Snowed In

Snowed In

Maybe there’ll be ice til Wednesday,
Maybe we’ll get off easy
At the end of one of the best semesters
What’s better than a snow day?

Or three?

Writing papers in bed
Getting distracted by friends
And wondering, will we have finals?

I’ll miss the blog party
But it shows that no matter how you prepare for life
There are always unexpected occurances
And the best thing to do is to live with the flurries
And forget your worries.
Drink a little wine
Relax and unwind.
All that you’ve learned is already inside.
So pick up a new book, stop cramming
And access the space in your brain
For all you’ve ever wanted to learn
And go for it. Its your turn to create your own adventure.

I found Section Line Drive's Xmas Medley!

This is extremely funny! Performed at the Acrabrella end of the year concert! Enjoy!

Things I Miss About London

-People calling me “love” all the time.
-Walking by royal albert hall and the Kensington palace on my way to school.
-Musicals. Especially “Wicked” (coming to PDX in March 2009!)
-The underground, and the London Paper
-Discovering a new pub every weekend.
-The South Bank.
-Evensong in beautiful churches.
-Hearing a different language every time I got onto public transportation.
-Double-decker buses that run all night long.
-Markets, especially Borough Market!
-Tea time, and faking British accents.
-Tesco and Sainsbury’s runs.
-Being in on the “high art” culture even if I think high art is a little ridiculous.
-Ballet and Opera.
-Hearing beautiful voices and instruments echo in the underground stations.
-Meeting with my Italian songwriter friend Riccardo.
-Playing in Hyde park.
-Indian food.
-Taking classes that required going to really good performances.
-Having an entire city at my disposal thanks to my oyster card.
-Sharing a flat with 18 friends, where there is always someone to join you on adventures.

Acabrella Concert!

Who would have thought the first a cappella group on campus started 4 years ago would lead to three amazing a cappella groups performing under the umbrella of one unified performance?!? Last night's end of the year concert was incredible. The Merry Weathers debuted their new arrangement of Coldplay's "Viva la vida," Momo and the Coop showed off their dynamic wonders in Hide and Seek, and Section Line Drive drove the audience home with a hell of a holiday medley ending in a remix of Daft Punk's "Harder, Faster, Stronger."


Here's a favorite of mine called Palaisade's sung by Jon Wash.

Where to Go for Music in Portland

After having some friends visit Portland, I started really thinking about what all the great places to go in Portland are. I mean… there is always Powell’s, Saturday market, the rose gardens, maybe the Chinese tea house, and the Japanese gardens as well, and sushi takahashi is a hit. But for how well known Portland is for its music scene, there are only a handful of places I’ve been to this semester to check out. Here's what I've got on the places I've been.


The Doug Fir –
Pluses: GREAT BANDS, lots of local bands and some really amazing touring bands as well. They host a variety of styles with an abundant amount of singer-songwriters.
GOOD SIZE, the venue isn’t too big. You can really enjoy the show and feel a part of it, and it is easy to tell the bands how much you like them because they usually walk around the venue during their opening acts’ performances.
GOOD PRICES: shows usually are in the 10-15 dollar range, very affordable for a night of awesome performances.
Minuses: strange atmosphere of an artificial log cabin, its very unique but I’ve found their promise to be air-conditioned a little counter intuitive as the colder months have been approaching. Before the house is packed, there is no need to keep the log cabin icy cold. Like most Portland venues, an all ages show is rare.


Arlene Schnitzer Music Hall
Pluses: beautiful interior, not a bad seat in the house. It is part of Portland’s downtown landscape. Diversity of events. Speakers, authors, rock concerts, and classical concerts all take place here.
Minuses: Expensive tickets.

Jimmy Mak’s
Pluses: Great jazz music seven days a week. Free on Mondays.
Minuses: I’ve only been here once! But there is the same 21+ problem which I no longer need to worry about, they kick minors out after 9pm. This is just the big fault of all Portland venues.

the fiction within

This is a call to all creative people who enjoy thinking about the meaning of life.


READ JEANETTE WINTERSON. She will rock your world. I've been thinking about the role of fiction lately and i think what i've been thinking about really ties to music. i feel that winterson uses fiction to get at what life is really about. how is it that something unreal seems to explain the truth better than the facts? i think we artists understand how this happens all the time. and it happens in music too, but in a different way. we create a composition.

Josh Ritter "The Temptation of Adam"

(This version of the song is a little different than the one I am writing about, it doesn't include the strings/horns interpretation, but you get the same fabulous effects of the beautiful lyrics in this incredible song).


For all the songwriter’s out there today, I cannot think of a better lyricist than Josh Ritter. He knows when and how to use a catchy tune with a full band in songs like “Kathleen” and “Right Moves,” but reserves his most poetic story-telling lyrics for instrumentation that only serves to prepare and take listeners on the experiential journey he is about to describe. “The Temptation of Adam” is the supreme example of Josh Ritter’s written gems that refuses to be dusted over in the minds of any one who has experienced truly sitting down and listening to this song word for word. The soft fluttering strings of the intro conjure up images of a quiet morning dawn, slowly granting the listener perception into the story he or she is about to be swept into. French horn comes in over the strings with a simple melody line repeated twice to create direction in the serene atmosphere. We could easily be fooled into thinking we are about to hear an orchestral piece until the horns finish their call and an electronic synthesizer quietly bubbles the scene away as the strings fade out and the story begins told in lyrics so sweet you won’t want to miss a single word.

