Dear Stewart,

(I was going to write about this yesterday when it happened, but then I got all sidetracked by the whole mistaken identity topic that I forgot about it. In re-reading what I just wrote, maybe that was a good idea. Oh, well.)

Yesterday during my shower, "King of Pain" came on the radio.

It's an okay song, nothing wrong with it; I'm not much qualified to write a music review beyond that. But I was standing there in the shower, trying to figure out those wacky lyrics, and I started thinking about it a little harder than I ever have before (that sounds questionable even to me, and I was there). I read somewhere (and this is spurious information, probably false) that Sting was writing about reincarnation and karma; when I was 11 and heard this song for the first time, probably in Laura Love's parents' car, all I remember being struck by was the line "there's a skeleton choking on a crust of bread" and being confused. Did the bread choke the skeleton and that's how that guy died? If the guy's already a skeleton, wouldn't the bread be gone now? Now that I'm older and understand the concepts of reincarnation and karma a little bit, I can maybe see a connection, but I'm not willing to dissect the song more than that. It's a good song, a classic, but not one of my favorites. I wondered, standing there in the shower, if you got bored playing it. The drum part is pretty minimal. And you only got one song on the album, which is criminal.

("Miss Gradenko" is one of the best songs you ever wrote, though. "O My God" is terrifc, too, but the rest of the album, I'd be happy to not hear for another 10 years or so.)

Anyway, if you wiped away everything but Outlandos, Zenyatta, and half of Regatta de Blanc (I'll let you choose which half... the second half, if you're having a hard time choosing; giving up "Message in a Bottle" for "No Time This Time" was a hard decision but once made, I'll stand by it) on my iPod, I'd be satisfied for quite a while. Of course eventually I would start to miss my Radiohead and Divinyls and Corrosion of Conformity and Fela Kuti and Kings of Leon and fIREHOSE and Talking Heads and...

Love you,
Irene

P.S. Hey, you know what's crazy? I wish I could tell you something that's in my heart (not about you, silly) but not on this blog. Yeah, I know right here is when you start getting weirded out. Please don't get weirded out. I'll figure it out on my own I guess. All this "Dear Stewart" business to the contrary, I really do get how this works.

P.P.S. Also, the preceding postscript is bullshit, because on occasion when I do have opportunties to tell people "what's in my heart" I tend to freeze, get mad, and/or cry, and you know what? I'm almost 40 years old, I should be able to handle that better. Why would I suddenly bare my soul to you any better than with people I actually know and who care about me in a demonstrable way? Yeah. I'm confused today.