edification: moral improvement or guidance (2)

ed·i·fi·ca·tion –noun
1. an act of edifying.
2. the state of being edified; uplifted.
3. moral improvement or guidance.

I am offering these artists up for your edification. So that you may be edified, up lifted and morally improved.

--Some/Most of the following are new artists to me so I'm recommending specific songs rather than entire collections--

Wilco - Heavy Metal Drummer
"A double kick drum by the river in the summer
She fell in love with the drummer
Another then another
She fell in love"
So his kid is adorable. FYI.


Apostle of Hustle - Cheap Like Sebastien
"The smallest truth is the brightest
A tiny undeniable fire
The smallest truth is found hiding
You’re scared but you’re not a liar"
The singer cracks me up. I want to dance with him. And, he acts while he sings. And (double and) he kind of looks like David Spade.


Greg Summerlin - Unlucky In Love
It is important to listen to the whole album. It's a story, you see.
If you like what you hear you can read the story here. Scroll to the bottom for a song by song explanation. It's quite beautiful, I think. An original.


The New Pornographers - Sing Me Spanish Techno
"The hourglass spills its sand
if only to punish you
for listenin' too long
to one song"
pretty much my new anthem


The 88 - Coming Home
This song is commercial city (Target and Sears from what I can remember) but also it's good. So whatever.


Marjorie Fair - Waves
"The person that I thought I was
Is something that I don't think is coming true"
It's a pretty video for a pretty song.


Wheat - I met a girl
"And you've got permission to see other men while you sleep
And we wage perpetual war for perpetual peace"
i think he's cute and his lyrics are fantastic.


Check these kids out too (if you have the time)
Pedestrian Rock
David Mead

oh, dcfc and sondre, how you woo me

Not only is this my favorite Sondre song but I think the girl he sings with is totally adorable.

The movie's cute and the ENTIRE soundtrack is Sondre Lerche.

He is such a dork. I heart him.


New Death Cab for Cutie song from their new album Narrow Stairs. (The intro is 4:40 minutes long, I like it) It's a little different from their older stuff. You can groove to it, it's fun. It makes me want a glass of wine and a tall coffee at the same time.

We're talking about passions, yeah, we're talking about emotions

El corazón del apuro está con nuestro alfabeto absurdo, no sabe deletrear y no puede ser enseñado. - Mark Twain

I like that quote. It has nothing with the rest of this blog, but, still. . .


"We paint the world with love and hate. . ." -Ceesau

It's stuck in my head in a loop, that line, though I've been listening to Paul Simon for the greater part of the week (tossed some Steve Miller and Led Zeppelin in for good measure, not to mention I listened to Sondre Lerche's new stuff which is fantastic. (A second side note, has anyone listened to DCFC's new cd? Is it any good?)) I am a parentheses fanatic. Back to the line.

I think it's true, but I wonder why. We're, or maybe I should avoid the collective 'we' but what the fuck ever, right? We are, I think, very scared of shades of gray. You either loved the movie, or hated it. Love this candidate, hate that one. We are loathe to find a middle ground. Maybe this is why it's so hard for relationships (friendship, acquaintanceship (ha), love, etc.) to last.

For example, just this week I was having Eric read a script I'm working on and he said "well I wouldn't watch it, but it's good." And I was furious. Well, of course you'll watch it, I wrote it. His response "well I hate that kind of show." Which only pissed me off more. Why does he have to 'hate' it? What happened to weighing pros and cons?

I am so rambling.

Oops.

I am not innocent, however. Later we were watching a basketball game and I couldn't stop myself from saying "oh I hate the Suns" which is ridiculous, I'm not passionate about basketball and hate is passion, is it not.

Of course this painting of the world happens on a larger scale. We hate leaders, and entire countries and populations (well okay, we, is used very generally in that, groups of people hate other groups of people etc etc.)

I'm not suggesting neutrality. Because, how boring but perhaps a little. . .

My parents love Scrubs and Dr. Cox had a really good quote the other day about hate losing meaning and him having to come up with a new word. . .

We're taking the passion out of passionate emotions. . . i think. . .is what i'm trying to say.

sondre lerche

did the entire soundtrack for dan in real life?

pretty sweet, yo.

cádiz

i'm going to live here







for five months.

fantastic.

and nerve wracking.

but mostly fantastic.

the things you will learn.

I think i'm going to do it. As much as I hate the idea of staying in Bellingham for six weeks of my summer. . . if I do it i will graduate with:

A BA in Spanish language and Literature
A Minor in French
An endorsement in the following: Teaching English as a Second Language, Teaching Spanish and Bilingual Education.

That's three endorsements that will allow me to teach anywhere in the world.


pretty cool.

well worth the six weeks (i think).

will you wait . . ?

um. . .

the office is fan-freaking-amazing.

omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg.

how am i supposed to wait an entire week???????

The Punkins and thoughts of thievery.

I just worked out super-hardcore for the first time in a few weeks. I ignored every lazy part of my being and just pushed and for awhile there I hated myself, but now I feel so good. Bone-tired, but at least I earned this type of exhaustion.

