Hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have, but I have it - Lana del Rey

Hope is a dangerous thing for
a woman like me to have, but
I have it - Lana del Rey

This song strikes a chord, especially in these days as I seem heavily immersed in nostalgic thoughts being back in Hong Kong after a while (and watching videos of strangers answer questions about their first loves, lost loves, painful life moments, etc.). I have spent a large part of my young adult years feeling a lack of something in my life, mostly in the domain of romantic relationships. As time passed and the situation didn't change, I went on to envision more and more realistically the possibility that I would spend my life without someone on my side, which left me distraught at first, but which I have learned to live with in a way that allowed me to still be serendipitous. My mind and approach to life have been shaped by these feelings to the point that I (still) have an instinctive, baseline tendency to consider myself as single, even when I am not. Be it when I listen to a song or relate to other people's stories and experiences, often I empathise with others' words and feelings and stories with a "I know what you feel, I'm in the same boat too!" attitude, to then realise it is actually not true. As I have been spending more and more time in relationships, this feeling has been slowly fading to the back of my mind, but sometimes still emerges. I used to think that my case was hopeless, but it wasn't. If I made it, you can make it too. Be it because you have had too many experiences and it seems that no one would wanna stick with you, or that you have barely had any experience and it seems that no one even wants to give you a chance, if you want to have someone on your side, don't give up! Someone is out there and you never know what life has planned for you. If you have no desire to have (just) one person next to you and the world seems to push back all the time to the socialised concept of the stable, monogamous relationship, don't give up! There are other people out there who feel in the same way. Either way, life changes and what we want changes. Sometimes we "change what we want" based on what is available to us, and sometimes this can be good, you can fins happiness where you didn't look for it. But be honest with your feelings and desires, and don't settle for something that doesn't really make you feel good about the present and about the future! It will be hard, but if you pick the good card from the deck, it will have been worth the wait 🙂. Don't give up on hope, even when it's painful to keep it. Hope is a dangerous thing to have for people like us, for people with our past. But we have it.

In my feelings - Lana del Rey

Countdown to 2019: -1 (but, well... Happy 2019!)

In my feelings - Lana del Rey

This last song comes in late (but it's still 2018 somewhere), and it's actually from 2017, so it's already 2 years old, but who cares! It took me a while to approach Lana's most recent album, but there were some hidden gems that I really came to appreciate in the past months. This song in particular really resonated with me for some events that happened in this 2018. I have been unapologetic for feeling all my (fu*king) feelings (like Lana), coming out of a relationship with communication problems in which I was the one who expressed all the feelings (maybe even too much), and especially realising I am living in a city surrounded by people who do not show (and claim not even to feel) their emotions, a fact which is starting to make me not feel at home in Hong Kong... Cultural differences are undeniable, and I left Italy as a "not-very-affectionate" person to end up in Hong Kong feeling like an emotional spinning top. I tried to find the middle way, but unsuccessfully so far, and I decided to indeed be feeling all my fuc*king feelings. Good ones, bad ones, I'd rather be alive than feel like a straight line on an ECG, even if being alive means facing problems, absoring negative events and emotions, and being emotionally unstable. I'm feeling all my fu*king feelings, and I'll keep doing so in 2019 too for sure. I wish you all a new year full of feelings (hopefully mostly good ones, but don't underestimate the bad ones, because they offer a much needed reference point for us to feel happy in other times) and of course of great music!

Cheers!

#sundayrevival Billie Jean - Micheal Jackson

Billie Jean - Michael Jackson

Not having listened to or been exposed to Michael Jackson lately, I have absolutely no clue why I woke up today with my head going like "Billie Jean is not my lover, she's just a girl who claims I am the one..."! But I did. Again, I should stop trying to find a reason behind what's going on in my head musically, but it's so peculiar that it makes me curious all the time! Is it s sign telling me I should go do a dance night out while I am still "young enough"? Even with the sore throat and usual malaise that came back to me in these busy, busy days? I wonder...! Well, in case you guys can go out dance to Billie Jean in my stead for the time being, I will join you asap!!

