Category: music

Human cities

My friend is having a hard time right now, partly because of the pressure that humans put on each other by living in communities. We are not made to be solitary forever, but we damn sure aren’t always made to live so close together, either.

If you’ve read or listened to my essay “Surrender,” then you know I had a dream of a city life. Sometimes I still do, but the city in my imagination is very different now. I could never live in New York: too big for me, too much. The psychic weight of all those people would crush me. Chicago was wonderful, but I am not so sure that I would fit there anymore. I don’t know if it is that I have become smaller, or… well, I don’t know.

What I do know is that I’m not yet ready to live off the grid. I think a small community might be too small for me. I don’t do active “community” that well at the best of times, and I need a variety of human ways, of human expression, around me. I need access to a spectrum of human experience. Others tell me this is possible in small communities. Perhaps it is. And perhaps it is elitist and ignorant of me to think I need the nice restaurants and the club guarded by men where only women dance and the high-speed internet and multiple movie theatres and a store that carries the beers of the world — but I do think that, at least for now.

Mostly, I think, I need that hum of human energy. And (and there’s always an “and”…) I need to be able to shut the door on it sometimes, too. Seattle is good for me that way, right now. I don’t think I could shut the door in New York, or even maybe Chicago. And to my friend whose door is not shutting so well right now, I send my love and the only assurance I can give, which is that human cities, like the humans who live there, are sometimes random, sometimes unpredictable, and sometimes they hurt us. But we love our cities, and sometimes they sustain us, nurture us, love us back. Just like the humans who live there.


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City living, heavy trouble.
City living rough.
We are given angry hearts
But anger’s not enough.

I don’t always know what is enough. I just know that humans have it.


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I am the eagle
I live in high country
In rocky cathedrals that reach to the sky.
I am the hawk and there’s blood on my feathers.
But time is still turning
They soon will be dry.
And all those who see me
And all who believe in me
Share in the freedom I feel when I fly.

Come dance with the west wind
And touch all the mountaintops.
Sail o’er the canyons and up to the stars.
And reach for the heavens
And hope for the future
And all that we can be
Not what we are.

And why is this song in a post about city life? Because woven within all the noise and the chaos and the fizz of the city is this part of being human, too. We are eagles and hawks in our concrete canyons. In our cities, we dance and reach and hope.

You’d better like to play

I’ve been reading Bob Lefsetz for a long time. He writes specifically about the music business, but he’s got something to say to anyone who wants to combine art and business. His passion is always for the art; like me, he believes that traditional business models for publishing, distributing and marketing art are pretty much dying on the vine, while the major book publishers music labels are blinking hard and saying Hey, what happened to our revenues? And he riffs. I like that.

The other day, Bob wrote this post about redefining success. Those who have been reading here for a while know that I’ve gone through some of this myself recently. And it’s still going on for me, as I ponder the balance between fiction and screenplay and management consulting and life, between security and freedom. As I fall in and out of fear. As I reach for a goal and sometimes get a fistful, and sometimes miss it altogether. I think many of us are engaged in our own redefinitions right now.

And I wonder how we will all define success on the other side? I’ll let you know what I come up with. And I’d be interested in hearing your postcards from this particular road.

I do know one thing for sure: Bob Lefsetz is right when he says You’d better enjoy playing.

And what if that is the real success?

If the song fits

It’s 4:45 AM and this is what I’m listening to. Make of it what you will.


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7:17. Here’s where I am now:


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It’s not really as dire as it all sounds. Just a little creative rage. I’ll keep updating, we’ll see where it goes.

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7:57.


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8:53. I’ve always liked this album, especially the songs that never made it to the radio. And today is definitely not a day for wasting time…

But now it’s time for breakfast, during which I will not get all Billy Idolesque on my sweetie, who is being the most patient woman on earth with me the last few days.


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11:08. Current process = get stuck; play something loud; write; repeat.


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4:40. Back to work after a long break to eat lunch with my sweetie, shop, cook bolognese sauce, and chill the champagne.

Today has been, of course, all about my relationship with my writing. Thanks for listening. Whatever you’re doing tonight, whatever you’re connecting with, I hope it is happy.


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Playing for Change

The power of music. So often, I turn to music to express things I can’t talk about any other way. Or to celebrate, or get busy, or because all I want to do is paint my room black and so I let the music drip down the walls while I cry.

