sia has done a lot in her career, which began with her first solo cd, OnlySee, in 1997. she's well known for a couple of reasons: her collaboration work on many tracks for the british downtempo group zero 7 and her hit song, breathe me. this aussie is weird. that's why i like her. she's very different and eclectic and quirky. AND, she's recently come out as a lezbian! 
i really dig her new cd, some people have real problems, because it's just that - a recognition that some people have real problems. many of the songs deal with love, heartache, loss, relationships, etc. this album definitely moves away from the style of writing that is utilized in her most famous single, which is, at best, a very ambient, sentimental...emo track. but the one song that has been in the foreground of my mind since i've heard it is academia.
as i come closer to may 11 (my graduation date), i start to panic slightly because it means that time is running out for me to finish my thesis. some days are better than others, and most days i am reminded that i need to take a break from academia. but it is during these little vacations, that i come to realize that my relationship with academia will always be one of love/hate. i love being in school, but i hate how i feel it separates me from reality. i love learning, but i hate being forced to write about what i've learned. i love writing, but i hate feeling like what i write will be judged. when i first heard this song, it was eerie...became a sort of running conversation from me to my thesis and vice versa. but more importantly, this song resonates within me because of the following lyrics:
Oh academia you can’t pick me up
Soothe me with your words when I need your love
how i would love for school to be enough...for being an academic to be enough, but it's not. i need things that are more tangible...to be more tactile...and not so much all in my head, or all in pure theory. so this one goes out to all y'all still in school and working on projects that just need to be finished. may you have the strength, determination, and hutzpa to get through it.
the end.
<3,
meggo.
Academia::Sia
You can be my alphabet and I will be your calculator
And together we’ll work out on the escalator
I will time you as you run up the down
And you’ll measure my footsteps as I blow through this town
The mean of our heights is divided by the nights
Which is times’d by the daggers and the route of all our fights,
The pass of your poem is to swathe me in your knowing
And the beauty of the word is that you don’t have to show it
No, oh academia you can’t pick me up
Soothe me with your words when I need your love
I am a dash and you are a dot
When will you see that I am all that you’ve got
I’m a binary code that you cracked long ago
But to you I’m just a novel that you wish you’d never wrote
I’m greater than x and lesser than y, so why is it
that I still can’t catch your eye?
You’re a cryptic crossword, a song I’ve never heard
While I sit here drawing circles I’m afraid of being hurt
Oh academia you can’t pick me up
Soothe me with your words when I need your love
You’re a difficult equation with a knack for heart evasion
Will you listen to my proof or will you add another page on
It appears to me the graph has come and stolen all the laughs
It appears to me the pen has over analysed again
And if I am a number I’m infinity plus one
And if I am four words then I am needing of your love
And if you are a number you’re infinity plus one
And if you are five words you are afraid to be the one
Oh academia you can’t pick me up
Soothe me with your words when I need your love
Oh, Academia
Academia
Academia, oh
Oh, Academia
Academia
Academia, oh
