Archive for music

“gotta break a few eggs”

May

April 2012

Birthday Month? (Yes, apparently I’m a sorority girl)

The month of my birthday is always a busy one. I don’t usually get much time to much of anything other than focus on school or other activities that seem to be filling up my time. That has been true most of my life, but now that I’m out of grad school and for the most part an adult.

I’m not sure I’ll ever feel like an adult, even if I keep calling myself an old man. Seeing my nieces grow up so quickly doesn’t make me feel any younger. However I enjoy every minute with them. A funny experience that happened this month was when I was home to help my brother in law and sister move we spent a little family time because it was the Easter season.

My sister had found this ingenious way of having my nieces color eggs in a way that wasn’t going to make a mess. With toddlers that is a feat if anything resembling any activity doesn’t involve making a mess. They did enjoy finding my phone and running off with it. However this little activity with my nieces coloring the eggs was simple, dip the egg and be amazed at how cool it was.

I remember being young and simply coloring an egg was exciting. Being able to see the world through their eyes can really make one appreciate the simple and things that we might think as normal and mundane. Just as we continued with the eggs my nieces began to bite into the hard boiled eggs and find the delicious part they were looking for.

They liked coloring eggs, but they liked eating them even more. Sometimes you’ve got to break a few eggs to really get what you want.

(or make an omelette)

My nieces understood that. Sure two year olds will break anything, but they knew what they wanted and they took it.

Sometimes that’s what you have to do. Break a few eggs, not necessarily to get what you want, but to the good part, the eggy center. Otherwise you’ll never really know what it holds inside.

You never know what life holds until you break a few eggs, and take a few chances.

Album of the Month

Do you love the Swell Season? Of course you do. Well, Marketa Irglova made a solo album. Just amazing. Came out a while back, but worth mentioning in this off month for albums.

Marketa Irglova ~ Anar

Categories : music, Update

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“always leave them wanting more”

Apr

March 2012

Spring, Sprang, Sprung.

Enjoyed the first day of Spring, watched another panda leave the zoo, drank green libations, cursed Benjamin Franklin, and started fires in someones backyard. These are all things that happened this past March. Things that are probably worth talking about, and likely would have a great punchline, but this March one evening sums it up pretty well.

I worked the entire week of Spring Break, because I’m no longer in grad school and that’s truly the grown-up thing to do, but working at a college during spring break is torture or at least a new form of it. The Monday night after spring break I decided to go on a night-cation up to the tiny town to the North of Paragould to see one of the things the South does better than anyone else: Bluegrass.

I don’t know what it is about bluegrass but it’s one of the few types of music that makes my heart beat two ticks faster. I walked into this little Collins Theater not really knowing what to expect since this was not only first time to that theatre, but my first time in the city of Paragould. It was going to be one of those nights where I was the youngest person in the room. That tends to happen more than I’d like to admit. Ex. Prairie Home Companion Concert.

I meandered to a good seat close to the front, but with good eyesight of an exit because you can never be too careful. As I waited for the show to start I noticed the crowd a little closer and how this little town would likely fit well with my own hometown. I’m basing this assumption purely on the amount of old men wearing suspenders and grandmas that likely make a “mean” pie. I’m sure their biscuits aren’t too bad either.

The band was finished up the second half of their show, with the typical encore of a song that everyone in the audience knew. It ended with a rousing round of applause and whistles and hoops and hollers, something I would expect at every bluegrass concert.

The band walked off the stage and even though they had already ‘encored’ I was left wanting more.

March has felt like that. A month full of great and wonderful things, some that I’m sure are just the tip of icebergs that have much more underneath what I’m able to see so far. Weddings, late evenings, conversations, and the-like just leave me always wanting more. More time, more songs I can dance like a crazy person, more chances for deep conversations with people who may not know how much their words mean.

I wouldn’t call this being un-content, but rather always thirsty.

However, you know it’s been a good month if you’re left wanting a few days more.

Album of the Month

If you know me, you know I’ve been excited about this album for a while. It’s not bluegrass, and even though it’s been five years since the last Shins album this new album was worth the wait. All I’m waiting for now is that dream band of Colin Meloy, James Mercer and Corin Tucker. But alas, that will likely never happen.

Port of Morrow ~ The Shins

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“always in the season, for you”

Dec

December 2011

Clark Griswold.

Last month of the year always bring reason for remembering and nostalgia, but I’ll leave that for other posts. December is always halfway between new things and old things. It’s the beginning of Winter as well end of Gregorian journey.

