things, the list goes on. Everyone deserves to be loved and everyone deserves a chance at life. Life is about making mistakes and learning from them. Love deeper and live fuller. Oh, and put Des’ree on repeat.