Friday, September 30, 2011
Shining Light
Speaking of music and how it moves a person - let me just remember my beautiful friend, John, who left us far too soon a couple weeks ago.
This man he was a shining light. So smart and funny and just, kind. We met in our graduate English classes last semester and hit it off immediate - he was dressed well, witty and clearly city; and to him, I was someone he knew from the radio already, and wanted to know better. We'd find each others' eyes during the awkward moments in class and exchange knowing looks, and that's how we bonded - two cynical, city-transplanted-to-Alaska snobs. We meshed, talked literature, then after the semester ended last May became real friends who hosted each other for dinner parties, went camping together. I reveled at being invited to his and Matthew's where they laid out hors devours before dinner and played jazz, then stayed up too late - all just like me! - drinking wine and laughing, telling story after story, eating the rest of the appetizer cheese plate at 2am.
In June when the ferns were growing up in the backyard and the weather became hospitable, John was here and after dinner we made a fire in the fire pit, Matt and I shook up pitchers of watermelon gimlets and we all roasted marshmallows. At one point in the evening there was John, with a fern in each hand like a coy fan dancer batting his eyelashes, performing an Annie Lennox song about being beautiful, mugging for no camera - just the present audience. I laughed so hard that I nearly peed -- a brilliant performance! I loved it and thank god I had found my people up here! We finished off that night with karaoke, dancing and red velvet cupcakes.
Just a few weeks ago we all went camping together. Jim drove and they sat in the back; I twisted around and we played the alphabet game and "Triad" - John's game where you name three seemingly disparate things and try to figure out what they have in common. Youth. Friendship. Death.
John died while Jim and I were in Mexico. It all seemed especially far away because of geography, because of vacation. Before we left and before he left, we talked about hosting a Halloween party together - dress like your favorite piece of art or artist. It was going to be a fabulous party, and it still could be - I'm planning on throwing it even so.
John, honey, I'm so mad that you left already and I'm so sad that it was so soon. You were one of the good ones and I'm glad I got to be your friend right off the bat, not wasting any time. This one is for you, dear man:
This man he was a shining light. So smart and funny and just, kind. We met in our graduate English classes last semester and hit it off immediate - he was dressed well, witty and clearly city; and to him, I was someone he knew from the radio already, and wanted to know better. We'd find each others' eyes during the awkward moments in class and exchange knowing looks, and that's how we bonded - two cynical, city-transplanted-to-Alaska snobs. We meshed, talked literature, then after the semester ended last May became real friends who hosted each other for dinner parties, went camping together. I reveled at being invited to his and Matthew's where they laid out hors devours before dinner and played jazz, then stayed up too late - all just like me! - drinking wine and laughing, telling story after story, eating the rest of the appetizer cheese plate at 2am.
In June when the ferns were growing up in the backyard and the weather became hospitable, John was here and after dinner we made a fire in the fire pit, Matt and I shook up pitchers of watermelon gimlets and we all roasted marshmallows. At one point in the evening there was John, with a fern in each hand like a coy fan dancer batting his eyelashes, performing an Annie Lennox song about being beautiful, mugging for no camera - just the present audience. I laughed so hard that I nearly peed -- a brilliant performance! I loved it and thank god I had found my people up here! We finished off that night with karaoke, dancing and red velvet cupcakes.
Just a few weeks ago we all went camping together. Jim drove and they sat in the back; I twisted around and we played the alphabet game and "Triad" - John's game where you name three seemingly disparate things and try to figure out what they have in common. Youth. Friendship. Death.
John died while Jim and I were in Mexico. It all seemed especially far away because of geography, because of vacation. Before we left and before he left, we talked about hosting a Halloween party together - dress like your favorite piece of art or artist. It was going to be a fabulous party, and it still could be - I'm planning on throwing it even so.
John, honey, I'm so mad that you left already and I'm so sad that it was so soon. You were one of the good ones and I'm glad I got to be your friend right off the bat, not wasting any time. This one is for you, dear man:
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Some Song I Used To Hear Back Then
I admit that one of my favoritest parts of producing a radio show is finding that mid-break song that echoes the week's theme, adding a dash of comic relief to the heavier shows or a dose of gravitas to the lighter ones. Then, I will inevitably end up down the enticing musical rabbit hole in the name of work and then five or ten or twenty three songs later... I'm listening to opera or discovering Brazilian triphop or remembering how I used to really dig Kim Deal and the crunchy guitars of the early 90s.
This next one is obvious - for "The Sex Talk" show it's clearly the Salt N Pepa classic, right. But, just to sort of look into other, less obvious choices, I've searched terms like "talk" and "listen" and "here for you" and so now, led astray, I'm listening to heart-exploding opera - how does that happen - specifically Turandot and the never-fails-to-timelessly-kill yet modern song, Time to Say Goodbye.
