You are not alone

I'm just going to go ahead and point out that I, Jon, and not Lauren, wrote this, in order to save some Facebook angst later. (lolz!)

I'm late again. But I've at least gone from thinking nobody reads the blog to being afraid to post because I always manage to tick somebody off. That's progress of some sort, right?

I take a great deal of solace from the idea that no matter how screwed up I think things are, no matter what grotesque emotion is gnawing at the frayed edges of my benumbed psyche, there's a song for it. Which means that at least one other poor sap had the same problem, and some other poor sap thought enough people had that problem to finance the record. In that spirit, I offer three songs that are speaking to me right now.

"No More", from Into the Woods, by Stephen Sondheim. It took me until I was about 30 before I realized how brilliant this show actually is, although part of that is that I usually can't brook Sondheim for all his clever antics. Although right now I'm cycling through the last three songs in the show: this one, "No one is alone", and "Children will listen". Also, I had never heard of this Kevin Dozier character who's singing in that clip until I started trying to find a decent youtube of the song, but he's pretty good!

"If I Didn't Believe In You", from The Last Five Years by Jason Robert Brown. A song about a guy desperately trying to shore up his wife and failing miserably for his own hubris. Don't we get to be happy, at some point down the line? (Apologies for the bad video, but Norbert Butz is awesome enough to put up with the poor quality.)

"Bruised", The Bens. That's Folds, Kweller, and Lee. I expect to take some shit for this one, because it's not a great song, and doesn't get into any sort of depth of emotion, but the hook has got me right in the emo pants: love just leaves you bruised.