Talking About Art

I have this desire to blog all the time or at least on some sort of consistent schedule but two weeks into this restart I'm already reminded that I don't consistently have anything to talk about. I don't want to turn this into a public diary so I can't talk about the horrors of family holidays without getting too personal about my Thanksgiving and I do have a half written draft about 40s era musicals, Glee and how I'm trying to balance culture that I enjoy while being mindful of the messages in some of it that bother me. But I'm still trying to find the right words that say what I need to without saying something I don't. 

Working off of that I can talk about how as much as I consume art in all its form I find it hard to talk about because so much of it just is what it is to me. I very rarely have some sort of deep, theoretical explanation for why I enjoy something. Art is all emotional expression and response to me.

I love Modern Art but I'm not good at defending it against its detractors who see nothing but splatters of paint on a  canvas because I can't put into intellectual, debatable terms the emotions some pieces of art provoke in me. There are books I love because they were written by an author who knows how to use words and loves language and writes something that evokes a strong response from me whether or not I got into the story at all and there are books that I love because no matter how simply written the book consumes me with a need to know what happens.

I have my music to dance to, my music to work to, my music to drive to and my music that crawls under my skin, becomes a part of me and/or says something that I need to say but can't. Sometimes there's a song or an artist that fill more than one box.  I love Bruce Springsteen because he writes good songs. They're well composed, well sung, well written, meaningful, etc. But I also love Bruce because I'm from Jersey, went down the Shore every summer, have driven Route 9, the Parkway, the Turnpike, etc hundreds of times and can see and hear and smell (no jokes on that one) home in all of his early work.

There's a recording out there of a live performance of Thunder Road from 1975 that's just Bruce, Roy Bittan, a piano and a harmonica and I'd love to write a thesis paper on why its the best thing ever but it all really just boils down to everything I feel when I listen to it and all the places and moments it takes me back to. I think that's why I love social networking sites like Tumblr and Blip because I can just throw a photo or a song or a quote up with the intended purpose of simply stating "I like this." or "I'm inspired." or "This is how I feel right now but playing you this song will be better than me trying to talk about it."

Nothing Lasts Forever

Today's post was going to be on fiscal responsibility, being a grown up and my day of shopping for important things yesterday.  But it's raining, it's November and I've had a certain song stuck in my head all day.


It took me years to let go of my dream of wearing the wedding dress in the video to my own wedding.  Still want Slash playing guitar outside.

This Is Not A Music Blog

It's not. But I'm figuring out a few editorial matters before I start with the proper posts and my biggest question is How Personal Do I Get? Talking about music is a great way to talk about me without wondering if I should really tell this story or that one in a place where anyone can stumble upon it.

Side note: Dear exes/former friends, Don't think this means you're off the hook. I'm just going to be nice for as long as possible and when the day comes names will be changed to protect the not always innocent.

I had a day off recently and stuck between feeling social and not I decided the best plan would be to sit with my laptop at Starbucks instead of sitting with it on my couch. I puzzled at the music choices on Twitter, drank some overpriced, over caloried, best stuff on earth and tried to get some Real Writing done. I haven't written a short story in almost two years and have had the perfect idea for one for almost as long. But none of this was meant to be because I started browsing through blogs and came across a piece of news that should have been laughable except for how instantly it broke my heart.

Last month Sony decided to discontinue production on their Walkman.

If I lose my words at any point it's because I just got a little choked up writing that. And yes it's the death of something that hasn't been a part of my life for well over a decade but time and iPods haven't killed my love. My iPod never sat with me on my canopy bed, my front step or the back of my mom or dad's car while I got to know The Beatles. My iPod didn't curl up with me in bed and play NKOTB right in my ears so that I actually believed Joey was singing just to me. It was my Walkman that had the radio that let me listen to Top 40, oldies and hip hop all in the same afternoon. It was my Walkman who kept me company on long car rides, long days at a relatives house or those days at home during my preteen years when I needed that magical transporter away from a world that wasn't making as much sense as I wanted it to. I learned patience and timing from all those times I trained myself how to perfectly fast forward past a song I didn't like without missing the beginning of a song I needed to hear.

We spent hours together and I'll never really be over my Walkman. I love my iPod but it's a business relationship. It gives me something to listen to on the treadmill and Metro and I keep it synced it with my iTunes. My Walkman and I had a friendship and it was one of the best friendships I've ever had.

RIP, good friend.

Did I Listen To Pop Music Because I Was Miserable or Was I Miserable Because I Listened To Pop Music?

Resurrecting the blog and while I get things up and running I felt I should point out that I have been creative in other corners of the net.

Until I can get a real entry up I can't think of a better introduction/reintroduction/explanation of who I am than this Tumblr post: The Goes Up To 11 List of Favorite Albums.

You Have To Admit It's Getting Better

Sometimes inspiration comes in the strangest places. Like a friend's IM status. At the height of my wallowing the other day I logged on to check my email and out of the corner of my eye saw:

It's easy to suffer when you make the world hard. Make your world easy and you will suffer less.

So simple and yet probably the hardest thing for me to do. I like control down to controlling how I respond to the world and how it responds back to me. And then when I set myself up for failure and heartbreak I'm left with the truths that have been in front of me the whole time.

I told a friend the other week that no one will ever love you back the exact same way you love them and I don't think I completely realized that until I said it. It's true for everything though and I think for 28 years I lived thinking that the universe would respond to me exactly how I responded to it even if my own responses were often time disingenuous and born out of distrust and fear.

So that's where I am right now at 1:06PM on January 21. Trying to make my world easy. And listening to Fleet Foxes who might just be the best band ever.

Aldous Huxley (read Brave New World if you haven't) and Wildmind have even more to say on love and much better then I could.

“We can only love what we know, and we can never know completely what we do not love.

I think I write about love so much because it's the part of my life that I understand the least and have had the least success with. I can be a student, a teacher, a boss, an employee but being a daughter, sister, friend and girlfriend have been things I've always struggled to feel like I'm good at.