Some Reasons Why I Love Adele

Originally written October 27, 2011

I love Adele.

That sounds like a confession, but it's really no secret that this British songbird has captured the hearts of music-lovers all over the world.

I love Adele for many reasons--a lot of them are inexplicable, because sometimes I think you just need to let yourself love something and not try to define why. But some reasons are very clear and observable to me.

When I listen to her I either: a. harmonize with her euphonic melodies, b. analyze her every vocal choice--from riffs to vibrato to registers, c. sing along with the melody and pretend I AM her (because I really wish I could be), or d. just sit back and let the beauty of her music wash over me.

Well, today in the car I was in an analyzing mode. This led me to compile a list of all the things I have observed about Adele's music that make me love her so much.

1. She's an alto. 
   This is so rare in today's music. What people want to hear from female pop artists are high notes and long-ranging riffs. Not the deep, cello-like tone Adele so effortlessly employs. But I think a lot of people didn't really realize that they love an alto voice until they heard Adele. Just because a singer has a shorter range does not in any way mean she is less-talented or less pleasurable to listen to. She brought back appreciation for full-bodied voices and recreated it for her generation.
2. She's young. 
   Do you realize this girl broke into the business when she was nineteen? Nineteen! At 21 she's already breaking barriers and doing her own thing her own way. And people can't help but love her! Kudos to her for that. What's also great about her youth is that I think we can expect at least a decade more of great music from her. I look forward to it.
3. She's not your typical body type. 
   I'm sure the media has focused waaay too much on this aspect of her, but Adele's non-apologetic, no-excuses regard of her own body image is ground-breaking in today's popular music society.
4. Her melody lines sound like they were written for a violin. 
   She writes her own music too. Did I mention that? When I listen to her, I'm reminded of the sweeping melodies of some classical violin piece, featuring the vast repertoire of dulcet sounds a violin is capable of producing. Who writes vocal melodies like that? Very few 21-year-olds. That's who.
5. Her voice is at once effortlessly smooth and heart-wrenchingly passionate. 
   This is nearly impossible in one artist. Somehow, Adele has either figured out how to use, or has simply been given, a voice with this rare capability. You can listen to her and know the depth of emotion behind her words, and yet she almost never over-sings. It's like she doesn't even have to TRY. But she's belting! But it's like slicing warm butter. But she's growling! But it's like sheathing a sharp blade. But she's singing out of her range, her voice is breaking with the effort! But it's profoundly musical. When I listen to Adele, I feel simultaneously relaxed and impassioned. It's so intense and yet so sweet.
6. She breaks technique rules. 
   Adele tends to commit vocal technique no-nos. She clips the ends of phrases, she distorts her words, she lets her voice get really splatty, she breathes in the middle of phrases. But she does it in all the right places. And somehow it works. Those "mistakes" sound right in her voice and in her style of music.

I applaud the music world, elitists and bandwagoners alike, for embracing Adele and her music. Her immense popularity is evidence that the public will make good, artful choices on their own when they aren't being spoon-fed the products that big record companies tell them to like.

May Adele's level of untainted musicality become the normal goal for the entire music industry, and may we all benefit from its influence.

Feedback

Originally written August 20, 2011

I think people thrive on feedback. Most people, anyway. I'm not sure if I envy or pity those who don't, because theirs must be a world of some serious solitude. Where no one else is needed or invited. But I think this is why people love social media like blogs and Facebook and Twitter. Because you can just kind of toss out an idea and go, "Hey, guys, what do you think about this?" and the purpose of those platforms is so that your friends or others can offer their opinions in whatever time or way they fancy. That's why it was so cool in the beginning. And why it's still so cool for people who are influential. But I think the ease of the whole thing may have damaged it now. Because as effortless as it is to throw out an idea into open internet-dome, it's equally painless to read, take in, and then move on without another thought. The movement for feedback has become kind of stagnant. Whereas at the beginning it was an assumed obligation, now it's the most gracious of courtesies to offer the whole of your thoughts on the project or idea a person presents to you, the internet audience. Granted, you can kind of go half-way. With a click you can simply "like" something, implying that you have read and at least half-heartedly agree with it, but not enough to expound upon your feelings or to challenge the notion further. Heaven forbid a discussion should break out.

