In this Edith Piaf song "Je ne regrette rien" (I regret nothing) last line - "ca commence avec toi" (it begins with you...)
Showing posts with label Music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Music. Show all posts
11.07.2010
How To Be Alone
HOW TO BE ALONE by Tanya Davis
If you are at first lonely, be patient. If you've not been alone much, or if when you were, you weren't okay with it, then just wait. You'll find it's fine to be alone once you're embracing it.
We could start with the acceptable places, the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library. Where you can stall and read the paper, where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there. Where you can browse the stacks and smell the books. You're not supposed to talk much anyway so it's safe there.
There's also the gym. If you're shy you could hang out with yourself in mirrors, you could put headphones in (guitar stroke).
And there's public transportation, because we all gotta go places.
And there's prayer and meditation. No one will think less if you're hanging with your breath seeking peace and salvation.
Start simple. Things you may have previously (electric guitar plucking) based on your avoid being alone principals.
The lunch counter. Where you will be surrounded by chow-downers. Employees who only have an hour and their spouses work across town and so they -- like you -- will be alone.
Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone.
When you are comfortable with eat lunch and run, take yourself out for dinner. A restaurant with linen and silverware. You're no less intriguing a person when you're eating solo dessert to cleaning the whipped cream from the dish with your finger. In fact some people at full tables will wish they were where you were.
Go to the movies. Where it is dark and soothing. Alone in your seat amidst a fleeting community.
And then, take yourself out dancing to a club where no one knows you. Stand on the outside of the floor till the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you. Dance like no one's watching...because, they're probably not. And, if they are, assume it is with best of human intentions. The way bodies move genuinely to beats is, after all, gorgeous and affecting. Dance until you're sweating, and beads of perspiration remind you of life's best things, down your back like a brook of blessings.
Go to the woods alone, and the trees and squirrels will watch for you.
Go to an unfamiliar city, roam the streets, they're always statues to talk to and benches made for sitting give strangers a shared existence if only for a minute and these moments can be so uplifting and the conversations you get in by sitting alone on benches might've never happened had you not been there by yourself
Society is afraid of alonedom, like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements, like people must have problems if, after a while, nobody is dating them. but lonely is a freedom that breaths easy and weightless and lonely is healing if you make it.
You could stand, swathed by groups and mobs or hold hands with your partner, look both further and farther for the endless quest for company. But no one's in your head and by the time you translate your thoughts, some essence of them may be lost or perhaps it is just kept.
Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself, perhaps all those sappy slogans from preschool over to high school's groaning were tokens for holding the lonely at bay. Cuz if you're happy in your head than solitude is blessed and alone is okay.
It's okay if no one believes like you. All experience is unique, no one has the same synapses, can't think like you, for this be relieved, keeps things interesting life's magic things in reach.
And it doesn't mean you're not connected, that communities not present, just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it. take silence and respect it. if you have an art that needs a practice, stop neglecting it. if your family doesn't get you, or religious sect is not meant for you, don't obsess about it.
you could be in an instant surrounded if you needed it
If your heart is bleeding make the best of it
There is heat in freezing, be a testament.
h/t - Roger Ebert's Journal
10.04.2010
6.30.2010
Zoë Keating’s 'Into The Trees'
The extraordinary avant-cellist Zoë Keating, has finally released her new album, Into the Trees. You can stream it right here. If you like what you hear, for just $8 you can purchase all eleven tracks for immediate download in your choice of format. Enjoy!
4.24.2010
Broken Bells - The High Road
Broken Bells is an American indie rock band featuring artist–producer Danger Mouse (billed by his real name, Brian Burton) and James Mercer, the lead vocalist and guitarist for the Portland indie rock band The Shins. Their self-titled debut album was released in the U.S. and Canada on March 9, 2010.
12.19.2009
Give a Goat, Get an Mp3
Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn are Pomplamoose.
They've made several fun covers that they perform out of a SF Bay area home studio. They've pioneered a specific style of work dubbed the "videosong"
This Christmas they've collaborated with several other musicians on the song, Always in the Season. (Including one of my faves, Zoë Keating on Cello!) At the end of the song they'll explain what you can do to get a couple of free Mp3's and help out a family by giving a goat.
11.23.2009
Before The GaGa
Love her, hate her or simply don’t understand what all the fuss is about, one must, at the very least, concede that Lady Gaga has become a pop phenomenon this year. With her outrageous outfits and stage antics, a bit Bowie, Madonna and Warhol, she's undeniably changing the pop music scene. However, in 2005, as this clip shows, she was just Stefani Germanotta, an N.Y.U. freshman competing in an annual talent show.
