On my drive into work this morning, one of the local radio stations played “November Rain” (Guns n Roses) “Rock Me Amadeus” (Falco) back to back.
That’s some serious musical whiplash. That’s like having bacon-caramel pie. I like bacon, and I like caramel, but not together.
Dear iPod,
Over the years that I’ve had you (as your second owner), we’ve had our rocky times. You’ve worked well with both my Windows and Mac workstations — that’s a plus. Your battery life is damn near useless (and I understand that’s not really your fault), but with the appropriate adapter therapy we’ve been able to work around that. I hardly ever use you with headphones, but that iTrip is a righteous score that allows you to rock the car, the house, and any other FM radio within distance. True, you’re only a 3G classic model, but you’ve got 40GB and I’ve never even come close to running you out of space. All in all, we’ve been good for each other. Today, however, was something entirely different.
I now, of course, realize that you picking Bon Jovi’s It’s My Life when I was driving home through Woodinville was really a message. But I didn’t get that message until after we got on to 522 through the funeral procession and slowly drove by the column of funeral-goers. Just as we drew even with the hearse, you switched to Chumbawumba’s Tubthumping. Specifically, you blared the following line out the open windows:
I get knocked down, but I get up again
You’re never going to keep me down.
That, dear iPod? Total awesome.
I was thinking about getting a newer model, but now? Now we’ll see what we can do to replace that no-good battery of yours. You’ve still got years of life left in you with just a little TLC from me. You, iPod, rock.
Love,
Devin.
For the record, Aly & AJ’s Potential Breakup Song is one hell of an earworm, but it sounds really good on my work desktop’s speaker/subwoofer. I’ve got it cranked up loud before anyone else gets here.
I have finally found out what is more annoying than getting your ass kicked online by a nine year-old kid — getting your ass kicked by an eighteen year-old girl who keeps giggling over voice chat every time she gets a kill. I mean, damn, girl’s got skills, but does she really have to be quite so vicious about it?
So, I’m in Sydney for a training conference that I’m talking about in my work blog if you’re interested. There’s a lot of interesting small differences that have more of a mental impact to me than the big ones:
The more Steph and I listen to Brad Paisley, the more impressed we are. (Those of you who don’t know who he is, he’s a country singer. If you don’t like country, that’s fine, you can stop reading, although I suggest you go to the video section of his website and at the very least watch Whiskey Lullaby, the duet he does with the incomparable Alison Krauss.) Tonight, though, I came in the middle of a new song on our local radio station: Letter to Me. The basic premise is simple: the song is a list of the things the singer would tell his 17 year-old self.
The best line of the song comes in the bridge:
And I’d end up saying have no fear
These are nowhere near the best years of your life
I don’t think I can tell you just how nice it is to hear one of these types of songs that doesn’t wallow in that sugar-coated all-American myth that “your high school years are the best years of your life.” Those years aren’t your best years — they shouldn’t be, at any rate — and if they are, you either need to pull your head out of your ass and look around to see how good your life is or you need to get in line for a serious kick in the ass.
Thanks, Brad. You continue to confirm that you are one of the coolest people in the music business.
Earlier tonight while reading my LiveJournal friends’ posts, I saw this video:
This video has been cracking me up for hours now. I’ve watched it, like, a gazillion times, and I still am laughing my ass off. I’m also madly wanting a cat, but that’s partly Ryan’s fault, since he just got a new cat and we went over to his place to get his help with Steph’s car.
Can I have a cat? Me, Mr. Cat Person? Nooooooo. Landlord says “No can has cat.” Meh.
(Thanks to Elizabeth Bear for the link.)
A YouTube clip of David Lee Roth performing Van Halen's classic "Jump." Nothing odd there, right?
I blame John Scalzi.
First, I would like it to be known that I am only doing this under protest. I don’t usually participate in blog memes, because most of them are damned silly. However, I got tagged on this one by Paul in what looks like a fairly typical spree of spreading the love, so I’ll go ahead and do it.
So here’s the meme, in Paul’s words:
The latest craze sweeping the series of tubes is “5 Things”, a sort of chain letter in which
victimsparticipants are supposed to list 5 things that others may not know about them, then pass the baton on to some other people.
