#how did i never notice this before it's so fucking funny hearing zzs of all people say that

[ayjadasblogforeverything]

[dreamgirlbreezy]

CHAPTER 22

ROCKY

 I was cold real cold and I couldn’t move nothing would move but I could hear voices talking, talking to me but I couldn’t answer.

“Ma’am hang in there we’re going to get you out can you hear me squeeze my hand if you can hear me” someone said I tried my best to squeeze his hand. “I feel a small squeeze she can hear me”

“Her name is Rocky Raquel” a voice said

“You know her?” someone asked

“Yes she’s my friend” the voice said I couldn’t put a name to the voice.

“Raquel we are going to get you out of there just stay with me okay hold on” they said I’m holding what happen then everything went black again.

“Raquel, Raquel can you hear me? We’re going to take good care of you here” another voice said I felt real cold I couldn’t open my eyes for nothing in the world all I could do was listen to the voices around me.

“Get her to the ER run a CT scan on her make sure she don’t have Internal Bleeding .” The voice said I was rushed somewhere then everything went black again.

I could hear voices again but still couldn’t open my eyes but I was glad I could hear people talking again. And I could make out who’s voice was who’s.

“Will she be okay?” my mom said mommy I want to talk to my mother.

“Yes she will she has concussion and 3 bruised ribs, no bleeding on the brain or any internal bleeding, no brain swelling and a hairline fracture head injury a few lacerations as you can see she has whiplash but no spinal cord damage” the doctor said

“But she has on a neck brace will she need to keep wearing that?” my mom asked

“For now yes she will need to keep the brace on to keep her neck and spinal cord in place. Neck injuries can be painful and require weeks of physical therapy, her vital signs are stable and strong.” the doctor said

“Why is she still out I don’t understand” my mom said I felt her touch my hand.

“Raquel has had a major contusion to her head. But her brain activity is normal, and she has no cerebral swelling. She'll wake when she's ready. Just give her some time” the doctor said I try in vain to move my hand. Nothing moves, nothing responds.

Unconsciousness claims me once more, stealing me away from the pain.

Everything is heavy and aching: limbs, head, eyelids, nothing will move. My eyes and mouth are resolutely shut, unwilling to move, leaving me blind and mute and aching. As I surface from the fog, consciousness hovers, a seductive siren just out of reach. Sounds become voices.

“I'm not leaving her.” Donnie says

Donnie! He's here . . . I will myself to wake - his voice is strained, an agonized whisper.

“There’s nothing you can do for her now go home get some sleep” my mom says

“I’m good I’m not leaving her side I can't”

“I know but what are you going to do sit here all night until they kick you out again and you just wait in the waiting room until visiting hours start again” my mom said

“Yes if I have too I’m not going so you might as well save your breath”

The fog closes in.

The fog lifts but I have no sense of time.

“I shouldn’t have made the plans to go out it’s my fault huh?” Jada asked

“It’s not your fault wanting to hang out with your friends” my mom says

“Yea”

“She said you was texting her that night?” Jada said

“I think I was I was drunk that night and was drunk texting when I came too I reread what I was texting her, I hope it wasn’t my fault that she got like this”

“No Mia said she didn’t have her phone out she said she wasn’t going to look at your text until she got home” my mom says.

“All I texted her while I was drunk it how--” I fight the fog . . . fight . . . But I spiral down once more into oblivion. No . . .

“I was there when the truck hit her I couldn’t believe it I called 911 and waited until they got there could you believe it a drunk driver he got out thinking he didn’t hit nothing cops locked his ass up right then and there, she lucky to be alive the way her car looked” Mia said

“Yea well let me be alone with ole boy for a few minutes I'll make him wish he was the one in the hospital and not her.”

“Yea well I need to go are you going to go home and shower or something?” Mia asked

“No I don’t wanna leave her side plus Lisa said she’ll be back so maybe I will catch a few ZZs when she gets here”

I try. I try. I want to see him. But my body disobeys me, and I fall asleep once more.

