Getting Ready to Get Rid of the Solarpunk Cave to the New Tunes of Lana Del Rey
As the winter days give way to spring days that will eventually give way to the day that we turn the heating off (probably later in April or early in May), I must do the sad work of deconstructing my Solarpunk Cave, as I have come to think of the grungy little room that I use as my office and indoor exercise space. We have a heat pump that's just waiting for heating season to end, so we can rip out our oil heating and install this cleaner, greener option (plus put up solar panels to generate some of the electricity it will need). That means my Solarpunk Cave/office/exercise space needs to be stripped down and renovated, to make way for some of the equipment.
Today, because it was too dismal and rainy to finish digging the evil ground elder roots out of my strawberry patch, I started ripping the wallpaper off of the walls of the Solarpunk Cave. This meant saying goodbye to the cave paintings I started to make a couple of years ago, because they were exactly the sort of thing that belonged on the grungy old walls of the grotto.
Given the extent of my artistic skills, perhaps having to rip down those old friends was not actually that sad (Spouse would definitely say good riddance). Maybe it's just that I was listening to the new Lana Del Rey album at the same time and her music so often sounds so sad, like all of the beautiful people in your life you'll never see again, and all the places that you've loved that are lost to you now. It wasn't just sad to pull down those cave painting friends of mine, it was sad to rip down the wallpaper my old cat Miss Messy used to pee on... how I loved that cat, if only because she loved me more than any other cat I've ever had... and now she's been dead for a couple of years.
Sometimes I feel like I should be embarrassed by liking Lana Del Rey so much. She's not without her issues, but sometimes she so perfectly nails what it's like to be a woman, in all of its glorious and sometimes horrible messiness.
The Grants, off her new album, is exactly one of those songs that makes you miss all of those people you will never see again.
But so far, I think this A&W is the most amazing song on the album. Crank this one up. It needs to be loud.