And here are my responses:
I’ll just note here, for the record, that I’m only doing this because I already have a couple of things I wanted to blog about and I can twist this meme to my service. The fact that I’ve been needing to update here is just extra gravy. The fact that one of my other co-victims needs to actually fix his blog server before he can respond just makes me feel better about the whole thing.
And now on to my victims, which is the hard part. I’ve been seeing this meme running around the tubes for a while, so anyone who hasn’t already done it is either less connected than I am or just as likely as I am to say “Poppycock!” at the whole concept and just not participate. With that caveat in mind….
….I choose you, Alistair, Andrew, Brian, Nick, and Steph (in alphabetical order so no ranking is implied).
For the past several months (maybe even year or two), I’ve been pondering an essay on how short and overt expressions of Christianity seem to be a staple feature of the country music genre and the severe cognitive dissonance this sometimes produces. Several events have happened recently that convince me I need to write this essay sooner, rather than later.
So, to get the ball rolling, let me point out one juxtaposition that currently makes my teeth ache: Carrie Underwood, the new country sensation whose career was launched by American Idol. Her first release was a sappy number named “Jesus, Take the Wheel” and had all the theological subtlety of a brick in the face. Her second release was an unremarkable coming-of-age number “Don’t Forget to Remember Me” which pretty much confirmed her reputation as Sweetness and Light Personified. Her current release, however, changed all of that. “Before He Cheats” is a powerful and raw number about getting revenge on a no-good cheatin’ scoundrel — and let me tell you, his truck is toast. By the time she gets done with it, you could put it between your legs, squeeze it like toothpaste, and nine out of ten dentists wouldn’t recommend it for anything.
Of her three songs, “Before He Cheats” is the only one I like. Yet I’d like it a lot better if someone else — anyone else — sang it, because Carrie “Jesus, Take the Wheel” Underwood may have the singing chops to pull the number off, but the mental clash between the message in the two songs is overpowering. Now, I don’t want to say that people who profess Christian beliefs must always be paragons of virtue in every way, because even if it were possible I don’t think it’s a healthy goal to pursue. (Remind me some other time to share my thoughts on what being Christ-like means.)
On the other hand, though, there’s too big of a gap between “Jesus, Take the Wheel” and “Before He Cheats.” Yes, I know, these are songs; they’re entertainment. But that’s what really bothers me. There is a large group of people out there who self-identify as Christian, who are (for the most part) decent people. Yet few of them look at these two songs and say, “Um, gee, something doesn’t add up here.” The country music industry — widely known (and lampooned) for its constant repition of such uplifting themes as infidelity, drunkeness, violence, and other disaster of life both major and minor — has managed to pull a fast one on its audience by inserting brief interludes of verbal piousness in a format that is otherwise filled with examples of every heartache, vice, and sin known to man.
Where is the disconnect? How does this happen? Is this a failure of Christianity or is there something else at work here?
I’ve never been a big fan of the whole zombie genre. However, I’ve finally found a bit of zombie-themed entertainment that makes me giggle. A very talented musician by the name of Jonathan Coulton has taken the basic zombie concept, mixed it in with office meetings and lingo, and set the whole tasty thing to music: Re Your Brains.
You can listen to it only or download it for a dollar. While you’re at it, check out the rest of his songs. His white boy easy listening version of “Baby Got Back” is funnier than sin.
Also entertaining, yesterday I got what was quite possibly the funniest spam I’ve ever seen. Somebody out there is aggressively targetting geeks. It was your basic Viagra ad — a picture of a woman and a man obviously about to get intimate — but the tagline read, “Take the blue pill…and I’ll show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.” Marketing male fertility by using Matrix references — genius! If only they weren’t spammers…
Dang. I just pulled off something tonight that makes me wonder if Apple wasn’t in fact smoking crack when they decided to drop the PowerPC processor in favor of moving to Pentiums. My little Mac mini — 512MB of RAM, 1.42 GHz PowerPC G4 CPU, was able to effortlessly (and I mean without a single slip, skip, hesitation, or bobble) do all of the following simultaneously:
Now, I’ve used a variety of systems in my day, and I’ve never seen the machine that could handle that set of tasks without at least the occasional glitch or shimmy in the works. At the very least, all of the I/O would cause the occasional pause as the machine optimized for the DVD burning operation to avoid making a toaster (if I was lucky). And my experience isn’t just in Windows — I’ve tried this on Linux and FreeBSD systems too. The unifying factor? They were all based on the Intel architecture, with its half-assed memory management and I/O capabilities.