After the introduction, the somewhat simple serene backdrop of his warm rhythmic acoustic finger picking creates the steady line of tension that the content of the song lies upon. The story is told poetically and colloquially as stories are often told with details of crossword puzzles with five letter words and warhead missile silo hatches that create crisp images to attach the deeper meaning of the song around. Each stanza takes us through the stages of a forming relationship, while cataloging the reasons why this love might not be attainable. The song follows a constant form of ABABABABAB, where the A section generally tells part of the story, while the B section describes the feelings happening under the surface. The story happens so quickly, and the words are so powerful, that one is compelled to return to listen over and over again.

The most beautiful love songs that are impossible to discard occur are recognized by the webs of meaning they create. So that each time the song is listened to, a new feeling or idea is conjured in the process of listening. “The Temptation of Adam” offers many layers of understanding to be discovered by the listener. From what I’ve gathered in my personal listenings, he describes war as a metaphor for love. The song begins “If this was a cold war we could keep each other warm.” So if love was a cold war free of physical contact a war in which people enter with the sole purpose of avoiding destruction, then he and Marie could “keep each other warm.” This is interesting because by keeping each other warm they are coming closer to changing the role that love plays in their lives; it is no longer cold, it comes closer to creating a bond, but it hasn’t yet crossed into a full fledged battle/war. Then he imagines the two of them living in a missile silo with a big red button that would allow him to launch the missile, it is on the grounds of preparation for battle where their relationship is formed. Now instead of love being viewed as a “Cold War,” love is being viewed as a World War, “the Big One.” These terms merge the idea of lifelong marriage with war, the big one could be referring to the big war, or it could be referring to “the one” one is meant to be with. If this correlation is correct, than the song really seems to view love as potentially destructive. Yet the glimpses we get into their relationship seem so romantic. Instead of carving their names into a tree as lovers are thought to do, he is pleading that they pretend that “this giant missile is an old oak tree instead” so they can “carve our name in hearts into the warhead.” He is trying to navigate a love that he feels deep down “just won’t work out above,” and gets at the extreme fear and tension of trying to hold on to a love that he thinks might “live a half life on the surface.” He continues in lines that are as heartwarming as they are heartbreaking “so at night while you are sleeping I hold you closer just because, as our time grows short I get a little nervous.”

The way this song is sung as a story that is being reflected upon and has not yet come to a final conclusion is reflected in the melodic A and B sections that end somewhat abruptly on the words “I think about that great big button and I’m tempted.” The tension here is that he seems to be tempted to live with Marie forever, to “stick pins in the map of all the places that you thought that love would be found”; but by saying he is tempted, he also seems to be saying he is tempted to push the great big button that would send the warhead missile into the earth and create the end of the world. Again there is tension in the idea that love could be great, but it could feel like the end of the world to give everything up for “the big one.” This song really gets to the heart of love in a way that most love songs cannot achieve. He balances this story on the delicate guitar line, creating a format for the listener to walk our way through this cold war zone that is on the brink of becoming something terribly powerful. Because his words are so powerful, and his music allows for the words to be carried and brought into existence with his calm honest voice, the listener feels equally heartbroken and hopeful at the end of the song. An effect that is rare and difficult to achieve in such a powerfully insightful way as Ritter has accomplished in this seemingly simple, yet masterfully worded song.

First Thursday was a Hit

I haven't been back to the arts district during these colder months for a walk around the galleries. It was great to go out briefly last night and peer in at all the windows, and check out one of the galleries with the class on our way to dinner at the golden horse restaurant (classicly delicious). It seemed like most of us became quickly overwhelmed in the gallery we stopped in at which featured a bunch of 4' by 5' posters of peoples faces... but the faces looked very peculiar. It turns out they had been photographed while hanging upside down, and then the photograph was turned right-side-up. So people's eyes were bloodshot, their bodies may have been a little offcenter, and their cheeks were strangely risen without them making any facial expression to cause it to happen. I thought they sort of looked like they were all on drugs of some sort... or else like they were dying! It was sort of creepy, and in a very crowded gallery, it was a lot to take in!

The rest of the guests may have been enjoying their wine and oreo cookies while perusing the drugged-out portraits, but our class only lasted so long in the overwhelming environment. When overwhelmed--take to china town and eat lots of good food together at tables! :)

Still it amazed me how many more galleries there were, I've been to first thursday many times but had never been to the galleries we found on our walk to china town. its inspiring to see how much art is being produced and viewed by others, no matter how quirky and strange the art may be! Going to the galleries really opens your perception in ways that the average walk down the street doesn't afford. It's nice to be engaged in that culture--for free, on thursdays!

Something Everyone Today should watch:

He says it all. Spread this around to anyone you think should watch.

Concert at the Co-op

Here's a glimpse of Momo and the Coop's debut of "Hide and Seek" by Imogen Heap. This third thursday show was a great succcess, other great music from LC students Anna and Kelsey and myself doing my songwriter thing.

