Grown To Love Indeed...

I've recently been obsessed with a local duo called The Bergamot. I first heard them--and heard of them--when they played in my store for the Starbucks 40th Anniversary Celebration. They are the son and future-daughter-in-law of Tracy, a very sweet regular who reminds me a lot of Auntie M. I kept listening to a song or two on their Facebook page, then finally took some tip money and waited for them to come in, and asked for a CD. I've been listening to it just about nonstop ever since.

They call themselves organic pop, and the sound fits this spring/summer weather absolutely perfectly, and I just adore it. My favorites are The Traveler, Haven, Rush and Skyscrapers. Oh, and Highway 17, which is hard to listen to without tearing up a bit, especially if I'm driving with the windows down on a gorgeous sunny day with the breeze blowing through my hair...Driving down the 17/All the faces we have seen/In a place that we have grown to love/Grown to love indeed...

I think I'm also a little obsessed with them because I (sort of) know them personally, because I absolutely made their day when I asked to buy their CD, because I've been listening to them and reading over their Facebook and website, reading about how they're doing what they love and are working hard to do it for a living...all while I've opened up my little digital storefront and am trying to promote and pretty up and cross my fingers that this will only be the beginning, just like this has been their beginning...

Also, they're 23 and 24, respectively, and I've been a little obsessed with age lately and all these artists and singers who are kicking ass in the world and they're all younger than me!

I know. Twenty-six is so old. I'm ancient. I should just give up ever accomplishing anything now KIDDING PLEASE DON'T HIT ME.

On a vaguely related side note, my mother will be happy, Ryan randomly pointed out not one, not two, but THREE silver hairs on my head today. The brat.

Off to read the night away...

It's Time To Start A Countdown...

I had a longer post made up relating a song that I'm really enjoying currently to my current work situation, but it was long and rambling, and I realized that it only made sense to me...and maybe Ryan and BJ. Suffice to say, the three of us caught most of a concert on TV last night, and Ryan bought me the concert CD for me today as an early birthday present (such a love), and one song in particular is matching up with realizations about stuff at work. This used to be a funhouse/But now it's full of evil clowns...

Anyway.

Yesterday and today were crazy at work, and I have no doubt that it will continue on through to Sunday. It might die down a bit after that...but only a bit. Summer has arrived at Starbucks, and its name this year is Mocha Coconut Frappucinno. Ugh.

Tomorrow will really be the hill to get over, as I have to work with the two people that make work a struggle. Wednesday, however...Wednesday is looking to be the perfect end of a long and difficult work week. Then I'll have my weekend, and I'm not going to think about how it'll start over again, I'm going to think about getting a hair cut and spending time with Ryan and with friends and RELAXING.

For now: dinner.

There's Butt Wiggling, Finger Pointing...All That Good Stuff.

So far today, I've done two things:

I managed to use the new little SD card reader I bought, and now have music on my phone. That's right, I'm using my fancy little phone to the full extent it was made for. This is new and exciting ground for me. The best part isn't that I didn't have to save for a new music player, it's not that I didn't have to carry a different little thing around to enjoy music, and it's not even that I'm finally using all my fancy phone's functions. It's that I did this all by myself. I used semi-advanced technology without anyone's help. GO ME!

I set up my NaNoMail so I can know about new stuff going on with the site, the event, and my home region. I poked at the home page for the South Bend region last night, and even posted an introduction on our thread. I really want to try and get to as many meet-ups and write-ins as I can, to get some camaraderie, support, advice, good writing time, etc. Really excited about the possibilities!

I've also set myself the first goal (well, the second, if count "Get An Idea Worth Running With" as the first one): Have some Novel Info ready to put on my page by the end of next week. A nice, tidy, entertaining, curiosity-invoking synopsis by Wednesday, Friday at the latest.

Three things down, and it's not even noon. I have to leave for work in an hour, and I'm there until 9:30, and then it's home for some BRAINSTORMIN' TAHM!

*does the I Did Stuff Dance, goes on her merry way*

Half Distinct.