 I have a pressing need to pee. I open my eyes. I'm in the clean, sterile environment of a hospital room. It's dark except for a sidelight, and all is quiet. My head and my chest aches, but more than that, my bladder is bursting. I need to pee. I test my limbs. My right arm smarts, and I notice the IV attached to it on the inside of my elbow. I shut my eyes quickly. Turning my head - I'm pleased that it responds to my will - I open my eyes again. Donnie is asleep, sitting beside me and leaning on my bed with his head on his folded arms. I reach out, grateful once more that my body responds, and run my fingers through his soft hair. He's startled awake, raising his head so suddenly my hand falls weakly back onto the bed.

“Hi”

“Rocky your awake hi, let me go get the nurse”

“Wait don’t leave me”

“I'll push the button for the nurse” he pushes the button.

Intercom “Yes” nurse says

“She’s awake”

Intercom “Okay here I come” nurse says

“I’m so happy to see you”

“Same here”

“We got a lot to talk about you drunk text me”

“I did and I wanna talk about that” the nurse came in.

“Hey Raquel how do you feel?” the nurse asked as she helped me sit up.

“I’m sore all over and I have to pee”

“Okay I can help you with that Donnie can you gives us a moment please” the nurse said

“You’ll get me once you’re done?”

“Yes close the door when you go out” the nurse says

“Okay” he took my hand and kissed it then left the room closing the door behind him.

After used a bedpan which was horrible felt like I was peeing on myself and was checked out and removed the neck brace she then opened the door and Donnie came back in and the nurse left saying the doctor will be in shortly to talk to me.

“Hey” he took my hand and kissed it “I was so scared when I got the call you was in a car crash I felt like my world had stopped and now that you’re ok it had started again”

“I, there’s so much I wanna say to you but I don’t know where to start”

“Start from the beginning”

“I have one important question”

“Okay?”

“Do you have a girlfriend cause Sammie said she saw you out on date with your girlfriend”

“No I don’t have a girlfriend that was just a friend I made through Maurice she has a man she wanted to hang out cause she was mad at him, Stacey is not my girl” he pulled his phone out I don’t know who he was going to call or how long we have together where we can talk so I need to start talking now.

“I just wanted to….. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for the pain I caused you. I’m really sorry for my part in it. But mostly I’m sorry because I miss our friendship. And however far off it may be, I look forward to the day that we can be friends again" he looked up at me putting his phone away. "You mean so much to me and I know I go from 0 to 1000 with you and I’m working on myself. I don’t want what we have to be lost and broken. But I love you I do so fucking much" few tears fell and I looked at him, he stood up I didn’t want him to leave so I pulled him. I wrapped my arms around his neck pulling him down to me, in a hug burying my face in his neck, now crying. 

“Raquel”

"Adonis please I’m sorry for what I did to you. And baby I’m in love you in every way I’m in love your heart, I’m in love your body and soul I’m in love your hugs, I’m in love your kisses. I’m in love with your smile, I’m in love your laugh, I’m in love with your love, and I’m in love with the way care. It’s funny how big of an impact you have on me. It’s like when I see you, you don’t even have to speak…all you can do is smile, and it can make my day, and then that’s how I remember my reasons for loving you. I miss you when something really good happens, because you’re the one I want to share it with. I miss you when something is troubling me, because you’re the one who understands me so well. I miss you when I laugh and cry, because I know that you are the one that makes my laughter grow, and my tears disappear. I miss you all the time, but I miss you the most when I lay awake at night, and think of all the wonderful times that we spent with each other for those were some of the best and most memorable times of my life." I held on to him for a while then I finally broke the hug letting my hands touch his face, travel down his neck, chest, stomach, and they landed on his waist. I looked up into his eyes, his face was emotionless, I couldn’t read him I didn’t know what else to say or do right now. I then felt his hand slowly go up my back, to the back of my neck and he pulled me forward towards him. He then kissed me, on the lips, slowly his hand touched my face. As he kissed me like he never did before and I loved it.

[grimelords]

I realised I finished writing up my January playlist and then forgot to post it, so I’m doing it here and now at the tail end of February. It’s 3 hours of good music, complete from A$AP Ferg to ZZ Top. Please enjoy.