Rally Against Prop 8 in PDX

Today was such an inspiring day. I felt like our last class ending with the rants of my fellow classmates tide nicely to the extremely relevant protest/rally happening today. So many LGBT supporters grabbed the loud speaker phone and reminded all of us angry about proposition 8 that there is hope for our future and for the rights of all citizens to be granted. Lots of speakers asked the queer community to COME OUT, so that all of the people we interact with will become potential supporters for the rights of the queer community. Having been in relationships with women, and knowing that I could potentially want to marry a woman someday, I know that I support gay marriage, but I think its important that others recognize this right and do not vote against two committed individuals joining in the bond of marriage.

I liked what a lot of speakers talked about--recognizing the religious communities, the christians and others who DO support gays and gay marriage, rather than spreading a message of hatred from the queer community back to the religious community. we need to support one another and work together. And until full rights are granted to the queer community, we are not standing together as a nation, we are dividing ourselves. I have complete hope, just like I did for Obama becoming president, that our country is turning the corner, that by the time I am 25 gay people will be allowed to get married, but its going to take a lot of work and a lot of educating others. And its going to take me being more open about my own sexuality for the sake of the rights of others... despite how hard that can be, it really IS important. These speakers really motivated me, I have lots of ideas about how to educate and spread the word. I'm excited for being a part of another huge civil rights accomplishment--granting the right to marry to all individuals in the US!

Get Angry.

Angry? What have I got to be angry about? Well… there are a lot of things probably. I’m just not typically an angry person. When I’m upset or hurt I usually cry, I don’t usually get angry, because I understand the other side too much. But there are a lot of things I’m angry about. I’m angry that American society fails to acknowledge the importance of community. Of working together and putting more emphasis on relationships with people. I’m angry that after nine-eleven I sat and listened to George Bush with a broken heart, and heard him say we’re going to start the war on terror, a phrase that doesn’t even make sense grammatically, but that’s not why it angered me. It angered me because that was the first time I had ever felt what it felt like to feel unsafe in America, and it made me never want any other person or family to have to feel that unsafe. I wanted to hear a president that was going to use the time of great difficulty to call people to help one another. Because my freshmen-in-high-school self really wanted to show that I cared. I wanted a message of hope and of love and support. I wanted to hear what I could do to help. Instead I heard a man’s voice telling the world that my country and my American people who were broken and afraid that day, were going to do things I had previously never understood the impact of, and still cannot. I am angry that a year later I sat in my software applications class with a TV on broadcasting live video of the US bombing Baghdad with conservative students cheering, saying “Go USA!” And thinking of what a horrible disconnected people we are, to be able to cheer at the death of innocent families like our own, in a competitive sport-fan-for-America sort of way. Like we were watching football.

I’m angry that when I finally got down to New Orleans, a year after Hurricane Katrina hit, there were still towns without electricity and people without homes. Another opportunity for our president to call on the people to help fellow Americans, resorted in some sorry poorly executed government efforts. Houses provided by FEMA costing the government much more than it would to have fellow American’s helping rebuild homes. And while I was there, cooking with donated food from grocery stores for Americorps members and some of the hurricane victims, I learned of the budget cut for Americorps, and saw half the group that was doing some good work for that part of New Orleans have to leave. Knowing that no budget was being cut for the war on terror. And I was angry.

But when I heard Obama give his acceptance speech, I could feel the energy in the room. We all know our country is in deep shit right now, but with Obama as president we’re all going to have an opportunity to help make it better. We finally elected someone whose heart seems to be about bettering the people of our nation and of the world. Someone who cares about creating peace rather than settling for unnecessary violence, creating trust rather than relying on fear to rule the nation that effects so much of the world. I have hope that in times of need, like right now, our country finally recognizes the importance of working together and relying more on one another than on money and power. This is my hope for the future, and it is a hope I think my President Elect supports. A hope that believes if we each contribute and help one another out, this world will be full of much more happiness and love than depression and hate. It takes a president who believes in his people for those people to act to create a positive change. I have hope that our willingness to act has not been extinguished in the past eight years of bad advice given to us by our former president, but that our motivation has been waiting for the right day to bloom into action, and that day has come.

Taking Music Back--It's happening all around.

In the last two weeks, I discovered how freeing and wonderful it is to try to freestyle, not really worrying about rhyming or anything in particular except just keeping a string of words flowing from your mouth. It works best when you stop thinking completely and just let it roll.

Since Julia and I did this in my living room and then freestyled in front of the class, I've found myself taking out my notebook before I go to bed and doing a free-write/freestyle to just see whats going on in my head, because there's a whole bunch going on there! It was amazing to see Obama win the election and hear his speech. The ending "Yes We Can" part of the speech was like music to my ears. There really is a rhythm we can tap into when we're writing or speaking that just changes everything.

I really enjoyed our readings by Henry Partch and John Cage. Both of these men show that what you are curious about in life is really important, and when you follow it you will discover things the mainstream will never touch because its too "weird" or different... but its so interesting. And I just feel like there are so many curiosities I want to explore in my lifetime. This gives me hope that such a life of exploration is possible. Henry Partch also inspired me to mess around with tuning my guitar in new ways to see how it sounds and not always conforming to the intervals our ears have been trained to accept as correct. There's all kinds of music out there. And I'm starting to hear it every where I go.