The rush today was, from what I was told, done before I even arrived. We were a bit busier than usual for quite a while, but quieted down quite a bit once the game started (for those who care, Notre Dame buried Purdue, something like 23 to 17?).

The traffic getting home was ridiculous. I left at 8 and didn't get home for half an hour. At one point, while in standstill traffic on Cleveland Road, I took a side road in a desperate attempt to bypass the traffic light I was attempting to reach...and ended up back on Cleveland, behind the exact same car as before.

I laughed and laughed...

Pomplamoose has been my honest obsession the past few days. I had it in my head all day, after having their YouTube channel on loop during last night's ICC raid in WoW. This song, in particular, has been stuck in my head. It's called "Another Day," and I like it for several reasons.

First, it's a great song. Second, I have a tendency to play the music videos in my head while listening/thinking of songs, and this video makes me happy to think about. Something about their enthusiasm--especially recording the stomps and claps--just makes me glad.

Third, and finally, the lyrics are great, and they remind me of my relationship:

Another day
Shows its face
I'm half awake
Half in space
And if you told me I was beautiful well that would just be in poor taste

Another hour
Flying by
I've yet to shower
Yet to dry
And if you told me I was wonderful I probably would wonder why

I am yours
You are mine
I am yours
You are mine
So it's alright

Another plate
In the sink
We're half the same
Half distinct
And if you told me I was perfect I'd assume you'd had too much too drink

Another day
Fades away
We're half asleep
Half in space
And if you told me we were dreaming I would pinch you to prove we're awake
Yeah if you told me we were dreaming I would pinch you to prove we're awake
Yeah if you told me we were dreaming I would pinch you to prove we're awake
If you told me we were dreaming I would pinch you to prove we're awake
Yeah if you told me we were dreaming I would pinch you to prove we're awake

I think this song reflects us fairly well. If he told me was I beautiful when I was still in Full Morning Grog, I would give him a dirty look. If he told me we were dreaming, I wouldn't hesitate to pinch him, just to make the point. Then giggle when he gave me a Look for it.

I love us. :)

It feels like tomorrow is a day off, but it's not; I work at Ironwood (Sameh's Starbucks!) from 3 to 11:30. I'm apprehensive about closing at another store, but I'll live. Then it'll be Monday, and that is my day off, and I'll like that. Hee.

(Also holy crap check out Pomplamoose's cover of Beat It, it's fantastic.)
(Linky!)

Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum, Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum!

Today was a normal sort of day. The only things that stand out, I won't be talking about, because one is a rant about two customers that no one really wants to hear, and the other is about money, which, again, no one really wants to hear about.

Tomorrow is my day off! Huzzah! There will be many a phone call to many a place, visits to bank and grocery store, and cleaning of the room and house. Further huzzah!

I am currently mildly obsessed with a band called Pomplamoose. They're a couple who record songs--original and covers--and post the making of them to YouTube, where you see every instrument, every vocalization, every source of every sound. The woman is very talented (and adorable!), the variation of instruments and "instruments" is both impressive and amusing, and there are usually little after-song clips that show the funny, human side of the couple.

Here, I shall leave you with one of my favorites, both by them and in general: The Chordettes "Mister Sandman":



(For the non-embedded-video-enabled: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xMCNmUaGko&feature=related)

Letting The Beetle Out.

About a month ago, I was eating dinner with my Dad, and I mentioned the music I had been listening to lately. I have this thing where I'll make a CD, either of one artist or a mix, and then listen to it over and over and over again. I'm one of those people who can do that without eventually hating the song.

I mentioned a few of the artists I had on this CD, and my Dad smirked.

"Earnest," he said. "Earnest, earnest, earnest."

He didn't make it sounds bad so much as...cute. As if these singers were children who are trying so hard to be real musicians, isn't that precious?

I get what he's saying--almost every song by these artists does have this earnest, urgent note to them. These songs have a message, this message is important, it is the most important message in the history of the world, we are the first people to sing about this message, and, by God, you will hear it and you will be moved. This attitude is great, until you've continued it for more than, say, one whole album, or three songs per album. Then it just feels...false. Not like the artist doesn't mean it--they do, don't you ever doubt it! But they mean it too much, to the point where it stops to mean anything to anyone else.

