Just cause I don't want to be too negative and all:
Here is the playlist that I just created for a mix CD to be played at Matt's Christmas party. I think it's a pretty good mix of sacred Christmas music and . . . (what's the opposite? The Devil's Christmas music?) It's an attempt to find a good mix of classic tunes and not-overplayed versions, along with a few curveballs to keep things interesting. . . but not so odd to wreck the flow.
soundtrack: hit play, and then move on to. . .
The Playlist
1. Christmas Is All Around Bill Nighy as Billy Mack Love Actually OST. Always makes me smile.
2. Winter Wonderland - Phantom Planet (fun)
3. Greensleeves - Vince Guaraldi (Charlie Brown Christmas)
4. Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer - Jack Johnson yeah. That's what I said. Jack Johnson gets on my playlist.
5. Santa Claus Is Coming To Town - The Jackson 5 (overplayed, but pure joy. Sorry, Mel.)
6. Song For A Winter's Night - Sarah McLachlan
7. Lo! How A Rose E'er Blooming - Sufjan Stevens (I like his christmas stuff, quite a lot.)
8. Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis - Neko Case
9. At Last I'm Ready For Christmas - Stan Rogers
10. O Come All Ye Faithful - Nat King Cole
11. O Holy Night - Tracy Chapman (avoids the dreadful over-production and over-vocalisation Mariah Carey ad all the Popera stars bring to the poor song. -- This song is the Star Spangled Banner of Christmas songs: EVERY artist with pretensions of great vocal skill has tortured this song right up and down the scale.)
12. I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm - Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong
13. Jingle Bell Rock - Brian Setzer Orchestra (specially requested by Matt: at least it's not the Brenda Lee version, or 'Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree')
14. Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) - Darlene Love
15. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen - Barenaked Ladies and Sarah McLachlan
16. Silent Night - Stevie Nicks
17. The Little Drummer Boy - The Temptations (the song's overdone, and one of my least favourite Christmas songs, but bud, the Temptations really bring it.)
18. Joy To The World - Brian Wilson (beach boy harmonies. Nice.)
19. Silver Bells - Stevie Wonder (the Dean Martin version's overdone, and young Stevie Wonder's voice is so fresh and full of vitality)
20. Hark! The Herald Angels Sing - Frank Sinatra - beat out three or four other Sinatra songs for a spot on the mix (His First Noel and Baby It's Cold Outside is also great.)
21. The First Noel - Emmylou Harris (a capella and gorgeous. Beat out five or six other versions of the song, by heavyweights like Aretha Franklin and Frank Sinatra and the Temptations to get on. The best discovery I made while searching for Christmas music to put on the mix).
22. Christmas Song - Aimee Mann (the Rat Pack and Nat King Cole versions are too overplayed)
23. White Christmas - Otis Redding (see previous post for my opinion on Bing's version).
24. A Fairytale of New York (aka Christmas in the Drunk Tank) by The Pogues and Kristy MacColl. (Energetic, funny, and full of joy.)
25. Away In A Manger - Bright Eyes (Most versions of this one were pretty similar, so I chose the one that was out in left field to finish off the mix.)
That's seventy-four minutes of Christmas Goodness for you.
Recommended purchases:
Christmas With The Rat Pack
Any "Best of Christmas with Ella Fitzgerald" collection.
A Motown Christmas - a bit overplayed, and no sacred songs on it (a serious handicap: the sacred songs are the most beautiful, by miles) but still great, because of the amazing performers.
Painful Omissions
because of song repeats, time constraints, too many songs by one artist, or other versions of the song being slightly better, I had to exclude these ones, but wish I didn't:
O Holy Night by Al Green
Baby It's Cold Outside by Tom Jones and Cerys (a singer from the band Catalonia)-- the funniest version of the song -wildly hilarious, in fact, but not as charming and sweet as Ella Fitzgerald and Louie Jordan, and didn't fit as well. Sinatra also had a good "Baby It's Cold Outside"
Jingle Bells or Christmas Song by Sammy Davis Jr.
At least something from Johnny Cash's Christmas album, and at least something from Aretha Franklin's Christmas recordings (her Joy to The World and O Christmas Tree almost made it, and Johnny's Blue Christmas was the last song I cut.
O Holy Night by Mariah Carey (overplayed, but sweet mercy, she can sing!)
something from Elvis (maybe O Little Town Of Bethlehem)
That Was The Worst Christmas Ever! - by Sufjan Stevens (and a handful more of his, including Holy Holy Holy and O Holy Night)
Christmas Day - Dido
Soon After Christmas - Stina Nordenstam - interesting, but too long and unfamiliar.
River - Joni Mitchell -- just didn't fit.
Winter Wonderland - Annie Lennox -- just didn't fit.
Let it Snow! - Ella Fitzgerald -- too much ella already.
Omission I don't regret:
Happy Christmas (War Is Over) - John Lennon and Yoko Ono. No regrets there. Too many na na na's and a cloying children's choir, along with the biggest guilt trip of any Christmas song.
If you download one song from this whole list, I recommend:
The First Noel - by Emmylou Harris
one expat's life in Korea
Friday, December 07, 2007
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Enough uplifting stuff. . . time for a rant! (or Seasonal Music in December) with a Survey at the End!
First thing:
I like Christmas. I really do. Somehow Christmas makes me think of home, of where I'm from, of who I'm from, more than any other time of year. It's a beautifully spiritual time, if you can hit the right notes, and keep your mind in the right place.
(insert obligatory paragraph about over-commercialized Christmas here -- even the complaining about Christmas has been overdone and is now clicheed.)
I can avert my eyes from the "shop shop shop" ads, or at least simply enjoy the christmassy feeling that the combination of the colours red, white, and green bring to my emotional memory, and not read the words.
But what I can't do, guy-sensitive-to-music that I am, is shut my ears from hearing Christmas music every flippin' place I go.
And dear readers, some of that Christmas music has got to go.
Now, you will notice this post has many embedded videos. The one introduced as a Tom Waits video, and the very last one are the two best, so if you're impatient, watch them and skip the rest. Be warned, many of the others are there to serve as examples of terrible Christmas music. I put them up for the same reason people look at boogers after they pick them, and slow down for car crashes: some people just want to know, even (or especially) when somebody says, "You don't want to know. Really." And some of the music (I chose the videos for their music -- ignore the images if you can) is a musical car crash. I'll even put a car crash warning on them, just so you can skip them if you don't like the smell of putrescence. And if you DO like putrescence. . . this post should be a proper hall of masochistic wonders for you!
For the music overkill. . . as when I posted a bunch of poetry in a previous blog, if you don't like it, skip it!
(car wreck warning: worst. Christmas. song. ever. Wham!)