The Swirl of Sea

the sea swirls around and pulls at my skirt opening as i spin with the sea pulling at me, my heart spins into motion before i can catch it and say "WAIT" You don't need to go, not now, not in so deep, not forever, not this way.

There is a calm palm tree on the beach, island of the inexperienced, waiting to be re-experienced. resting. the rest is up to me.

written freestyle

Sitting on the edge of humanity
Arts and crafts
Sifting through the laughs and the slips of paper
I’m not wavering I’m just floating free
At certain times things come to me
I’m no critic, but I’m taught to try
To be explicit
To address all those that came before
And open up the door so you can walk through too
Lady sings the blues and its not a work ethic
Lady feels free
Never underestimate the fate
That happens when we stop to debate
The avenues roads we could take
And never fall short of the pearly gate
I tell ya heavens not up in the sky
Its right here
Have you seen the sunny weather have you seen a sky so clear?
The leaves change and I remain
In a stack of books
With a screen that reaches into me
Trying to find meaning and connect the dots
Build a web of information
In my internet blog
You ever notice how your brain can see
Even when you’re asleep
We’ve got the power to dream
It doesn’t take an effort
But you do have to try
To let your body feel whats natural
Whats coming off the fly
I can do this on paper and its hard to say why
Is it any different with my mouth and with my eyes open

Ready for dreaming when I’m not sleeping

And you can’t tell me to make a pretty theme out of the way thoughts escape into reality
If you want a course outline
And to pre-determine my mind
Please leave me out of your equation
And construct this false equation
That only works within your paper
I want to mix the air with my awareness
The temperature of this room
A leaf in full bloom as it lacks everything
And gets ready to dance its one performance
Til it gets lifted when the sun shines
And the breeze flies
To give it new life
We’re part of this life.

Forget all those critics, I'm an artist!

I was happy to be the one reading excerpts from Brenda Ueland's book If You Want To Write in class today. It was like we picked a class just for me and my "overly sensitive" self. I was just in the library last night, and I chose to read some critical essays on Emily Dickinson rather than attempt writing my short story because I felt so inadequate of a story teller. Poetry is more up my ally, I've practiced that art enough that I feel entitled to be able to write it. But story telling is just something I never tried before. And there's so many darn good stories out there, and stories are SUCH an effective way to effect lives because something about them is memorable.

I feel like throughout school we've always had a list of criteria and an idea of what makes an A grade and what doesn't, so much that before we can listen to what that creative drive inside is itching to tell, we smother it with rules and confinements, until the inspiration doesn't even know how to breathe anymore.

So I think a little artistic rebellion is all I need. and it sort of helps to think of it as rebellion. I'll prove it to them I won't care what they have to say and I'll create despite this pressure to be perfect! There is so much joy and freedom in writing, and I'm so glad to have discovered that book along with many other artist friends who articulate the necessity and importance of freely writing as a form of expression and art.

Secret Dungeon

There once lived an old woman with a secret deep dark dungeon beneath her house. She spent most of her life, the part that was visible to the outside world, in her decorated home furnished with leather couches, expensive glassware, and artistic looking lamps. Her husband died some years ago leaving her in a stage of a life she had always wished to experience. Sure she was a widow; but to her, she became unmarried, a free soul, and ready to do things she forgot she ever wanted to do. This was a difficult thing for her because she desperately loved people in her life. Now that her husband had been gone for so many years, there had not been any one to share love with on a daily basis. But now she would have so much time to explore all the places in herself that she had neglected and forgotten about. Places she could now explore without restraint.

When she and her husband bought this house, they had no idea it contained a floorboard in the back corner of a closet that opened up to a ladder that led down to a room without electricity. She discovered this opening once before, but was too afraid to enter. She tried to think of it as never being there. But because she was all alone in her house now for many years, she could neglect it no longer. She grabbed a baseball bat and a flashlight, entered the closet, opened the floorboard, and stepped down. The ladder went much deeper than she had expected. She had to walk down at least 25 steps on the ladder until she reached the ground, which was covered in a mossy green grass. The moisture sunk through her socks and made her feet wet. By now her curiosity trumped her fear and she set the baseball bat against the ladder. She turned all the way around and examined how green and humid it was under her house. There was a small tree in the corner and a piece of ribbon tied to one of its leafless branches which held a tiny piece of folded paper. She untied the ribbon and opened the paper, and a magical light escaped from the folds in the paper. The light from the paper painted the walls like a sky with red and yellow and orange rays of sunset. This flash of light lasted only a few seconds and when it went out she shone her flashlight on the paper and found a picture of her husband.

She took the photo up the ladder immediately to try to regain some clarity in what was turning out to be a magical experience. When she got to the top of the ladder, and out of the closet, she noticed it was raining outside. She lit a candle and put some tea on the kettle to sooth her nerves. After the tea cooled enough to sip it, she let the warm tea relax her as she took the photograph out, opened it up and found nothing there. It was blank. Then her feelings surged from the experience, and she cried. Had this magical world existed all along? How did her husband's photograph get there and why did it disappear in the dim light of a rainy day? She longed for her husband to return to comfort her, but at the same time she felt freed by this new space for her to explore in herself.

