Heart’s a mess

23 January 2012 | 3 Comments

Gotye’s “Heart’s a Mess” is a fabulous, evocative song, and one of the playlist songs for “Dangerous Space”. I imagine this as one of the songs Duncan writes during the story; I imagine Mars hearing the demo in the studio that night, this hand-inside-your-heart-and-other-places song. I imagine the band working it out. I imagine the live shows, the crowd singing back…. Bring on the F-tech.

Ah, I wish. Instead, I offer you this fantastic video with animation by Brendan Cook. I find it beautiful and compelling, and it would never have occurred to me in a million years to video the song this way. The variety and the power of human imagination amazes me every day. We see such different things inside us. And how wonderful to be able to share this way. Internet, I love you.

Gakked from Film School Rejects, where you can see a different short film every day.

Enjoy your day.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, music

So live it just blew my heart out

30 October 2011 | 1 Comment

Folks who have read “Dangerous Space” will understand how I feel about this performance of “Round Here” by Counting Crows. And if you haven’t read the story, well, read it in the music.

I encourage you with all my heart to take the 12 minutes to experience this song. It’s just fucking amazing.

(Here’s the link if YouTube pulls a whacky in the embed.)

Enjoy your day. Let some music in.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under being human, music

U2 in Seattle

14 June 2011 | 1 Comment

Here’s an essay I published last week on @U2, the best U2 website on the planet, where I am proud to be a staff writer.

For those of you who aren’t stone U2 fans, the essay title is a lyric from the song “A Sort of Homecoming.”

To use the E-Phonic MP3 Player you will need Adobe Flash Player 9 or better and a Javascript enabled browser.

I’m also here to remind you that I’ll be starting the Clarion West Write-a-thon on Sunday, and I hope you’ll consider supporting me. The day sponsor slots are filling up, but there are still slots available, and I’d love to write something just for you…

And if you’re a writer, please consider participating! We’ve nearly reached our goal of 100 participating writers, and we have a challenge grant in progress — if we make 100 participants, we’ll receive $15 for every writer. Help us make that goal!

Enjoy your day.

Tonight, At Last, I Am Coming Home: U2 in Seattle

I spent Saturday afternoon, June 4, in the company of some of my warm, funny, smart colleagues from @U2. I spent Saturday evening inside U2′s music; inside myself.

It was a phenomenal day. The music was magic as only experts can make it: so fresh and new that it’s easy to forget it comes from years of practice and the utter willingness of the artists to surrender to the moment. I saw in the band, and felt in myself, intimacy and trust and passion and personal connection under the clear night sky in a stadium of 65,000 people. Pretty amazing.

And a sort of homecoming for me.

Here’s why: I’ve been a U2 fan for 30 years. I love these guys. A lot of their music is identity music for me, songs that speak to me so much of myself that I can hear them and remember who I am even when the fog is thick around me, even when I’m standing on the wrong side of one of my own internal canyons. Even when I’m scared. But most especially when I am not scared. Most especially when I am full of joy and confidence, when I love both myself and the world, the music of U2 has been my music too.

But the last few years, I’ve not been finding so much power in the new music. I like it, it’s good, I can listen to it for an hour and then move on. It’s smart, it’s political, it’s full of allusion, there are love songs … but it’s not intimate (for me) and it hasn’t brought me those moments of Oh!, that frisson of finding myself inside a song. And that’s what I want from U2. I want the intimacy that only music creates between artist and audience: I sing you.

And so here’s the thing: I’ve had tickets to this show for 2 1/2 years, and I almost didn’t go. I’m tired and I have a lot on my plate right now, and I was frightened of being on my feet for hours, crushed against people who would go get a beer because they didn’t recognize the song and were only there to video the hits on their iPhone. I was frightened of being unable to see or hear the music, unable to feel it. Unable to find myself there. I just wasn’t sure I could bear it.

But I went. Because I love these guys, and part of love is trusting that someday we will understand each other again. I also went because @U2 — the site, the team, the work we do — is important to me, and we rarely get to see each other.

I’m so glad I went. My @U2 compadres are savvy about concert logistics, so we ended up in what I am convinced was the best place in the stadium — perfect sound, great view of the entire set, no one at our backs, and plenty of space for me to dance or to lift up my arms in exultation. A place like an open door into a room big enough for 65,000 people, and small enough for just me and my band. I’m forever grateful to my @U2 friends. I never would have found that open door without them.

And then U2 walked in and played.

It was magnificent.

On Saturday, June 4, U2 and I came home to each other. It turns out we have just as much to talk about as we ever did. Through the music, we still speak of love and yearning, the complexity of life, the power of the human spirit, and the smack-you-in-the-heart simplicity of joy.

