Weekly Music Crush

Driving home tonight, a song came on my radio that I really liked.

I have a theory that alternative rock songs (my most preferred genre), don't always have the best/most understandable/easily deciphered lyrics. And my theory further postulates that country music (probably my least preferred genre, with a few notable exceptions) has really great/easily understood/very meaningful lyrics.

So I heard this song and I thought, "Holy Cow. It's an alternative song with great meaningful lyrics that I can understand." The perfect fusion. A shining example...

I got home and googled it, and it's by... Miley Cyrus! Gah! I wasn't expecting that. And listening to it again... it's not quite completely alternative... okay it's kinda country. But I've thought about it a lot and - I still like it.

I guess it's like brand-spankin'-new. I can't even buy it on iTunes yet; the album is coming out on March 24th. And it was dang hard to find a bootlegged version to share with you guys. The best I could do is this ripped-off version with advertisements (creepy voice man says "1075 the river" scattered throughout) But it's this week's music crush.

(Rss Feeders, you'll have to visit to view this:)

Sixty-Five degrees

It is such a miracle that the world can become warm after it's felt like a freezer for so long. I have to hand it to winter: if you weren't so depressing, spring wouldn't be so invigorating, amazing, joyous.

I stood outside of my apartment today, and from my yard (and even from my windows), I have a pretty view of Utah lake. Today the sun was warm and neighbors were outside being happy (because, after all, it's warm). On days like this the lake reflects the sky, and it becomes this unearthly band of color within the landscape.


The sun went away when I tried to take a picture, but still the warm air makes everything so enjoyable, even murky landscapes. It made me think of another Denise Levertov poem called, "What One Receives from Living Close to a Lake." It's a little corny but I still like it.

That it is wide,
and still - yet subtly
stirring; wide and
level, reflecting the intangible sky's
vaster breadth in its own
fresh, cold, serene
surface we can
touch, enter, taste.
That it is wide
and uninterrupted save by
here a sail, there
a constellation of waterfowl -
a meadow of water
you could say,
a clearing amid the entangled
forest of forms and voices,
anxious intentions, urgent
memories: a deep, clear
breath to fill
the soul, an internal
gesture, arms
flung wide to echo
that mute
generous outstretching
we call lake.

This week's music crush

Thanks to everyone for your responses to Thursday's post. I feel so encouraged - you've convinced me to stick with this life thing. It also occurs to me that while I'm sad about not working at that great job anymore, I'm really grateful that I had a chance to work there at all. I was lucky to be there and it gave me direction for where I want to go in life.

In the meantime, here's my music crush this week. Pretty harmonies. Generally, I rarely listen to the lyrics - so they're not really a strong point of songs that I like. But I like songs that have something interesting musically going on.

You should listen to at least the first minute, then you'll get an idea of the chorus. (For you RSS feeders, you'll have to visit this page to see the song. But on the plus side, you can check out my new skin - I did it all by myself, aren't you proud of me?)

I was on the front page of BYU's paper today

That's me in the lower-left corner.
You can click on the image to go to a .pdf of the newspaper.



The photos are from September 2007. It's hard to know what to say about this - really it's kind of cool but sort of bitter-sweet at the same time. I really loved that job and I was so sad to have to leave. Isn't there some sort of saying about how ghosts from our past creep back from time to time?

And they could have spelled my name right. =) Just kidding, that's not a big deal. Actually I'm sort of more miffed that they used photos that I took of Kelsey without any credit to me... of course they had no idea who took them, I'm sure. That was actually something like Kelsey's first or second day working there, and she was obliging me by standing in for some photos - but we were being a little silly and she was making too-serious faces in some of the photos. So of course they chose to use THOSE photos on the front page of the dang newspaper. Poor Kelsey. She would appreciate me adding a disclaimer here - she in no way looks as "pleh" as she does in the photos, and is, in fact, a very attractive person. (In fact we were chatting about it and she said, "I could sue them for defamation of character") lolz.

Actually, I've been in the Daily Universe once before, when we were installing the Minerva Teichert exhibit that I worked on in different ways for about a year - first helping with the curatorial process of getting the exhibition ready to go (and the book that accompanied the exhibition), and then later I moved down to the registration department and had the good luck of getting to help install the show - so I was involved in a lot of the steps. It was great experience - it really showed how an exhibit goes together from beginning to end. So I like it that I had a little commemorative newspaper appearance to go along with the exhibit that was so important to me.



But today's article? Not really as gratifying. And I know that so many students do great jobs as employees at BYU and are inevitably let go when they graduate, and I bet that a lot of other students had jobs that they really liked and wish they could have continued. It kind of depresses me that I'm just another brick in that sad wall. Just another student employee who wishes they could have stayed. And now there are new student employees that stand out much stronger in the minds of those people who work there permanently, and if positions do open up, they go to the latest kids... I become more obsolete with each month that goes by. And that's really kind of sad.

Sorry! I have to dump a little. Last April, when I turned 24, I was so excited for the upcoming year. I thought it was going to be a great one. Instead, it has been the hardest and most difficult year of my life. Last summer life was so difficult to cope with, then my miscarriage in the fall, then winter rang in with kidney stones and five ER visits, and now we're swinging our way back to April with my wisdom teeth being removed (and now infected).

I'm aware of all the silver linings. But life is just so baffling and overwhelming sometimes. And we get little reminders (or, if not little reminders, then someone uses large space on the front page of the newspaper) - reminders that show us where we've been so far.

And sometimes it makes me just a little nauseous.

If river stones were real money, I'd be rich.

I saw this advertisement a few weeks ago when I was at work. I've been thinking a lot about finances lately and for some reason I was struck with how simple and visually appealing this little financial lesson is.

Who knew things could be so simple? Finance is just one big Jenga game with stones.

Denise Levertov

Denise Levertov is a poet who died in 1997. She was born in England, but lived in Washington at the end of her life. I've been going through some of her poems lately. I keep thinking about one that I read a few days ago:

Empty Hands

In the night foundations crumble.
God's image was contrived
of beaten alloy. A thin clatter
as it tumbles from its niche.

Parts of your body ache,
each separate, ominous,
linked only by emplacement within
a worn skin. Convictions

wheel and scatter,
white birds affrighted.

In time you sleep. But wake
to the same sensation: adrift
mid-ocean, frayed mooring ropes
trailing behind you, swirling.

Yet when you open
unwilling eyes, you see the day
is sunlit. You walk
down to the real shore.

Over the city,
a scum of brown. But it is quiet
among the trees, grass
strewn with first-fallen leaves,
a sheen of dew. The past night

remains with you, but your attention
is drawn away from it
to taste the autumn light, falling
into your empty hands.


Further on in the book of her poems, I found one that seems like a companion piece to this, yet they weren't intentionally linked in any way, except for her own repeated motif.

A Gift

Just when you seem to yourself
nothing but a flimsy web
of questions, you are given
the questions of others to hold
in the emptiness of your hands,
songbird eggs that can still hatch
if you keep them warm,
butterflies opening and closing themselves
in your cupped palms, trusting you not to injure
their scintillant fur, their dust.
You are given the questions of others
as if they were answers
to all you ask. Yes, perhaps
this gift is your answer.

Coraline

The movie Coraline is pretty surreal in concept and visual imagery...


On top of that, seeing the movie in 3-D was pretty stunning and magical.

But seeing Coraline,
in 3-D,
while on percocet...
Well, it was pretty awesome.