#sundayrevival Pretty good year - Tori Amos

Pretty good year - Tori Amos

I don't know why I found myself with this song in my head this afternoon, but I just did. I suppose I triggered Tori myself by suggesting her music to a friend recently, but I suppose that's not all of it...! Anyway I guess that, notwithstanding my generally bad mood of the last few days/weeks (I need a holiday), a Sunday with Tori can never be a totally bad Sunday. Maybe it's a bliss of another kind...!

#sundayrevival A thousand miles - Vanessa Carlton

A thousand miles - Vanessa Carlton

A couple weeks ago I went to karaoke with some friends, a pretty fun night, and one of the songs we sang all together was of course a teenage classic of ours, 'A thousand miles'. The song has been coming up often ever since, with some of us singing it off the top of our heads from time to time; this happened today too during our hike to the Lion Rock peak, a steep walk up a tall hill which rewarded us with a mystical view of nothingness (we were surrounded by the white of clouds), and of course we also got soaked. It's been a nice and enjoyable experience anyway! The celebrations for the Chinese New Year are going on, but they are past the climax now, so I'm getting ready to start next semester!

#blogbirthday All we are - OneRepublic

All we are - OneRepublic

I don't know why I fixed in my mind the 20th of October as the blog's birthday, when I actually posted the first entry on the 19th of October, but well... does it really matter?
So, I'm here to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the blog!!! It turned 3... well, yesterday actually! It's incredible that I've managed to stick to it for so long given everything that's happened in these past three years and especially given that I didn't expect to stick with it for so long in the first place! This third year has been the hardest one so far, I'd say. I've been having plentiful of free time in my hands and that brought me to waste it on TV series and travelling (well, that time wasn't wasted at all!) and other things, so that I haven't paid enough attention to 'A song or two per day', which has actually become 'A couple songs per week', or something like that! Lately, since I started my PhD and moved to Hong Kong, things have been hectic once again and it's been even harder to find the time and energy to come and post here, but still, I'm trying my best!
So, as I keep saying, this blog has been the longest commitment of my life (it has been actually), so let's make somethings special for its third birthday, hoping that I will be able to finding my balance and carrying on with all parts of my life, this included! To celebrate the blog's birthday I want, as usual, to share something special with you. This year I've chosen my favourite OneRepublic song, given that they have just released their new album and after this and 'Native', I really got the feeling they're not gonna go and make anymore great music as they did on their first two album, as they have started a more commercial path (understandably, but I must say that doesn't make me happy at all). Moreover, just a couple of months ago I left everything I had at home to embark on a new adventure and, knowing that most of it will be there again when I come back, of course being far away doesn't allow me to enjoy my past relationships as much as I could when I was back home. That doesn't diminish them, rather... they just evolve. So "Time could tear you apart, but it won't break anything that we are... We won't say our goodbyes, you know its better that way, we won't break, we won't die, it's just a moment of change! All we are, all we are, is everything that's right..."

Taxi ride - Tori Amos

Taxi ride - Tori Amos

Don't know why, tonight I felt the need to watch/listen to some live performance of Tori Amos (if you ever need a reason for that feeling), and thanking her incredible productivity, a quick and easy YouTube search brought me to find what I was looking for. It's been incredibly soothing and I will forever be grateful to the forces of the universe that have brought me to discover her... well, more than 7 years ago. Feels like forever. Anyway, I've found this beautiful live performance she did for NPR in 2012 and have been absolutely delighted by it, seeing how she came back to near-to perfect shape in that time frame after long years of decadence. I've particularly enjoyed 'Taxi ride' from that live, it's a version I probably like even better than the album one, so I'm gonna share it with you now, you can look at (and especially listen to) the difference if you care about it enough!