11.07.2009
Hugh Laurie Singing Minnie The Moocher
This is from the House Soundtrack and Laurie is singing with his Band From TV. Years earlier, with his long-time comedy and acting partner Stephen Frye, his Wooster sung and attempted (with some help from Jeeves) to deconstruct the song. Good stuff.
9.14.2009
Monday Music
It wasn’t all bad at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards Sunday night. I didn’t watch, but this performance by Pink! was shared on Twitter. I like Pink and this high wire performance is pretty amazing. (PG-13)
8.03.2009
7.29.2009
NSO to Live Twitter Performance of Beethoven
Have you ever sat in the audience for a classical music concert and wished you understood the music better -- even for a piece you were familiar with?
National Symphony Orchestra Associate Conductor Emil de Cou feels your pain.
De Cou is writing a series of messages on Twitter designed to draw the audience into Thursday night's NSO performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 6, better known as the "Pastoral Symphony," at Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts, which is the summer home of the NSO. Wolf Trap is encouraging audience members on the outdoor lawn to follow on their cell phones during the concert.
Following a similar experiment in 2007 involving iTunes and podcasts, audience members who are interested in learning more about this symphonic work can follow the Wolf Trap Twitter feed. During the intermission of Thursday's concert, tweets explaining the composer's intent behind the music will be sent both to those at the live performance and for those playing the piece at home.
This particular work was not chosen by accident. Many pastoral symphonies were written before and after Beethoven's time, but his remains the best known. It's a genre that audiences of the 1800s were very familiar with -- a context with its own musical themes that is largely lost to modern audiences. So sample tweets like "Measure 37: A grove of trees filled with singing birds" will give any listener a visual context to go with the performance.
5.31.2009
Awesome Brat Pack Mashup
Late on this one, but this Phoenix Lisztomania "Brat Pack Mash-up" is just brilliant! 80s dancing - the crown jewel of 80s movies, and no one did 80s movies better than that group of roughly interchangeable teen actors collectively known as the Brat Pack.
5.21.2009
Death Cab for Cutie’s Little Bribes
Been neglecting this site in favor of life, Twitter, my tumblr blog and Facebook. I know. So sharing this awesome fan made music video. Enjoy.
Via: rossching.com
3.27.2009
Some Awesome Nerd-Tastic Music For Your Friday
A short medley of (mostly) '80s hits arranged and performed on his stylophone.
Via: John Scalzi's Whatever Blog
2.17.2009
Feeling a Bit Quaker/Folk Tonight
One of my favorite songs by Hoosier & Quaker, Singer/Songwriter Carrie Newcomer is Bare To the Bone. I couldn't find an embedable version,
but here are the lyrics. Enjoy!
Lyrics for: Bare To The Bone
From the album: Betty's Diner: The Best Of Carrie Newcomer
Songwriter: Carrie Newcomer
Here I am without a message
Here I stand with empty hands
Just a spirit tired of wandering
Like a stranger in this land
Walking wide eyed through this world
Is the only way I've known
Wrapped in hope and good intentions
Bare to the bone
There is nothing I won't show you
Nothing I can hide
Risked it all and dreamt it all
And seldom questioned why
You took me in when I was hungry
When my spirit ached and groaned
Laid wide open and defenseless
And bear to the bone
So, when I rise, I rise in glory
If I do, I do by grace
Time will wash away these footprints
And we'll leave without a trace
Between here and now and forever
Is such precious little time?
What we do in love and kindness
Is all that we leave behind
When my lights are slowly fading
And my eyes is softly waning
And the evening sun is setting
And the world is barely breathing
Then your voice will call me
And your hands can lead me home
Like a newborn awed and naked
And bare to the bone
So, when I rise, I rise in glory
If I do, I do by grace
Time will wash away these footprints
And we'll leave without a trace
Between here and now and forever
Is such precious little time
What we do in love and kindness
Is all we ever leave behind
Here I am without a message
Here I stand with empty hands
Just a spirit tired of wandering
Like a stranger in this land
Walking wide eyed through this world
Is the only way I've known
Wrapped in hope and good intentions
Bare to the bone
Wrapped in hope and good intentions
Bare to the bone
© CARRIE NEWCOMER MUSIC
Completely unrelated except that it's also by Carrie is The Gathering of Spirits. Another of my favorites by her.
2.14.2009
Become a Fan of Country/Folk Singer and Songwriter Rhett McDaniel
Listen and become a fan of my very talented friend, singer/song writer Rhett McDaniel. His songs are mostly Country, Adult Contemporary and Folk. Though Hoosier born and reared, Rhett now lives, performs, writes and works
out of Nashville, TN.
12.07.2008
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