Ever since that smirk, there's been a beetle in the back of my mind, buzzing about earnest. After a few weeks of this, I've decided on something:

We need earnest.

I don't mean the global "we", the "we" of the whole world ("The citizens of all nations need to hear this so they can understand their mistakes!"). I mean my "we". We, the generation that straddles Generation X and Generation Z--those born in the 1980's but raised in the 1990's and 2000's.

I tend to think that we were raised in one of the most cynical decades in living memory. The business- and money-focused attitude of the 80's was still present, but the realization that this capitalist way of life could not be sustained was beginning to set in with all the tenderness of an elephant settling on an hollowed egg shell. Just listen to the music of the 1990's--Nirvana, Green Day, Pearl Jam, The Offspring. Their lyrics span from subtle cynicism to blatant bitterness. Our country experienced The Gulf War, the Oklahoma City bombing, Bill Clinton's scandal with Monica Lewinsky, and many other events that divided and scarred the country in numerous ways.

And that was just the 1990's. For me, ages 4 to 14.

Even from the very beginning, the 2000's have been a hard decade. They've been hard on everyone, but imagine coming of age in them. The past 9 years have brought upon three highly publicized and controversial elections, and a war that has divided the country in a way that we haven't approached since the Civil War. We experienced the attacks on September 11, which are to many of my generation what Pearl Harbor was to our grandparents, what JFK's assassination was to our parents. Our economy has crashed, and millions have gone from a safe, middle-class lifestyle to poverty, losing their jobs, their insurance, their homes, the lives they had become accustomed and attached to.

If any other teenagers and children had parents even vaguely similar to mine, they grew up listening to rants and rambles, yelling and crying. We grew up with hands being thrown in the air and eyes being rolled with disgust and hopelessness. We grew up hearing things like "What is this world coming to?" and "I can't believe this is happening," or even "What are we going to do?"

Every generation grows up with the combined hope and threat that they will be in charge someday. They will be the ones to take the reigns, clean up the mess, change the course of civilization, and so on and so forth. Growing up hearing that the world is going to hell in a hand basket, being told in the same breath that "this will all be yours someday"...that's quite a bundle to be handed.

So it any wonder that we've been drawn to music that has our voice, our worries, our hopes, our frustration? Songs like the all-star cover of Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, American Idiot, The Lovers Are Losing, and Land of Confusion?. Songs with lyrics like "We're the new face of failure/Prettier and younger, by not any better of", and "Burning down the capitols/Wisest of the animals" and "People can no longer cover their eyes"?

Yes, the singers are earnest. Because we need earnest. We need hopeful. We need angry, we need dedicated, we need pissed off.

Every generation thinks it has it worse off than the one before, that it has better reason to be pissed off than the one before, that the previous ones will never understand what it is we're going through. To a degree, every generation is right.

Our grandparents were handed the Depression and World War II, bread lines and a military draft.
Our parents were handed Vietnam and its aftermath, Nixon and his lies.
We are handed the Iraq war, the aftermath of September 11, the bill for the environmental spending of the previous decades.

Every generation is given a country that is broken and needs to be made whole. And each time the country is handed down, like a quilt made by a forgotten ancestor, it is a little more threadbare, a little more stained, a little harder to patch up.

My generation currently has the ragged ends of yet another unwinnable war started by the previous controversial president, the worse economic recession in 20 years, an overburdened environment in danger of giving at any moment, state-by-state fights for basic human rights, and a political tug-of-war over our health insurance.

We need our own versions of Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, Jackson Browne, The Clash, Bruce Springsteen--you want to tell me that they didn't want to move the world? That they didn't have a message that you are going to hear and by God learn from?

We need our songs filled with anger, frustration, worry, and hope. We need those voices articulating the feelings that we can not, made more poignant in ways that only music can accomplish. We need those emotions out where everyone can hear them.

We need earnest.

Would you always? Maybe sometimes? Make it easy...