​Dream House - Deafheaven: I started the year off with extreme mental anguish at the realisation that Sunbather is five years old this year and that I am thusly one million years old and have wasted my youth. That aside, Dream House is still an incredible song. It does what the best songs do and speaks directly to the teenaged part of your brain that thinks nobody will ever understand you like this song does right now. It is an overwhelming experience, the whole album is, and very good for having an embarrassing amount of emotions while you're driving alone and it's very loud.

Hold My Liquor - Kanye West: When this song came out I remember someone said the best musical moment of 2013 was when you couldn't tell the difference between Chief Keef and Justin Vernon on this song and I'm inclined to agree.

Melody 4 - Tera Melos: I've talked about this album at length in these playlists and probably featured almost every song at this point but I'll just say, what I like so much about this song is how it moves so effortlessly between a very melodic almost pop-punk type chorus before disintegrating into stop start mathematics and back again before you even notice.

B Boy (feat Big Sean & A$AP Ferg) - Meek Mill: I don't know how the fuck he did it, but somehow Meek Mill got a bunch of rappers who are normally nothing amazing (Meek included) to operate at the absolute top of their game for whole verse each. Highlights especially are 'I got commas on commas on commas, and I ain't talkin about a run on sentence!' 'put my P up on her head like that bitch is reppin Philly, and I wheelie in the pussy like my n**** meek milly' and the immediate about turn of A$Ap Ferg saying 'You thinkin' Khloe don't know me, I'm in the car dashin' haters/I'm in the Kardashian, get it? I'm lyin', can't I pretend?/They say fake it 'til you make it, well let the fakin' begin!'

Shabba REMIX - A$AP Ferg, Shabba Ranks, Busta Rhymes, Migos: This song's a good example of how many different flows you can get to work over one beat, and how much it improves the song. Ferg is so fast and so varied, then Migos even it out with straight triplets for most of their verse before Busta kills it by just doing absolutely everything. Great job everyone.

Attak (feat. Danny Brown) - Rustie: I normally can't stand Danny Brown but he kills this song. I still have a lot of feelings about Rustie, who showed so much promise for being the weirdo that dance music needed before presumably watching HudMo make a million producing for Kanye and friends and deciding to remove every interesting element from his music to make it palatable for rappers. That is, at least, my theory. This song is great, but every other song on this album is an example of this approach not working and instead producing boring, half assed songs where nobody's at their full potential.

Ultra Thizz - Rustie: Compare it to this, the busiest song in the world. The way the melody of the bassline that sounds like it's about to swallow you whole contends with the synth melody AND the pitched up vocal melody for your attention, they all come it at once and trade barbs before being superseded by a fuzzy, inscrutable guitar solo which fades out and leaves us back at the start. What I love about this song is the absolute maximalism and hypercolour sounds, combined with the only simple melody being the big chord stabs that centre the piece combine into a total sensory experience. Not to mention the rhythms, where absolutely every part of it seems to be slightly stranger than you expect, constantly dropping one beat before or after you expect - your first clue is the snare build at the start suddenly splitting into triplets.

If I Were A Carpenter - Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash: My girlfriend showed me this song and it unlocked a third of the triangle in my brain where this song, Wichita Lineman by Glen Campbell and The Engine Driver by The Decemberists make a sort of trinity of songs about having a job and thinking about Wife. They're all very very good too.

12 Bricks - OG Maco: Outside of the famous video, which is very good, this song is also incredible. Another in the pantheon of songs with extremely minimal instrumentation where the vocal performance is so good it doesn't need anything. The slight delay makes all the screaming and wooing toward the end just pile on top of each other in waves building the texture up until it finally levels out.

Requiem Para Um Amor - Toquinho: I really cannot get enough of the organ in this song. I don't think I've ever heard a classical guitar/electric organ duet before and now I'm hungry for more.

You Can Be A Robot, Too - Shintaro Sakamoto: This song appeared on my Discover Weekly playlist and I'm not really sure why but it's very good. I can't tell if it's actually a children's song or just playful like one but I appreciate it either way. When it started playing from the playlist the album cover was a cartoon of a kid surrounded by robots, but when I tried to add it to a playlist the art changed to a green picture of a skeleton playing a lap steel guitar with an explosion in the background, which felt very cursed to me.