And sometimes music is more than just about me. Sometimes it’s about all of us, together. That’s another power of music.

The Playing for Change Foundation wants to bring peace to the world through music. That’s not a bad idea: people who would never consider sitting down together will stand up together and dance to the same song. PFC is building community around music and committed to providing resources for musicians, music students and music schools around the world.

And they made this great video. I love the song, and I love what they’ve done with it. And right now it speaks to me particularly keenly, the way music often does: right now it seems good to remember that we all need someone to stand by us sometimes, and that when we stand by someone else we are doing good in the world.

Enjoy.

 

Like a Song: Surrender

I’m a staff writer for the website @U2 (and yes, I say this every time, but it’s still the best damn U2 fan site on the planet). One of my favorite parts of @U2 is our Like A Song series, personal essays by staff members about U2 songs that are important to us.

This month’s podcast includes my reading of my essay on the song “Surrender” from the War album. Powerful album, powerful song. My audio is a bit hissy, alas — I’m still learning how to manage the technology we have — but I hope you’ll give it a listen. The reading is a titch over 8 minutes long.

Download the entire podcast, or listen directly to my segment.

And here’s the essay.

And here’s the song:

[Use this link if you can’t see the media player.]

Enjoy.

Storm

I have a pile of work to do, and there’s a big storm on the way — the temperature is dropping and the sky is drawing in on us, as if the world were shrinking. And so rather than telling the story of the actor who stabbed himself, or doing my monthly search keyword roundup (both coming soon, I promise), I thought I would just leave you with some music.

When I was younger and even more consciously dramatic than I am now, I once stood on a Florida beach at midnight watching heat lightning twenty miles out to sea, the last shreds of a thunderstorm gang that had come hulking across the area that day. It was a big system: the lightning poured down across half the horizon, and a cool wind blew in and out of the warm night, and the surf was pounding… so you know I had to sing “Riders of the Storm.”

I hope you have had the fun of getting big with the universe sometime.

Say yes

A few days ago, I read this review of a concert by the band Of Montreal in my morning newspaper. And I just had to share.

I don’t know the music. I fossicked about on YouTube and couldn’t find a good quality clip of a live show to share here, so I can’t even tell you if I would have the same experience of a concert as the reviewer. And it doesn’t matter. I am so taken by the giddiness and sheer geeky love of this review, especially coming as it does from Travis Nichols, an arts reviewer who always brings context and wide perspective and objectivity to his work. And enthusiasm — that’s one of the things I enjoy about his reviews, I always know when he likes something. But I’ve never seen him wiggle like this:

….they are at times so irritatingly goofy you just want to say no on principle.
 
But don’t be that way. Say yes.
 
Enjoy the glitter, the face paint, the pastel shorts, the tiger costumes, the dancing golden Buddhas, the confetti, the light show and the weird spectacle of frontman Kevin Barnes nearly naked, covered in shaving cream, doing some kind of New Wave strut on the Showbox SoDo stage. Say yes to songs like “Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse” and “Disconnect the Dots” and “Id Engager,” songs that are such a muddle of riffs and disco stomps that the only sensible thing to do is shout along to a chorus like “C’mon chemicals! C’mon chemicaaaaals!” until you’re hoarse.
 
— from Travis Nichols’ review of Of Montreal, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 20 Nov. 2008

It just gets better from there.

And it doesn’t matter if you like this particular music. Just that you like something enough to give yourself up to it sometimes. We should all have some stuff that makes us wiggle in joy, that makes us say yes.

Go read the review. Enjoy. I hope you get some yes in your day.

Girls and boys and everything between

My 2007 interview with the WPR program To The Best of Our Knowledge will air again this coming week (starting on Sunday). I talk with host Jim Fleming about Dangerous Space, the character of Mars, and gender in fiction and life, and do a brief reading. I very much enjoyed the conversation with Jim — he’s a great host, asked thoughtful questions, and gave me lots of room to wave my arms around (in the way one does on the radio, grin).

If you’d like to hear it, you can find your local station here, or use this direct link to the mp3 of the show. My segment starts at about 38:30.

And in the spirit of it all, here’s a little something I’ve always loved. You don’t have to go far to find the wild side — it’s right there between your ears. Have fun with yours today.


(Click here if you can’t see the audio player.)