I find this new scarcity of feedback really sad. And I understand why it happens. As a person who uses the internet, I sometimes feel so plagued with requests for my feedback that all I can do is walk away and ignore them all. It's a tiring thing, coming up with informed opinions on all that's available to see in this vast web world (world wide web, ha ha). But then, when you become the person who finally gets up the guts to toss out a precious idea, probably one that you've slaved over to word just right or you've rewritten again and again to find just the perfect melody, when you are the creator and you're sending your little baby to the stage, the last thing you want to hear--even, perhaps, after boos and jeers--is crickets.

This is a two-way street. You can't go around consuming across the internet giving no feedback, and then expect everyone to stop what they're doing and write you a long note of criticism or praise for your creation. You can't take three weeks to respond to a person's carefully crafted email and then become more and more disappointed every hour they don't write back after you've sent yours. There's give and take here. And people are more important than online games and stupid human tricks on youtube.

The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us

Originally written July 15, 2011

The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us.

This was the song that my iPod shuffled up to my car stereo minutes after I had watched the last Harry Potter film. I'd love to be all profound and say it was fate that this song came up because it seemed to capture perfectly everything I felt on that therapeutic drive home. But I must be truthful. This was the song, in all its perfect manifestation of the enigmatic feelings inside me, that came just after the right moment. Indeed, waiting in the stalled line of cars to exit the Warren Theatre parking lot was a song quite dissimilar to how I felt but welcomed, anyway, as an escape from the strangeness of my insides. Yes, the first song that graced my ears after perhaps the most pivotal point of my transition out of childhood was "Some Kind of Wonderful" by Grand Funk Railroad.

I won't lie. I funked out. Rolled the windows down, turned the volume up. Tapping out the beat on my steering wheel, I didn't give a second thought to the inappropriate abruptness my iPod had shoved upon me in that delicate moment. The jam carried me out of the brightly lit parking lot onto the dimly lamplit streets back home.

But then, after some silence, the shuffle found another tune. I was caught off-guard by the satisfaction the song evoked in me. I had not felt what I needed to sift through until Sufjan Stevens's mournful melody gently nudged me, reminding me of the great need to process what had just happened.

The story of Harry Potter was a part of me. It still is. But as my life continues to change, and my identity with it, Harry's part of me had to make a transition as well. It won't be buried, it doesn't need to hide, and it won't disappear. I cannot say that I do not and will not still need Hogwarts. I always will. And it will always be there, just as the story claims. But it will become something different to me. A part of my past with deep, resounding echos that will follow me forward. I can always go back to revisit. I never believe it is right to completely abandon the past. But now I ought to and will take what I have learned from this story, which is so very dear to me, and make my own with it. For this, I have not felt ready until this time. I'm still not sure that I am completely ready, but I have felt the shift.

Perhaps it is a providential connection that this story "all ends on July 15" and that my hybrid adolescent-adult life has been building toward some point of real transition for quite a while now. Either way, Harry's public life seems to have been intertwined with mine in this moment. I am certain that many others my age feel a similar connection and stand now at the same crossroads. I don't know exactly what the change will yield when I proceed from here - I can only be certain that change will happen. So I must take what I've gained from adolescence - the knowledge for which I've labored and that which has been graciously given me - and I must walk confidently forward with it.

I think only then will I fulfill the true intent of the story of Harry Potter - and of any story which has deeply impacted me. When I go forth and do, make, live. Then the story truly comes - and stays - alive forever.

"No story lives unless someone wants to listen. The stories we love best do live in us forever. So, whether you come back by page or by the big screen, Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home.” -JK Rowling

Aw, to hell with it

I've never had a blog, really. The post below was something I felt inspired to write as an entry to a kind of contest and I needed somewhere to put it. I actually have been blogging, though. Not a whole lot, just when I get an idea I feel I should type up, which occurs, like, once a month. But I use a private blog. It's called 750words.com. It's awesome; I highly recommend it.

I blogged on 750words instead of on a real blog because I live a life of fear. How dumb. As if I need to be ashamed of myself. So this is where I slap myself and say, "Snap out of it, sad-sack!" Every time I write something on 750words, I actually get proud of myself. Proud enough to want to show someone what I've written. Buuuuuut then I inevitably find some excuse not to publish it anywhere because I am honestly afraid of what people will think of me.