See, most mediocre, half-hearted pop-songs clutter up the airwaves for a little while, and then have the consideration to vanish, as their limited shelf/radio-life expires. Even if you REALLY hate the latest steaming pile of Black-Eyed-Peas, it'll go away in about three months. That's not to say it hasn't already overstayed its welcome, but at least it's gone now.
Not so Christmas music. EVERY DECEMBER, radio programmers dig up, and warm over all the crappy songs from Christmas past, trotting dead horses back out and into radio rotation, so that we're STILL listening to George Michael whine about "Last Christmas" when by now, it's been twenty-four Christmases since he gave you his heart, and you're still glad you gave it away, and it's been twenty-three Christmases since his mopey, sloppily written, limpidly sung song should have ceased forever to grate on shop customers' ears. Instead, here in Korea, modern pop bands are COVERING it, just so I hear it even MORE often!
Rain: the biggest male popstar in Korea. Put me out of my misery now! (SUPER MEGA TRAIN-WRECK WARNING)
whew! at least it was short.
Now to be fair, I recognize that it's hard to make a good Christmas song --
Your choices are these:
Option 1. write your own song.
(car wreck warning: bryan adams, riffing on the tired old "Christmas makes us better people" theme)
In which case, your own songwriting skills are on a playlist right before, or after, some Christmas classic, and bud, I don't care how underrated a songwriter Bryan Adams might be. . . his junky Christmas anthem pales next to the majesty of "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing."
From Paul McCartney, this is my submission for the worst track any Beatle ever recorded, and that INCLUDES the plastic ono band. . . but every Christmas, it comes back again.
(car wreck warning: wonderful christmas time)
The images in the video make me smile--"Hey everybody! Even though the Beatles broke up, I'm still using drugs. . . see?"
Making a Christmas song, option 2:
Do a version of a Christmas classic.
You have a better chance of success here, except that with all the good ones, somebody's already done it better.
Ella Fitzgerald sang "Baby, it's Cold Outside" with Louis Jordan . . . that means Avril Lavigne, Michael Buble, Jack Johnson, Fergie, and any band assembled by a producer rather than by the musicians finding each other, should leave it alone. Really. Why bother trying.
(listen to the words: it's the only song in the world that makes date-rape sound charming and nostalgic, if you listen to it cynically enough)
Annie Lennox did Winter Wonderland really well (there's a link to her version later). . . this version makes me want to cancel Christmas altogether, hide my head under a pillow, and hibernate until February.
(Big Car Wreck warning. This clip is like using a corkscrew instead of a q-tip. Really, don't watch more than the first fifteen seconds of this one. I'm ashamed of my culture right now. No Joke. this is the worst video clip in the entire post. in case you doubt me, let me just say: Ozzy Osbourne/Jessica Simpson duet. Still doubt me? I dare you to press play!)
(Warning: every time someone plays this clip in its entirety, an angel loses its wings.)
(As my sister's friend says, "You make baby Jesus cry.")
Making a Christmas Song: Option 3 (if you can pull it off): make an amazing Christmas song that gets overplayed until people hate it anyway.
Dear Mariah Carey:
Thanks for this one! It's AWESOME
Awesome!
(the first 435 times)
Dear radio programmers who play "All I Want For Christmas Is You" practically on repeat every December: please? stop? You all agreed to take "Crazy" off the air before people got sick of it -- can we now give Mariah the Gnarls Barkley treatment, before you start losing listeners through death by immolation? Yeah, it's rare that an actually talented artist makes a Christmas album at the top of her game. . . but every five minutes I'm hearing "All I Want For Christmas. . . " either the Mariah version, or the cover from the "Love Actually" soundtrack. At some point, thanks to the "shuffle" function on CD players, I'm going to hear them back-to-back, and I heard that if that's followed by back-to-back versions of "Last Christmas" by Wham! and then by the K-Popstar Rain, every Starbucks in Korea will implode.
The great Christmas songs get played more often than the crappy ones, so we even tire of them, sadly. (Sorry, Bing Crosby. The song's great, but I've just overdosed on it. All respect to you, but I never want to hear "White Christmas" again.)
So that's the quandary of Christmas music. Either there are a zillion other versions (probably by better musicians), or your song's not gonna hold water next to the other Christmas classics, or it's gonna get so overplayed we're sick of it anyway--it just takes us three years instead of one week.
At the root of the problem, or at least a major part of it, is this:
Most Christmas albums are basically Christmas-spending-spree cash-ins from artists who are either getting old and running out of fresh ideas, or whose appeal will fade quickly (often due to lack of true talent), and need to capitalize before they become irrelevant, or who were all about the money anyway, right from the start. For proof, go to a used CD shop and see how many "where are they now" bands have numerous copies of their Christmas Album on the shelves, where nobody's buying them.
These cynical money-grubbing artists are hilariously parodied here in "Love Actually" by the fictional artist "Billy Mack" -- THIS makes me laugh, because it's so true.
(Car wreck. . . no, train wreck. . . no, mid-air-plane collision. . . this is the Titanic of bad music videos. . . but it's funny, and a parody. . . does that make it ok? I especially like the interview clips before and after the actual song, and the naughty elves with stripper poles.)
help us all! at least they're not serious, like Ozzy Osbourne and Jessica Simpson up above.
And so it is that bad artists make most of the Christmas music out there.
Conversely, it is only rarely that a really great artist does a really interesting take on Christmas. The artists who could make a really interesting Christmas album are rarely the ones who actually DO make Christmas music, because actual artists aren't usually into cash-grabs. I've been hearing an Aimee Mann Christmas song lately at Starbucks (I can't find it to post it), and that's nice. . . I think Tom Waits would make the best Christmas album ever, but he's too much of an artist to make one, the same way I think Robert Redford is the Hollywood star who'd make the best U.S. President. . . for precisely the reasons he would never run for president.
Come on, Tom, give us some more. (Tom Waits: Christmas Card From a Hooker In Minneapolis) -- Neko Case sings a gorgeous version of this song, too, but it never gets on the radio, or on YouTube.
This, THIS is good. Sad, funny, tender, Tom Waits.
So my Christmas wish is that we could retire some of that Christmas dreck that's been recycled for too many years. Please? We could also make a rule that radio stations and shops can only play a Christmas song a maximum of three times (maximum four) per twenty-four hours, so that we don't get sick of Bing's White Christmas, and Annie Lennox's "Winter Wonderland," which I still like. . . barely.
(embedding disabled by request, so you have to follow the link to hear the song)
In a world of MP3 CD's, there's just no excuse anymore for playing "Merry Christmas" by Mariah Carey on repeat for eight hours a day in your coffee shop. Really, none. Radio programmers: It's OK to play just regular, nice music in December -- mix it up a bit! Then we can enjoy the Christmas music when it DOES come on, instead of sighing and gritting our teeth until January.