There are things I miss about my younger days and things I look forward to in the coming years, but with Christmas falling in the midst of all these other changes and endings and cold temperatures (for us in the Top Hemisphere of the world) things just seem to run together.

There’s a line from a TV show I enjoy where a Dad asks his son what’s the most important thing. The son answers with a definitive: “Breakfast”. The dad corrects him and says “no, Family”. The son says “oh I thought you were talking about the things we eat”.

Often we are like the son, focused on only one thing when forgetting the things that are truly important. Sure , breakfast is important, but Family always comes before that. Maybe family to you is that group of people who happen to share the same genetic code as you, but others. Friends, cousins, people you went to college with. For me, it’s both.

I wouldn’t trade my “family” for anything, even with their flaws, political views or taste in the oak-ridge boys. When we start basing our love of those based on what they’ve done for me lately or how they’ve caused me harm then we aren’t showing love the way we need to be showing love.

It doesn’t come in a box, cost $100 or have apps, but love is truly shown through your actions, words and time.

We don’t need a Christmas season to remember that.

album of the month

A little bit of Christmassy selection for you. I mean if you’re still reading this 12 days after December 25, it’s officially still Christmas.

Categories : Holidays, music, Update

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“it’s always darkest before the dawn”

Dec

November 2011

Odd Month.

Even though it’s been December for 12 days now, I’m just now catching up from November. With most things, I’d love if I could go back and catch that fleeting moment. (That’s probably why I like time travel themed television so much.) However, those times are gone and past, all I can do is remember it, rather than relive it.

I don’t want to relive this past November.

Not because of what is was, or what it wasn’t. There were good times, there were also some of the worst, but like all things in life, we are only meant to live each moment as it passes not again and again.

This past month my Pawpaw (Grandfather) died. It is/was hard, but just like those other things I’d like to revisit my experiences, but are limited by the laws of physics. I don’t want to relive those moments of pain, but without those moments of pain there wouldn’t be moments of joy.

So, I remember the joy.

I have great memories of my Pawpaw, and those are the times I’d like to revisit. I’ll enjoy remembering those moments and spending time with my own family and young nieces as I create memories for those others around me so that when those we love are gone, their joy still remains.

Their Joy Still Remains.

Here’s to the end of November and the the beginning of the end of 2011. Let’s not try to relive it, but remember the joy of it.

album of the month

I don’t need to say anything about her music… Just listen to it. Mind. Blowingly. Good.

Florence + Machine ~ Ceremonials

Categories : Life, music, Update

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“you can’t choose what stays and what fades away”

Nov

October 2011

Always my favorite month.

Deep breaths everybody.

In a month that often lives up to the hype, this month didn’t let down.

Deep breaths

A strange feeling of everything being new, and yet similar just following me through the month.

Deep Breaths.

Reassurance that where you are is where you’re supposed to be, even if that’s as surprising a thought you’ve had in a long time.

Deep Breaths.

This month has been about deep breaths and taking time for those breaths. Deep breaths of the cold night air, the scent of the leaves changing and people lighting their chimneys. There’s a time that I find myself at a awe, wonder and peace. It’s that point between when the intake of the breath ends and the exhale begins. That split moment lends itself to great clarity, for me.

In that moment all of my sensory expressions are heightened and I experience everything how it is rather than how I want it to be. That moment of clarity and peace is something I hope for, something I wish happened with every breath I took. So I breathe deeply because there’s always time to take a breath. There’s always time.

Because the year has been great so far, but there’s still a bit left to go. I ask myself to breathe deeply to remember and refresh so I can end strong for 2011. Life doesn’t always give us time to do everything, but the least it gives us, is a chance to breathe.

Deep breaths everybody…

Album of the Month

I like Coldplay’s new album, but I’m still a proponent of cOLDplay.

So this month I’m suggesting you listen to what made them who they are. One of their best, if not their best album,
Rush of Blood to the Head. Sure other’s were more successful. Just like how Joshua Tree is a much better album than most of the stuff U2 puts out now.

Rush of Blood to the Head – cOLDplay

Below is a little cOLDplay and Coldplay for you as well.

cOLDplay – Amsterdam

Coldplay – Princess of China

Categories : music, Update

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“we know it’s not right, but it’s real”

Oct

September 2011

Strange Days Ahead.

September will and always has been a strange month for me. Maybe it’s the roller coaster of patriotic emotion that tends to flow through the U.S. at large during the first part of the month, to the current unnecessary political cluster of crazies that dominate both sides of either airwaves, while most of U.S. just wants everything to be better than it is now.