I really want to know what kind of chipset Apple is using to do memory management and I/O, because this mini just smoked my brain. I’ve known for a while that raw clock cycles can’t be used to compare RISC processors like the PowerPC (or SPARC or Alpha) with the CISC CPUs such as, oh, pretty much anything out of Intel for modern PC use — but having a low-end system like this deal with all these high-I/O tasks without breaking a sweat is pretty damn awesome. I really hope they’re not using what is essentially typical PC chipsets, because if so, I doubt their new offerings will be able to do this, no matter what benchmarks they can cook up.
Mixing custom playlists is fun. I just created a “Sweat” playlist, intended for use when exercising. Maybe having a decent soundtrack will give me some motivation to hit the physical fitness regime with something approaching dedication again. As such, the songs don’t have to be good music, they just have to have a good beat or rhythm:
Yeah, I know. I should be ashamed of myself. But y’know, if I can actually stick with my exercises and drop some lard off this tubby frame of mine, my taste in music might be slightly vindicated.
As you may remember, the local bookstore closed down last year. Today, I found out that our charming little hole-in-the-wall CD shop will be closing down in 6 weeks or so. This bites, because Steph and I try to support small local shops even if it means paying more, as long as we can get what we want there.
On the good side, they’re holding a 15% off everything sale, and I was finally able to pick up a copy of Billy Idol’s infamous (and very hard to find) Cyberpunk album, as well as a boxed 3-CD set of Queen’s greatest hits. Still, I’d rather that they were able to stay in business.
We finally diagnosed whatever is going on with Steph’s computer — motherboard or CPU. Well, shite. I wasn’t really looking to be rebuilding machines at this point, nor to be acquiring new hardware. I think we have a gameplan, but Steph will be computerless for another couple of days. Good thing she can read her email from OWA.
Oh, yeah — chapter 4 of the DCAR ebook is kicking my ass. I just cannot find the words to put on paper. This is doubly infuriating, because there are a lot of other projects that are clamoring inside my skull for airtime. I’ve got a wonderful essay rattling around in there, tentatively titled “The Relationship Lens: Re-imaging the role of faith and the church.” This sounds like a lot more fun to write, but it’s not what has the deadline.
Got a concerned email from one of the ladies at church. Rumors are now going around that we’re leaving. This wouldn’t be so bad of itself, because we are going to be actively looking for a new church home. What pisses me off is that it sounds like there’s already a healthy load of bullshit going around about my reasons — lots of gossip and speculation. Mind you, nobody’s bothered to ask me what the truth is.
If it weren’t for the fact that we still have a great school for the kids, I’d almost be thinking it was time to seriously consider moving from Monroe.
Update: the kids are really grooving on the Queen albums. They recognize a lot of the music from the Highlander movies and TV series. Yep, they are geeks.
[Editor's warning: the following is tale of suspense and horror...of mid-80s Christian rock music and youthful prejudice. You have been warned.]
Once upon a time, when I was a young and impressionable lad, my sister discovered a really good contemporary Christian rock band by the name of Petra. This was back in the day when Petra had just released their More Power To Ya album, back in the heydey of the whole backmasking controversy, and I still remember my astonishment at hearing a few seconds of in-the-clear backmasking just before the wailing guitar kicked in for “Judas’ Kiss” — a song that my sister and I had to listen to at extremely low volume so that my parents wouldn’t make us turn it off (or, worse, confiscate the tape). As alarming as the music was to my sheltered ears, though, the lyrics were the most amazing part. Here was a band that talked about all sorts of real issues; they weren’t just moving around words in hymns, or quoting Bible verses ad infinitum. They had a gritty, rubber-meets-the-road way of getting their point across without preaching. They weren’t afraid to state things how they saw them, but they didn’t feel the need to hammer it in, either — they were more than willing to be subtle and let you think about what they were saying for a bit.