Raver - Burial: This song has always stood out to me on Untrue because of how straightforward the beat is. Under anyone else's control this would be a normal song but instead it's this incredibly detailed, messy piece of work that feels like looking at a house song through a dirty window. I also have no proof at all to back this up but in my mind the xylophone line is sampled from Donkey Kong 64 or possibly Banjo Kazooie.

Cavalettas - The Mars Volta: I remember reading a bad review of this album when it came out that was mad because it pulled 'the most egregious studio trick in recent memory' by having the whole mix except for one guitar get sucked down into a wormhole multiple times, including the bass getting physically detuned until you can hear the strings slack before resuming as normal a second later. In my opinion it's incredibly funny and it sounds good so more bands should do it. Also the other day I saw the drummer Thomas Pridgen comment on Omar Rodriguez's instagram 'check ur dms bro'. Imagine being in a band with someone for a decade and not having their number, insane.

Flash Back - Rustie: Honestly I cannot get enough of this bassline. This song is another good example of what I was talking about with Rustie dumbing his melodies down after this album, the main line in this winds around and around itself in this loping confused rhythm and against the bass that's also syncopated it just ends up sounding like hypercolour, which is a feat for a song that's basically just those two melodies against each other for the bulk of it with some plastic choir stabs throughout.

Heaven - DJ Sammy: What an absolute perennial banger. Can you believe this AND Boys Of Summer were on the same album? Incredible stuff DJ Sammy. I've been meaning to make a playlist of all the 90s/2000s lame rave songs that are secretly very emotional and have definitely inspired absolute emotional turmoil in ravers the world over like this Better Off Alone and Heaven Is A Place On Earth, but for now just enjoy the Bryan Adams classic as reimagined by DJ Sammy.

Stalking To A Stranger (Planets Collide Remix) - The Avalanches: I owe this song a lot because it not only for me into Hunters And Collectors, who it turns out have far better and angrier songs than Holy Grail, but it also turned me onto Vertigo/Relight My Fire by Dan Hartman which is sampled at the start. When this song came out it was the first new Avalanches song in a decade or so and nobody knew what to make of it because suddenly Avalanches songs just have screaming men in them, which was very good.

Miracle - Kimbra: I think that very soon everyone is going to figure out that Kimbra has been the pop genius the world needs and she's been here all along.

Wayfaring Stranger (Burial Remix) - Jamie Woon: Jamie Woon got a raw deal in my opinion. He had a song remixed by Burial, and then Burial co-produced Night Air for him and he was the king of dark and mysterious British dubstep wave, but then James Blake and everyone else came along and sort of overshadowed him totally. Now that whole movement is sort of clouded because of how quickly 'dubstep' came to mean 'skrillex', and for some reason the only place this song is on Spotify is a compilation called The World's Heaviest Dubstep, Grime & Bass.

Chanbara - At The Drive-In: A lot of writing about At The Drive-In focuses on how they never really captured the ferocity of their live shows on record until Relationship Of Command but the absolutely big screams on this working against the salsa bongo rhythms is an amazing thing. I also kind of prefer the weedy half-clean guitar sounds on this and their first album especially to Relationship of Command's crunchier sound, it feels like it gives a lot more space to the weird noodling melodies that come and go.

All Medicated Geniuses - Pretty Girls Make Graves: The intro of this song absolutely blew my 15 year old math rock mind with how simply it transitions from the snare on the beat to the snare off the beat. It is endlessly fascinating to me because I am a dummy. Every part of this song is amazing to me, from the big swing band bassline behind the guitar that's sort of just screaming through the verses and absolutely on its own journey through the chorus to the drums for the reasons I already mentioned but also the way they keep everything straight and absolutely refuse to indulge the guitar's worst math impulses.

Dangerous - The xx: I really love the horns in this song, and the big air raid sirens toward the end. It is still shocking to me that The xx transitioning to making upbeat bangers worked out for them but I'm so glad that they did.

