Tag: Music

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Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world

There’s a particular feeling I get sometimes, a paradoxical combination of “wow I am just so connected to everyone and everything right now” and “wow I am totally incapable of describing this to anyone to my satisfaction, much less sharing it with them, gotta just sit here and experience it all by myself.”

Connected / Disconnected. All One / All Alone. Everyone / No One. Everything / Nothing. Self / No Self.  Object / No Object. Lately I’ve found some comfort in the belief that it’s possible to transcend this dualistic way of interpreting experience (Möbius?!), but then what words suffice?

Sometimes, songs are the friends I am looking for / are more immediately-available reflections of my half-twist inner landscape. Inevitably, when I find myself in the aforementioned state, lyrics from a particular Grateful Dead song pop unbidden into my consciousness:

Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world
The heart has its beaches, its homeland and thoughts of its own
Wake now, discover that you are the song that the morning brings
But the heart has its seasons, its evenings and songs of its own

And:

Sometimes the songs that we hear are just songs of our own

Here’s my favorite version available on Spotify:

Or, if you’re that kind of nerdy, give this 19-minute version a try and see, as you’re listening, if you end up back where you started, but with a slightly different perspective.

Full lyrics: Continue reading “Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world”

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The stars sing too / I know they know me back

Back in April an acquaintance shared a song she’d just released:

This part in particular really hits me:

I talk to the stars I know they know me back
You talk to the dark I know it holds you back

Then, just last week, my favorite English teacher from high school shared a Mary Oliver poem with me (see below, thanks Ellen!). I’d like to imagine ARA’s song was inspired by this poem, and in particular, this line:

So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe the stars sing too,

Here’s the whole thing:

This World
by Mary Oliver

I would like to write a poem about the world that has in it
nothing fancy.
But it seems impossible.
Whatever the subject, the morning sun
glimmers it.
The tulip feels the heat and flaps its petals open and becomes a star.
The ants bore into the peony bud and there is a dark
pinprick well of sweetness.
As for the stones on the beach, forget it.
Each one could be set in gold.
So I tried with my eyes shut, but of course the birds
were singing.
And the aspen trees were shaking the sweetest music
out of their leaves.
And that was followed by, guess what, a momentous and
beautiful silence
as comes to all of us, in little earfuls, if we’re not too
hurried to hear it.
As for spiders, how the dew hangs in their webs
even if they say nothing, or seem to say nothing.
So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe they sing.
So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe the stars sing too,
and the ants, and the peonies, and the warm stones,
so happy to be where they are, on the beach, instead of being
locked up in gold.

Continue reading “The stars sing too / I know they know me back”

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Nai Palm is an invitation to blossom

What is it about witnessing someone who is so comfortable sharing their own genius that it calls the rest of us to get serious about cultivating, if not also sharing, our own?

…genius must be invited out of a person. People carry to this world something important that they must deliver… To see the genius in a young person is to give it the fertile ground required for it to burst forth and blossom, for it is not enough to be born into this world loaded with such a beauty.

–Malidoma Patrice Some, from his book The Healing Wisdom of Africa, 1999, TarcherPerigee.

There have been exactly two instances in the last year when someone’s live performance cracked open some sort of direct connection between me and the source of creativity (and yes, I realize how woo woo that sounds): one was Feist’s concert at the Powerstation in November, and the other was watching Nai Palm perform solo at the Tuning Fork a few weeks ago.

I don’t even particularly love Nai Palm’s style of music (you might be familiar with her as the frontwoman for Hiatus Coyote?), but there is simply no denying her talent. And perhaps more importantly, her PRESENCE.

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

–Usually attributed to Anaïs Nin, but the source remains mysterious.

I couldn’t decide which of these to share, so here are two videos of Nai Palm performing Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland Continue reading “Nai Palm is an invitation to blossom”

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Shitty things men do to women at concerts, and how not to be complicit

I am still really shaken by something I experienced / witnessed last Saturday night at a concert. Don’t want to read the distressing details? Here’s the take-home message:

DECENT MEN: if a friend of yours, or any guy you witness, is behaving like a #metoo wrecking ball at a show, or anywhere, let him know that what he’s doing is not OK. At the very least, check in with the women he’s preying on to make sure they’re alright.

***

I had been looking forward to the Unknown Mortal Orchestra show for a while, and reaallllly wanted to enjoy it. (A note for the uninitiated: they are NOT an orchestra!)

…but very unfortunately, the whole night was tainted by the behavior of a predatory dude working the floor where in the area where Scott and I were standing. We watched him making the rounds, repeatedly going up to women and attempting to manhandle them (embrace, kiss, and literally pick them up, dragging them away from their friends).

Then came the moment when I had to physically shove him away from my own body.

Continue reading “Shitty things men do to women at concerts, and how not to be complicit”

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Hey Ya, Hey Ya

Someone at work just shared this Hey Ya cover, and I’m kind of blown away by the sound mix. It’s just so… vast.

I’d never heard of KAMAU so did a bit of poking around; in addition to discovering that he’s Canadian, I found his observations about this song via SoundCloud:

Hey Ya is the epitome of absolute duality between the energy and content within one song. It’s, sonically, the happiest song, with the saddest content that we can all relate to, a breaking heart…a sinking romance. Andre 3000, almost prophetically, foresees the fact that nobody will pay attention or even notice that he’s in pain “Yall don’t wanna hear me, you just wanna dance.”

