Be good to me, but not so much that I start taking you for granted.
Sit on the steps outside to watch for my shadow, when I'm coming home late at night.
Ask me where I've been, but don't try and chase me down.
May you never try and tether me, may you never find out how bad I can bite.
Can you be for me the beautiful thing I've long felt a-coming?
Stay on my side, but let me keep searching. Don't be the thing that was found,
But the shadows that fall at dusk, while I'm out still gathering my pack.
Stray me from home, but not from the path I've meant to be on.
Don't be my place, but rather a living reminder the road's not that dirty.
Come and go. Give me the strength to give what you'll ask of me,
Miss me when my mind wanders. Know I'm a child of the wild at heart,
That being in one place isn't that different from being put in my place.
That I sometimes mistake and misunderstand the distinction.
I need to run away often to find what I didn't know was missing.
Let me tell another story before the fire blows out, then we'll to bed.
Let me sate this thirst of being heard a while longer. Let me.
This isn't, as it may appear, a poem for the one I love. (Or maybe?) It's more of a prayer to the year ahead. They never turn out the way I thought they might. The years. 25 definitely didn't go as I would've expected last January. A lot of unforeseen happenings, encounters, adventures. Some sorrow. Disappointment. A lot of beauty and things to be grateful for. Good, meaningful things. So for 26, I'm trying to be mindful how little I can actually predict. I'm sticking to more general desires of thumb (if I won't be allowed to set rules), like the ones above.
The first song I listened to after turning 25. At 3 AM, much to my neighbors' delight.
Well, Billy rapped all night about his suicide
How he'd kick it in the head when he was 25
Speed jive, don't want to stay alive
When you're 25
Except I do. So much, I do. I'm too in love with it to stop. Life.
But we can love
Oh yes, we can love
I love this version of the song in particular, more than any of Bowie's versions. But then, I've always had a soft spot for (the extraordinary) Michael Stipe. There's just something so special about this version, about the way he sings at the end
bring him down here to me, bring him down because I want him
Now
I want you, I want all of you, I want you now.
Life. I want all of you.
The title of this thingy comes from this song - which is fantastic, if you can ignore the somewhat nauseatingly cutesy video. Because you can't just be stuck on the old stuff you used to listen to billions of years ago, can you?
The expression "turns my head" has always appealed to me, for some reason. I'm forever in love with things and people and moments who actually physically make you turn your head and take note of the world happening around you. How could anyone not be?
I was gonna link John Lee Hooker's I hate the Day I Was Born except I don't, and it doesn't capture my feeling now, despite it being a damn fine piece of blues. This, however, does. I hope I manage to go through this year with James Brown's fantastic energy.
So I guess I'll stick to these three for 
