Refraining (for now) from adding a hundred Christmas songs to the @marchxness.bsky.social preliminary list.

It’s annual Stay-Off-the-Internet Day. #AprilFools

“When Folds sings ‘she’s a brick’ and he’s ‘drowning slowly,’ I can’t help but wonder if the song is being fair, if there is not some way to take more ownership for the events unfolding.” @cicilybennion.bsky.social has my vote! marchxness.com#/sadnesscham... @marchxness.bsky.social

LOOK AT MY HOES

Found this at the bottom of a little-used bag this morning. “(Chap) stick around.” @angermonsoon.bsky.social #predator

Good game, @erinkeane.bsky.social and best of luck in the Final Four™

Holy smokes, tie game over at @marchxness.bsky.social !

@marchxness.bsky.social makes strange bedfellows.

ELITE 8! Kate Bush vs. Guns N' Roses - Listen, read, VOTE! marchxness.com#/elite8-gnrv...

I know it’s not possible, but my ideal @marchxness.bsky.social Final Four™ would be Kate Bush vs. Bush, and Black Crowes vs. Counting Crows. #marchsadness

😳

with a last-minute surge from kate bush stans (lovehounds or fish people), hootie & my essay have been defeated in this year's @marchxness.bsky.social. hats off to @cherylgraham.bsky.social's essay & margarita campaign! we're sad over here, but not all that sad in the grand scheme.

“The most indelible art has something wrong with it…” Good game and great essay to @kjmoulton.bsky.social It was a squeaker, but @katebushmusic.bsky.social hive rose up at the end. @marchxness.bsky.social

Woke up late (see last night’s margaritas) to find this one neck and neck. Sounded the 🚨 in the Kate Bush forum. 🤞🏻 marchxness.com/sweet16-bush...

Kate’s pulled ahead with a modest lead. I’m going out to dinner/drum up votes. marchxness.com/sweet16-bush...

You heard the man.

Dessa just released a remix of Ani DiFranco's "Shy." open.spotify.com/track/2UKZEE... Attn. @susannadonato.bsky.social

Jessie Buckley names Kate Bush’s The Red Shoes as a Desert Island Disc. Eight days later, she wins an Oscar. Coincidence? I think not.

It is tip off time for our Sweet 16 games: Dion vs Hersh and Bush vs Hootie. Read em and weep at marchxness.com (votes due by 9am Wed).

@awolfson.bsky.social got me in the feels with his essay. And @erinkeane.bsky.social made me think about GnR in a whole new way. This is a close one! You have 20 minutes to vote! marchxness.com/2ndround-gnr...

Ok, how did I miss this one by @erinlangner.bsky.social ? Such a beautiful mix of personal essay and deep-dive music writing. “A fractured self is sometimes the only kind that can survive the disconnect between how we expect the world to be and how it ends up being.” marchxness.com/2ndround-car...

Wow – Billie Myers’s Instagram is 99% typewriter poems and one post about @allisonwrites.bsky.social @marchxness.bsky.social essay.

It’s nice to make mixtapes of songs you like for your friends, but making a mixtape of songs you really dislike for an enemy can be even more rewarding.

LOL, Vote!

Close game happening right now between two songs I never want to hear again and two essays I will happily read more than once. marchxness.com/2ndround-hoo...

Ok, there’s another March Madness happening, and the Arizona men’s basketball team just pulled off an exciting win with a buzzer beater. #marchmadness

I’ve been visiting family and am just getting home and back to reading the second round @marchxness.bsky.social essays. I tried to read all of 64 them during the first round, but some fell through the cracks. Others get richer upon re-reading.

I love how @paleoctopi.bsky.social does a forensic dive into this song, then pulls way back to put it in a wider context. I also love the ambiguity about the song and his relationship to Waits. It’s something our essays share. Grateful to be in the matchup with him. marchxness.com/2ndround-bus...

I wish I were a faster writer, but my essays seem to come together like sculptures – throwing a bunch of mud together and slowly forming it into something coherent. This is the “mud” of my @marchxness.bsky.social essay. Read, listen, and vote! marchxness.com/2ndround-bus...