A few years later, Petra released Beat the System, which was wildly unlike their previous albums. Up until that point, they had a very classic rock sound — distortion guitar, layered vocal harmonies, the works. Beat the System was an excursion into the mid-’80s technorock, chock-full of glitzy synth riffs. Underneath, though, they still had the good old rock and roll, and some of my favorite Petra songs come from that album (“It Is Finished”, “Clean”, and “Adonai”). Bob Hartman’s songwriting and guitar virtuoso, combined with the sheer vocal awesomeness that was Greg X. Volz, made for some seriously adult music. Not too long after, they came out with the Captured in Time and Space “best of” album, which was a collection of live performances. Alas, Greg X. Volz was leaving Petra and striking out on his own to work on a solo project.
I still remember the day I finally walked into the Christian bookstore we frequented and saw the new Petra album Back to the Street — the first one with lead singer John Schlitt. I put the cassette in the player, popped on the headphones, and pushed the play button, waiting for my first taste of Petra after Volz….and when it came on, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The heavily synthesized sound of Beat the System was one thing; yeah, there was a lot of electronic sound to it, but it was exquisitely produced and layered and there was plenty of bass. This…this crap was high, and tinny, and sounded faintly frantic. And then I heard John Schlitt’s voice and wanted to burst into tears. Greg X. Volz would never be mistaken for a bass or baritone in choir, but he knew how to sing. Schlitt’s voice was high and raspy. Oh, yeah, he could hit the notes, but it was so workmanlike. I was worried that he was going to give himself a hernia, and perhaps give me one for good measure. And the lyrics — wow, taking a step back from the meat and going to the milk! Trite, obvious phrases; strained and stretched imagery — this couldn’t have been written by master songwriter Bob Hartman! I still couldn’t beleive it even after I checked the liner notes and confirmed, to my teenage disbelief, that Hartman (the soul of Petra) was credited as the author of this junk.
I never bought another Petra album — at least, not one produced after Captured in Time and Space. As far as I was concerned, from that day on there was no Petra. They’d disbanded and some group of imposters was trying to take over their good name. And it wasn’t like I was taking any comfort from Greg X. Volz’s solo album The River is Rising; I was spectacularly unimpressed (although not nursing an actively negative impression of it like I was with the ersatz Petra the Christian music industry was trying to push on me). And so I left it for lo! these many years, until a confluence of fate put them into my path again.
A couple of years ago, I was given a selection of ’80s-era Christian music LPs (yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as vinyl!). Although I didn’t have a turntable at the time, I knew I would eventually get one again, so I was carefully hoarding away a selection of albums. Then, a couple months back, a co-worker bequeathed her old stereo to me; it included a turntable. So when I cleaned out my office, I brought the stereo home and re-acquainted myself with a bunch of the vinyl.
Upon mature reflection and the space of a decade or so, I was surprised to find that I actually enjoyed the heck out of The River is Rising; while it was simpler fare than he’d performed with Petra, Greg brought his usual grace to it. I held off on the two Schlitt-era Petra albums, though (Back to the Street and the followup This Means War), until the right time. This afternoon, I finally put Back to the Street on the turntable and brought the needle to vinyl.
I have to say, the only thing that has changed for me is that now I have the words to describe why I dislike it so much. As that teenager, I only knew I hated it; I couldn’t tell you why. Now I know that it’s trite, insipid fare, and although Schlitt’s Petra is just as sincere and professional as the original group (a distinction I was incapable of making all those years ago), they are fundamentally a different group. It’s no wonder the group turned into a praise band over the years. Oh, they had all the elements there even in the More Power To Ya and Beat the System days — “Let Everything That Hath Breath” is a rock anthem and hymn all rolled up in one tasty power-chord package, and “Adonai” belts it to the heavens with the best of any of Hartman’s offerings — but they still knew how to kick more than a little ass while doing it. And slowly, over the years after Greg left, they turned into, well, sissies. The God I worship has an amp that goes all the way to 11. The God I worship likes power chords in His praise songs. This is the God who proclaimed, “Upon this rock I will build my church” (emphasis mine).
Farewell, Petra. You’ve been grand.
It’s all Steph’s fault.
