And I Still Know All the Words
Before Alanis took stage last night, ejdl leans over from her seat and ponders aloud “Do you think she’ll sing the hidden track?” Wow, I think, I don’t even remember that track… It was a capella, right?
Then a single lamp is lit on stage and there she is, singing a capella, bringing us into the evening with the hidden track from 1995’s “Jagged Little Pill”. Ballsy.
Would you forgive me, love
If I dance in your shower?
Would you forgive me, love
If I lay in your bed?
Would you forgive me, love
If I stayed all afternoon?
She is calm, smiling, glowing, and deserving of every wizened look she gives the audience that evening. And she is so happy! She has taken that whining edge off of her voice and softened it to suit both her years and the acoustic setting. And it has so much power behind it. So even though I had organized this girl’s night out for the express purpose of seeing my husband*, Jason Mraz, as the opening act, Alanis stole her own show back with only a few notes.
And I still knew all the words. Mind-blowing.
I’m sitting there at the Hummingbird Centre, twenty-eight years old, a whole ten years packed with experience I would not have had if I had seen her on the original “Jagged Little Pill” tour. But I also feel like that eighteen year old girl again, with every note. I’m both at the same time: me now and me then.
The memories come back fast and furious.
I’m angry with the ex-boyfriend who went to Japan and married his host-sister. I can’t even shake his hand.
I’m driving my Buick Century station wagon (yellow with wood paneling, yeah!) as fast as I can over Oak Hill – dropping it into neutral at the crest of the hill and flying down the backside at dangerous speeds. [We called it the Alanis-mobile, thanks to the video from “Ironic”.]
I’m bored at the bowling alley. I’m hiding red painted finger nails from my mother. [It looks so trashy!]
I’m trying that first cigarette. [“Have you ever had to use an asthma inhaler?” he says. “It’s kind of like that.”]
I am in hysterics after losing a ring of sentimental value at a house party – the one where the empty bottle of peach schnapps got tossed over the fence along with my sanity.
I am screaming “You Oughta Know” at the top of my lungs from the top of the slide at the park behind the hospital. The Dub joins in, also at the top of her lungs. The boys are terrified and get back in their cars.
Alanis IS the soundtrack of my high school senior year. She is sexy and bad-ass and the best goddamn catharsis I have ever heard. And she fucking rocks my eighteen year old world. She shocks the hell out of me and I love every moment of it as she sings:
You took me out to wine, dine, 69 me
You didn’t hear a damn word I said
- “Right Through You”
It was a slap in the face how quickly I was replaced
Are you thinking of me when you fuck her
- “You Oughta Know”
My brothers they never went blind for what they did
But I may as well have
- “Forgiven”
I don’t want to be your glass of single malt whiskey
Hidden in the bottom drawer
- “Not the Doctor”
But it’s more than just the shock value that reels me in and makes eighteen year old me hold on tight. There’s a depth beneath the shaking anger. She hits all my insecurities with “Perfect”. She bonds with me when she rolls her eyes over her Catholic upbringing in “Forgiven”. (Though not raised Catholic myself, I did have a short phase as an evangelical in the earlier years of high school. I stopped when someone had a seizure during the service and the pastors specifically told people not to help, as she had simply been consumed by the spirit.) She sympathizes with my worry for a friend with a tendency to withdraw and shrink in “Mary Jane”. Alanis Morissette is my best friend, the rebellious older sister I never had, and my own personal GOD at age eighteen.
I never bought another album by her. I thought we just drifted apart. Actually, I thought I outgrew her. And last night she showed me how wrong I was.
Twenty-eight year old me still knew all the words to every song she sang. But this time, I responded to different parts, different keys, different lilts of her voice. To say I was a precautious teenager is putting it mildly. I was Good with a Capital G. I didn’t vandalize, or drink and drive, or experiment with drugs and there was absolutely no sex to my teenage years. I only ever skipped class once and straight-As were a mandatory expectation I placed on myself. Two words describe me:
1) Late
2) Bloomer.
So a lot of that inevitable experimentation with good and bad, right and wrong, and the expansion of my universe happened when I finally felt old enough to be able to keep myself “safe” and mature enough to deal with any of the consequences, should they arise. Alanis afforded herself no such luxury – by the time she released “Jagged Little Pill” she had seen and done it all. But I had not.
It wasn’t until ten years had passed that I could begin to relate to that sharp edge of badness she presented in JLP.
You must wonder why I’m relentless and all strung out
- “All I Really Want”
And every time you speak her name
Does she know how you told me you’d hold me
Until you died, ‘til you died
But you’re still alive
- “You Oughta Know”
The individual lines from “Hand In My Pocket” are like a tuning fork inside me:
I’m high but I’m grounded
I’m young and I’m underpaid
I care but I’m restless
I’m free but I’m focused
I’m hard but I’m friendly, baby
JESUS.
And she giggles when she changes the line in “Ironic” to
It’s like meeting the man of my dreams
And then meeting his beautiful… husband
I still sing the original words. And they send a chill down my spine. I get it now. I didn't then.
I get it all now. Everything that she sang to me then was true then. And it’s still all true now. It just hits me different. It hits me with profound piano keys, instead of wailing guitars and huffing harmonicas. It hits me with the soft purity of her voice and the knowing look in her eyes, instead of that twitching, keening, high-strung wail she used to adopt. Alanis smiles and loves her audience because she’s pretty sure they all get the point of this “Where Is She Now” Tour.
Alanis Morissette, you are still my best friend, my rebellious older sister and my own personal GOD. Thank you for the show.