(It's a pretty poor reflection on the caliber of Christmas music that I'm actually GLAD no other holidays have special pop-songs for them -- but then again, that's not a bad business idea. Do you think there'd be a market for crappy Thanksgiving albums? What about crappy Valentine's Day music? I'm SURE if you made a bad Independence Day album, Americans would buy it. This might be my million-dollar idea!)
Before I go: here are some more Christmas songs I DO like if I don't hear them too often, and the last one is my favourite Christmas recording ever -- if you only listen to one of these songs, make it that one (if two, add the Tom Waits one above).
Joni Mitchell
Jackson 5 (and most of A Motown Christmas)
(Most of Christmas With the Rat Pack is pretty good, too -- Sinatra, Dean Martin, Davis Jr. and co. know how to handle a classic Christmas tune).
This, by Sarah McLachlan, is not about Christmas, but it's about Winter. I'd love to hear this at Starbucks as I sip my maquillado.
And I especially love this one. One of the most beautiful voices I know (Stevie Nicks: you've heard her before on this blog), matched with what I would argue to be the most beautiful melody ever penned. Shimmering! (As the Wizard of Oz would say, "Pay no attention to the early '80s hair! I am the great and powerful OZ!")
And now, it's survey time. . . which songs need to be retired, in your opinion? (see above: also, Boney M)
Which artists need to make a Christmas album? (I humbly submit Alicia Keys and Tom Waits)
(PS: Blood On The Tracks Era Bob Dylan would have made an absolute wonder of a Christmas album, too. Not anymore though.)
Which Christmas music needs to be played more? (did you know Sufjan Stevens has a Christmas Album or two out?)
And what are your favourite Christmas recordings (after Handel's Messiah)?
And my favourite Christmas songs:
Silent Night (the one melody I really never tire of)
Hark The Herald Angels Sing
The First Noel
O Holy Night (in moderation, and sung tastefully)
Angels We Have Heard on High
Joy To The World
Love'em.
I like Christmas. I really do. Somehow Christmas makes me think of home, of where I'm from, of who I'm from, more than any other time of year. It's a beautifully spiritual time, if you can hit the right notes, and keep your mind in the right place.
(insert obligatory paragraph about over-commercialized Christmas here -- even the complaining about Christmas has been overdone and is now clicheed.)
I can avert my eyes from the "shop shop shop" ads, or at least simply enjoy the christmassy feeling that the combination of the colours red, white, and green bring to my emotional memory, and not read the words.
But what I can't do, guy-sensitive-to-music that I am, is shut my ears from hearing Christmas music every flippin' place I go.
And dear readers, some of that Christmas music has got to go.
Now, you will notice this post has many embedded videos. The one introduced as a Tom Waits video, and the very last one are the two best, so if you're impatient, watch them and skip the rest. Be warned, many of the others are there to serve as examples of terrible Christmas music. I put them up for the same reason people look at boogers after they pick them, and slow down for car crashes: some people just want to know, even (or especially) when somebody says, "You don't want to know. Really." And some of the music (I chose the videos for their music -- ignore the images if you can) is a musical car crash. I'll even put a car crash warning on them, just so you can skip them if you don't like the smell of putrescence. And if you DO like putrescence. . . this post should be a proper hall of masochistic wonders for you!
For the music overkill. . . as when I posted a bunch of poetry in a previous blog, if you don't like it, skip it!
(car wreck warning: worst. Christmas. song. ever. Wham!)
See, most mediocre, half-hearted pop-songs clutter up the airwaves for a little while, and then have the consideration to vanish, as their limited shelf/radio-life expires. Even if you REALLY hate the latest steaming pile of Black-Eyed-Peas, it'll go away in about three months. That's not to say it hasn't already overstayed its welcome, but at least it's gone now.
Not so Christmas music. EVERY DECEMBER, radio programmers dig up, and warm over all the crappy songs from Christmas past, trotting dead horses back out and into radio rotation, so that we're STILL listening to George Michael whine about "Last Christmas" when by now, it's been twenty-four Christmases since he gave you his heart, and you're still glad you gave it away, and it's been twenty-three Christmases since his mopey, sloppily written, limpidly sung song should have ceased forever to grate on shop customers' ears. Instead, here in Korea, modern pop bands are COVERING it, just so I hear it even MORE often!
Rain: the biggest male popstar in Korea. Put me out of my misery now! (SUPER MEGA TRAIN-WRECK WARNING)
whew! at least it was short.
Now to be fair, I recognize that it's hard to make a good Christmas song --
Your choices are these:
Option 1. write your own song.
(car wreck warning: bryan adams, riffing on the tired old "Christmas makes us better people" theme)
In which case, your own songwriting skills are on a playlist right before, or after, some Christmas classic, and bud, I don't care how underrated a songwriter Bryan Adams might be. . . his junky Christmas anthem pales next to the majesty of "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing."
From Paul McCartney, this is my submission for the worst track any Beatle ever recorded, and that INCLUDES the plastic ono band. . . but every Christmas, it comes back again.
(car wreck warning: wonderful christmas time)
The images in the video make me smile--"Hey everybody! Even though the Beatles broke up, I'm still using drugs. . . see?"
Making a Christmas song, option 2:
Do a version of a Christmas classic.
You have a better chance of success here, except that with all the good ones, somebody's already done it better.
Ella Fitzgerald sang "Baby, it's Cold Outside" with Louis Jordan . . . that means Avril Lavigne, Michael Buble, Jack Johnson, Fergie, and any band assembled by a producer rather than by the musicians finding each other, should leave it alone. Really. Why bother trying.
(listen to the words: it's the only song in the world that makes date-rape sound charming and nostalgic, if you listen to it cynically enough)
Annie Lennox did Winter Wonderland really well (there's a link to her version later). . . this version makes me want to cancel Christmas altogether, hide my head under a pillow, and hibernate until February.
(Big Car Wreck warning. This clip is like using a corkscrew instead of a q-tip. Really, don't watch more than the first fifteen seconds of this one. I'm ashamed of my culture right now. No Joke. this is the worst video clip in the entire post. in case you doubt me, let me just say: Ozzy Osbourne/Jessica Simpson duet. Still doubt me? I dare you to press play!)
(Warning: every time someone plays this clip in its entirety, an angel loses its wings.)
(As my sister's friend says, "You make baby Jesus cry.")
Making a Christmas Song: Option 3 (if you can pull it off): make an amazing Christmas song that gets overplayed until people hate it anyway.