What I'm really afraid of is that people who scoff at the notion that I deem myself worth listening to. Well, I'm tired of feeling that way. It's incredible limiting. And it's getting cramped in this box I made for myself. So, ok, if you're reading this and you think I'm full of myself, please stop reading immediately and go back to watching stupid cat videos on YouTube.

I'm going to post what I've written over these past few months on 750words. I guess that means some of them will be outdated. That's ok. I'll post them with their original dates. Problem solved. Blog begun.

Blank Pages

When I graduated from college last May, one of the neatest gifts I received was a book called “The Nothing Book,” which was given to me by my painting professor. The book is literally what the title suggests: a book with nothing in it – a collection of blank pages. The covers have some great one-liners: “For: poets, cooks, travelers, writers, students, [and so on…] and all of us who’ve ever wanted to do a book.” Do a book. I love that. Here’s another good one: “When asked what five books he would take with him to [a] desert island, George Bernard Shaw replied that he would take five blank books.” Smart dude.

I have to admit, this little guy, with all his scary blank pages staring up at me expectantly every time I peeked inside, intimidated me for quite some time. And several months went by before I finally cracked the bad boy and tried to write something. But, reading back, I’m glad I finally did. And here’s why.

I, like many others who read this blog and love music, art, film, and the like, consider myself a creative person. But if you were to compile all of my creative works into a book, you would need naught but a single staple to bind it. I’m a scared artist. I decide I want to make something and then I shy away because I know it will never be as good as the incredible works from which I draw my inspiration. Logical me badgers dreaming me with all kinds of criticisms:

You’ve never produced anything good before; why would you ever be able to make anything worthwhile now? 

Do you really think your ideas are original? I can think of ten different people who thought of that before you and did it better. 

Do you realize how selfish you are? What do you want to do with this thing? Sell it? Who’s going to pay for that anyway?

And then I put the pen down, I get up from the piano, I shut the laptop, and I quickly occupy myself with some mundane distraction to numb the intense unfulfillment I feel.

BUT there are other times when I get something. When something comes to me, and I just happen to be in the right place at the right time with the right tools within my reach, and it just comes upon me. I know you’ve felt this too. The words, the tune, never a complete work (or maybe for some lucky people it is), but something beautiful, moving, raw and real, or maybe funny, but always filled with so much truth.  And it comes to you. And you get it down, and you read back over it and you are in awe. Did I just write that? you say to yourself. Well, kind of. But you can’t really take credit for all of it.

Inspiration is something we can’t control. It has a will of its own. We can’t force it out of ourselves. So I propose we stop trying. We can create without it – so many artists have – but we can’t expect ourselves to produce inspiration. It comes to us. But that doesn’t mean we stop working. Art takes more than just inspiration. I am learning this the hard way.

Because at this point, my book of nothing is filled with those little points of inspiration. I’ve started a poem. I’ve started a play. I’ve started a song. But I have yet to finish anything. And. that. is. so. frustrating. And that is why I don’t feel like I’ve really done anything. Yet. My part of the deal comes after the wave of revelation has come and run its course. That’s when it’s my job to get down and do the grunt work - editing and re-editing, pushing through toward just one more thought, one more note, one step closer to a complete project, until another wave comes washing over me.

One personal journal entry I wrote in my book of nothing recently came after a bout of this frustration. I didn’t think, really, in my anger; I just let the voices in my head pour out onto the page. But, this time, what they had to tell me didn’t end up so hopeless as I had expected:

“I feel really trapped where I am – and sad. Nothing’s going on, and the boredom is gnawing at my insides. I feel so restless. But also so incapable of anything greater than this. Why the hell am I writing a poem?

I have no idea.

But I don’t want to stop. So I guess I won’t.

Now. Let’s make it happen.”

And bam. There it was. Right in the middle of my tirade something clicked, and I knew that, no matter what pain or frustration it caused, I wanted to keep going. I had to keep going. Why should I have to know why I’m creating something? I should just freaking create it, right?! So, you guys.  We gotta keep going. We can’t give up when Inspiration leaves us to do our work alone. It takes the both of us. Inspiration and artist.

So let’s make it happen.