After a few days she returned to the dark space under her house, and next to the tree she saw a small piano. She took piano lessons as a child in order to appease her parents, but this piano did not bring back feelings of hostility; instead, it seemed to call to her and ask her to tap on its keys. She slowly walked closer and closer to the piano and sat on the dusty bench and pressed down a key that rang and echoed in the dark dungeon. As the note echoed a light swelled and illuminated her face. Each time she pressed a key the room lit up; and when she held down the pedal to let the notes resonate, it stayed lit. The first note she played lit the room in a blue color, the second in white, and the third in red. The intensity of the light grew each time the volume grew. She found she no longer needed a flashlight. She wasn't concerned about playing anything she had learned as a child so much as she was amazed at the power of the music to color the room. She returned upstairs and cleared out her office of all the books and saved magazines, and started painting beautiful colorful pictures inspired by her trips into the dungeon. She went there when she was afraid. And the dungeon always seemed to change when she entered. Sometimes it was moist, sometimes it was dry, sometimes it was cold, and sometimes it was rough and rocky. She dared not show anyone the dungeon because it had become a deeply personal place that was too special to be exploited. But many admired her paintings. She turned part of her house into a gallery. Her home started to be littered with guests who became new friends. They left art in her home and made music in the upstairs that flickered and warmed the home like a fire. Her creative bank never ran dry... there were just times when it was harder to see, and easier to ignore. But whenever she let her creative spirit free, she found love. She had kept that sheet of paper and some years later the photograph of her husband was restored. She always loved him, and when she saw his face on the sheet of paper she knew he would be happy for her newfound creative life. This was all she could have ever hoped for, and it was always there to be found.

The End

Post-Funeral Blues

(written after the assignment of choosing music for our funeral)


I think this assignment brought me closer to the idea of death. Listening to one of the students songs today in class made me imagine a funeral taking place. Even in doing this assignment I chose to make it more autobiographical than about death. I wanted to convey my personality more than provide effective pieces of music for people to hear when considering my death. Maybe I really haven't come to terms with death itself at all, so I focused on the life, on my life. And I found laughter, crying, creativity, and hope to be major parts of my life. And LOVE of course. So this assignment brought me back to the basics, my childhood self and my 21 year old self laughs and cries at the same time. I like that about myself. This assignment helped me think about who I am and what I value and what I try to provide for others (things like Encouragement, love, support, joy). Because when I'm down (and dead) thats the only thing I'd wish I could do--spread a message of hope and love.

The Great Week Ahead!

Tonight I am going to see Sigur Ros in concert at the Arlene Schnitzer Hall, and its going to be INCREDIBLE! If ever have some extra time, just watch some of their videos on youtube, they are so incredibly beautiful. I love his music! It feels like its from another world, one I really want to be in.

In other news, Momo and the Coop and Section Line Drive, two out of four of the a cappella groups on campus had a sweet concert on Friday night as part of Coming Out Week. I sang drift away, and it was really a blast. I'm experimenting with posting videos so here, take a look at the performance!



I hope you enjoy!

When My Life is Over, Use these Songs to Remember

If there were two things I ever learned how to do in my life, they were to laugh and to cry. It wasn’t even something I really had to learn; I just found myself doing both all the time and sometimes even doing both at once. No matter how upset I felt, if someone said or did something I thought was funny, I couldn’t help but laugh. I used to get mad at my dad for this, because he would make me laugh when I really wanted to communicate the seriousness behind my tears; but I was never able to resist laughter no matter how angry or upset I had been. It had been such a gift to always be able to laugh, because it helped me to step outside of myself in a way. The song “Laugh So You Don’t Cry” by Andy Davis was a song about trying to cheer somebody up. This song usually helped me when I was feeling down to remember that people cared about me, so I chose this song for my funeral as a way of reminding people that I cared about them and would want them to smile and laugh long after I died. I wanted to encourage people to keep joy in their hearts even when their hearts feel heavy.

I always loved music most for its ability to communicate something I had felt. When I couldn’t find a song to express something, I tried writing my own songs. Anything to communicate some of what went on in my heart, and a lot went on there. I have always been extremely sensitive and extremely aware of my feelings and the feelings of those I love. This was part of why I always cried so much. This sensitivity probably could have driven me crazy; but instead, it led me to spend some time with my honest feelings and express them in poetry and song lyrics. I’m thankful for artists like Ani DiFranco who acknowledge that space where so much art happens. The song “Shroud” was my artist’s anthem. It was about leaving “the house of conformity in order to make art,” and ended with the line “who ever said that life is suffering, must have had their finger on the pulse of joy, ain’t the power of transcendence the greatest one we can employ.” She understood that there were things we had to give up in order to be ourselves, and that suffering and joy depended upon one another. I wanted to remind people at my funeral that there is joy to be found in their suffering.

“Everything’s Not Lost” by Coldplay was one of those songs that never failed to give me hope. I sang this song so loud, and hoped its message into existence. It was written in the moment of feeling like “all is lost,” and ends “hoping everything’s not lost.” This song could speak to my loved ones for me, reminding them not to give up hope when they ever feel discouraged. Just because I would be dead at my funeral doesn’t mean any one else should stop living and stop dreaming. I chose these three songs as the music at my funeral to reflect the joyful, creative, hopeful life I lived, and inspire others to carry those parts of me with them in their lives.