And so it begins again, my love affair with U2. Bono said that night, “If there is one idea that underpins our band, it’s the idea that you can start again. And today we are starting again.”

Then they played me. Then they sang me. I’m so glad I was there to hear it.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, music

Mystery drive

15 April 2011 | 1 Comment

A mystery drive is when I get in the car and follow my nose somewhere I haven’t been before. No particular plan, no final destination. I did this often when I was younger; now, not so much. But today Nicola and I did a mystery drive. We had a good time.

One feature of mystery drives is that I must balance an absolute disregard for getting lost with an absolute certainty that I can always find my way back. This is called “sense of direction.” I like having it in this way, and wish it were a blanket talent I brought to everything. Because so much of what’s good in life is a mystery drive.

It’s been too long since I shared music, so here are some songs to drive by.

Enjoy.

To use the E-Phonic MP3 Player you will need Adobe Flash Player 9 or better and a Javascript enabled browser.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, music

The next step

18 November 2010 | Comments Off

You know I love music. It fuels my writing, my nights in the pub, my fireside conversations with friends. It makes moments in movies, and in life, more ecstatic or more bittersweet. The best music punches straight in, blows a goodbye kiss to my thinking brain and blasts into the bright hot murky cold stir-it-up places within me. Not all music is the ecstatic kind, but I’ve always been ecstatic on some level about it. I hear a song I like, I get excited, you know? It pleases me to hear myself sung back to me.

And this pleases me too: this Seattle Times profile of Seattle band The Head and the Heart, and their in-studio session at KEXP. Threshold experiences fascinate me: people standing in a doorway, or on a cliff, ready to step… Those moments of And so it begins.

Enjoy your day.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, music

Dance hard to Pink

19 September 2010 | 3 Comments

This is my current favorite song to dance alone to, hand motions and everything… It’s impossible not to dance hard, and there is something about seeing about two hundred women get out on the floor and mean it.

Any straight guys out there who like to dance to this one, or are we well into the land of gendered experience now?

NSFW. Plug in your earphones and smile serenely when they ask you what you’re playing.

Or you could just dance.

To use the E-Phonic MP3 Player you will need Adobe Flash Player 9 or better and a Javascript enabled browser.

U & Ur Hand
Pink

Check it out
Going out
On the late night

Looking tight
Feeling nice
It’s a cock fight

I can tell
I just know
That it’s going down
Tonight

At the door we don’t wait cause we know them
At the bar six shots just beginning
That’s when dickhead put his hands on me
But you see

I’m not here for your entertainment
You don’t really want to mess with me tonight
Just stop and take a second
I was fine before you walked into my life
Cause you know it’s over
Before it began
Keep your drink just give me the money
It’s just you and your hand tonight

Midnight
I’m drunk
I don’t give a fuck

Wanna dance
By myself
Guess you’re outta luck

Don’t touch
Back up
I’m not the one

Listen up it’s just not happening
You can say what you want to your boyfriends
Just let me have my fun tonight

In the corner with your boys you bet up five bucks
To get the girl that just walked in but she thinks you suck
We didn’t get all dressed up just for you to see
So quit spilling your drinks on me

You know who you are
High fivin’, talkin shit, but you’re going home alone, aren’t you?

Cause I’m not here for your entertainment
You don’t really want to mess with me tonight
Just stop and take a second
I was fine before you walked into my life
Cause you know it’s over
Before it began
Keep your drink just give me the money
It’s just you and your hand tonight

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, jukebox, music

Grin your axis off

8 September 2010 | 8 Comments

There’s the snort-your-wine laugh. There’s the wicked giggle. There’s the private smile. And all the varieties in between. I treasure them all.

Today I give you the “people are amazing” grin, courtesy of the Axis of Awesome.

Muchas gracias a Karina, mi hermana de corazon, quien sabe cómo me hace sonrier!

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, life, music

Grace Under Pressure

1 September 2010 | 8 Comments

Here’s a beautiful woman and a beautiful man making some wicked good music together. Such grace Under Pressure (oooh, a music pun!)

Enjoy your day.

Apologies for the annoying popup annotations. To turn them off, mouse onto the little up-arrow at the bottom right of the player, and then click the triangular icon to turn off annotations.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, music

Let the music take you there

22 June 2010 | 9 Comments

From Flavorwire comes this cogent infographic.

Makes me think it’s time for some more jukebox around this joint. I’ll work on that. In the meantime, what else can we add to the list? I will ponder this as I drive to the gym.