primitive radio gods - standing outside a phone booth with money in my hand

ma teresa's joined the mob
and happy with her full-time job

Talk about a one-hit wonder. It was played every five minutes for about two months and then disappeared into nothingness. It captures everything I love: that "trip-hop" sound of Portishead and the 1990s, cryptic lyrics that don't really mean anything, a reference to Mother Teresa, after whom I am named.

This song is time travel: I'm sixteen again when I hear it. I'm in my senior year of high school. I'm riding in my friend's rice rocket and we're headed to the mall (third largest in the country, if you care to know.) I'm worried about my mother who is in the hospital, and at the same time, I don't know where the hell I'm going to get a prom dress.

Was that 13 years ago? My goodness. How have things changed? That friend and I drifted apart during college (and I'm sad about it, as she and I were quite close for a few years); my mother recovered but had a fatal relapse years later; and that prom dress was my favorite thing ever, and I even wore it to class at Berkeley a few times. It's exactly the kind of thing I'd never wear now -- long, totally black, and, totally dull.

(So, a number of you were asking, "what happened to the blog?" Basically, it came to its natural end. I'd been having a hard time writing posts that seemed... intelligent and meaningful to me. It seemed as if all I was doing was complaining all the time, and that needed to stop.

I wanted to try something different. As friends who have known me for a long time will tell you, I've always been obsessed with music. As Chris Columbus says about his film Almost Famous, playing back mixed tapes is as good as a diary for me. I can tell you the exact moment the first time I ever heard a song, and when I hear a song, it takes me right back to that place. And so I thought a "musical diary" would be a cool concept to share with the world, rather than my complaining.)