[Pause.]
A few years ago I wore red pants to dinner with an old friend and his new girlfriend who was a music supervisor in Hollywood. This was back when all my friends and acquaintances, to some varying cinematic degree, worked in Hollywood doing something hollywoody, and I was rarely impressed by their proximity to stars, free cereal bars at work, car services. That night, though, I remember eating al fresco while feeling cute in my red pants and also really coveting the new girlfriend's job - really, that's a thing you get paid for? - picking music for a movie? I think we went for drinks after at our local Irish-themed pub and I paid for song after song on the jukebox whilst we played pool. "I can pick songs too," thought twenty-year old me.
I'm just so moved by music. Like nothing else. That's all. If I could get paid for doing that, what makes me feel most alive - wouldn't that be the grand end all of doing what you love I suppose?
Lately I've been listening to rediscovered gems I'd forgotten to even look up, but the songs that when you hear them randomly cue up all the words and music memories are remembered back like back of hands.
For instance, the Notwist came up while loading the dishwasher the other night - Things look much bigger on your knees, on your knees. And all of the sudden you're one with the freaks. Have you ever, have you ever been all messed up? (p.s. this video is genius.) Then this: I used to hear some song I used to hear back then, a long time ago comes on and those are really the lyrics, from Peter, Bjorn and John - And the question is was I more alive than the night now, I happily have to disagree - I laugh more often now, I cry more often now, I am more free.
Oh, alright. Here's one more that I heard while meeting in a coffee shop earlier this week - PJ Harvey and Thom Yorke - No need for words for now. We sit in silence. You look me in the eye directly. I think It's Wednesday. The mess we're in. The city sun set over me. I used to listen to this song on a rooftop while the sun set over me, thinking about all the places I would go; all the messes I'd get into and out of; all the Wednesdays that'd come and go, grasping and letting go all the time in the world, clenched fists then open hands.
And that's how music does it, you know, takes me right back in time, a visit to a memory theater when the city overwhelmed a young springy self, happy-drunk on citylife and I couldn't think about tomorrow for all the noise, but I also couldn't not think about tomorrow because all the cacophony excited me to make something the next day, something noisy and also something gentle that lets someone else know they've been understood.
This next one is obvious - for "The Sex Talk" show it's clearly the Salt N Pepa classic, right. But, just to sort of look into other, less obvious choices, I've searched terms like "talk" and "listen" and "here for you" and so now, led astray, I'm listening to heart-exploding opera - how does that happen - specifically Turandot and the never-fails-to-timelessly-kill yet modern song, Time to Say Goodbye.
[Pause.]
A few years ago I wore red pants to dinner with an old friend and his new girlfriend who was a music supervisor in Hollywood. This was back when all my friends and acquaintances, to some varying cinematic degree, worked in Hollywood doing something hollywoody, and I was rarely impressed by their proximity to stars, free cereal bars at work, car services. That night, though, I remember eating al fresco while feeling cute in my red pants and also really coveting the new girlfriend's job - really, that's a thing you get paid for? - picking music for a movie? I think we went for drinks after at our local Irish-themed pub and I paid for song after song on the jukebox whilst we played pool. "I can pick songs too," thought twenty-year old me.
I'm just so moved by music. Like nothing else. That's all. If I could get paid for doing that, what makes me feel most alive - wouldn't that be the grand end all of doing what you love I suppose?
Lately I've been listening to rediscovered gems I'd forgotten to even look up, but the songs that when you hear them randomly cue up all the words and music memories are remembered back like back of hands.
For instance, the Notwist came up while loading the dishwasher the other night - Things look much bigger on your knees, on your knees. And all of the sudden you're one with the freaks. Have you ever, have you ever been all messed up? (p.s. this video is genius.) Then this: I used to hear some song I used to hear back then, a long time ago comes on and those are really the lyrics, from Peter, Bjorn and John - And the question is was I more alive than the night now, I happily have to disagree - I laugh more often now, I cry more often now, I am more free.
Oh, alright. Here's one more that I heard while meeting in a coffee shop earlier this week - PJ Harvey and Thom Yorke - No need for words for now. We sit in silence. You look me in the eye directly. I think It's Wednesday. The mess we're in. The city sun set over me. I used to listen to this song on a rooftop while the sun set over me, thinking about all the places I would go; all the messes I'd get into and out of; all the Wednesdays that'd come and go, grasping and letting go all the time in the world, clenched fists then open hands.
And that's how music does it, you know, takes me right back in time, a visit to a memory theater when the city overwhelmed a young springy self, happy-drunk on citylife and I couldn't think about tomorrow for all the noise, but I also couldn't not think about tomorrow because all the cacophony excited me to make something the next day, something noisy and also something gentle that lets someone else know they've been understood.
Friday, September 16, 2011
Up on the roof
Kicking back on Playa Las Animas
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