Time to Pretend

TIME TO PRETEND, MGMT

(February 2010)

Pre-leaving London: A lot of TV shows have great songs in their soundtracks, but very few of them know how to use them well. Take, as an example, Cold Case - because of their time-jumping stories, they play an insane amount of time-appropriate music, but never use it affectively. Shows like Grey's Anatomy, which uses a lot of indie-rock stuff, will have it playing in the background of an intense scene, and it's usually distracting for either the drama of the scene or the music playing. However, Skins used music really well in their scenes, and none better than MGMT's "Time to Pretend" in the second series finale. I heard it once the first time, then was stuck on it. In a weird way, it's a truly epic song, with its very grand dun-DUNs in the background and lyrics, though about the shallow rock-star lifestyle, has wonderful and thoughtful phrasing about the cyclical nature of life in a way that isn't usually mentioned in a song like this.

As a writer, music is really important to me when I write, and a lot of times, songs will figure in significantly to what I'm writing. I can only think of, maybe, one script I've written in the fifteen years or so of me writing where I haven't thought of a song to go in it (and that script was just written a month or so ago). I've decided that I want "Time to Pretend" to be in a script of mine - I can already see it, a music montage of characters growing up and getting into their twenties/thirties. Maybe I should be writing that instead of this blog?

Maybe that's not such a bad idea.

In My Place

IN MY PLACE, COLDPLAY

(February 2003)

Sophomore year at UCLA: I had been aware of Coldplay's existence, mostly when the summer before going to college when MTV did this A-Z of things to come this summer special, and Y was for "Yellow," which was Coldplay's first single. But I had tuned out their other singles from the first album, mostly based on my massive dislike for "Yellow," and wasn't even aware that they had a second album out. But, during winter quarter of sophomore year, I was wandering down the hallway from my room at the end to the elevator on the opposite end when I head this song blasting from my RA's room. Mary, my RA (who also had a very, very unfortunate surname), had a habit of blasting "A Rush of Blood to the Head" from her room in the early evenings, and I walked over to her room next to the elevator to pop my head in. In hindsight, I think I had this fascination with Mary, and it wasn't a crush at all - she's not my type, and there was a latent snobbery in her demeanor that was a real turn-off - but I think it may have been this need to know that my RA was as cool as Justin, my freshman year RA, was, and I don't know if Mary was. I mean, she was nice, I'm not saying she was a bitch, but she wasn't as cool as I wanted her to be. But I kept wanting it, wanting it, and that's why I kept bothering her, especially to nitpick her musical choices.

On this particular day, "In My Place" was playing, with its oddly catchy guitar riff, and I really wanted to know what it was. So, I asked and I was told. Then she started asking where I was from and told me that I had a major New York vibe, which I still to this day don't understand since I've never been to New York. I asked what she meant by that, and she blathered on about something about being sophisticated or something. When I told her that I was in fact from San Francisco, she said that she didn't get that at all. Apparently, San Francisco is void of sophistication. All this while listening to Chris Martin wail about being lost.

I Hear The Bells

I HEAR THE BELLS, MIKE DOUGHTY

(August 2005)

The summer after I graduated from UCLA: I was living with my best friend Scott in this amazingly beautiful apartment that neither of us could afford in West LA, a blue eighteen unit complex on Rochester. I was kinda unemployed - I was still working at the UCLA Store, but since I had already graduated, I only had until December to work there. And I was absolutely obsessed with Veronica Mars.

Sadly (or not, depending on how you look at it), that show has become a defining theme of that pot-scented, mindless, money-draining, post-college year. I mean, really, Scott and I would get high and wander the backstreets in our neighborhood, and I marveled at the neon lights glowing from these other apartment buildings, and I felt like I was in the seedy world of that show, and I loved it. I also even tried replicating that in my bedroom - I bought a string of blue Christmas lights at the Target on Washington near Sony Studios in Culver City and hung them up in my room to have on while I slept. (The truth is, that plan never fully came to fruition: I only hung about half of the lights, the other half remaining in a clump near my bed - it probably was a combination of my trademark laziness (the entire year that we lived there, I don't think I ever fully unpacked) and the pot, which made me even lazier... the irony is that I wanted that cool blue light in my room so that I could have it on while getting high and listening to electropop on my virus-and-gnome-infested computer). And part of my entire wanting to live inside the world of Veronica Mars meant downloading the soundtrack album and listening to it non-stop.

"I Hear the Bells" is track 2. When I downloaded it and listened to it, I didn't remember hearing it on the show by that point, but I enjoyed it. It didn't make its debut on the show until close to the end of the second season, during Veronica and Logan's "epic" conversation during the alterna-prom (in a theme reminiscent with that TV season, Veronica Mars shared a lot of music with Grey's Anatomy, and "I Hear the Bells" made its debut on that show in the middle of season 2 when George has his first solo surgery while stuck in an elevator with a dying patient... the song didn't have as much impact in that scene).

I really dug Doughty's raspy voice, and for some reason, there were lines that spoke to me and will forever encapsulate that time period: "I'm seeking girls in sales and marketing / Let's go make out up in the balcony." While I was unemployed for a majority of that year, that didn't mean that I wasn't actively looking for work. I was bounced around from temp agency to temp agency, and the one I had the longest relationship with was Apple One, and their office was in Torrance, which was a long ways away from West LA. I mean, in terms of miles, it's not necessarily far, but try driving down the 405 in the middle of the day. Yeah, hours. Hours! Anyway, as an entry-level applicant, I only really had retail or admin experience (like everyone else in the world), so I figured that if I wanted to admin anywhere, it had to be someplace interesting where I wouldn't want to stab myself or go jerk off in the bathroom out of boredom. So, I said on all my applications and resume that I wanted a job in sales or marketing. What a random pairing to be mentioned in this song I was listening to a lot of. The making out line, well... I always want to make out with someone, and having graduated college with my first major relationship under my belt (no pun intended), well, I wanted to continue on that road.

The most vivid memory I have of the song is listening to it in Casey (my wonderful car) while driving back from another failed appointment at Apple One in Torrance. It was around 2:30 in the afternoon, hence heavy traffic on the 405 North. The weather was weird: it was kinda cloudy and dark, definitely about to rain (which, I don't recall if it actually did). I was stressed out, probably smoking a cigarette since I'd learned at that time that smoking actually calmed down my LA-acquired road rage, and I remember listening to the song, stuck on the freeway, closer to Torrance than not (I hadn't gotten to the airport yet), and feeling a bit calmer. For whatever reason, I listened to the song on loop a few times, definitely chilling me out, preparing me for another night of staying in, getting high, watching TV, and hoping that my life would start the next day.