CAKE can read my soul.

So... I just found out that CAKE is coming to Chicago in a month. The prospect of trying desperately to find tickets to see them live is one of the most exciting things I can think of right now. Aside from finding gainful employment in the form of a job with benefits.

In fantasizing about what it would be like to listen to one of the few bands I have loved since at least junior high, I am obsessively listening to their music and being completely mindful of each and every word and the feelings I had when I first heard them.

Though my tastes have changed over time, more generally, there is something so simple and lovely about CAKE that always has seemed like they are expressing my thoughts, conscious or not, in such interesting ways.

The women they sing about have *always* been who I'd wanted to be. I remember hearing "Let Me Go" for the first time when I was a freshman in high school and instantly thinking to myself that I wanted to be woman who, "when she walks she swings her arms instead of her hips." And then in college and beyond wanting to be the one who wears a short skirt and a long jacket. Those women always seemed more interesting to be around than the standard media representations.

So now, in my obsessive CAKE-music-listening, I have now listened to "Love You Madly" approximately 1,233,856 +/- 325 times. Some very choice lyrics:

I don't want to wonder if this is a blunder
I don't want to worry whether we're going to stay together 'til we die
I don't want to jump in unless this music's thumping
All the dishes rattle in the cupboards when the elephants arrive

I want to love you madly
I want to love you now
I want to love you madly, ouais
I want to love you, love you
Love you madly

I don't want to fake it I just want to make it
The ornaments look pretty but they're pulling down the branches of the tree
I don't want to think about it, I don't want to talk about it
When I kiss your lips I want to sink down to the bottom of the sea

I want to love you madly
I want to love you now, yeah
I want to love you madly, ouais
I want to love you, love you
Love you madly

I don't want to hold back, I don't want to slip down
I don't want to think back to the one thing that I know I should have done
I don't want to doubt you, know everything about you
I don't want to sit across the table from you wishing I could run

I want to love you madly
I want to love you now
I want to love you madly, ouais
I want to love you, love you
Love you madly

Thank you CAKE, for doing it yet again... Expressing precisely and poetically the ambivalence and mindfulness I regularly feel. I hope I get to see you in a month.