Dear Mariah Carey:
Thanks for this one! It's AWESOME
Awesome!
(the first 435 times)
Dear radio programmers who play "All I Want For Christmas Is You" practically on repeat every December: please? stop? You all agreed to take "Crazy" off the air before people got sick of it -- can we now give Mariah the Gnarls Barkley treatment, before you start losing listeners through death by immolation? Yeah, it's rare that an actually talented artist makes a Christmas album at the top of her game. . . but every five minutes I'm hearing "All I Want For Christmas. . . " either the Mariah version, or the cover from the "Love Actually" soundtrack. At some point, thanks to the "shuffle" function on CD players, I'm going to hear them back-to-back, and I heard that if that's followed by back-to-back versions of "Last Christmas" by Wham! and then by the K-Popstar Rain, every Starbucks in Korea will implode.
The great Christmas songs get played more often than the crappy ones, so we even tire of them, sadly. (Sorry, Bing Crosby. The song's great, but I've just overdosed on it. All respect to you, but I never want to hear "White Christmas" again.)
So that's the quandary of Christmas music. Either there are a zillion other versions (probably by better musicians), or your song's not gonna hold water next to the other Christmas classics, or it's gonna get so overplayed we're sick of it anyway--it just takes us three years instead of one week.
At the root of the problem, or at least a major part of it, is this:
Most Christmas albums are basically Christmas-spending-spree cash-ins from artists who are either getting old and running out of fresh ideas, or whose appeal will fade quickly (often due to lack of true talent), and need to capitalize before they become irrelevant, or who were all about the money anyway, right from the start. For proof, go to a used CD shop and see how many "where are they now" bands have numerous copies of their Christmas Album on the shelves, where nobody's buying them.
These cynical money-grubbing artists are hilariously parodied here in "Love Actually" by the fictional artist "Billy Mack" -- THIS makes me laugh, because it's so true.
(Car wreck. . . no, train wreck. . . no, mid-air-plane collision. . . this is the Titanic of bad music videos. . . but it's funny, and a parody. . . does that make it ok? I especially like the interview clips before and after the actual song, and the naughty elves with stripper poles.)
help us all! at least they're not serious, like Ozzy Osbourne and Jessica Simpson up above.
And so it is that bad artists make most of the Christmas music out there.
Conversely, it is only rarely that a really great artist does a really interesting take on Christmas. The artists who could make a really interesting Christmas album are rarely the ones who actually DO make Christmas music, because actual artists aren't usually into cash-grabs. I've been hearing an Aimee Mann Christmas song lately at Starbucks (I can't find it to post it), and that's nice. . . I think Tom Waits would make the best Christmas album ever, but he's too much of an artist to make one, the same way I think Robert Redford is the Hollywood star who'd make the best U.S. President. . . for precisely the reasons he would never run for president.
Come on, Tom, give us some more. (Tom Waits: Christmas Card From a Hooker In Minneapolis) -- Neko Case sings a gorgeous version of this song, too, but it never gets on the radio, or on YouTube.
This, THIS is good. Sad, funny, tender, Tom Waits.
So my Christmas wish is that we could retire some of that Christmas dreck that's been recycled for too many years. Please? We could also make a rule that radio stations and shops can only play a Christmas song a maximum of three times (maximum four) per twenty-four hours, so that we don't get sick of Bing's White Christmas, and Annie Lennox's "Winter Wonderland," which I still like. . . barely.
(embedding disabled by request, so you have to follow the link to hear the song)
In a world of MP3 CD's, there's just no excuse anymore for playing "Merry Christmas" by Mariah Carey on repeat for eight hours a day in your coffee shop. Really, none. Radio programmers: It's OK to play just regular, nice music in December -- mix it up a bit! Then we can enjoy the Christmas music when it DOES come on, instead of sighing and gritting our teeth until January.
(It's a pretty poor reflection on the caliber of Christmas music that I'm actually GLAD no other holidays have special pop-songs for them -- but then again, that's not a bad business idea. Do you think there'd be a market for crappy Thanksgiving albums? What about crappy Valentine's Day music? I'm SURE if you made a bad Independence Day album, Americans would buy it. This might be my million-dollar idea!)
Before I go: here are some more Christmas songs I DO like if I don't hear them too often, and the last one is my favourite Christmas recording ever -- if you only listen to one of these songs, make it that one (if two, add the Tom Waits one above).
Joni Mitchell
Jackson 5 (and most of A Motown Christmas)
(Most of Christmas With the Rat Pack is pretty good, too -- Sinatra, Dean Martin, Davis Jr. and co. know how to handle a classic Christmas tune).
This, by Sarah McLachlan, is not about Christmas, but it's about Winter. I'd love to hear this at Starbucks as I sip my maquillado.
And I especially love this one. One of the most beautiful voices I know (Stevie Nicks: you've heard her before on this blog), matched with what I would argue to be the most beautiful melody ever penned. Shimmering! (As the Wizard of Oz would say, "Pay no attention to the early '80s hair! I am the great and powerful OZ!")
And now, it's survey time. . . which songs need to be retired, in your opinion? (see above: also, Boney M)
Which artists need to make a Christmas album? (I humbly submit Alicia Keys and Tom Waits)
(PS: Blood On The Tracks Era Bob Dylan would have made an absolute wonder of a Christmas album, too. Not anymore though.)
Which Christmas music needs to be played more? (did you know Sufjan Stevens has a Christmas Album or two out?)
And what are your favourite Christmas recordings (after Handel's Messiah)?
And my favourite Christmas songs:
Silent Night (the one melody I really never tire of)
Hark The Herald Angels Sing
The First Noel
O Holy Night (in moderation, and sung tastefully)
Angels We Have Heard on High
Joy To The World
Love'em.
Saturday, December 01, 2007
Four Songs that meant a lot to me.
You may remember I went through a rough patch in late 2005/early 2006: losing your mom, and then breaking up with The Reason You Moved Across The Ocean can shake a person to the foundation, I've heard. Well, I'm happy to say I'm doing much better now. Here in Korea, they say Autumn is a melancholy time, the best time of the year for nostalgia and retrospection. I've been doing that, too, digging through my old diaries, poems, and e-mails to mull over the lowest low time I've had so far in my young life, to see what I picked up, like burrs from the brambles I walked through in the valley. So far, I like what I've found stuck to my clothes and hair: I walked out of that valley with some valuable stuff in my pockets.
Here are four songs that really, really helped me during that time. I sent them to some of my friends, listened to a few of them several times a day, during January, February, and March. And April.
This one is called Waiting For A Superman, by The Flaming Lips.
It's a really good song for when you feel sad, when you're ready to give up, when your ideals, principles, or heroes have let you down.
