#dave bry

[houseoforange]

Emily had always been generously accepting of my lifestyle choices. I never had to hide anything from her... We gave each other space, she and I. We didn't have to spend every moment together or insist that we take up each other's hobbies. It reminded me of that Kahlil Gibran poem people always read at weddings about how each individual string needs to quiver separately in order for a lute to make nice music, and how 'the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.' That had always made sense to me, and I took pride in how we didn't lose ourselves—our selves, our individuality—even as we'd decided to spend the rest of our lives together.

Though this letter is written to Robert Sean Leonard, I've never heard of Kahlil Gibran's poem which is why I decided to highlight this excerpt from page 227 of Dave Bry's Public Apology. It's the second of my two favorite parts in Dave's short & sweet read.

[ashittyghost]

"I think I actually prefer this original version of the song (called "Chelsea Hotel #1," and never recorded for any album) to the one that became more famous. It's dirtier, more sensual, and when he breaks it down into a gospel reverie with his back-up singers in the middle, he finds a new line of melody that I'll miss forever. And at the end, my God, when he goes back into it, and sings about watching Janis racing the midnight train, nude, without any cape to cover her, tearing up her feet on the gravel, and he can't catch up with her? It's a eulogy, this song, isn't it?" - Dave Bry

[foxlot]

Soft-rugged and fluorescent-lit, the video store gave me the same dissociative feeling as looking in the mirror had. There I was, in this very familiar place, a place where I'd spent so many hours of my life doing exactly what I was doing then, scanning the collection, searching for titles that I knew or new ones that looked intriguing, a place where there were always faces I recognized—Ms. Maxwell, an English teacher at my school, worked there some nights—a place where people met and stopped to chat. There I was, just like always, except not at all like always. Walking around the store, I couldn't help thinking about what I looked like to the other people around me. I saw Mr. Johnson, Jeremy's dad, there that night. Did he recognize me? Did I seem the same? I suppose I did. I wasn't trembling or sobbing or breathing into a brown paper bag, there wasn't blood dripping from my nose or soaking through my shirt from my chest. I was just standing there, my jaw set firm, squinting slightly as I scanned the titles on the plastic-sheathed spines of the VHS boxes on one of the racks in the comedy section. I felt like a spy. I felt like a liar.

Dear Mom, Dave Bry

[colleen-powers]

"Watch how he twitches his right hand when he raps. It seems like a device he's developed to help him remember his lyrics. Like some kind of muscle memory thing or something. It's cool. And he's really, really, really good." --Dave Bry about Kendrick Lamar on Funkmaster Flex's show

[bearsasbears]