Running - Bully: I was listening to a podcast about water management policy and infrastructure called Water You Talking About because I am young and cool and for some reason they were using the chorus of this song where she goes 'I'LL ADMIT IT! I GET ANXIOUS TOO!' as their theme song in an episode which is I suppose appropriate but also really made me laugh.

Simultaneous Contrasts - Warehouse: The singer in this band has my new favourite voice, it's amazing. She sounds like she's eaten a belt sander or something. I love the way the guitar line follows her vocals up in the chorus and also just how extremely busy the whole band is around her. They remind me of some kind of alternate universe Life Without Buildings where she's pissed off instead of just beguiling.

Light Up The Night - The Protomen: There's no reason this band should be good. They wrote a rock opera based on the story of Megaman inspired by Queen and Bruce Springsteen and it actually turned out incredible somehow. Unfortunately since this album came out almost a decade ago all they've done is a couple of live albums and covers albums, so I may never get the resolution I crave on the story of Thomas Light and Joe and whoever.

Tonto - Battles: Here's what's so good about this song: it spends 2 and a half minutes winding up to a huge centrepiece that's over way too soon and then the next 4 minutes slowly slowly slowly winding down to absolute zero. It's like the opposite of how to write a good song but it's absolutely enthralling.

Wall Street - Battles: Around a minute into this, there's two snare hits where it sounds like it's part of a roll that got digitally muted that I am obsessed with. Every part of this song is incredible, but the drums throughout alternate between sounding like he's desperately trying to keep up and sounding like pure power and total command. I especially love the big brassy snare sound that comes up from underneath occasionally to pull the brakes. The performance of this song that Battles did for La Blogoteque is one of my favourite videos on youtube.

Every Single Line Means Something - Marnie Stern: For about a week this month I developed a quiet mania about John Stanier from Battles filling in on drums in the Late Night With Seth Myers Band (for some reason), and then I found out that Marnie Stern is apparently in that band as well and it really threw me for a loop. I don't really know why this was such an incredible thing or why I focused on it so much, maybe something I need to figure out, but it reminded me of this great song so that's a positive. This is some of my favourite work Zach Hill has ever done because he's being forced to play pretty much a normal backbeat for a lot of this song and it feels like he's been cursed by a witch. The amount of power he's putting out for such a straightforward idea is incredible. Of course because it's Zach Hill he's also doing the absolute most in every other part of the song. I haven't even mentioned how much I love Marnie on her own song! Anyway, listen to this whole album.

Hacker - Death Grips: I never got into the hype around Death Grips when they were the thing, and haven't really investigated their discography past this album, but this song is an absolute masterpiece and probably everything you ever need to know about them. Lyrically between this and 'I've Seen Footage' there's a pretty neat summation of their worldview, paranoid because your existence is inextricably linked to the internet and everything that entails, 'having conversations with your car alarm'. 'make your water break at the apple store,'

Pass The Word (Love's The Word) - The Mad Lads: I was looking up where the sample's from in Hilltop Hoods' Chase That Feeling and it turns out it's this song. Try to listen to this whole intro. He's trying to give a sermon but his dumbshit friends simply will not shut the fuck up for fully three whole minutes. Other than the intro the song is very, very good.

Monkey Time '69 - The Mad Lads: I also found this other song by the Mad Lads called 'Monkey Time '69', which to me is the definition of comedy.

She's Got Guns - The Go! Team: New Go Team album! Unfortunately nothing on it sort of lived up to the promise of the first two singles Mayday and Semicircle song, but this song is still a hit. The way this is mixed is so good, the brass behind the massive bass and spacious drums and the vocals sort of backgrounded within it all, very appealing.

Coast To Coast - Tune-Yards:It feels weird that a Tune-Yards song can be this smooth. A sort of apocalyptic, politics is ruined, new york is sinking, funky smooth jam.