Continue reading “Hey Ya, Hey Ya”

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Clear as mud: Black Willow, Mississippi Mud, and FBI informants

LomaScott very rarely plays songs more than once in a sitting, so the fact that we’ve now listened to Loma‘s Black Willow six times in a row is no small endorsement. I agree: it’s infectiously beautiful, darkly haunting, the lyrics are provocative… definitely worth playing over and over, and there’s something about the album cover art, too.

I finally decided to look for a video and Lo, not only does one exist, it’s in a similar vein as the ones I have posted twice before:

And the plot thickens! The video’s first comment on YouTube is from (actor, producer, and writer) Daniel Martine, who points out that the song sounds eerily similar to a song called “Mississippi Mud,” a Black Blood and the Chocolate Pickles song with a grim history:

In his comment to the Black Willow video, Daniel continues:

The story is about the death of black students who protesting [sic] at Jackson State in Mississippi in ’70. Not long after Kent State shootings happened. But it didn’t get the press of Kent State, because they were black students.

I can google up no evidence that Loma may have meant Black Willow to be a straight up homage to the song and/or a rememberance of the events that took place at Jackson State, not to mention the inequality of the response thereafter compared to shootings of white students. But I could understand that the band could have gone there Continue reading “Clear as mud: Black Willow, Mississippi Mud, and FBI informants”

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Life is Magic, Where is My Rabbit?

I’ve been playing Fraser Ross nonstop the last couple days. Scott figured out that he’ll be playing a house concert in our old neighborhood next week AND there were still tickets available, so I’m very excited about that.

The whole album is rich and melancholic and lovely and there are more upbeat, fun moments as well, which remind me a bit of parts of the Farallons’ Outer Sun Sets EP.

If you want a quick taster, here’s one that makes me want to jump around:

 

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Watch Cold War on a big screen

ColdWar Though we missed most of the New Zealand International Film Festival because of our trip to Maine, we did catch Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War on closing night. I loved it even more than Ida (every shot in both is composed like a photograph I’d want to spend time in front of at a museum) because of the music. Highly recommend you see these in a theater if you can!

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Self care and art as acts of resistance

It’s hard to deny that there’s a lot of shit going down in the world right now. As the daughter of two immigrants (into the US) and an immigrant (into NZ) myself, what’s happening at the US border hits me in a particular way, and there are so many other examples we might point to around the world.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it takes to stay open to and present with this sort of unpleasantness, for a couple reasons. First, I believe it is important to actually SEE and GRIEVE these atrocities, rather than pretending they don’t exist or that they don’t hurt. And more importantly, I believe we must be present to what is going on if we might hope to effectively address any issues that are not in alignment with our own values.

And so I have been super inspired by a few things that my friends have shared this week. They remind me that there are so many ways to contribute to upending the status quo, and so many ways to take care of ourselves as we do that work. Continue reading “Self care and art as acts of resistance”

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The Solstice is Our Anniversary

The paradoxical thing about monogamy, for me at least, is that it took someone who doesn’t insist upon it to inspire me to live it so willingly.

Read on for two poems (one that speaks to the inevitably-ephemeral nature of relationships, and one that speaks to the phenomenon I described above), the story about how Scott and I came to find ourselves in a relationship the second time around, and a bit of Wendell Berry’s ever-inspiring wisdom.

Sonnet of Fidelity
by Vinicius de Moraes

Above all, to my love I’ll be attentive
First and always, with care and so much
That even when facing the greatest enchantment
By love be more enchanted my thoughts.

I want to live it through in each vain moment
And in its honor I’ll spread my song
And laugh my laughter and cry my tears
When you are sad or when you are content.

And thus, when later comes looking for me
Who knows, the death, anxiety of the living,
Who knows, the loneliness, end of all lovers

I’ll be able to say to myself of the love (I had):
Be not immortal, since it is flame
But be infinite while it lasts.

I discovered this next one in the book Loving and Leaving the Good Life, by Helen Nearing; she had sent it to her husband, Scott Nearing, in response to a poem he sent her while they were separated by an ocean:

The Wind Bloweth Where It Listeth
by Countee Cullen

“Live like the wind,” he said, “unfettered,
And love me while you can;
And when you will, and can be bettered,
Go to the better man.

“For you’ll grow weary, maybe, sleeping
So long a time with me;
Like this there’ll be no cause for weeping;
The wind is always free.

“Go when you please,” he would be saying,
His mouth hard on her own;
That’s why she stayed and loved the staying,
Contented to the bone.

***

Because Scott and I didn’t see each other for two and a half years following our first date (except for one unacknowledged, wordless encounter in the doorway of Green Apple Books), I count our second date as our anniversary.

Except that I can’t really call it a date because it wasn’t really meant to be a date. We’d been hanging out platonically for several weeks, going to shows and having philosophical discussions, and had even gone on a double date. Which is why it hadn’t occurred to me that it might be awkward to invite Peter, a friend from work, to join us at The Independent on the evening of the Summer Solstice, 2016… Continue reading “The Solstice is Our Anniversary”