@marchxness.bsky.social How do I get the link for each matchup? When I try to ‘share’ the page from my iPhone, I only get the homepage URL

My Northwest bracket is looking pretty good, but the Tori loss is going to mess me up going forward. @marchxness.bsky.social

Didn’t expect a Shakespearean take on Guns ‘n’ Roses, but that’s @marchxness.bsky.social for you. “Hamlet a tortured rock star, Axl a prince wrestling with his demons. Both of them making their problems everyone’s.” @erinkeane.bsky.social marchxness.com#/1stround-gn...

New website just dropped. Thank you to my talented and patient friend Richard. We traded work, but I think I got the better end of the deal 😬 www.cherylgraham.net

Like @kathleenmrooney.bsky.social , I never wanted to have kids. But it hadn’t occurred to me that *art* may have had something to do with that decision. It didn’t even feel like a decision but whoa –maybe art/music was behind it. Excellent essay – it gets my vote! marchxness.com#/1stround-so...

marchxness.com#/1stround-ni... “The conversation is still happening, but it’s already over. And deeper still, she’s realizing it’s been over—that the love she thought she was still in, and maybe is, isn’t reciprocated.” Andrew Arthur on Sinead O’Connor. I listened to this album constantly in 1990.

Sitting in a bar reading today’s @marchxness.bsky.social essays. Yacht Rock on the speakers above and a bad first date happening to my right.

Next up in Tucson Essay Club it's TUCSON ESSAY MOVIE CLUB featuring 1982's THE VERDICT as introduced by @cherylgraham.bsky.social. Sun March 22 at Casa Video, social hour at 7pm, Movie & an Essay at 8pm

Relevant to @marchxness.bsky.social

Welp, I’m officially “I drank iced tea at 4pm and am wide awake past midnight” years old.

I had to stop reading this Chelsea Biondolillo essay halfway through, because I’ve read a lot of these today and my tolerance for sadness was waning. But I returned to it tonight and yes, it’s very sad but also very beautiful. Just like the song. marchxness.com/1stround-gin...

And this one, by Jamison Crabtree, suggesting we talk about songs as a way to talk – or not talk – about ourselves. Oof, again. Another difficult vote! marchxness.com/1stround-mor...

“I keep being confronted by a choice: learn to re-parent myself or let my pain hurt everyone around me, like my mother and her mother before her.” Oof, this one is a gut-punch from @lelascottmacneil.bsky.social marchxness.com/1stround-mor...

Despite my best intentions, I've fallen behind on @marchxness.bsky.social essays. So I will be skeeting (?) about them all day. Megan Campbell cracked me up with: "Then one day in 1991 my friend April asked me, “Have you heard of this band Nirvana?” Exeunt the 1980s." marchxness.com/#/1stround-f...

“Your Ghost” might be considered the inverse of Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights.” @anniezaleski.bsky.social might get my vote based on this alone, although @levin.bsky.social made me think about the Black Crowes in a whole new way. marchxness.com/#/1stround-b... #marchsadness

Today’s the day to vote for @katebushmusic.bsky.social in the annual tournament of songs and essays, @marchxness.bsky.social Read and vote here 🙏🏻 marchxness.com/1stround-bro...

@grossman.bsky.social with a “Predator” shout-out. This is a tough one (I know, I say that about nearly every matchup).

Today’s favorite @marchxness.bsky.social essay is by @jamcharlesworth.bsky.social “Every time I hear that moment when the final chorus finishes up and the opening theme returns—altered this time from minor to major—the substitution of just one note in the chord progression… 1/2

So far I have a perfect @marchxness.bsky.social bracket, but I think the Paula Cole/Magnetic Fields matchup may wreck it. I didn’t think of the Paula Cole song as sad until @erindorney.bsky.social illuminated it. Kudos to the victor, whoever it turns out to be, my bracket be damned!

I’ve got Bonnie Raitt going all the way, but damn, this essay by @dgellar.bsky.social left me with a lump in my throat. marchxness.com#/1stround-ra...

“A bot inside a data center sucking water from the Colorado River cannot stand at the bus stop in awe listening to a phrase, the way it exerts a force while hanging in mid-air.” Excellent @marchxness.bsky.social essay by @leahmensch.bsky.social This is a tough one, and the live scores reflect that.