--it's freezing in this computer lab--

I was watching these youtube videos a friend of mine put together for RISD which are good. They are very. . . alternative, very emo. . . good but also, I'm sure through a quick search, I'd be able to find a similar product elsewhere. But. All that aside, for one of the videos she used the song Thirty-Three by The Smashing Pumpkins (aka the punkins) which is my all-time favorite song by them. I barely remember the video but the song is sticking with me. . . it's interesting how that happens. It's a very melancholy song (hence it being on Mellon Collie). . . it's putting a weird spin on my day.

It's nice out. I've been prepared for all my classes. I worked out. I wrote something. I should feel ecstatic and yet this song is nagging at me. . . and yet I'm not upset about it, it's a nice nag. . . hmm.

On another note, this computer is padlocked to the desk. For no reason at all I now feel like a thief.

jimpammichaeldwighttobyryanstanleymeridithangelaandyphyllis (not necessarily in that order)

the office is back.

life is funny again.

amen.

Ceesau (prounounced see-saw)

I haven't done a "music edification" blog in forever, almost a year i think. Someday I will compile my lists again, mostly because I think word of mouth is the best way for good things to spread. But for now.

Ceesau.

Please check them out.

Not only are they amazingly talented (at least, i think they are) but they are socially conscious (almost all the proceeds from their cdbaby and clothing sales go to several charities that they support).

The lead singer/ main writer hails from Staten Island, not far from my own roots in Manhattan. He, like me, grew up in a world entirely different from the one I live in now.

"Growing up in mixed class neighborhood, prejudice was minimal. There was a great integration of
Nationalities."

The school I went to as a kid was 70% hispanic, 12% white, 18% everything else. I never knew racism, there was no room for it in the midst of such diversity.

"I was always fascinated by the world outside making immediate judgements and the narrow way in which
they would form their opinions. We don't seem to give due time before concluding what it is we think
we see...
Art, Music...the Ocean...
But most importantly the People walking around us.
You realize just as we are different, we are the same.

Ceesau is the bridge between all things that truly never needed one!

A world in Balance. Staying away from extremes and being open to the differences."

I'm throwing quotes at you, and I'm not expressing myself very accurately either. What I'm trying to say is: this band has the potential to be a powerful tool against a lot of what is currently wrong with our world.

"Ceesau is about. . .it's something I started over 10, 15 years ago, about racial unity and equality. . . This one song, "Wrote the Longest Word," is about how everything is everything, everybody is everybody, everybody's the same in a sense, in a philosophical, ideological [way]. The sense of if we could all start back from zero and just be like, what makes us segregate and separate and get all screwed up. Just all these little bubbles that we come from and these things we're taught and we think are right, the way people should be or shouldn't be or what we should believe in. . . Like I said, 'The Longest Word' is about wishing that things were a little bit better, wishing we could rewind from the chaos and the ultra, ultra technologically modern world that we've become, fast-paced, and we're all running too fast. I'm trying to pull back from being so affected by all of those things."

Anyways.

I'm rambling I know, but i found these guys on CDBaby.com (which, by the way, is a fantastic way to find random artists) and now i can't stop talking about them. It's so much fun to find artists by accident, and then to have them touch you both on an artistic level as a listener but also on a soul-like level as a charitable person interested in bettering the world anyway i can. . . so check it out. That's my plug.

And go.

(Incidentally the lead singer is an actor on CSI:NY as well as a painter and a writer; your regular renaissance man).
(all quotes are attributed to Carmine Giovinazzo from various sources)

Career-dom

I'm stressed out and I feel very thin, stretched to four corners of what I want to do with my time.

I want to teach in a bilingual school. Maybe the John Stanford school in seattle or Le Petite Ecole in New York (though I hear it's very snotty), or maybe in Spain (though where Eric fits in there I'm not sure.)

I want to write a book, maybe a collection of short stories or a novel. I could do it, I have the talent (part of being a writer, I've learned, is being just cocky enough (or to quote JT 'is it really cocky if you know that it's true?)). I have the talent, then, but do I have the passion. Sometimes, I get so frustrated, because the line between being good and being published is very wide and tall.

I want to see my screenplay on TV. It's a good screenplay, a great one maybe, complete with twists and turns and a gay main character (who I quote already, though he isn't an icon. . . yet. I think, right now, I want this most of all. I want it so that I can almost taste it, and Kat is right there with me, rooting me on, feeding me ideas, correcting my grammar.

I want to be married and have kids, ahora, and yet, I don't want this at all. I want to live, live, live, without a single thing holding me back from travelling, saving money, spending money, earning money. But then, in the back of my head, my mother's voice is echoing "don't let a good guy go" and Eric is a good guy; he is this above all else.

I want all of these things, but they don't seem to coincide or mesh at all. It's four different lives I want, and yet only one me. I feel like Robert Frost's traveller.



As for teaching though, this much I know I can accomplish. Already, every day, I get six to ten e-mails of job offers from Spain, Mexcio, all the souther border states and Canada too. At least, while I'm still choosing the least travelled path, I know there is job security.