Myth Happens

1. Despite recent stress, derspatchel and I went out tonight for Dine Out Boston at the Marliave. We wouldn't have been able to afford it ordinarily. But on a prix fixe menu, I had succulent, garlic-dripping snails and an entrée of scallops seared over tiny enoki mushrooms and crisp sage leaves with sweet potato ravioli on top and Rob had a starter of rarebit with smoky bacon and a superlative beef Wellington with nothing else on the plate to distract and we split half a dozen oysters for a dollar each and the desserts were frankly ridiculous. I expected not to like the mint chocolate chip ice cream which came with the other two flavors in the trio of the day; I accepted it as the necessary cost of blueberry swirl and salt caramel. It was the best of the three. The mint was fresh mint, not candy. It tasted like a garden, cool and bitter-green, like chewing on the crushed raw leaves. We may have fought over it a little. Fortunately, there was more than enough candied ginger butterscotch pudding to smooth over tensions. Afterward we walked around the North End, stopping in to Modern Pastry to lay in a store of cannoli and lobster tail for tomorrow, and watched Government Center under construction slide past the windows of the Green Line like a diorama in a dark ride, and between Harvard and Porter a stranger vomited slightly on Rob's shoes, which was not awesome. Everything until that point, A-plus!

2. Against Me! is a punk band from Gainesville who released their first album in 2001, so there is a non-zero chance that I heard some of their music in college. I found them in my new music trawl last week. Frontwoman Laura Jane Grace came out as trans in 2012. Transgender Dysphoria Blues is the album she wrote around that period; it was released in January on the band's own label. What I've got right now are the acoustic demos of two album tracks, released last year as the EP True Trans: "FuckMyLife666" and "True Trans Soul Rebel." Both are very good songs and I could find them for free on the internet (the EP was briefly a giveaway over the summer). The actual album, I am going to buy. I want to support the band. Cash-clear that trans punk is awesome. Also, the acoustic versions have been stuck in my head for a solid week now and that is generally a good sign about a record.

3. Talking about PJ Harvey with ashlyme, I realized that I never mentioned a thing I noticed a few weeks ago. For years, I couldn't listen easily to "Sweeter Than Anything." It crystallized a part of my life that hurt. I mean it was physically painful when it came around on iTunes; I'd leave it playing only if I was feeling desolate. How can this be? There's nothing left here. We were never more than a dream. Harvey's voice breaks with the chorus, unable to complete the question she knows there's really no answer to. Even that rolling underwater bassline sounds like the endless repetition of a grief it's hard to think outside of, wearing the same spiral of memory and loss. I can't even remember where I was this last month, on foot somewhere in Cambridge or Somerville, running an errand or returning from a doctor's appointment, and I realized the song was in my head and I was using it to keep time as I walked and it was not wrecking me. I was not singing it to grieve. I don't know if I will ever be able to listen to it as simply as "White Chalk" or "Yuri-G" or even "The Phone Song," which is one of the B-sides from Uh Huh Her (2004) I like better than the album. But it's not nothing. And it's a really good song. To Bring You My Love (1994) and Is This Desire? (1998) were the first PJ Harvey I heard and I loved them at once. I was sorry to lose any of her voice from that time, no matter what it told me.