No, really. She’s the one who introduced me to Il Divo, a new male chorale group put together by American Idol’s venom-tongued emcee Simon Cowell. These guys have some serious opera and theater cred, and I shamefully confess that I fell in love with their cover of Toni Braxton’s “Unbreak My Heart.” Of course, Il Divo sings most of their songs in Italian, which automatically makes everything more sexy (at least to us Americans) because we can’t hear how inane the lyrics really are. Still, you haven’t lived until you’ve heard four high-octane professional male singers belt out Italian versions of “Unchained Melody (Seza Catene)” or “My Way (A Mi Manera)” — so head to their website and check them out.
I like them enough we picked up their first CD, Il Divo
My kids got introduced to vinyl the other day when Steph and I set up the new stero/CD/tape/turntable unit a co-worker gave me a few months back. I pulled out my stash of late ’80s contemporary Christian albums (Greg X. Volz’s first solo album, some of Steve Taylor, Michael W. Smith). Man, some of that music was bad…but I love it.
Okay, that’s enough public shame for one day. Enjoy the new blog theme — this one has earned the approval of both my wife and my mother, so it’s probably sticking around.
Holidays are a time of love, peace, family unity, good smells coming from the kitchen, world peace, and a fluffy bunny for every child.
They are also times of high stress, especially for those who are hosting the inevitable gatherings. Lots of chores, food preparation, and other tasks of varying degrees of pleasantness await those who extend their hospitality to friends and family. All this stress can lead to decidedly unpeaceful feelings, especially on the part of those who are doing the bulk of the work, such as my lovely wife.
The stress has an affect on the rest of us, though, and it can take small annoyances and incidents and blow them up out of proportion. If you’re not careful, your reaction will be disproportionate as well. I had to clamp down on an inappropriate reaction this morning when the shattered glass bowl was neatly laid at my feet for my failure to level the refrigerator yesterday, and the whole experience got me thinking about how, at another time when both of us were less stressed, we’d have been able to cope with the situation in a more civil manner. We have some measure of control over how big of a disaster any given incident is, by choosing how we view the situation and what context we choose to see it in.
Which leads me to the annoyance I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. I challenged you to figure out what exactly about the lyrics of the Rebecca St. James song Lion bothered me. While normally the grammatical issues folks uncovered would bother me, I’m much more forgiving when it comes to song lyrics — it’s hard enough to write decent lyrics without having to be sure you’ve got perfect grammar.
So, much (I’m sure) to the surprise of my readers, my gripe with the lyrics comes from an actual content issue rather than grammar. Specifically, the last line of the chorus bothers me:
This is not a dream that I’m living
This is just a world of Your own
You took me from all that I know
Shown me how it feels to hope
With You with me, facing tomorrow together
I can learn to fly
Feels like I’m living in the lion’s mouth, but the lion is an angel
Remember that we’re talking about songs inspired by The Chronicles of Narnia here, so “the lion” is Aslan. And Aslan is not an angel; He is the Saviour, as the later books make clear. So when I first heard this song, as much as I liked it, I was extremely upset that Rebecca — a musician whose work I have admired for a long time — missed such a basic point. Even though C. S. Lewis hadn’t set out to consciously write Aslan as Christ, it is undeniable that’s how things ended up, and it waters down the impact of the story if Aslan is a mere angel.
A few days after I posted the previous entry, Steph and I were talking about the song and why it irritated me. She was puzzled because she couldn’t really figure out how it related to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. We could match it up in a very generic sense, but neither one of us was satisfied with that interpretation. Steph then realized that the song makes perfect sense…if it’s imagined as being from Eustace’s viewpoint, in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, after he has his first encounter with Aslan.
All at once, Steph’s insight transformed my irritation. Eustace’s endragoning and subsequent restoration — literally, his rebirth as a new creature — has long been one of my favorite parts of the series, even though I personally find Treader to be the weakest book in the series. All that aside, Eustace’s face-to-face meeting with Aslan is a moving experience. Here is this boy who has been raised knowing nothing of church or God, suddenly transported to a world of fantasy and transformed into an ugly beast that displays the greed of his inner heart for all to see — and now, in a moment of pain and honesty, is brought face-to-face with his failings and his weaknesses. In the eyes and paws of this wild lion he finds only love and forgiveness; and is given the opportunity to change his life forever.
