Prompt: "A song featuring a lyric that you totally used for your AIM away message at one point"
Selected by Sara
"White Houses"
Vanessa Carlton
Harmonium, 2004
I can't even begin to describe how important this song is until I tell you how important she was to me. How important Becca was to me. A girl I met in the fourth grade. She was outgoing, charismatic, creative, smart, talented, and funny. She was the first of many women who taught me how to be a friend. Who taught me how to treat others. Taught me about fashion, showed me how her older sister was doing their eyeliner in high school. See, most of my close girlfriends had sisters. That was very important to me. I have all brothers and a very tomboy-ish mom. The girly things slipped through the cracks.
From sixth to twelfth grade, Becca and I were inseparable. Getting into trouble, fighting over boys, doing plays, going to the mall on Friday nights. We did it all. She was also a huge music influence over me. We loved Vanessa Carlton's breakout hit "A Thousand Miles" from our middle school days. But "White Houses," that was for us grown-up high schoolers. Understanding the story within the song. Screaming the lyrics while drinking Smirnoff Ice. Just girlhood shit. This is important stuff. And I absolutely used "And she's so pretty and she's so sure / Maybe I'm more clever than a girl like her" when I was upset that my crush asked someone else out.
4 comments:
This feels like a cliffhanger story, even though I don't think it was intended that way. What happened with Becca? Is she still alive???
It really is a cliff hanger and I woke up thinking about it. The consequences of starting my thoughts at 10 pm.
Becca is very much alive. She was an art teacher for a bit and now I think works in art therapy. We lost touch in college and there were some things that happened to her that unfortunately splintered the HS friend group. Maybe there will be a follow up post about that!
She sounds like an art teacher type.
Winter break freshman year of college I went with her to get her septum pierced in York, PA. Absolutely art teacher material.
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