Maybe it’s the feelings of nostalgia for the ending summer, which makes us long for the days when things were the way we remember them rather than the way they were. .

It could be the cold days that remind us relief is coming, and all those burdened by the heat and ever-present sun. September has always been strange, and maybe it always will be. Most months I can put a thumb on a single point, epiphany, or a time when something was or wasn’t. But September always seems to be that month I have trouble putting in a box or summing up in short paragraphs and thoughts. .

I finally got to see A Prairie Home Companion live, which was immensely exciting for me even though I was the youngest person in the audience that drove themselves to the show. That night sums up September very succinctly for me.

Garrison Keillor, a man of strong narrative and humor stuck a chord with everyone in the room through his jokes, stories and music. He made you laugh in one hand while pensively constructing a story you felt was your own in the other. .One of the things he said that stuck with me was:

“It’s easier for a goose to be a dog, than a dog to be goose”

Simple and silly, but true. Some things are easier than other things and other things are just imposssible.

Which was my September. . It was real, and some things were easier than others, while other things just ended up being impossible.

Such is life…

…

Such is September…

A month I’ll always remember.

Album(s) of the Month

You get two this month. You’re welcome. So I’ll make it short. Check the videos below.

Laura Marling ~ A Creature I Don’t Know

Neon Indian ~Era Extraña

Categories : music, Update

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“there is a time when the light will arise”

Sep

August 2011

I’ve called Ghana so many times this past month.

First off, this is a little late. So I’ll make it worth your while.

If you clicked then you may notice the new virtual ‘digs’, it’s still very similar to what I had before, but it’s a work in progress. If your background isn’t white, them clear your cache and it should all show up. I’ll be adding a few more things as time progresses. Which is a bit of a trend in my life currently as I begin to add more aquaintances, friends and memories to my time at a new position and in a new town.

I got a new couch, which make me feel like this guy.

The thing with the couch was that I felt like that was a big deal for some reason. The couch was the real sign that I was planning on being where I am for at least a small amount of time, which could feel like forever. It’s funny to me, how something as trivial as a couch meant so much. I joked with a friend that the people I met before I had the couch were real friends because they wouldn’t be in the friendship for the couch.

As I sat down on my couch and looked into the rest of my fairly empty apartment it didn’t seem as empty as it once did, and the room didn’t seem as big either.

When you start-over in a new place that’s what you do. You find the holes, empty parts of your life and you fill them. For me a couch, was an important first step. Now, to find people to sit on it and stare at the wall without a TV. Ha ha.

I wrote this phrase down earlier in the month and I feel like it’s fitting for the current state of life I may be in:

As our eyes grow wide and our souls feel tall we realize that the world is much smaller than it used to be.

album of the month

Beirut brings memories of cold weather, and pretending like there’s a Russian marching band behind me when I listen to them. Short album, but very good, and a bit catchier than his previous music. Simple and catchy, but not in a bad way.

Beirut – The Rip Tide

Categories : music, Update

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“do as though there is nothing left to be”

Jul

June 2011

Waiting for the rains.

The summer has be hot and dry. For some places even dryer and hotter than what I’ve had to deal with. There’s something about the seasons and weather that tend to mimic my life, or at least I find significance in their correlative nature. Either way June was no different.

It didn’t feel like a whole lot happened, but June was filled with applying for jobs, waiting on responses, being put in the hot seat for interviews and being turned down.

The heat was on.

My job was scheduled to end at the end of the month and I was afraid I was going to have to move home, which not that I don’t love my family, but not exactly the ideal situation.

All of June had been hot and dry and really there had been no relief.

I decided to visit my hometown, and move as much stuff as I could. While I was there I got to visit parts of my family I don’t see very often. Which is most of them. It was good to see family, but the topic of discussion continued to be the heat and how hot it was, and when will this all be over.

For me, the heat had been coming in multiple ways, the heat of the sun and my own stressors of joblessness. As so many different emotions were bottled up inside of me and so many ideas of what was happening next and what direction I am heading in I found myself in a state that I’ve really never openly been in, for fear of the vulnerability it shows in me.

Then the rains came.

As I sat out on my parents porch watching the lightning light up the sky, the smell of rain filled the air. A feeling of relief and sudden knowledge that even though I may not know where my life is heading next, there is relief coming. The smell of petracor filled the air as the dust became mud and the soil sighed a great relief under the passage of the thunderstorm.