My Dream: Covanent to Myself

To compose music and be a songwriter in the world collaborating with artists using poetry, instruments, rhythm and melody to view the world in a new way.

I will commit to learning to read and write music. To teaching others what I know (encouraging others to follow their dream). I want to be a keen poet and be able to say what I mean. It is so difficult to express ideas in structured sentences... but I will try, and also allow poetry and music to do some of the talking. I will embrace my talents and build a community that encourages one another to fulfill all of our dreams.

music recharge

I have been getting hints from the world that I need to be playing music again. I noticed that its been 2 or 3 weeks since I really sat down and played guitar, especially to create new music. I get so wrapped up with school, especially because I like my classes now, that I find myself reading page after page, novel after novel, while my guitar sits sadly leaned against my wall. But I haven't done anything about it. Meanwhile, I have received emails from people I've played shows for in the East coast, asking if I would like to come to Maine and perform. Another email from a childhood family friend inviting me to play at a camp I used to go to growing up to perform in a small town in Pennsylvania. Friends of friends have been asking about me, have I made another CD since the one I made a year and a half ago? I got invited to play at a showcase on a thursday night, but couldn't make it. And then, finally, something just broke open in me and the only thing I could count on was my guitar to provide the framework for a form of expression I don't know how to do in any other way but to just sing... not always words, sometimes just sounds.

Perhaps we all need an emotional kick in the ass to start that creative energy flow. I think I'm with Beethoven on that one, the more emotional struggle happening, the more the melodies and the attempts to process through these struggles in a way that doesn't rely solely on spoken words... but on music, and something moldable and abstract. Somehow these forms represent things in a more true way. I'm taking a class on Emily Dickinson right now. I think the reason I am an english major and the reason I find poetry in particular so necessary, is because it breaks down sentence structure and builds language around new ideas. I want to do that too. Its strange how fiction and poetry and art, all invented experiences can feel like they are the most true expressions of reality. They get at the heart of things. They're not trying to prove something to somebody. They exist out of the need to exist, art for arts sake.

Right now my musical inspiration has been closely tied to visuals. I have this visual of me standing in the colorodo river, with the two walls of the grand canyon on either side of me. And rather than climb back up the side I climbed down, or climbing to the other side and dividing myself from my past, I'm walking through the water, where the life is. I want to paint this picture into a song, and express this feeling of being deeply connected to a form of life that cuts miles into the earth, and flows a little closer to its core, while remaining slightly disconnected from past experiences (in this case romantic) and the potential of a new experience, given the knowledge that love can be painful and the climb is going further and further away from the source of life, the water.

So I've been drawing pictures and scribbling words, and playing guitar by the river just letting these feelings shape sounds and a song structure. I hope to be able to make something of it, and share it with others when its ready.

Last Thursday on Alberta

Last Thursday has been picking up popularity since this summer when there were so many pedestrians walking the streets that they petitioned to make trimet buses take a different route and keep cars from driving down the street. This open-art-gallery event is more like a block party, with street performers, barbequed corn on the cob, and fire-juggling acrobatic dancers. If you’re looking for a quiet casual evening, you’re better off moseying around the pearl district on first Thursday, because last Thursday crams all the action into one happening street where the crowds are unavoidable and the vibe is celebration.

potential song lyrics of mine

If you are a luxury
And I’ve got no money
Is this just a fairytale
To think that we could be Royalty?
And if I had your body
Held fast underneath me
Are we making love then?
Or am I just a poor thief?

Time-Based Art Festival Ends with a Splash

Sitting on the cement ledge of world-renowned Lawrence Halprin’s Keller Fountain, looking across and down as the dancers dressed in white and blue slowly invade the platform planks and submerge their bodies in the fluid stage below, whets the appetite for the two-hour-long adventure to come. Dancers cannonball underwater 30 feet above the miked string-quartet avidly bouncing their bows and flittering there fingers to Morton Subtonik’s “A Fluttering of Wings” creating an icy eerie texture on this hot sunny day. The mixture of live sound-recorded pieces repeated over the ambient noise-rhythms of “Five Legged Stool” and “A Sky of Cloudless Sulpher,” Anna Halprin’s choreography matches this strange music with guided interpreted dance. At the end of the piece, a gold bell rings at the top of the applause and the crowd stands up and follows-the brightly dressed TBA volunteers to the next segment of the performance.

The beauty of this event is its placement in the city. Outside of business buildings, in Pettygrove Park, where people usually keep to themselves or gather in small groups during lunch hour, the collective audience of two-or-three-hundred floods the cement center and takes a seat off of the park benches. Older folks hand over their canes and plop down on their small area of cement squeezed next to mothers with infants and people with digital cameras. The performers surround the central audience raised up on grassy knolls for a humorous game of musical Telephone. Each raised hill houses two dancers and an instrumentalist. The violinist standing on a chair in the middle of the crowd guides the French horn player, flautist, cellist, and others transforming Pauline Oliveros’s “Tree/Peace,” meant for a piano trio, into an interpretive responsive octet and dance crew.