I found this video through Fazed, a collection of submitted online oddities. It's a fan video for a song called "Two Weeks" by the band Grizzly Bear. Let me emphasize something: this is a fan video. Not professional. Made in spare time by someone who loved the song just that much. Hot damn.

It was posted a couple of months ago, so it isn't exactly a new find. It's just that I wanted to use this blog to share things I love as well as rants and navel gazing, so why not start with a video that might just be one of my Favorite Things Ever?

Two Weeks - Grizzly Bear from Gabe Askew on Vimeo.

Something else I've wanted to do with this blog is talk about something I think about more than I let on: lyrics.

While I'm not one for making music, I do love it. I almost always have a song in my head whether I like it or not, I can recite entire songs on command, and I blast music in my car whenever I go somewhere, singing along as loud as I possibly can--when I'm alone.

You can "blame" my father for this: he plays several different instruments with a degree of capability that range from well to wow, he has literally THOUSANDS of CDs (along with plenty of tapes and vinyl records), and he will spend hours upon hours playing with a single sound using his plethora of computer synthesizers that he can--and will--talk about for as long as anyone will listen. Despite all his best efforts, the best I can do when pointed at a musical instrument and told to have at is twitch in a controlled manner.

I recently realized that not everyone listens to music the same way. Shocking, right? I just never thought about it until I was talking with Ryan. Unable to remember the name of a song that I knew he knew, I tried to remind him by reciting some of the lyrics. He just gave me a blank stare. Upon further discussion, I discovered that Ryan listens to songs in layers--first, how each instrument sound individually, then how they all sound together.

The first and last thing I hear are lyrics. To me, music is about poetry set to music. And poetry is about the language. Which is why I'm not partial to most classical music--as beautiful as it is, it just doesn't stick to my brain as it does to Ryan's. This is also why I'm more partial to musicals--I'm a story addict, have a very hard time reading anything that doesn't have a plot, so stories? Set to music? GIMME!

I listen to lyrics, and, if it isn't already clear what the song is about, I do my best to figure it out, put a story behind it. For all I know, I'm completely off target, but I like to think that I'm at least a little close. Especially when the subject is something I'm intimate with, such as love or depression. When you're in something, it's easier to recognize language that relates to it, you know?

Now with that long and lengthy explanation, here is my view on this song: Two Weeks by Grizzly Bear.

First, the lyrics.

Save up all the days
A routine malaise
Just like yesterday
I told you I would stay

Would you always?
Maybe sometimes?
Make it easy?
Take your time

Think of all the ways
Momentary phase
Just like yesterday
I told you I would stay

Every time you try
Quarter half the mile
Just like yesterday
I told you I would stay

Would you always?
Maybe sometimes?
Make it easy?
Take your time

Would you always...
Maybe sometimes...
Make it easy...
Take your time...

Always
Sometimes
Easy
Time


My first thought with this song was: a plea. The singer is pleading to the subject to be happy. This isn't just a case of reading the lyrics--you can hear it in the singer's voice. They love this person, and they just want them to be happy.

There's also the repetition of the line just like yesterday, along with phrases like the routine malaise and every time you try. This makes me think that the person in question is stuck in a cycle (the routine malaise) that is making them unhappy. Not only that, but the cycle isn't solely self-imposed: Every time you try/quarter half the mile hints at an outside force making things harder whenever an attempt is made to break out of it, shortening the distance they've already traveled.

Think of all the ways/Momentary phase makes me think that the subject has given up on the idea of breaking out. They'll think about another way of life, then pass it off as just a phase, a moment's weakness.

The singer understands that all they can do is urge the subject to break out of the cycle, and be there to support them (the repeated phrase I told you I would stay), even if they don't. They understand that it's not an overnight decision/process (take your time). There's no message of "you're a bad person to still be in this cycle" or "I'm leaving unless you do this."

I don't just love this song because of the tune, or the voice, or even because the beautiful fan video plays in my head every time I hear it. I love this song because of the emotion behind it. If I'm right, there is nothing selfish in this song. It's pure love, pure hope for the one they care about to do what's needed to just be happy.

Pure, patient, unselfish, unconditional love.

Does it get any better than that?