The next day, my phone began to ring with future possibilities that are soon to be in full fruition. The rain continued to pour. After a month of feeling a drought in so many different ways my life was once again given a drink of water to help ease the heat.

As one passage in my life ends, and another begins I know that the small trials I pass through will guide my future steps.

As long as there’s rain, I’ll be alive.

(Look forward to an actual update soon on where I’ll be heading next. Nothing is final so not wanting to post it all up yet.)

album of the month

Not that the album of the month is bad I’d just like to give it to three different people, but the other one and two both came out in May. There really is so much good music coming out, it really is Summer. Bon Iver (Bon Eeever, it’s French yo) delivers with their anticipated next album. It almost feels like this album should’ve come out in the winter when I feel like their music fits better, but I’m not complaining.

Bon Iver – Bon Iver

Categories : Life, music, Update

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and music, music, music…

Jun

My music is eclectic. (to say the least)

Recently I just finished my #noshufflesaga where I listened to my 15.6 days worth of music in full succession. Then I decided I have a lot of music I don’t talk about, so I would.

I decided while I’m on this kick I’d share a few musicians that I’ve never really talked about that I find at the least interesting. Click on each one for a youtube clip of their music. Enjoy. I know I do.

Rock/Pop

Oh Land, Austra, My Morning Jacket

Hip Hop/Rap

Chiddy Bang, Childish Gambino, Nyle

Folk (ish)

The Swell Season, Laura Marling, The Avett Brothers

Alternative

Local Natives, School of Seven Bells, Foster the People

Electronic (ish)

Phantogram, La Roux, The Golden Filter

Not Really any other Genre

James Yuill, Mexican Institute of Sound, White Lies

Categories : music

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“the world outside is full of such wonder that often, I barely can speak”

Jun

May 2011

Transition.

Such a necessary part of life, but often a difficult one. Watching friend, family and others around me falling into different levels of transition isn’t as troubling as wishing my own transition was already complete.

May has been such a surreal month. This time last year I was shoulder-deep in a cultural immersion experience of a lifetime. (for lack of a better term) And now I’m stuck between where I was and where I’ll be next. This isn’t a new feeling, but rather one that I don’t always welcome.

As a good friend of mine who is also in a transitional stage in her life as well explained it: “life seems to be getting bigger and bigger and it feels like I’m getting smaller and smaller.” That made me think, maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

We are supposed to be small, we are small. As much as one man (or woman) may feel like they are above it all and great they are simply just as small as you are. When you’re small, big things seem big, but small things seem normal.

We must leave the big things up to God and let the small (normal) things be our focus because those are really the only things we can “control”. Maybe I should learn to take my own advice and focus on what small (normal) things I can control.

As I went out on a small hike/camp out at the end of this month, in the Ouachita National Forest reminded me of that. The forest is massive and there is so much complexity and greatness to it, yet it is simple. So much goes into the growth of a single tree in that forest, but that one tree is just a small part of an even larger ecosystem.

Just as the cicadas that hissed as the sun set low and the lightning bugs began to flicker in the darkened distance it was apparent how small everything is. The audacity of believing that I am somehow in control of anything is almost insane. I am just like a pine needle in the forest, a small part of a greater system that finds it’s strength not from being “big” but from the “small”.

Life may be about the big things, but living is about the small things.

It’s much less daunting that way.

music I’m listening to

There’s one band that I remember from my times in Stillwater it is a group that used to be called Kunek, but now go by the moniker of Other Lives. They put on a great live show, and well their music is an atmospheric joy to listen to. It’s just good music. If I were to compare it to a famous band I’d say Fleet Foxes, but then again I think Other Lives is better, so I should be comparing Fleet Foxes to them. However check out the Fleet Foxes new album while your at it. It’s not too shabby at all.

Other Lives ~ tamer animals

Categories : music, Update

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Archive for music

“gotta break a few eggs”

April 2012

Album of the Month

“always leave them wanting more”

March 2012

Album of the Month

“always in the season, for you”

December 2011

album of the month

“it’s always darkest before the dawn”

November 2011

album of the month

“you can’t choose what stays and what fades away”

October 2011

Album of the Month

“we know it’s not right, but it’s real”

September 2011

Album(s) of the Month

“there is a time when the light will arise”

August 2011

album of the month

“do as though there is nothing left to be”

June 2011

album of the month

and music, music, music…

“the world outside is full of such wonder that often, I barely can speak”

May 2011

music I’m listening to

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