*In no way is he really my husband.
Then a single lamp is lit on stage and there she is, singing a capella, bringing us into the evening with the hidden track from 1995’s “Jagged Little Pill”. Ballsy.
Would you forgive me, love
If I dance in your shower?
Would you forgive me, love
If I lay in your bed?
Would you forgive me, love
If I stayed all afternoon?
She is calm, smiling, glowing, and deserving of every wizened look she gives the audience that evening. And she is so happy! She has taken that whining edge off of her voice and softened it to suit both her years and the acoustic setting. And it has so much power behind it. So even though I had organized this girl’s night out for the express purpose of seeing my husband*, Jason Mraz, as the opening act, Alanis stole her own show back with only a few notes.
And I still knew all the words. Mind-blowing.
I’m sitting there at the Hummingbird Centre, twenty-eight years old, a whole ten years packed with experience I would not have had if I had seen her on the original “Jagged Little Pill” tour. But I also feel like that eighteen year old girl again, with every note. I’m both at the same time: me now and me then.
The memories come back fast and furious.
I’m angry with the ex-boyfriend who went to Japan and married his host-sister. I can’t even shake his hand.
I’m driving my Buick Century station wagon (yellow with wood paneling, yeah!) as fast as I can over Oak Hill – dropping it into neutral at the crest of the hill and flying down the backside at dangerous speeds. [We called it the Alanis-mobile, thanks to the video from “Ironic”.]
I’m bored at the bowling alley. I’m hiding red painted finger nails from my mother. [It looks so trashy!]
I’m trying that first cigarette. [“Have you ever had to use an asthma inhaler?” he says. “It’s kind of like that.”]
I am in hysterics after losing a ring of sentimental value at a house party – the one where the empty bottle of peach schnapps got tossed over the fence along with my sanity.
I am screaming “You Oughta Know” at the top of my lungs from the top of the slide at the park behind the hospital. The Dub joins in, also at the top of her lungs. The boys are terrified and get back in their cars.
Alanis IS the soundtrack of my high school senior year. She is sexy and bad-ass and the best goddamn catharsis I have ever heard. And she fucking rocks my eighteen year old world. She shocks the hell out of me and I love every moment of it as she sings:
You took me out to wine, dine, 69 me
You didn’t hear a damn word I said
- “Right Through You”
It was a slap in the face how quickly I was replaced
Are you thinking of me when you fuck her
- “You Oughta Know”
My brothers they never went blind for what they did
But I may as well have
- “Forgiven”
I don’t want to be your glass of single malt whiskey
Hidden in the bottom drawer
- “Not the Doctor”
But it’s more than just the shock value that reels me in and makes eighteen year old me hold on tight. There’s a depth beneath the shaking anger. She hits all my insecurities with “Perfect”. She bonds with me when she rolls her eyes over her Catholic upbringing in “Forgiven”. (Though not raised Catholic myself, I did have a short phase as an evangelical in the earlier years of high school. I stopped when someone had a seizure during the service and the pastors specifically told people not to help, as she had simply been consumed by the spirit.) She sympathizes with my worry for a friend with a tendency to withdraw and shrink in “Mary Jane”. Alanis Morissette is my best friend, the rebellious older sister I never had, and my own personal GOD at age eighteen.
I never bought another album by her. I thought we just drifted apart. Actually, I thought I outgrew her. And last night she showed me how wrong I was.
Twenty-eight year old me still knew all the words to every song she sang. But this time, I responded to different parts, different keys, different lilts of her voice. To say I was a precautious teenager is putting it mildly. I was Good with a Capital G. I didn’t vandalize, or drink and drive, or experiment with drugs and there was absolutely no sex to my teenage years. I only ever skipped class once and straight-As were a mandatory expectation I placed on myself. Two words describe me:
1) Late
2) Bloomer.
So a lot of that inevitable experimentation with good and bad, right and wrong, and the expansion of my universe happened when I finally felt old enough to be able to keep myself “safe” and mature enough to deal with any of the consequences, should they arise. Alanis afforded herself no such luxury – by the time she released “Jagged Little Pill” she had seen and done it all. But I had not.
It wasn’t until ten years had passed that I could begin to relate to that sharp edge of badness she presented in JLP.
You must wonder why I’m relentless and all strung out
- “All I Really Want”
And every time you speak her name
Does she know how you told me you’d hold me
Until you died, ‘til you died
But you’re still alive
- “You Oughta Know”
The individual lines from “Hand In My Pocket” are like a tuning fork inside me:
I’m high but I’m grounded
I’m young and I’m underpaid
I care but I’m restless
I’m free but I’m focused
I’m hard but I’m friendly, baby
JESUS.
And she giggles when she changes the line in “Ironic” to
It’s like meeting the man of my dreams
And then meeting his beautiful… husband
I still sing the original words. And they send a chill down my spine. I get it now. I didn't then.
I get it all now. Everything that she sang to me then was true then. And it’s still all true now. It just hits me different. It hits me with profound piano keys, instead of wailing guitars and huffing harmonicas. It hits me with the soft purity of her voice and the knowing look in her eyes, instead of that twitching, keening, high-strung wail she used to adopt. Alanis smiles and loves her audience because she’s pretty sure they all get the point of this “Where Is She Now” Tour.
Alanis Morissette, you are still my best friend, my rebellious older sister and my own personal GOD. Thank you for the show.
*In no way is he really my husband.
posted by nerdifer at 11:46 p.m.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home