The Lovejoy Fountain, complete with a grand piano placed in the base of the fountain proved that even the musicians were going to get their feet wet that day. Terry Riley’s “In C” begins with the metronome-like octaves of C played on the piano as xylophones, bassoons, trumpets, and keyboards and an array of percussive instruments sound from all different angles of the outer edges of the audience. Dancers take to the fountain placing wet handprints on the dry cement wall, and climbing above the ledge flipping cups upside-down over partially opened hands letting the water drip out like sand through a glass timer. One dancer repeatedly throws a cup full of water over the ledge of the fountain and lets the water disperse magically into droplets as it falls 25 feet into the pool of water below. Terry Riley’s piece gets slowly replaced by percussionists, including Lewis & Clark’s own Brett Pascal (slightly disguised in a sunhat), banging on metal buckets with chains, entering the fountain, and clanking the inside strings of the piano reaping playful havoc. Just as Terry Riley’s piece changes each time it is played depending on how long each of the instrumentalists plays one musical rhythmic and simple melodic idea, the open-to-the-public closing event of the Time-Based Art Festival acted as a guide to an experience that an artist takes with his or her art, and the audience takes with the performance.

The audience ends the ceremony by joining hands in a circle with women dressing and undressing in the middle of the circle. As you leave and unlink hands with the stranger next to you, one of the event staff looks you strangely in the eye placing a pin on your hand that reads “PLAY” and sternly says, “Please, go play.” Retracing steps through the city parks and fountains gave those spaces all new meanings, and invited the people of Portland to play together in our communal spaces.

Clearing the work out of the play

I've spent three years, six semesters, playing this game of the student, trying to get my mind around massive subjects, pulling up a magnifying glass to nitty gritty details, and spending god knows how many hours in the library waiting for paper ideas to materialize into coherent sentences. and i'm finally starting to feel a change that was articulated so simply in todays lecture. "In order to become successful you have to have discipline, not the kind of discipline where you work all the time, but where you work hard for a good hour and then play for 2 hours."

Yesterday I did just that at the closing performance of the time-based art festival here in downtown Portland. I'll be posting pictures of this joyful experience (ending with the perfect memoriabilia pin with the word "PLAY" on it now strapped to my bag) when I organize that experience into a sort of review. For now I'm just marveling at how much better life is when you do separate the work from the play.

Before heading to Nora's class today, I got the urge I haven't had in at least two weeks to just sing and play my guitar. It helped having no one home and 10 solid minutes before I needed to speed away on my bicycle to get to class, of course longer would have been good but it was enough to make me want to return home after class for session number two, mirah tabs in hand, new song ideas of my own ready to be recorded on garageband, for the later more serious work/play of finishing and rewriting songs. I'm still working on clearing away the fog that work casts over my clear sunny dreams, and on days like today I'm allowing those dreams to peak their heads out of the covers; I'm giving them the time they need to wake up and sing in the morning. I'm still too afraid to post what those dreams might be, and the "covenant" to myself we were asked to write up in class the other day. I have a feeling, like I always do, that my dreams involve the community of the arts (music in particular) and my place within it. For now I'll make sure to only do work when I'm doing work, and leave the rest of my time to explore whatever's inside my curious soul, and unabashedly go outside and PLAY.

Sister, Sister

Think of your favorite hip-hop song, take out the profanities, and replace that thrusting bass line with smooth electronic ambient rhythms, and you're making your way closer into the world of Cocorosie. Sisters Bianca Lellani Casady, nicknamed Coco, and Sierra Rose Casady, nicknamed Rosie, recreate a childlike innocence clashed with harsh adult subtleties using bits and pieces from hip-hop, folk, classical/opera, electronica, and reggae in their most recent album The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn. The wind-up music box in “Bloody Twins,” the kazoo in “Werewolf,” and the bike bell in “Animals” are a few examples of the creative sound effects that litter each track. There is a simplicity to Bianca’s raspy rhyming spoken/sung words reminiscent of rap that is lifted up by her sister Sierra’s opera-inspired vocal lines drifting out into another realm of angelic sweetness.

These at times magnificently sounding songs each have an element of darkness mixed in. Divorce and separation shaped the sisters’ childhood and it was not until their 20’s that they even became close. Sierra lost touch with Bianca when she was sent to boarding school as a teenager, and she later moved to Paris to study opera. Bianca studied linguistics and sociology, wrote music and pursued art on her own until her artistic soul sent her wandering, and she serendipitously landed at her sisters apartment. The music they wrote together and recorded in Sierra’s bathroom spread through friends and in March 2004 the freshly formed Cocorosie released their successful La Maison de Mon Reve through the Indie label Touch and Go Records, and toured with Ratatat, Bright Eyes, and Devendra Banhart. The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn goes further out on a limb than Cocorosie’s first album in order to further explore what they seem most interested in—mixing together ideas that don’t usually go together, harsh cruelty with happy-go-lucky melody, children’s toys played with harps.