#sundayrevival Up there down there - Patti Smith

Up there down there - Patti Smith

"Up there there's a ball of fire, some call it the spirit, some call it the sun..." These are the first words that I can recall after waking up this morning. No idea where they came from and what it was that I was thinking which brought me there, but something did! A Patti Smith classic and a favourite of mine since I went through her discography, sounds like a great tune for this Sunday! Lunch is done and I'm heading downtown for some shopping and strolling around, hoping that the rays of sun and flashes of blue sky I've seen sooner will stick around a bit longer!! I really wouldn't mind enjoying the ball of fire up there, whatever you may call it!

#sundayrevival Music - Madonna

Music - Madonna

Hello dear readers, sorry for being away from the blog again, I’ve taken a 20-some hours trip to Milan to celebrate a friend’s birthday and I took the chance to say goodbye to some people I might not be seeing for a good amount of time. I can’t complain about goodbyes as the life I’ve chosen for myself in this time of my life is not one of stability, so goodbyes have to be part of the game! The idea of not having close people around might be hard, but as of now I am more excited and eager to go explore, meet new people and stuff! New music is on my to-do list too of course, but today it’s Sunday so it’s time to look back, and what better looking back than one of my favourite songs by the singer whose music was on my mind when I got up this morning?!

Josephine - The wallflowers

Josephine - The wallflowers

New music on the way: I approached the band headed by Bob Dylan's son soon after I got to know them at an extracurricular course in "History of pop/rock music" I attended in university in late 2012. I approached their second album in the last few days and I have already bonded with this lovely song! For those among you who don't know their music, it's classic american rock. At least, that's what it feels to me. I started listening to 'Counting crows' in the same period as 'The wallflowers' and their music is quite similar in terms of genre in my opinion. It's not my favourite genre, as these usually long rock ballads tend to bore me a little, but nonetheless there are particular times when (and songs that) I enjoy quite a bit. It's also funny as I remember linking one of my favourite 'Counting crows' songs (Anna begins) to Lisbon, as I heard a musician playing it live in the streets of the city when I first visited it in 2013. Funny thing: I'm leaving for Lisbon again tomorrow (well, today to be precise). American rock, ladies songs, similar bands, Lisbon... the circle is closed!

A sorta fairytale (single) - Tori Amos

A sorta fairytale

Here we are with the first song of 2016 and to celebrate the beginning of the new year I picked one of my absolute favourite songs ever, the one I've listening to the most according to my iTunes count (taking into account both the original version and the single edit) and, really, one of the songs I love the most. It's magic, as after listening to it more than 300 times, it still hold its magic power as the first time I fell in love with it. The lyrics are beautiful, the melody soothing but with a great rhythm, the song can touch your deepest feelings and at the same time be a perfect soundtrack for a thoughtless ride in your car. The video is absolutely inspiring too, and the whole 'Scarlet's walk' CD is just awesome, I can't wait to be driving in the middle of America just to use it as a soundtrack, walking back on the steps Tori herself was walking while drafting the album. I really hope that 2016 will be like this song: as close to perfection as it can get in this world.

"Like a good book I can't put this day back, a sorta fairytale with you..."

And I rode along side till you lost me there in the open road...

Hurt - Nine Inch Nails

Hurt - Nine Inch Nails

I've been having a strange relationship with NIN's music: I started listening to them at the beginning of this year and unexpectedly liked their music quite a lot! I am not used to listening to "strong" rock, but when I approached them together with Radiohead, which have been in my queue for years, I found myself liking NIN debut album more than 'Pablo honey'. I was thus somehow optimistic, even if people told me to be careful, and they right... I listened to the subsequent EPs by NIN and found them too much for me. Now I got to 'The Downward Spiral' and, even if at the beginning it's been hard, I feel like we're making good progress together! I can't wait to get to "softer" parts of their discography, as I'm confident I will like them quite a lot!

