Apr 29 2013

Music Monday: Happy Birthday, Willie + Phosphorescent

securedownloadI love Willie Nelson and just the other day I mentioned to Dash that I am sorry I’ve never seen him in concert. His response: he’s not dead yet. True. But he’s 80 years old, so I guess if the opportunity arises, I will move mountains to be there.

In actuality, Willie Nelson has been on my mind because of a band called Phosphorescent that I just discovered in the last couple months. The singer songwriter, Matthew Houck, sounds like Willie Nelson to me. Nouveaux Willie. Neo-Willie. Turns out this band had an album back in 2009 called To Willie, so my notion was not far off.

I love this song. And I think you will too. It’s as easy as a warm spring Sunday – which was the kind of day we had here in Minneapolis on Willie’s birthday. But it’s laced with sadness. Really pretty.

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And some Willie too, of course. Renegade, stoner, poet, romancer – the man can convey more emotion in one bar of music than most people can in a whole catalogue of songs. Enjoy. YouTube Preview Image


Apr 7 2013

The Hearts of Artists

tumblr_m8matwCrgb1qgq7v2o1_500Mostly I hate the internet and it’s way of sucking you into pure nonsense – superficial, relentless chatter and information that takes you out of your life and leaves you mired in a loud, screechy limbo. One of my struggles with blogging is the notion that I’m simply adding to the chatter. I know it’s my way of corralling my wandering attention and focusing on the stuff of my life here and now, but there’s always that little voice – who cares?

Sometimes, however, the internet brings you beauty. Something pure, something cool, something you wouldn’t see without a computer. I was literally moved to tears at 9 am on a Sunday morning when I saw this video of Maria Abramović’s performance piece at the MOMA from 2010. She simply sits in a chair in a dramatic red dress and people line up to take turns staring into her eyes. Talk about intimate.

Watch what happens when her old lover and collaborator, Ulay, takes the chair. The story is that they had had a passionate love in the seventies which ran its course. They decided to start walking from the opposite ends of the Great Wall of China and meet in the middle for one final embrace. (Of course, right?) This is them meeting again after all these years.

It’s breathtaking. I’m DYING!!! And I’m so going to track down this documentary.

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Via Swissmiss


Apr 5 2013

Music Monday: Dawes

loudawesShame on me for not responding to Creeper Bud’s text while I was on spring break. She was offering me her two tickets to see Dawes perform at the Electric Fetus this past Tuesday at 6. It’s not that I don’t love Dawes and the Electric Fetus and Creeper Bud, for that matter. It’s just that 6 o’clock on a Tuesday seems dubious when you don’t have your calendar in front of you. As it turns out Creeper Bud left me the tickets anyway and as Tuesday unfolded, a little field trip before dinner seemed like the perfect thing. I’m a firm believer that when there’s a choice to do or not do, you just gotta do. And I proved myself right yet again.

Saint James was at tennis practice, so I took a very neutral Supergirl as my sidekick. She was unfamiliar with Dawes but she’s nothing if not game. Turns out she’s the perfect wingman. When we arrived 20 minutes before the show, the line was snaking around the block, so she yelled at me to let her out and go park. I parked a few streets away and ran to meet her – hustling past all manner of hipsters, girls in bright lipstick and tights and plaid clad folks to find her tucked into the line with her hood up – chill as a buddha.

Turns out the kind of people who make an extra effort to check out a Dawes show in a record store are an affable bunch who think nothing of letting a little kid worm her way to the front. Time and again, people would smile at her, let her through and look back at me to see if I wanted to follow. Who am I to say no? We ended up with a perfect spot front and center – so good that a blogger for the City Pages asked me to text her my iPhone pics. Check out my first published pics in Natalie Gallagher’s great interview here.

Dawes is such a good band – beautiful musicianship and lyrics that get you right in the gut. Watching and listening from five feet away is so intimate it’s almost awkward. Taylor Goldsmith doesn’t make it easy – he’s not showy, and peacocky and flamboyant – he’s humble, soulful and unbearably honest. He is extending a piece of his heart every time he opens his mouth and you feel like you need to accept it with some modicum of care. I found myself staring at his beat up buttercream confection of a guitar, wondering if it had a name, to keep myself from welling up.

My favorite thing was watching them through Supergirl’s eyes. She was leaning up against an amp, her head at Goldsmith’s chest level, still as a stone. The kid who always has one eye on my Instagram and one eye on iTunes and her hands busy doodling and her mouth going a mile a minute was quite literally frozen in her tracks. She got to feel the magic that is a live performance, where the love and energy is flying in both directions, where you feel something shift in your insides and walk away just a little bit different.

And if I played my cards right, she’ll be hooked for life. Stories Don’t End.

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Apr 5 2013

Spring Musings

adrienneThis year for spring break we road tripped to Michigan to see my family. Maestro de Bife is back from Australia, Golden and his wife, Delicious Apple, were due to have their second bambina, it was Easter. We figured we’d spend spring break immersed in familial milestones as we so rarely get to do.

I had fully prepared myself for the possibility that Manzanita’s little sis might not be born while we were there, but as it turns out, Delicious Apple went into labor as we were driving towards them all. Petite Pomme was born on March 27th and couldn’t be more perfect, with my dear Manzanita suddenly thrust into the role of older sis and big girl – she’s hilarious and sweet, with the tiniest little naughty streak as perfectly befitting a two year old.

Something about being home makes me feel so acutely aware of myself and where I’m at in life. What am I doing? How am I doing? How did I get here? Where did the time go? Where’s my Esprit sweatshirt?

Partially, it’s the sandwich effect of being a mom and yet being around my own sweet mother and all the objects and landmarks of my youth – the Burger King, the Dairy Mat, Shane Park. I am out of my own castle and back in the castle of my girlhood. It’s so familiar and cozy – the meals and wine, the strong personalities, the quick brewing and passing stormy tempers, the laughter – but it’s my past and it was created by my parents, with their aesthetic, rules, likes and dispositions. It represents their adventures and travels, their high standards and hard work. My castle is different – it’s messier and dirtier, for sure, but the wall colors are brighter, the music is louder, the furniture is more random and most importantly it’s ours. Take a queen out of her castle and she can’t help but feel ever so slightly adrift and introspective.

Also, since our families don’t live near us, I see my kids acutely through their eyes. Any brattiness or funniness feels magnified and more noticeable because they don’t necessarily have the entire context – they don’t live the days in and days out. I can’t help but wonder what my family thinks, how my kids are coming off, whether they realize how kind and chill they really are. Good manners are my thing, but even more so when the people whose opinions I care about the most are watching. I wonder if they can tease out the subtle balance of the things we’ve taught them and the things that are just pure them – that tightrope of childrearing where you can do a lot, but you can only do so much – and I mean that for better and for worse, because some of my favorite things about my kids are the things we had nothing to do with.

Plus it’s spring! We take a deep breath, a big stretch to the ever warming sun and mutter a tiny prayer of thanks and good riddance to a winter that goes on about a month too long in these parts. We get a chance to clean house, both literally and metaphorically, start fresh, try out new ideas, give new policies a whirl. We get to keep the good, pitch the bad and promise ourselves we will live our days with more intention, attention, gratitude and lightness. But how? Specifically. How?

There’s nothing like going home to bring into clearer focus what it is to make a home. There’s nothing like going back to the past to clarify our hopes and wishes for the future. And there’s nothing like family to remind us that almost everything we do and know, comes from them.

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