The song “Bloody Twins” slowly creaks along to the chiming of a music box with lyrics about being kissed and turned into roses. “Japan” begins where “Bloody Twins” left off with a wind-up-music-box feeling being cranked faster and then slower, and soon shifts into a reggae sing-along with a surprising pile of heavy lyrics. Cocorosie introduces severe irony in the third verse about Jamaica, which includes the lines "they'll take you home and then they'll rape you” and adds joyfully “but you like it so say thank you." Again they mix their childlike sound with some intense references to war in the fourth verse, "Everybody wants to go to I-raq / but once they go they don't come back / bringing peanut butter jelly, and other snacks / we might have our freedom but we still go down." Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are the trademarks of elementary school lunch boxes, but this image only serves to infantilize the soldiers, making war seem like an exciting field trip from home.

The name of the CD is a bit troubling and ironic also—The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn. "The adventures of Ghosthorse" is a little creepy for the ghost reference, but could sound like a viable children's book title, until we get the side-kick to Ghosthorse which is "Stillborn," a dead infant. These women aren't afraid to use some non-PC language and images, and they can't be tossed out with other artists who seem to be experimental for the sake of being experimental. They've got a message here that’s coming out of their messy room of toy instruments and silly-serious lyrics. And they naturally place the unlikely mixture of opera and hip-hop into the same disorderly, but complete family.

Inventive Ancient Oddities

I can't tell if Meredith's Monk's ancient earthy vocal music in her 1980's CD Dolmen Music has gone extinct today or if it is a form of genius from another universe. The final track "Dolmen Music: Overture And Men's Conclave - Wa-Ohs - Rain - Pine Tree Lullaby" could be the musical backdrop to the origins of humankind all orderly gathered around stonehenge in the year 2,900 BC as the monoliths magically raise into their perfect positions in the ground. Her voice is a sort of tribal-cavewoman-meets-alien-space-creature surprise jumping out over her minimalist soothing piano snippets on repeat. But somehow she landed on earth showing us vocal technique far beyond a country yodel and trill. She makes Schoenberg's use of sprechstimme seem like baby talk in her grown-up ensemble of awkward vocal oddities. Monk communicates laughter, deep moaning and weeping using gibberish speech-song and sounds, all without saying more than a few English words on the third track of her five-track album. Whether you are interested in studying extreme vocal technique, or simply want to be entertained by what could qualify as a 20th century musical from mars, Dolmen Music is worth the wild journey it sparks.

Kronos Quartet : Short Stories

The Kronos Quartet album "Short Stories" is aptly named, take the twelve and a half minute song "Cat O' Nine Tails," continuously morphing from one extremely short story into the next without warning.

The first minute is relentless with change of style and genre, like a commercial with too many images packed in for you to take in at once, its audio-overload. Brief moments of tonality disperse madly into chaotic dissonance over and over, landing someplace entirely unexpected each time. This is a quartet with serious multiple personality disorder. just when you think you are getting to know the piece it morphs into something different. The photo on the cover of the cd with a birds-eye-view picture of a typewriter with flames coming out of it does a good job of representing the madness that goes on in these songs. you can picture the performers hammering away their skittish story on the typewriter which releases a fire fueled by a curiosity driven to madness. It is enough to spark your interest. It is easy to forget in moments of extreme dissonance and discontinuity that there is an incredible skill at work, and here there is.

If nothing else you could come to this saying you've never heard anything quite like it. They use all kinds of inventive techniques to play each of the four stringed instruments, making a cello sound like an angry dog, and the slapping and stretching of strings sound like bamboo being pushed and snapped in a creepy forest. The instruments take on a human or animal quality in what seems like a short horror story, arriving at times in moments of beautiful sadness. Half way through the song, diminished chords fade into silence and then get scooped up into a tacky version of a hoe-down dance from your middle school country-line-dance class, departing into something less familiar just in time to keep you from skipping to your next track on your shuffle setting of i-tunes. One can only imagine how this piece is notated for all of the strange sounds that manage to come out of these traditional instruments (presumably a cello, viola, and two violins). The creaking of a door sliding slowly pulled out of the cello into the casual strum of a violin, they throw you into snippets of familiar genres, and sweep you right back out of them with haunting sound effects and precise chaos. this music is refreshing and alive, and a bit frightening, you would have to be brave to play this one loud with your windows down in the summer time (and a bit neurotic feeling). But its worth listening to in a safe secluded place, for an experience all together unique and difficult to understand.

First day of class -- McCartney

Before today I was doing a bad job of describing what this class was to people. "It's called music and language... we are reading about billie holliday, it should be really cool." I am pleased to be writing about music, creatively and critically.

Today in class we listened to Paul McCartney's new album. The introduction sounded like tuning instruments with a rhythm behind it, it sounded chaotic. Then the music thinned out and there was a dialogue between the low strings and the drum and slowly built back up with more instrumentation and more layers. The instruments did not have a big range of notes used, it was not very melodic or lyrical, but instead, pressing and marching forward without changing. it sounded disjointed with jolting rhythms.

perhaps listening to the rest of the song would have allowed it time to become more melodically interesting, but i thought mccartney's limited understanding of music theory was really apparent in the lack of diversity in the string parts. It wasn't close to the caliber of composers we compared him to in class, stravinsky's rite of spring and beethovens ninth symphony, but it was an interesting atmospheric kind of music to listen to.