MUSIC « In Which We Are Stuck In A City But Belong In A Field »
Tuesday, November 10, 2009 at 10:37AM 
All Over Yours
by MEREDITH CHAMBERLAIN
I'm pretty content with womanhood lately but, like Meredith, every once and a while, I'm struck with a damning desire to be a man. Definitely not any kind of man. Only the best kind.
Every once and a while I want desperately to be a man, on a stage, with a head full of thoughts and a voice just good enough to let them out. I want to be that boy your mother warned you not to get into the '92 Cutlass with. The one who grew up to sing in a band. I envy him, love him, want to be in love with him, want to be him, for making his feelings sound so good.
Last week I sat down next to a bible study group at Chipotle. It was Sunday in Manhattan, I should have known? Listening to people who love Jesus talk about Jesus in a McDonald's subsidiary is just as maddening, and American, as it sounds. If God is everywhere, as you say, he does not need to be in my taco, specifically. This is why I avoid writing about music, and musicians. I ain't nuthin' but a groupie. But Julian Casablancas released an album this week. I'm giving myself a holiday.
Life seems unreal. Can we go back to your place?
There are feelings you get—rushes—after you engage in certain activities. These activities often leave you feeling happy, and sweaty. Like running and you know, the obvious one. They are not meant to stimulate your mind. They're just supposed to make you feel fucking great. The thing about music though, is that at its best, it leaves you drunk and smart. You feel all boozy without the hangover; you get a lesson without the lecture.
When I'm old and write some internet novel, and my editor, who will be me, asks who I'd like to thank in the acknowledgments, I will tell her The Strokes. Because Julian's splintered mumblings made more sense to me than any novel could in 2001, in 2003, in 2006. Novels make a little more sense to me now, in 2009, but I'm afraid his Phrazes for the Young will beat the books, still. Julian got sober, stayed married and decided on a child since I last heard from him, and I think he's got some stuff to say.
Can't you find some other guy?
And what he's saying to me right now is that things are going to be all right. The old wants and needs and leave me alones have been replaced by a sort of acceptance. The questions aren't shot into thin air in fits and starts. They're planted. Rooted. And the one thing that was all over the other albums, all over my life, all over yours, isn't all over this one. Fear. He's sort of telling it to fuck off.
I've spent a lot of time wishing that I was the result of a premarital affair between a French woman and American Man in the early winter of 1949. The French thing is peripheral but the chronological thing is not. My father would be forced to marry and move to America, and when 1967 hit, my Franco-American ass would be 18. I would be young enough to be stupid but old enough to be emancipated. I would get to live before all the good ones died.
I don't want what you want. I don't feel what you feel.
As it turns out, being a product of a special post-marital night between two New Jerseyans in the early winter of 1983 wasn't so bad. The Strokes made 1983 a good year to be born; 2001 a good year to be 18. When I was home from college I would wait on line for six hours to see them play, from the front row, at Roseland. Julian's head would crowd surf into my nose and I'd turn around and tell my brother, proudly, that he smelled. I would stalk them at 2nd and 7th; Jules loved that crazy toy store. I would stutter sour nothings in Albert's ear as I waited in the coat check line I thought was the bathroom line in the basement of the Bowery Ballroom during a Remy Zero show.
How could you be. Whoaaa ohh ohhh. So perfect for me?
When I wasn't home from break I would walk around off campus aimlessly, hopelessly looking for a party full of kids asking themselves if this is it. When I finally found one I bullied the thrower into being my friend for eternity. She comes in handy.
For example. Three Fridays ago I found myself decently pissed off for no reason. I left work and went to my happy place. Wine, and records. After three glasses, I'd listened to “Heart in a Cage” four times, had multiple breakthroughs, mainly regarding the realization that my heart was in fact, caged, and texted them all to the best friend forever who, like Julian, always understands. "I feel that way every time I listen to them," she wrote back.
I'll take you shopping. I'll take you dancing, too.
Someone told me recently that I write like they think when they're paranoid. This made me feel strange and then it made me feel cool. It reminded me of Julian. Maybe he's not a poet. But he tells me, over and over, that I'm not completely insane. To want everything and nothing at some times and not at others. He tells me that the truth doesn't need to be bundled up in eloquence before it's handed off. It can be stripped down and shouted; it can be danced to, celebrated, blasted from cars, rather than shelved. And this is why I want, desperately at times, to be man, on a stage, with a voice. Paranoia is all we have, in the end; it should be heard. It should sound good
Meredith Chamberlain is the senior contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Brooklyn. She tumbls here.
"11th Dimension" - Julian Casablancas (mp3)
"Glass" - Julian Casablancas (mp3)
"Ludlow St." - Julian Casablancas (mp3)
"River of Brakelights" - Julian Casablancas (mp3)
Reader Comments (3)
Go bother This Guy in Berlin; flatter him a bit, buy him lunch; soon you'll be hearing good old gossipy tidbits about your favorite band and maybe even accidentally overhearing phone conversations involving one of them! Better yet: offer to hire him to produce a crappy demo... he will get one on the phone to impress you.
Back when the Strokes were the rage, the haters would ask me, "Hugh, why do you like the Strokes?" And I would be brutally honest. "For one thing, Casablancas is quite the crooner."
He is really extraordinary. I have not seen a person as talented as Meredith for a long, long time. I know he had trouble with Herbal Viagra , but that is not a valid excuse to ignore his talent.