In a way, I envy Eustace; unlike so many of us today, his first experience of God is a singularly soul-changing encounter filled not with guilt and accusation, but rather acceptance and redemption. He doesn’t know anything about theology; he doesn’t have the sophisticated religious jargon with which to share his experience and frame his thoughts. Within the borders of his experience, Eustace only knows that he is made new. He doesn’t know the difference between angel and Saviour…he just knows he’s been touched by the supernatural. And he will never be the same.
It only took a moment to find a different context — and now, my irritation with the song has disappeared. Something that two weeks ago was a big disappointment has been swept away in one moment of changed perspective. What other annoyances and roadblocks can we deal with so easily, I wonder?
I recently posted
a round-up of the recent music and videos we’ve been enjoying here in
the Ganger household. One of the songs I took pains to point out is Lion from Rebecca St. James. However, there’s a small problem with this song that grates on my nerves every time I hear it.
Rather than rant about it, let me post the lyrics and see if you can
spot the same thing I did. In a blatant and shameless attempt to
generate some comment traffic, please post what you see in the comment
thread here on my site (LJ readers — please not in my comment thread
on the LJ feed; I’m trying this as an experiment).
Without further ado:
Mysterious
That’s what I call You
I’m curious about You
I’m scared and I’m not sure that you are safe
But your eyes seem to say that You are good
(Chorus)
This is not a dream that I’m living
This is just a world of Your own
You took me from all that I know
Shown me how it feels to hope
With You with me, facing tomorrow together
I can learn to fly
Feels like I’m living in the lion’s mouth, but the lion is an angel
Wise eyes, You see the core of me
Your gentleness melts me
And now I know that words cannot describe
The power that I feel when I’m with You
Chorus
Peace and power, love forever
Who am I to stand before You?
I am speechless
But in my weakness
You are here and all is well
Chorus x2
It’s been a bit since I’ve talked about music and video, so here we go.
to listen to (and watch, since the flip side of the CD is a DVD with several of their videos). If you’ve not heard any of Bond‘sMy favorite number off this album, Explosive, has a kick-ass video (even with the silly Mariah Carey moments — you’ll know them when you see them).
. Now I have the last two seasons on DVD and only need the first three, plus the movie collection
and Crusade
Unlike many B5 fans, I thought Season 5
was a strong season; I enjoyed the telepath story arc, as I think the
Telepath War is one of the most fascinating bits of the B5 universe and
I’d love to see more about it.
Most importantly, though, this season
contains the incomparable episode Sleeping in Light, which is
the final episode of the series. It’s a powerful and moving episode; I
start crying about 2 minutes in and usually don’t stop until 15 minutes
after I’m done watching.
The David Crowder Band’s suave disco offering of Turkish Delight talks about how big sins come in small temptations.
The most powerful song on the album, though, is Rebecca St. James’s Lion;
the accompanying picture is a shot of Lucy and Susan mourning over the
Aslan’s muzzled corpose as he rests on the Stone Table, so you can
probably figure out just what kind of impact the song has.
or DVD
.
.It is probably not a good idea to watch the video for Alan Jackson’s “Monday Morning Church” when you’ve recently lost a friend, especially not when you are wondering how his wife is holding up.
I’d imagine that Brad Paisley and Allison Krauss’s “Whiskey Lullaby” would be a bad one too, but since that one brings tears to my eyes on a good day I’ve been avoiding it.
Once again, I’m up far too late, trying to fix a raft of computer problems. This time I’m reinstalling my Exchange organization, migrating DNS zones, and trying to install a new reverse proxy web server. The usual.
I’ve got my iPod playing away — I love the Griffin iTrip I bought for it. For $40, I have wireless streaming media at home and in any car. The iTrip takes the output of my iPod and broadcasts it onto any FM channel I select. It doesn’t have a large radius, but it’s good enough to hit every radio in the house, which means Steph and I can listen to the same music all through the house. Not at all bad for the price.
