2nd 30 Day Letter Challenge--Day Seven: Letter to a Band/Singer

Dear Peter Gene Hernandez (aka Bruno Mars),

I can't believe T wrote to you too. She totally lives inside my head. If other people couldn't see her/be driven to the beach by her, I would sometimes doubt she existed anywhere else. <3 
I contemplated writing to someone else after reading her post, but what I want to say to you seems important, so I'll keep going. 

You seem so much more like a Peter than like a Bruno. Bruno sounds like a) a name I'd give my dog, and b) like you're trying to reinvent yourself into being the cool kid now because like Bowling for Soup taught us, High School Never Ends. I'm glad Mars is the end of your stage name, it's appropriately spacey. I think I'm going to call you Peter throughout this post, if you don't mind. Peter, you won my musical allegiance within the first 30 seconds of the first time I saw the music video for "Just the Way You Are".  

You hadn't even started singing yet, but the sneaky smile you gave the girl and the first of the tape-drawings clued me into the fact that I was going to love this song. And love it I did. It was so obnoxiously cute in all the ways I've always openly criticized/condemned/judged/scorned but secretly harbored intense desires for. (Really secretly...I would admit to any perceived hypocrisy, you have my word. I really don't think I knew how much I wanted that cuteness and those feelings until they were suddenly in my life and I wouldn't have it any other way.) This song was adorably sappily over-the-top cutesy perfect in the way I then thought only songs could be (I have since been proven wonderfully fantastically wrong), and I was hooked. I had friends that made fun of you when Grenade came out, over-analyzing the lyrics and calling it stupid, but I stuck up for you because I liked that song, too. I had once felt a warped semblance of the feeling and the situation you were trying to express, and I couldn't have expressed it any better.

After that, I decided to go on a little internet-hunt to see what other good songs you had. And then I basically went on a Bruno-binge, listening to and downloading song after song, even the ones I thought were a little weird, like Liquor Store Blues (which has a video now, I didn't know), because I could still identify with some of it, empathize with all of it, and above all it just made me want to give you a hug, Peter. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I downloaded a song that would later (read: has now) become the unofficial theme song to my life:

It's evidently a Brandy cover and was never released on Doo-Wops & Hooligans or your EP (not that I'm really sure what the difference between an album and an EP is. Maybe something to do with the fact that It's Better if You Don't Understand only has a few songs on it? Note to self: seek further enlightenment.) but I have a feeling that its appearance in my life at just the right time will lead it to always be my favorite. It's so perfect. If I were a pre-angsty preteen, I'd say it's like you understand my life. It's really just like all of our lives are part of the same great big story and though everyone's pain is different it's also all a little bit the same.

There was one song, though, that I just couldn't bring myself to download, Peter. In fact, I couldn't even bring myself to listen attentively to the whole thing. (My little brother loves this song. Go figure.) This song is the same song T wrote about, because we shared the experience of watching your video for it for the first time together last night. If the song itself wasn't bad enough, your synchronized-swimmers/90s-boy-band-esque backup dancers were monkeys, and the entire video is you dancing around the room with them. I feel like this could be reworked into a children's cartoon. It was like undiscovered-wannabe-Youtube-sensation plus friend-who-does-some-light-choreo plus other-friend-who-is-into-computer-graphics-a-bit maybe part of the point, too lazy to make a real video?). Maybe you're going for a difference audience (like my little brother, whose musical tastes I generally disdain) here or something, but I want you to know that I disapprove with every fiber of my being. Some days I just want to be lazy too, but that song...makes me wanna get up and do anything else but listen to it.

So this letter is to say that 95% of your music makes me happy (even the songs that remind me that I'm a little sad). And we can just pretend that other song never happened. It was a Bruno moment. I won't talk about it if you don't, Peter. 

Adoringly,

Maya 

2nd 30 Day Letter Challenge--Day Four: Letter to Something You Have that Belongs to Someone Else

Dear Hong Kong T-Shirt,

T accused me of thinking about your owner when I suggested this letter topic. She's not wrong--that's a 24/7 practice, haha--but there were other things I could have written to, I promise! But you win because you're his and that makes you special.
It's becoming clear to me that I will never know how I came to be in possession of you. Adorably sneaky little shirt, you wormed your way into my laundry basket during the last few days of school and knew me well enough to know I wouldn't fold my laundry after washing it but would rather bring home the contents of the basket as such, thus only discovering you after I lolligagged around the house for a few days and then decided I could be bothered with silly thins like unpacking. I guess that makes you a pretty smart shirt. I was also pleasantly surprised that, unlike his HS hoodie, you actually fit me. Well, I suppose it is the life goal of every t-shirt to be worn as much as possible, and if that was in fact your intention, then I must say well-played, because as soon as I discovered you and that you fit, I decided you were my new pajamas for the summer.
Now I make sure to only do my laundry during the day, so that you're available for sleeping in every night. I would pack you with me if I were to go on vacation. I know it's all in my mind, but feeling you on my skin, and knowing that you are his and that my body is where his body once was...you make me feel like he's not so far away. You give me that peaceful easy sleep he gives me. You feel...right, and I'm glad mysterious universal forces brought you to me. And evidently he thinks you look good on me, so everybody's happy.
I think the fact that you're a Hong Kong shirt is kind of funny: it shows so clearly to anyone who knows me that you do not belong to me, and to anyone who knows me well enough to have listened to me gush about the person you do belong to since February, it screams the name of the person you do belong to. The more I think about it, it becomes clearer that he might not be getting you back anytime soon...but even so, I don't think you will ever become mine in the way I've appropriated other people's belongings in the past. Nope, for however long I keep it, you'll be a little part of the adventure he's taking me on, a simple little thing that reminds me of him. (I wouldn't have it any other way.)

I'm glad you're here to help me through this distance thing. 

Love 爱 (<-- Look what your owner just taught me!),

Maya   

Skype: A Double-Eged Sword

Sometimes I wonder if this distance thing would have been easier or harder if we were doing it 20 years ago before the internet and text messages. Sometimes I feel like all these various means of making the distance feel not as far just make it feel even farther. 

Take, for example, skype. Skyping with him makes me simultaneously deliriously happy and really really sad. I feel like I smiled more in the hour I just spent talking to him than I did in the past four days since we last Skyped. He has that effect on me. But while talking to him face to face(ish), seeing his smile and hearing his voice and remembering how much I love his laugh...while all of those things make me feel soooo good, feel like the distance doesn't matter so much...at the same time it shows me just how far apart we really are. Because if I can see him and I can hear him then dammit, I should be able to hold him. Not being able to touch him while I'm talking to him is the hardest thing to get used to. I miss him so much more when all I can do is blow him a kiss goodnight and close my computer screen and ready myself for the next night in my longggggg series of nights alone.

The ability to see him while I'm talking to him is still absolutely priceless, though. I'm glad I have the chance. Even on this crappy computer that I'm dealing with since mine got stolen. Even if we basically just talk about our mundane lives. Even though it makes the desire to feel him nearly unbearable. Because no one else makes me smile for an hour. This sadness I feel when I say goodbye to him again...it's a sunshower. Does not detract from the overall joy.