Wednesday - Tori Amos

Wednesday - Tori Amos

"Nothing here to fear. I'm just sitting around being foolish when there is work to be done. Just a hang-up call and the quiet breathing of our Persian we call Cajun on a Wednesday...". This is how my day started, with this song playing in the car, and I must confess it made perfect sense to me for the time being: taking it easy getting up and having breakfast while I had to come to work... I was just lacking the Persian (cat? I assume so, given that it's breathing), but I could see my own wednesday as the one described by Tori in her song, starting the day in the usual way, thinking "Well, why not?" and stopping for a coffee (I didn't do that, but just because I don't love coffee) and maybe recalling things said by somebody, things I forgot already...

Westbound - Lizzy Grant (a.k.a. May Jailer, a.k.a. Lana del Rey)

Today didn't start in the best way possible: the water plastic bottle I had in my consultant rucksack was faulty and poured a good amount of its content around. Result: flooded bag, including all the stuff that was inside (from pc to charger, from food to CDs and wires). I don't know how, but it seems like everything is working fine! Plus, I later realized I (of course) also flooded my shirt, pants and underpants with the water that was coming out from the rucksack. All of this in the small 2 minutes walk form the car to the office. Nice, ain't it? Thanks goodness I could hang all my stuff around to dry as the best housewives would, and I brought my rucksack back in the car to dry up (which worked perfectly, just to let you know how hot it is around here these days)! Anyway it looks like stuff about my future is moving up (again), now we'll have to see how long it takes for stuff to happen...! Anyway for now I'm not westbound as Lana in her song, yet I'm going to go so far away that east and west are kinda blurred, plus it isn't out the question that I'm just taking the long way west!

(To listen to the song click here or on the picture caption)

Westbound - Lizzy Grant

Hold back the tears - Neil Young

Hold back the tears - Neil Young

I must confess that going through the discography of some artists is a pretty long and not-always-so-enjoyable task, especially when these artists have released tens of albums and have been making the history of last century's music (with some of them), but also been trying different things or anyway been producing stuff that won't be remembered, or that anyway doesn't fit the musical taste of a millennial like me. Nonetheless a few good songs are always to be found here and there, and this is exactly the example of what I've just been writing about, so in case you want to know Neil Young better but don't know where to start, here is a good point!

#sundayrevival Just feel better - Santana feat. Steven Tyler

Just feel better - Santana feat. Steven Tyler

Old sayings always come in handy, and one of my favourites is the one about hitting two birds with one stone (or, in Italian, "catching two pigeons with one broad bean"). I just had a good chance to use that, as I was wondering what I could post for today's sundayrevival and then, 5 minutes later, I got this chorus in my head but couldn't remember which song it came from. After a very quick Google search (this time I've been lucky, a couple of other times my brain did this trick to me it has been way more cumbersome to find out which song I was thinking about, one of them is actually still pending!), I found out that Just feel better was the song I have been mumbling in my mind and voilà, here both of my problems were solved! I hope this can help you enjoy your sunday too!

Au revoir - OneRepublic

Au revoir - OneRepublic

Loads of coverage for Elastic heart, the song I posted yesterday! Seems like lots of people got offended and touched regarding issues of pedophilia that might be suggested by video, an impression that personally didn't occur to me at all, I understand and empathize with the bad situations some people have been through, but I deem them intelligent enough to understand that this is art and dancing, and it has nothing to do with molestation and violence. My opinion is that people who get offended by potential pedophilia references should look for it back into their own eyes. Well, that's enough talk about a song that is not even the one I'm posting today!! Something much less troublesome today (I hope), I got back listening to OneRepublic (don't know why) and I found this song on my mind again: I noticed it for the second time, the first being right before their November concert in Milan. I thus decided to include it in the playlist I'm building, and I'm posting it here too! Also, given that bad attack that took place in Paris yesterday, I'll take it as a chance to say au revoir to the people who were so violently attacked and killed...