Right now, I’m listening to my Favorites playlist on shuffle. It just brought up a song I’ve been meaning to blog about for the past couple of weeks — Big & Rich’s Live This Life — and I’m struck by how appropriate it is in light of some news I received Monday. First, though, the song:
Met a man on a street last night / said his name was Jesus
Met a man on a street last night
Thought he was crazy / until I watched him heal a blind man
I watched him heal a blind man / and now I see, yeah
Chorus:
I live this life / until this life won’t let me live here anymore
Then I will walk / yes I will walk with patience through that open door
I have no fears / angels follow me wherever I may go
I live this life / until this life won’t let me live here anymore
Met a girl in a chair with wheels / but no one else could see her
Met a girl in a chair with wheels
Everyone was so afraid / to even look down on her
And she just spread her little wings / and flew away, yeah
Repeat Chorus 2x
For a bit of extra kick, go read what Big & Rich have to say about their songs. From the notes on Live This Life:
The first verse came from a late-night conversation Big Kenny had with a homeless man in Nashville. “I met a man on a street last night/He said his name was Jesus.” John and Big both felt that something very important had been laid on them, but three weeks passed by before its purpose hit them and the rest of the song was written. The second verse describes Katie Darnell, a teenage girl and a friend of John and Kenny’s who died of brain cancer in the summer of 2003.
The song itself is very simple musically, but B&R have a powerful way of harmonizing. They’re joined on this track (I think) by the talented and haunting vocals of Gretchen Wilson. The result is easily my favorite song on this album.
I may seem like I’m switching gears here for a minute, but bear with me. As the release of the Cookbook gets closer, we’ve had a bunch of last-minute tasks to take care of (uploading scripts to our blog site, publicity, etc.) and one of the ones on my list was finalizing who I was going to send my author copies to. During the QC1 phase, I realized that I’d left two very important names out of my acknowledgements list — Ms. Kathy Snyder and Mrs. Tricia Boylen, two incredible high school teachers who nurtured my love of writing while ensuring I remained challenged in their classes. Both of them took personal time to read my fledgling stories and give me meaningful critiques. I reealized that even though the Cookbook wasn’t quite the first book I’d imagined writing during high school, I wouldn’t have gotten to this point without them.
So on Monday afternoon, I called my old high school to find out if they had contact information for them. That’s when I learned that Mrs. Boylen passed away last year. It was all I could do to finish my conversation with the nice office lady who I am sure had no idea how her casual news gutted the heart out of my day. After I put the phone down, I sat and cried like I haven’t in a long time. I am still stunned and heartbroken as I write this. Although she was talking about retiring at the end of my senior year, she was so full of life and energy. She never seemed to be old enough to be even thinking about retiring; in the fifteen years that have passed in my life from the time I graduated, I’ve often visualized sending a copy of my first book to Kathy and Tricia. I just assumed they would always be around by the time I got around to getting published.
The worst part was the little voice in my head that whispered that maybe, just maybe if I’d pushed harder on the Cookbook all through last year, if I’d cajoled my co-authors and myself into keeping on schedule, I’d have had time to follow through and send her the book. So I did some more digging. Although the town newspaper charges for access to the web archives, I was able to finagle up enough free information to find out that she died on May 5, 2004. Even with our original schedule, there’s no way the book would have been done. Thus I banished that bit of guilt, only to confront another one: I don’t think I ever told her that she was one of my favorite teacher, that she and Ms. Snyder were often the only reasons I’d get out of bed and come to school.
I hated my high school years with a passion; I hated the town, I had nothing in common with most of the kids, and what few friends I did have always left me with the feeling they’d befriended me out of pity. I was lucky with my teachers; almost all of them left me feeling that they considered themselves lucky to have me, know-it-all that I was. Kathy and Tricia never made me feel like anything other than the most important student they’d ever taught. I know they tried to make every student feel that way, but the message sunk down deep into my psyche. I’ve never doubted once, over these fifteen years, that when I finally see my name in print, they’ll be absolutely thrilled to see it too. I was so blindly confident that I never thought to take the time to drop them a note and let them know how I was doing. I kept making excuses for why I wasn’t writing instead of just sitting down and doing it. If I’d been pushing all through those fifteen years, would I have been published by now? We’ll never know.
Between this news and Live This Life, I’ve received a wake-up call. We only have so much time and then we have to move on.
Speaking of moving on, Exchange is done upgrading. Time to move to bed. Thanks for letting me ramble, if you made it this far.