"It's a good time for Superman to lift the sun into the sky
is it getting heavy? Well I thought it was already as heavy as can be"
"Tell everybody waiting for Superman
that they should try to hold on best they can
he hasn't dropped them, forgot them, or anything
it's just too heavy for Superman to lift."
This one is from The Mountain Goats. Their album The Sunset Tree is a fairly autobiographical, and INCREDIBLY raw confessional about the songwriter's experience coping with an abusive father, and getting away from that situation, whatever the cost. The stubborn insistence on hope, both in the music and in the words, made this the song equivalent of my motto for a while. I'd hum it when I walked to work.
"I am gonna make it through this year
if it kills me"
Rage, sadness, hope, determination, desperation, revenge, grief -- this guy's lived it, and somehow got it all into this album. I still thank the Mountain Goats for it. I didn't listen to this one as much as some of the other ones on this page, but Good Lord, I needed this one.
Next, these are the two songs I'd listen to (along with the last two movements of Beethoven's Ninth, which I wrote about in the post linked above (and here again).
Thunder Road - follow the link and see what I wrote about it there.
This song was the surest, fastest pick-me-up in my collection. The Arcade Fire made an album called "Funeral", because during its recording, two or three band members lost parents or siblings. It was on most year-end top ten lists in 2005, and this, the opening track on that album, is like a revelation. The first twenty seconds (the musical intro), and then the chorus, are a filling-up with life in the face of partings, endings, and deaths, that can get you through a day. The song builds -- it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger, like a rolling boulder gathering speed.
I like that part, but the chorus went through my head for an entire month (and it was a good thing, unlike MOST times a song sticks in your head for a month).
"You change all the lead
sleepin' in my head to gold,
as the day grows dim,
I hear you sing a golden hymn,
the song I've been trying to sing."
And this is the coda the song ends on, a call out for a purity of purpose, of living, that I needed at the time. The singer howls them out like a drowning man calling for help, desperate for life, desperate for purity, desperate to be full of. . . something.
"Purify the colours, purify my mind.
Purify the colours, purify my mind,
and spread the ashes of the colours
in this heart of mine."
Listen to it.
I hope you like these songs. I sure needed them . . . maybe they'll do some good for you, too. Music is intensely personal, so if they don't move you, that's OK, but they sure plucked the right strings in my, at just the right time.
Here are four songs that really, really helped me during that time. I sent them to some of my friends, listened to a few of them several times a day, during January, February, and March. And April.
This one is called Waiting For A Superman, by The Flaming Lips.
It's a really good song for when you feel sad, when you're ready to give up, when your ideals, principles, or heroes have let you down.
"It's a good time for Superman to lift the sun into the sky
is it getting heavy? Well I thought it was already as heavy as can be"
"Tell everybody waiting for Superman
that they should try to hold on best they can
he hasn't dropped them, forgot them, or anything
it's just too heavy for Superman to lift."
This one is from The Mountain Goats. Their album The Sunset Tree is a fairly autobiographical, and INCREDIBLY raw confessional about the songwriter's experience coping with an abusive father, and getting away from that situation, whatever the cost. The stubborn insistence on hope, both in the music and in the words, made this the song equivalent of my motto for a while. I'd hum it when I walked to work.
"I am gonna make it through this year
if it kills me"
Rage, sadness, hope, determination, desperation, revenge, grief -- this guy's lived it, and somehow got it all into this album. I still thank the Mountain Goats for it. I didn't listen to this one as much as some of the other ones on this page, but Good Lord, I needed this one.
Next, these are the two songs I'd listen to (along with the last two movements of Beethoven's Ninth, which I wrote about in the post linked above (and here again).
Thunder Road - follow the link and see what I wrote about it there.
This song was the surest, fastest pick-me-up in my collection. The Arcade Fire made an album called "Funeral", because during its recording, two or three band members lost parents or siblings. It was on most year-end top ten lists in 2005, and this, the opening track on that album, is like a revelation. The first twenty seconds (the musical intro), and then the chorus, are a filling-up with life in the face of partings, endings, and deaths, that can get you through a day. The song builds -- it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger, like a rolling boulder gathering speed.
I like that part, but the chorus went through my head for an entire month (and it was a good thing, unlike MOST times a song sticks in your head for a month).
"You change all the lead
sleepin' in my head to gold,
as the day grows dim,
I hear you sing a golden hymn,
the song I've been trying to sing."
And this is the coda the song ends on, a call out for a purity of purpose, of living, that I needed at the time. The singer howls them out like a drowning man calling for help, desperate for life, desperate for purity, desperate to be full of. . . something.
"Purify the colours, purify my mind.
Purify the colours, purify my mind,
and spread the ashes of the colours
in this heart of mine."
Listen to it.
I hope you like these songs. I sure needed them . . . maybe they'll do some good for you, too. Music is intensely personal, so if they don't move you, that's OK, but they sure plucked the right strings in my, at just the right time.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Bud, holy cow!
I just went to the Seoul Museum of Art, and saw Vincent Van Gogh. This guy...
you know the difference between looking at pictures of your friend, and actually sitting down and chatting -- you know the way NOBODY gets your vacation photos the way you do, just because bud, the food looks great in the picture, but they didn't get to eat it, and you did.
Well, dear readers, art is like that too. I didn't actually see Vincent VanGogh. He died. Quite a while ago, now. But if you think these pictures are impressive -- wow! You really gotta see them in person. The paint on the canvas, the little knots of colour, the texture that jumps out at you -- it's like the difference between a photo album and a person (which makes sense, but still didn't really click until I saw these in person).
This one was there. Girlfriendoseyo disagrees with me, but I think Van Gogh was overwhelmed by the sun. The sun seems so close here -- it strikes me even as being accusing. The sun almost totally dominates just about every painting where it appears in Van Gogh's work. The field is so mundane next to that glaring eye. You can barely even see the birds eating the sower's seeds -- they're totally irrelevant next to that sun.
I stared at this one for about three minutes without blinking. I don't know how, but Vincent got to me, like a fisher with his hook, he got a hold of something in me.
This next one wasn't in the exhibit, but you can see here, too, Van Gogh's feeling about the sky. I said to Girlfriendoseyo today -- Raphael's or Vermeer's paintings are so perfect, so realistic, it's like they're just seeing. Picasso's paintings are so intuitive, so emotional, it's like they're just feeling. Van Gogh sees and feels. It's amazing how raw and visceral these paintings are in person.
This one WAS in the exhibit, and Girlfriendoseyo and I were both totally gobsmacked. I just can not convey to you how powerful this painting is in person. I really can't. Even if you eat the computer screen where the painting is displayed, you won't be as deeply impressed by it as we were. Go, seek it out, and see it yourself.
