comfort food

Bad days, stressed days, days when the person you need on the other end of the phone doesn't call, can't call, won't call, days when you want to go back to bed as soon as you woke up. Days when you have to work long into the night, long past what should be quitting time.

These are the days I turn to music like comfort food.

I don't believe in guilty pleasures because I don't think there's much people can enjoy that they should feel guilty about (obviously within parameters of consent, etc). And so I don't think that there's a need for this tiering of music - this need to have the division between your "serious" music tastes and your "guilty pleasures." I like the Jonas Brothers, Britney Spears, Madonna AND I like Patti Smith, Leonard Cohen, Marianne Faithfull, et al. I think there's a weird divide there, a weird way in which we privilege a type of authenticity, as if all music isn't created at a remove. This is not to say that certain musicians don't speak more personally to me, sound more real to me, make me feel the grit and the sweat and the tears, whereas Britney only ever makes me feel like I'm privvy to her most recent re-programming.

I do believe that certain music is comfort food. I wrote before about songs that make me want to cry and feel particular and unique and spiritual all at once. Comfort food can do all these things, but I associate music like comfort food with a sense of nostalgia, of knowing all the words and anticipating refrains and dancing in my chair and lifting my spirits. Comfort food makes me feel like something works in the midst of it all and the delightful about music is that it can linger there in the background while I crank out the nth paper of the week or get all angsty about my social mistakes.

Which is why earlier this week, in the midst of a downward spiral, I made a pineapple upside down cake and listened to all of my Vanessa Carlton albums. That's right, Vanessa "A Thousand Miles" Carlton. When called upon, Vanessa is my comfort food because she hits all the right notes of adolescent pathos, schoolgirl journaling and heartfelt pianos. And she can be clever - on "Come Undone" she's a "sycophantic courtier with an elegent repose." On "Who's To Say" she speaks to the feeling we all have of never being old enough to emotionally negotiate life. She's slinky and hoonky on "Private Radio" and I love "Hands On Me" because both the song and video perfectly encapsulate the human condition of skin hunger, that innate need to be touched. How couldn't these songs be the perfect salve on a rough day?

P.S. I promise I will actually write about a song one of these days. Just not today.