I was asked by our priest if I could provide some quiet background guitar music for my church’s Maundy Thursday service. I agreed, and when time came to head down to the church tonight, I decided to walk. It’s only ten minutes away by foot and I can always use the exercise. My fingers are sore — with the practice time yesterday and today, plus the actual time playing for the service, I played more than I’ve probably played for the previous six months — but it was good.
On the way home, I was walking by another church (there are at least five churches within close walking distance of our house; this is not a sign of Monroe’s special piety, oh no — it’s a sign that we need ‘em) where a bunch of young folks (by that I mean younger than me, so youth group/early adult) were hanging out on the sidewalk. One of the young men saw me walking along with my guitar bag and basically invited me to sit and play guitar with him for a while. I was tempted, but declined the offer; we chatted for a few more seconds then wished each other well and went our separate ways. I really wanted to sit and play, and while I did want to get home, that wasn’t the reason I declined. Nor was I ashamed of my guitar (which was a birthday gift from my parents a couple of years back to replace the one that got stolen years ago), which while inexpensive has an incredibly rich sound for such a low-end guitar. No, I was ashamed of my playing. What I know about playing guitar is almost entirely self-taught.
When my parents got me my new guitar, I was really excited. Since we were at their house in Portland, I sat in a corner and played for as long as my fingers could stand (I hate playing nylon strings, so I play steel string guitars. Steel strings are much harder on the fingers until you build up the callous tissue on your fingertips. My fingers hate me right now). I was horrified to discover that I’d either forgotten a lot in the intervening nine years without a guitar, or (more likely) I was never as good as I thought I was. My parents said it was nice to hear me playing again, but I’m not sure I believed them then; I was so down in the dumps about how much I sucked that I had a hard time deciding if they were just being nice. (And to be honest, I still have that same trouble.)
It doesn’t help that I’ve been grooving to Allison Krauss + Union Station for the last couple of days. They are very talented musicians, so of course I immediately compare myself to them. I’ve had no formal lessons (apart from some sessions I managed to trade in return for teaching computer lessons back when I was a kid) and I have this wonderful music in my head that I can’t get out through my fingers. I’ve got a limited set of chords and fingerings I know and I can’t even do those consistently. There are chords that I’ve tried — and failed — to get down for as long as I’ve been playing. I think I just need to face the fact that I’m not a competent musician.
It occurs to me to wonder if learning how to touch-type early on has affected my manual dexterity; I’ve heard that typing and guitar playing require different muscles. If that’s the case, and I can only choose to be good at one, well, typing wins. I’ve had life-long dreams about being an author. Granted, I have dreams about writing and performing the occasional hit song, but even in my dreams, those are flukes; I’m first and foremost an author. Even so, it’s hard for me to find the will to do something if I don’t think I can be expert at it.
Edited: Steph says, and I completely agree, that I need to keep playing no matter what. Having my guitar available, even if I suck, gives me an outlet I don’t otherwise get.
Stephanie and I were listening to the radio in the car tonight. We had it on our local country station since they were doing their weekly countdown and we both like a lot of the modern country music (although by no means all of it). As we were listening to Brad Paisley’s “Mud on the Tires” Steph asked a question that demonstrates just how differently we think.
[Note: For those of you who haven't heard the song, it's a song about a young gentleman who has just got a new truck and is inviting his girl to go out for a night drive to a secluded spot on the lake. Since they'll have to go off-road, it means getting some "mud on the tires."]
The question she asked?
I wonder if he just drove over and showed up on her doorstep to ask her or if he’s talking to her on the phone?
From her point of view, this was a reasonable question. I found it incredibly funny and was more than a touch gobsmacked that she might think it even makes a difference. The point of the song is that the singer is wooing his lady love into some romantic together time in front of a campfire on a remote strech of lake shore. For the story he’s telling, how does it matter? I know she thinks it’s an important distinction; if this was a real-life event, I’d even agree. But it’s a song; it’s an idealized snapshot of a moment in time. I cannot come up with any way how the answer to that question makes a difference to the scene Brad is portraying (we don’t ever hear the answer, you see; the song is entirely about the proposal.)
That’s one example of how we’re different. I think I’m glad for the differences; it would be awfully boring if she thought the same way I did all the time.