This next painting was there too, the only of his self portraits (I think).
This one broke my heart, and also caught hold of me for several minutes: every line said, "dude, I've lived a f***ing rough life." He died at age 37, but this, one of his early paintings, already looks about fifty.
Everybody loves these next three. . . they weren't at the exhibit, but they might have been too much for me if they were. My old roomie Anthony once told me the story of his buddy, the self-proclaimed "biggest Bjork fan in the world", who, when he got the chance to see Bjork perform live, ended up having to leave the auditorium after the first few songs, completely overwhelmed with the power of his experience. I scoffed at the story then, and called dude an idiot for flinching away from a potential high-point in his life. . . but now I think I might understand a bit.
Considering how these three are still amazing, gorgeous, and fresh to me, even though they pop up of every tea room wall, on every Starbucks mug, in every poster-shop window. . . to actually see them in person, to have their impact amplified that much -- I might have to look away for a while, too, before staring into the sun like that.
Dear Lord, the man's night skies were breathtaking!
This one WAS there. In person, it's almost a different painting entirely.
And I wish I could explain what he does with flowers. . . but there's just no way. (This is why people write poems, I suppose.)
This wasn't at the exhibit, but again, look how he just lays his soul bare in the skies. The indoor still life paintings' backgrounds were totally flat and dull, but this Vincent fellow, he had some kind of a thing about skies.
Thanks to him, now I do, too.
Wasn't at the exhibit, but just -- wow. Just wow.
I love painters.
The German poet Rilke (my personal poetry hero) wrote, in the First Duino Elegy
"already the knowing animals are aware
that we are not really at home in our interpreted world"
And this is why artists draw -- because there doesn't have to be a story, or a meaning, or anything but a field and a sky. . . but that field, and that sky -- WOW!
Here it is! Be amazed!
We're right back to that again, aren't we? Can't that sometimes be enough? Can't that sometimes be the entire end and purpose of some art? As John Keats said,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
But with words, Keats had to say beauty is truth. These painters just show something beautiful, and they don't even have to add a single layer of interpretation if they don't want to, and they can just leave it at "here it is. be amazed."
(Girl With a Pearl Earring, by another Dutch guy who was pretty good: Vermeer. Here it is. It's beautiful. Be amazed.)
Yeah, sometimes there's other stuff in there, too. . . but there doesn't have to be. With writing, it's almost impossible not to add in a little pontification, a little theme or interpretation or explanation -- it's why I get bummed every time I read Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey -- he starts off with a "here it is. be amazed" and then starts adding other stuff. Sometimes in other poems, he got it right, got it pure, but often he was so busy explaining the perfection of his moments, or describing his own feelings, that he clouds the beauty with too many traces of his own voice -- kind of like an amazing photograph with a text line across the middle of the composition saying, "taken on a fuji finepix E550"
For your benefit, I've created a visual representation of what I mean. Which of these pictures would you rather have on your wall?
Here's a Picasso painting I talked about in a previous post.
I love about Picasso that he stripped away everything in his paintings except the things he decided were important for that particular painting.
Form? Not needed.
Proportion? Why?
Perspective? Does it serve the painting's main theme?
Conventional Placement Of Body Parts? Let's talk about that again later.
But what he DID keep in his painting, distorted, exaggerated, or rearranged for proper emphasis, maintained the exact emotional content of his subject, even when the recognizable form was long gone, and so, even though you wouldn't recognize her to pass her on the street, you FEEL this woman crying (the painting is named "La Femme Qui Pleure" - the woman who cries), more (or at least as) clearly and authentically than/as a hundred photos of women actually crying.
The other thing I love love love about Picasso is his face. Look at his eyes. Those are eyes that have been trained, for an entire lifetime, to see into the heart of things, and find wonder there. "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child." That he not only learned how to SEE the world that way, but was also skilled or intuitive enough to translate what he saw onto canvas is as much a miracle as the way Mozart heard the music perfectly in his head, or the way Beethoven composed the Ninth Symphony while stone-deaf, or the way John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison managed to be born in the same city, in the same era, and meet each other.
Even when he's very old, you still see a child in his eyes. You see a mind still open. Still dancing.
That kind of wise simplicity appears from time to time, in somebody's eyes. . . not even in every artist, though. My favourite poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, has a sharper edge in his eyes.
but it doesn't surprise me that someone who uses words (which are basically boxes, categories, and judgements impressed upon the things that actually reach one's senses) would have a sharper edge than someone who uses colours and shapes to lay bare his soul.
Would you believe that behind those eyes lies one of the finest religious-scholarly minds on the planet?
I hope, when I'm an old man, I have eyes as encompassing, innocent, and simple, as that.
But more than that, I hope they look that way because I've worked my whole life to see the world simply and wonderfully (wonderful meaning full of wonder, of course), and maybe even that I've been clever enough to transmit some of that tight-packed wonder into some books that other people can read.
How long does it take to write a poem like Rilke, or paint a painting like Picasso, or a story like JD Salinger?
A few hours, or a few days, or a few months. . . and an entire lifetime, of course.
you know the difference between looking at pictures of your friend, and actually sitting down and chatting -- you know the way NOBODY gets your vacation photos the way you do, just because bud, the food looks great in the picture, but they didn't get to eat it, and you did.
Well, dear readers, art is like that too. I didn't actually see Vincent VanGogh. He died. Quite a while ago, now. But if you think these pictures are impressive -- wow! You really gotta see them in person. The paint on the canvas, the little knots of colour, the texture that jumps out at you -- it's like the difference between a photo album and a person (which makes sense, but still didn't really click until I saw these in person).
This one was there. Girlfriendoseyo disagrees with me, but I think Van Gogh was overwhelmed by the sun. The sun seems so close here -- it strikes me even as being accusing. The sun almost totally dominates just about every painting where it appears in Van Gogh's work. The field is so mundane next to that glaring eye. You can barely even see the birds eating the sower's seeds -- they're totally irrelevant next to that sun.
I stared at this one for about three minutes without blinking. I don't know how, but Vincent got to me, like a fisher with his hook, he got a hold of something in me.
This next one wasn't in the exhibit, but you can see here, too, Van Gogh's feeling about the sky. I said to Girlfriendoseyo today -- Raphael's or Vermeer's paintings are so perfect, so realistic, it's like they're just seeing. Picasso's paintings are so intuitive, so emotional, it's like they're just feeling. Van Gogh sees and feels. It's amazing how raw and visceral these paintings are in person.
This one WAS in the exhibit, and Girlfriendoseyo and I were both totally gobsmacked. I just can not convey to you how powerful this painting is in person. I really can't. Even if you eat the computer screen where the painting is displayed, you won't be as deeply impressed by it as we were. Go, seek it out, and see it yourself.
