dreams are not realities, or why i don't listen to the dresden dolls

once upon a time i was a sweet, sensitive goth with perfect grades that were only surpassed by a more perfect reputation. it's funny but it is completely true - i looked like bloody death but i acted like an absolute angel; it wasnt until college that i did anything even remotely morally reprehensible in the slightest (well, wait - does anal sex count?)

this combination of scholastic ability and respectability earned me the unique privilege of attending the summer session of harvard university. i confess that to this day i am stil not completely sure that i understand why my parents let me go - they were the type that were overprotective to a fault, and overprotection is not really something you associate with letting a sixteen-year-old live in a dorm 3,000 miles away from home with a bit of money and a wardrobe inspired equally by aubrey beardsley, jane eyre and twiggy ramirez.

(you think i'm kidding? i loved this picture.)

but they let me go, and the experience was a definitive one for more than a few reasons. it was the summer in which, left to manage myself entirely, i did exactly as i pleased and was young enough to not feel any shame about it. i read in the cemetery and befriended the bums who congregated outside of it. it was the golden age of my life as a modern dancer, in which i had the rare opportunity to have a dance choreographed on me. it was the summer in which i became almost entirely nocturnal, and it also went down as the summer in which i spent all the money my parents had entrusted to me so solemnly on records, flowers, vintage clothes, sweets and comic books. (they were not pleased.)

but the most delicious gift that that summer gave to me was one that i still play with passionately today - a taste for the heady thrills of flaneurism. late at night, depressed and alone, i would wander wander wander around the streets of the deserted city, up to the store 24, down to the bus depot, through the yard, over to radcliffe, over to the gym, anywhere. i'm not sure what first inspired these late-night jaunts, and that's part of what makes them so charming to me. i simply decided to begin, perhaps fueled by the innate curiosity to witness and to know that governs nearly all of my pursuits. at any rate, i discovered quickly that walking was an excellent palliative measure against existential sadness, and i developed an immense taste for it.

it was on one of these innumerable nighttime ramblings that i first saw amanda palmer in harvard square. on friday nights there were always all sorts of people milling around there; between the T stop and the ABP it was the sort of place people chilled at just to be seen. this was the era in which she was doing her act as the eight-foot bride and i was immediately transfixed.

(amanda palmer, as she would have appeared at the time)

oh my god!!!! i remember thinking. she has black hair too! and she's also wearing a vintage wedding gown! and holding flowers! AHHHH! clearly, clearly we are meant to meet. and be best friends. (keep in mind i was but sixteen, and unused to the harsh realities of the world.) it was almost too pat. i believe at the time she had a card in front of her with a snippet of emily dickinson on it, something about silence.

so what did i do, this sweet, sensitive young scholar? well, i did what any poet philosopher would do when confronted with a similar situation.

lately i've been thinking about the word "insecure." i use it at times to describe myself but more and more often it is feeling stale and falling flat as far as capturing exactly what i mean when i try to use it. i am an anxious person, sure. i am a trepidatious person, sure, given to fantastical flights of the imagination and hesitation in the midst of ambiguous and troubling scenes. but when confronted with scenes of extreme meaning and beauty i don't doubt for an instant - i go forward blindly with perfect vision and balls of steel.

i am certain that i dressed with particular care, although i do not remember exactly what it is that i wore. i can hazard a guess, however, that it was my favourite dress, a cream wedding gown in raw silk from 1860. i wrote my favourite emily dickinson poem on a dollar bill, rolled it up, tied it with a sprig of evergreen, dropped it into her urn, and waited.

eventually she stepped off her box, and i was there. hesitant but full of strange love, i timidly complimented her on her dress.

"it's not mine." she answered, awkwardly, coldly, turning away, freezing me out.

really now, can you believe such a thing? freezing out an adorable, raw, silly girl in a precious dress with a sad little face? incomprehensible. (but then again, i'm slightly prejudiced.)

almost nothing, really, but to me, what a something it was. i was so upset i ran away to the edge of the yard and hid in the dark against the wrought iron fence. here i had a foolish little cry, knowing just how foolish i was, and completed the foolishness of the scene by writing a foolish little poem about it all.

because i am "like that" in that i still have all of my journals, i have that exact poem here in front of me. i hesitate to reprint it because it is terrible, just terrible, but i feel like it would be false to not include it. (besides, it is slightly hysterical.)


"I.

and i wonder as i sit
i still see your face clearly
your hair was pulled back
and you stepped off your box
to talk to those outside your realm.

you opened your mouth and things fell
out, not exactly the colour i expected.
hiking up your dress,
"it's not mine" and a falling tone.
how strange for me the irony sits.
it's musty but still a foundling to me.
how strange.
live up to your poetry after all,
and the distended layers would match,
and i wouldn't feel so empty.

when you suppose that you scare all the pieces you thought were yourself strewn about
then it is time to go home
when you suppose that it is time to go home
then it is time to scare yourself

and then will perhaps leaping
make me thinner,
make you truthful-er,
make my hair blacker?

(i'm guessing that this is around where it starts becoming about my boyfriend and not about amanda.)

why did my persistence die
with our first kiss?

it's encroaching
it's so close now
i can feel it feel it feel it
and however far i run
it's not like i will forget

time may be kind,
but it's just trying to make up
for what's coming next."


i never connected my experience to the dresden dolls until they started becoming more popular. their first website was part of jon whitney's brainwashed, which i frequented pretty religiously in those days. (a brief sidenote: jon whitney was, for a space of time in my life, a hero of mine, and when i had the opportunity to meet him he was more than pleasant. sidesidenote: if you really want a laugh, click on the feb 2004 interview with jon whitney from afterimage. holy shit that made my night.)

pretty soon even my dad, in his inimitable manner, was telling me: "hey suz! i heard this song and thought of you. it's about a boy! who runs on coins! you should check it out!" so check it out i did. and as soon as i read that amanda palmer had been a street performer in cambridge, i stiffened. that bitch. and i refused to listen to more than a few moments.

and i wonder now, especially as it is quite a timely notion for me to ponder on: when the iron enters my soul, what should i do?

of course, there is no answer. i am almost at the point where i can laugh at such a thing, and happily find the dresden dolls torrent and live a life full of bliss. but i am not at that point yet. and it is, as i elaborate on at length in my thesis, it is that "almost" that makes all of the difference my dears.

when the iron has entered my soul it is a type of permanence and yet it is not permanent. how could it be? i could simply say, "i am a foucauldian" and let that stand in for any further elaboration but instead i shall elaborate. i am sure if i had amanda palmer here in her own defense she would mutter something about being insecure, or annoyed, or busy on that particular summer evening. and there is a way she could say it that would melt that frozen part of me. this is a given. (this notion is part of why it is so damnably hard to determine a real prescriptive philosophics.)

but until that cold, hidden part is kissed by the sun, iron it remains. and i stick to that right, and continue to not listen to the dresden dolls. dreams are not realities; dreams need to have someone home for them to come true. so right now i am turning to the dreams that are "at home," so to speak. i know it is the right thing to do.