Cattle And The Creeping Things - The Hold Steady: I've never listened to much of The Hold Steady outside of this album because I don't feel like I really need to, it's got everything I'd ever need. Sorry to always to talk about drums but the amount of reverb on them in this song makes them sound absolutely huge and I really love it, especially in the last verse they just become massive. Also I went through a long period of being obsessed with the lyrics of this song, it's a good distillation of this whole album's christian cult/drugs in middle america story and it is completely my shit.

Losing All Sense - Grizzly Bear: There's something about Painted Ruins that's impenetrable to me. I keep listening to it and only absorbing about one song at a time, totally loving that song and then ignoring the rest of the album. Now it's Losing All Sense.

Blue Cheese - Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile: This song is like Kurt Vile in his purest form, just sort of strumming and talking about whatever the fuck. The best part of this song is when they go 'woo hoo!!!' then he whistles a little bit and then says 'here come the lone ranger!' in an elvis voice and plays a solo that sounds like he's tuning his guitar. Also right at the end you can hear someone's phone message tone going off.

Catch Me If You Can Theme - John Williams: John Williams didn't have to go as hard as he did with the Catch Me If You Can theme. I have this in my head all the time. I love the rapid shifts in this recording, because I guess it's functioning as the overture so he's just cycling through every different variation he's got in his aresenal.

I've Seen Footage - Death Grips: It's good that Death Grips' most popular song is about how the internet melts your brain There's a good quote from Zach Hill about where the title came from: 'The line “I’ve Seen Footage” was from a conversation I had with this street-person dude in Sacramento named Snake Eyes. A friend of ours recorded him on the porch in a conversation– he didn’t know he was being recorded. He was all fucked up on drugs and shit, just rattling off all this crazy information. He was talking about structures on the moon. I mean, I talk about those things, too. So we were talking about moon structures, and Snake Eyes says, “I’ve seen footage! I’ve seen footage of it!” And I was like, “That’s good!”

The Bucket - Kings Of Leon:It seems impossible that Kings Of Leon were a really good band at one point but here's the proof.

Standing Next To Me - The Last Shadow Puppets: I'm a truther for Muse ripping off Knights Of Cydonia from The Age Of The Understatement by The Last Shadow Puppets but that's a post for another time. This is a perfect song in my opinion. The absolute pace of it, the minimal drums that are just sort of accenting the strumming, the huge sweeping strings elevating the whole thing, the fact that it's over in just over two minutes. Incredible.

Jesus Just Left Chicago (live) - ZZ Top: Nobody believes me when I tell them but ZZ Top are very good. I have a fantasy about this song that ZZ Top were ringleaders of a sort of revival blues cult and this song is gospel to them. Jesus did really leave Chicago and he's heading towards California and we will be here waiting for him. You may not see him, but he sees you and he loves you. This and the La Grange recording are absolutely furious for live recordings, I love how much crowd noise there is in it throughout, they are truly fucking loving it.

La Grange (live) - ZZ Top: Especially here, my god they love it. La Grange is a good song because it's just a good riff and one verse of nonsense lyrics that are just an excuse to go the fuck off for the remainder. The huge drum fill and the 'have mercy everybody!!' is massive, the solos are ferocious, and somehow this song that feels like it could jam out for 15 minutes is reined in and tightly structured and has somewhat abrupt end.

Barracuda - Heart: Hey remember Guitar Hero? Cause I had ptsd flashbacks when this song came on during I, Tonya.

Bloodmeat - Protest The Hero: I don't know how exactly Protest The Hero pivoted from a concept album about a goddess(?) being executed(?) and bringing about a new genderless utopian age(?) to their second album opening with this very bicep emoji classic metal song about the mongol hordes slaughtering all who oppose them, but good for them I suppose.

Born On A Day The Sun Didn't Rise - Black Moth Super Rainbow: The drums in this song have no place being that huge. Black Moth Super Rainbow are good and I can't believe I hadn't listened to them in years until I woke up with this song in my head one morning, like an omen.

Been Drinkin' Water Out Of A Hollow Log - Mississippi Fred McDowell: Literalyl every Mississippi Fred McDowell song sounds exactly the same which is good because if it works why change it. In my understanding this song seems to be about a man dying of hunger and thirst on purpose to meet god, which is very good to me.

Listen here.