This next painting was there too, the only of his self portraits (I think).
This one broke my heart, and also caught hold of me for several minutes: every line said, "dude, I've lived a f***ing rough life." He died at age 37, but this, one of his early paintings, already looks about fifty.
Everybody loves these next three. . . they weren't at the exhibit, but they might have been too much for me if they were. My old roomie Anthony once told me the story of his buddy, the self-proclaimed "biggest Bjork fan in the world", who, when he got the chance to see Bjork perform live, ended up having to leave the auditorium after the first few songs, completely overwhelmed with the power of his experience. I scoffed at the story then, and called dude an idiot for flinching away from a potential high-point in his life. . . but now I think I might understand a bit.
Considering how these three are still amazing, gorgeous, and fresh to me, even though they pop up of every tea room wall, on every Starbucks mug, in every poster-shop window. . . to actually see them in person, to have their impact amplified that much -- I might have to look away for a while, too, before staring into the sun like that.
Dear Lord, the man's night skies were breathtaking!This one WAS there. In person, it's almost a different painting entirely.
And I wish I could explain what he does with flowers. . . but there's just no way. (This is why people write poems, I suppose.)
This wasn't at the exhibit, but again, look how he just lays his soul bare in the skies. The indoor still life paintings' backgrounds were totally flat and dull, but this Vincent fellow, he had some kind of a thing about skies.
Thanks to him, now I do, too.
Wasn't at the exhibit, but just -- wow. Just wow.
I love painters.
The German poet Rilke (my personal poetry hero) wrote, in the First Duino Elegy
"already the knowing animals are aware
that we are not really at home in our interpreted world"
And this is why artists draw -- because there doesn't have to be a story, or a meaning, or anything but a field and a sky. . . but that field, and that sky -- WOW!
Here it is! Be amazed!
We're right back to that again, aren't we? Can't that sometimes be enough? Can't that sometimes be the entire end and purpose of some art? As John Keats said,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
But with words, Keats had to say beauty is truth. These painters just show something beautiful, and they don't even have to add a single layer of interpretation if they don't want to, and they can just leave it at "here it is. be amazed."
(Girl With a Pearl Earring, by another Dutch guy who was pretty good: Vermeer. Here it is. It's beautiful. Be amazed.)Yeah, sometimes there's other stuff in there, too. . . but there doesn't have to be. With writing, it's almost impossible not to add in a little pontification, a little theme or interpretation or explanation -- it's why I get bummed every time I read Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey -- he starts off with a "here it is. be amazed" and then starts adding other stuff. Sometimes in other poems, he got it right, got it pure, but often he was so busy explaining the perfection of his moments, or describing his own feelings, that he clouds the beauty with too many traces of his own voice -- kind of like an amazing photograph with a text line across the middle of the composition saying, "taken on a fuji finepix E550"
For your benefit, I've created a visual representation of what I mean. Which of these pictures would you rather have on your wall?
Here's a Picasso painting I talked about in a previous post.
I love about Picasso that he stripped away everything in his paintings except the things he decided were important for that particular painting.
Form? Not needed.
Proportion? Why?
Perspective? Does it serve the painting's main theme?
Conventional Placement Of Body Parts? Let's talk about that again later.
But what he DID keep in his painting, distorted, exaggerated, or rearranged for proper emphasis, maintained the exact emotional content of his subject, even when the recognizable form was long gone, and so, even though you wouldn't recognize her to pass her on the street, you FEEL this woman crying (the painting is named "La Femme Qui Pleure" - the woman who cries), more (or at least as) clearly and authentically than/as a hundred photos of women actually crying.
The other thing I love love love about Picasso is his face. Look at his eyes. Those are eyes that have been trained, for an entire lifetime, to see into the heart of things, and find wonder there. "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child." That he not only learned how to SEE the world that way, but was also skilled or intuitive enough to translate what he saw onto canvas is as much a miracle as the way Mozart heard the music perfectly in his head, or the way Beethoven composed the Ninth Symphony while stone-deaf, or the way John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison managed to be born in the same city, in the same era, and meet each other.
Even when he's very old, you still see a child in his eyes. You see a mind still open. Still dancing.
That kind of wise simplicity appears from time to time, in somebody's eyes. . . not even in every artist, though. My favourite poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, has a sharper edge in his eyes.
but it doesn't surprise me that someone who uses words (which are basically boxes, categories, and judgements impressed upon the things that actually reach one's senses) would have a sharper edge than someone who uses colours and shapes to lay bare his soul.
Would you believe that behind those eyes lies one of the finest religious-scholarly minds on the planet?I hope, when I'm an old man, I have eyes as encompassing, innocent, and simple, as that.
But more than that, I hope they look that way because I've worked my whole life to see the world simply and wonderfully (wonderful meaning full of wonder, of course), and maybe even that I've been clever enough to transmit some of that tight-packed wonder into some books that other people can read.
How long does it take to write a poem like Rilke, or paint a painting like Picasso, or a story like JD Salinger?
A few hours, or a few days, or a few months. . . and an entire lifetime, of course.
Friday, November 23, 2007
with my family, and the friends I've loved in my short life I have had so many people I've deeply cared for
(the pictures are explained at the end of the post.)
Before I get into that:
a thought on music: the measure of a great songwriter, I think, is that other artists can take the song and do something interesting with it. (submitted for consideration: Bob Dylan songs, Beatles songs have been covered meaningfully [or otherwise] by so many artists. See also: jazz standards, where any artist can give it their own take. If your song has been covered by a jazz artist [or by more than one] you can console yourself that it's pretty darn well-written.)
but
the measure of a great musician, I realized today, is that people don't dare cover the song, because they know they could never measure up to the standard set by the original (or at least THE version) -- Every artist who sings "Hallelujah" will be measured against Jeff Buckley, every artist who sings "Watchtower" will be measured against Jimi Hendrix. Some bands just never have, like, ANY of their songs remade, because their musical identity is so unique that no artist could measure up. Really, who's gonna cover a Led Zeppelin song? You'll never top them, so why bother trying, unless you take it in such a different direction that it's barely the same song anymore, or only do it live, where Zep is sure to fire up a crowd? Even in jazz -- "My Funny Valentine" isn't done much anymore, because that's Chet's song, and "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" is cute, but you won't be as cute as Louis and Ella. Mark of a musician.
Next:
a Roboseyo observation on life:
Problem is, the worst 1% of a demographic is usually also the loudest.
OK then. Blog soundtrack time: hit play, and then read.
