Report, soldier!

Unfortunately, nothing new to report here…or perhaps too much of not much importance to report in teh last few months.  We bought a house, saw some family…I’m still working at the same job but liking it less and less…but aside from professional life, things are good. 

Last night I went into a short “memory fest”.  I started remembering things…one memory leads to another and before I knew it I was thinking about old friends and old times from the past 8 or 9 years.  I can’t imagine having a lifetime of memories to look back on.  The good news is that I learned I am happy where I am.  I may regret a few things, but I can honestly say that my life is good and despite my flubs I think I’m in a good spot headed in the direction I want to go.  It’s a good feeling coming from someone who can barely decide which toothpaste to buy without contemplating the lasting consequences of said decision. 

Now for a quick review!   COLDPLAY: Viva La Vida. 

   For me, Coldplay is a mixed tape band.  I like them, but in small doses.  Viva La Vida is different.  I love their new sound that is so Coldplay but so different.  I found the musicality of this album to be much more complex and varied than other songs I’ve heard by them – lots of syncopation and funky rhythms.  I thought the lyrics were more meaningful and sophisticated and they really experimented with this one; new vocal styles, new instrumentality – and for me it totally worked.  I’ve been listening to it nonstop, as one whole, entire work, and haven’t gotten sick of it yet. 

Another good album is the new Seven Mary 3 (7mary3) album…which album title is escaping me.  Oh well, another good reason to post later.

Exploding Dog

The drawing to the left is entitled “She is My Sunshine”.

The artist is Sam Brown out of Denver, Colorado.  I stumbled upon his work at Exploding Dog through a friend a few years ago and fell in love with the art.  The drawings have a simple aesthetic appeal but what I love most about them is their ability to capture very specific emotions.  Each drawing has a little title like, “since when did you have lazer eyes?” or “without you i am completely incomplete”.   One is called “I’d slay a dragon for you” and the drawing says “but why?”. 

So much of emotion is a moment.  You may have a thousand sad or melancholoy moments but each one is a little different; aach happy moment is tender in its own way.  And that’s what resonates with me – many of these quirky pieces of art have a universal appeal to them.  They might be kind of weird but you “get it” for lack of a better phrase.  People can send in ideas for him to draw –

Go forth and explode!  I mean explore…

The Magnetic Fields

I just heard a song from their new album Distortion on an NPR show called “Fair Game“.   I had a few of their songs before my “infamous” hard drive crash, but had since forgotten them and this peek into their new music was intruiguing.  I really liked the few songs I heard on their myspace page (the only thing myspace is good for anyway…music). 

In other news – we’re still trying to get everything packed up.  I can’t believe how much stuff we’ve accumulated and how hard it can be to throw things away.  Things from my childhood, things from high school, college…it’s not that I am wrapped up in feeling that my life has been defined by material things.  Rather, the boxes of papers, photos, buttons and other odds and ends, somehow bring back all of my memories in a rush that is bittersweet and oh-so-pleasant.  Nostalgia is a melencholy emotion but one that I could never do without and in a strange way love to experience.  (So long as it’s not tinged with TOO much regret.) 

On the other hand, things that once seemed so important are now dismissed and tossed away with barely a glance and a flick of the hand which my husband knows to mean ‘bye-bye’. 

I constantly struggle with the desires to keep and to toss.  To retain and to purge.  It’s almost as if I’m afraif that letting go of those things means to accept losing those memories.  To fully close those chapters of my life, never to open the box again, squeal with joy and tenderly pull out the small momentos that remind me of long lost times and long lost people…is not something I can do easily. 

I think we all long for things past – Fitzgerald may have said it best in This Side of Paradise that we do not wish to regain our innocence.  We wish to lose it again.  I love that book and I love the idea, because going back to my old things gives me a chance to retravel the paths of my life from where I was to where I am. 

Movies & Moving

Warning – there is a spoiler about Into the Wild –

Over the weekend I was able to see Into the Wild and Martian Child.  The former, was a very long and scenically beautiful movie. It had some wonderfully poignant moments when the main character really connects with nature and more importantly with people around him.  The ending scenes, however, as he slowly starves to death, left me a little disturbed and just feeling kind of awful at the end.  I couldn’t figure out why, but I think it has to with the fact that when he finally reaches clarity and finds the “truth” he so desperately seeks, there is no hope.  He’s dying and will never get to employ the lesson.  Does he regret it or does he feel that without the final journey into death, his lesson about happiness would have remained unlearned?  Was it worth it to him?  I can’t say – but the seeming futility of his final days really left me feeling a but empty, instead of inspired by the “truth” he learned.  I ended up thinking primarily on his death rather than exploring the other 2 hours of film where you could really think about how pure his relationships were with the people he met when things weren’t founded on things and life wasn’t spent interrupted by cell phones and stop lights.  But I think that is a bit just me – I have a hard time to imagining myself in the situation of characters and the ending scenes were perhaps jut a little too intense for my psyche to handle?  Overall, I loved the soundtrack, loved seeing his travels, the life of a vagadond, and the people he met, but the psychological ramifications of going through the end of life as he did left me feeling a little hollow inside.

Martian Child was a movie that I enjoyed.  I like John Cusack in general, but I thought the movie was a nice “feel-good” film.  Yes, it’s fairly predictable with moments where I had to remind myself that it was a movie, and wraps up tidily – but I still enjoyed it.  It did a good job of not giving you characters you saw a good or bad – while sometimes you were frustrated with the adoption board, the boy, John Cusack, it was only in the mild way you would feel for someone you care for and believe to have good intentions.  And you know what?  There is nothing wrong with enjoying a good, clean, film with a happy ending.