I don't know if this blog actually qualifies as a public forum. . . though theoretically it is, much in the same way you can hold up a sign on a street corner and people can choose to read it or not. . . maybe this blog is more like holding up a sign in an alley at night, I'm not sure how many people come here, really . . . nor whether anybody other than folks who used to be on my personal mailing list still care, but. . .
In going through my old e-mails from the year before, and then the year after Mom died (no small task: over 500 pages just from the five I e-mailed the MOST during that time) I've been struck, staggered, and humbled, by the amazing quality of friends I have.
The thoughts and emotions shared during that time were pretty raw, I was basically bleeding through e-mail a bunch of the time, and my friends (in descending order of number of pages sent back and forth) Tamie, Anna, Melissa, Matt and (before we broke up) Exgirlfriendoseyo really worked like a life buoy (or maybe a tourniquet) for me.
So here are some specific things I'm thankful for, concerning each of these friends:
(in descending order of pages)
Tamie - was my grief buddy. We were peripheral friends during University, but she stayed on my e-mailing list, and then suddenly, when Exgirlfriendoseyo and I broke up, she sent a letter so gentle and compassionate that we've since become good friends. We connected deeply and instantly for several reasons, but you'll just have to ask HER what they are, for privacy reasons and such. Our e-mail correspondence was extensive, and traced a lot of changes in my character and faith, as they were happening. Tamie is wise, gentle, and compassionate. She doesn't give unsolicited advice, or answer without thinking deeply first. She was really diligent in speaking with compassion and without judgment, and by doing that, gave me a space where I could poke around at myself, during a time when I really didn't like being in my own company. Thanks, Tamie!
(also, for a while I think Tamie and Mel were the only ones actually reading my blog. . .)
(it's American thanksgiving, so I guess I can get away with this.)
Anna - my friendship with Anna was one of those "friendship least likely to happen" situations after university ended, but despite (or maybe because of) a knotty beginning, we became good friends later. She lives in my brother's hometown, and she has brown eyes full of wisdom, and she's my age, but she's still the kind of person who listens to birds, and goes outside to look at the frost on the grass in the streetlights, when it shines like diamonds. Like Tamie, our lives followed a somewhat similar arc in certain respects over the last while, and between conversations and e-mails, she's been a good travel companion through some rough patches.
Melissa - didn't get as many pages of e-mail, but it's not because I love her less (it's because we'd meet while I was in Canada, and back in Korea, I phoned her more - hard as that is to believe, considering how sporadic my calling habits are). If I had to be stuck on a desert island with one person, I'd have to choose Jesus, because then we could walk on water back to the mainland (and chat along the way) but if I got to pick three people, it'd be Matt, Dan, and Mel.
One of the things I love about Mel is that she'd beg me to choose someone else so that she could remain with her wonderful husband and her amazing two little boys (you can go read about them on her blog, which is linked on the side here). Mel makes me laugh beyond all reason, and she's been my most loyal university friend. Our friendship has had some amazing give-and-take, and I'm so grateful to have her around. She's extremely smart (but never arrogant), and she takes no crap from me, and chops me back down to size if I get too preposterous, at the same time praising me when I do well. She's one of those rare friends who can give a person the truth honestly, but also kindly enough for a person to really learn something, and maybe become a better person. She has an amazing family, and she needs support right now because her husband is far away in RCMP boot camp, so you should go put encouraging comments on her blog. She's also a badass paramedic, and you can read some of the blood-and-guts stories on her blog.
Soundtrack 2: press play when the other one ends, then scroll down and ignore the images that run as the music plays. Seriously, PLEASE scroll down so you can't see the images that play. They're really cheesy.
The song's "Call it Off" by Tegan and Sara. They're Canadian, and great.
The original version vanished, but this live version has a great crowd singalong.
Matt - Again, more that passed between us was conversation than e-mail. While I was in Canada, with Mom, he got the concentrated stuff, and the korea-related stuff, but once I returned to Korea, well, I might have made it without his support, but it would have been a much rougher, slower go, and I might be a different person than I am now. Matt's the most loyal friend, and the best friend, I've met since university, and he's influenced me more than probably anybody outside my immediate family.
Matt's smart but not arrogant, gentle but tough, honest and tactical. He, like Mel, will call me out if I'm out of line (I really appreciate people who do that), but, like Mel, when he does, it comes from a place of compassion, of knowing me well, and knowing what's important to me (sometimes I get called out by people who misunderstand me or my situation, or who press their values onto my life. . . then it's more of a "thanks for your opinion" than a "I never noticed that before. . . I'll adjust accordingly" as it has usually been with Melissa and Matt. He's funny and he keeps me light-hearted when I need it, and he's ready for a sauna, a poetry reading, a night of revelry, or a mountain-climb, as suits the situation. I love him to pieces. His wife Heyjin is so amazing she, like Melissa's family, really deserves a post of her own, so for now I'll say, I'm glad and grateful for my friendship with her.
Finally, Exgirlfriendoseyo:
Before things fell apart on my return to Korea, she was a good e-mail pal, and she got a lot of the day-to-day updates on Mom's condition. I'm glad she was in Korea waiting for me, because having someone to look forward to sure makes a difficult time like watching your mom die a little more manageable. Exgirlfriendoseyo was (and probably remains, for all I know) a sweet-hearted woman. She's caring and lovable and I'm glad I met her. We weren't quite ready to go the distance together, but I learned a lot about loving from her, and then I learned a lot about grieving from losing her, and for that, I ought to be grateful.
There's a song I wanted to have as the soundtrack for this post: Red Cave, by Yeasayer ends with the repeated lyric, "I'm so blessed to have a good time with my family, and the friends I've loved in my short life I have had so many people I've deeply cared for" -- which sounds nice, but it's miles better set in the rest of the song.
At some point in the future, some cut-and-pastes from the e-mails that passed between me and those five (e-mailing was basically my version of therapy for those two years, along with a few other habits and activities), might appear on this blog. They might not. It depends on the context where they seem most appropriately used.
There are a lot of other people who have been there for me through this time -- shout out to my brothers and sisters and my dad, of course, as well as some other e-pals and coworkers, and the people pictured throughout this post. I love you all and I'm so glad you're in my life. I haven't attached names because I don't necessarily have permission, per se, to name these people on my blog, but you've meant a lot to me. But the five mentioned that bore the lion's share of my grief (certainly my e-grief), and as I look through the old e-mail records, I'm wildly, ridiculously grateful they (and the rest of you) were around when I needed them.
Thanks, eh?
all the love in the world:
rob
(Actually, when I think about it again, maybe the one person I'd choose to be stuck on a desert island with is Dick Cheney, so he couldn't f*** up the world any more than he already has. . . but that's another post entirely)
(Morning has broken, by Cat Stevens)
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