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“Something feels different about today…”

Lately, I’ve been losing myself. I lost my last two blog posts this morning to a server shift. And tonight, I lost a bag full of my stuff at a lounge downtown. Where do things go when they are lost and how do they find their way back? My bag returned via human decency and a late night phone call. The posts, mired in the sappy shit of the past, I can do without…

And myself?

When I backpacked the East Coast, I found inspiration with a series of songs and movies that guided me out of whatever metaphoric dark forest I was in. I overcame fear and found myself stronger than before. But the past few months were difficult… I commented once that, although I returned from holiday in January, I felt as if I didn’t really come back. I needed that inspiration again, to tackle something much more challenging, and I happened to find it…

People ask the question… what’s a RocknRolla?

And I tell ‘em – it’s not about drums, drugs, and hospital drips. Oh, no. There’s more there than that, my friend. We all like a bit of the good life – some the money, some the drugs… others the sex game, the glamour, or the fame. But a RocknRolla, oh, he’s different…

Why?

Because a real RocknRolla wants the fucking lot.

I recently watched Guy Ritchie’s “RocknRolla,” and was pleasantly surprised. It offered twice the amount of slick badassery as one of my other favorite films, “Layer Cake,” only with a strong rock emphasis. The soundtrack, drenched in attitude and distorted guitars, reignited whatever it was inside me that needed a spark. And while I wouldn’t say the film will necessarily rock your world, it was enough to remind me that I always had a bit of RocknRolla hidden within.

What once was lost, now is found…

“Something feels different about today,” a friend commented in the afternoon…

I completely agree…

Today is the day I came back.

Whitney Houston – “I Believe in You and Me” (Keane’s Megaremix 2009tron)

Because I can, dammit.

www.jem-music.net
www.myspace.com/jem

Lately I’ve been feeling like getting away. I mean, sometimes you just need a break or a chance to take a breath. When everything gets too cluttered and overwhelming, you can always turn to music for temporary solace. One of the most enchanting things I’ve heard in awhile, Jem’s cover of Coldplay’s “Yellow” acts as four minutes of refuge, a safe place from the storm…

✈

www.florenceandthemachine.net
www.myspace.com/florenceandthemachinemusic

I’ve been having such vivid dreams lately that I decided to create a record in an effort to analyze them all. Whenever I wake from such a dream, I immediately grab my iPhone and email what little I can remember to a friend. I’m not sure why I share them. Maybe it’s my subconscious struggle to be understood… so that someone else can see what goes on inside my head, from the inside out.

3/4/09
…we were walking down the street and you were singing Corinne Bailey Rae, except it was a song I never heard before… And it was upbeat but I thought the song was boring… And it reminded me of my songs and I was worried if people would really like them… But you were skipping and singing along to it so that made me feel better…

3/5/09
I’m in my home in Hawaii for some reason. Apparently it was bad and people needed money and the guy has “malignant cancer” or something… And I’m reading some news article to find out what it was that he did that was so horrible… like not donating money or something, but I think it was that he was cruel and dry to his loved ones before telling them he was sick and undergoing surgery. The headline reads:

One man’s painful journey to find love…

3/5/09, dream 2
…and I wonder where you are, and [someone] says you’re to my left… and I turn and see you and give you a big hug. And you say something teasing like “didn’t you see me?!” and I wonder if I should just make a funny face and say, “gne gne gne” instead…

3/6/09
It was me driving at first, then me in the backseat, then me driving and realizing I had to meet my parents where they left me. I parked and biked through a crowd in the sand and got sand on everyone and felt really bad. Even got sand and stuck my tires accidentally into their picnic dip (falafel in hummus!). Mom calls my phone and says she is someplace else that I Tweeted about and keeps hanging up before I can ask for details. I tell my friend, annoyed:

Always make sure who you’re looking for is in the crowd before jumping into the fray…

3/7/09
We’re leaving a store and it takes awhile to get out because so many old people are leaving. I see a friend and say hi. She asks if I need a ride and I say I already have one. She looks a little disappointed that I said no. I see Tinna in the parking lot and leave. Then I’m reading a magazine with a special feature called “The Founders” or something, with pics of old moss covered ruins with Latin inscribed on them. Pretty but a little somber. I realize I read that magazine before at a time that had something to do with EG…

3/8/09
I’m in and old and tropical place. There’s a bridge that’s hard to get around. I’m taking pictures at first. There’s a woman who is an ecologist and I learn somehow what I’m seeing is the last of something. She doesn’t know I’m here, and I take a picture of her. There’s the presence of God except he’s a little plastic figurine at the edge of a lake that the woman is swimming in. Then I see God for real as I take the pic, and I try to get both him, her, and plastic God in the frame, except she’s coming toward me so it’s hard…

3/8/09, dream 2
It’s some weird Chinese/Buddhist/martial arts chant show but no one is Asian. They all lip sync to Chinese but their mouths don’t match. They parade past us and a black guy who looks very small but is older points at my shoes and tells me he likes them. One character yells, “in inglese!” and the show starts in English. It’s all very much like a circus show or Moulin Rouge… ominous, like most of my dreams not involving food (unless the cake is trying to eat ME…) and it’s snowing lightly and it’s dark and the bright lights are blinding…

Then you and I are in a living room somewhere. A Christmas Tree is up and swing music is playing. We start dancing and it’s fun, but when we stop I worry if you think I’m a bad dancer…

A coworker in Germany shared this band with me, and the vibrancy of the videos seemed to match that of my dreams, so I thought it apt to include them in the post…

www.thisisbrighteyes.com
www.myspace.com/brighteyes

“These myths are sacred and profane!”

So says the inside cover of Bright Eyes’ Cassadega, a message visible only through the included “Spectral Decoder,” allowing the holder the ability of viewing the hidden images and text on an otherwise barren album case. Without this useful piece of plastic, the above image would resemble little more than blurred lines of static. With it, we get depictions of life and death… pyramids, comets and stars.

“Swollen saints bathing in a backwards river under a sliver of the moon…”

I remember first listening to the album while waiting for a bus in Hawaii. The heat from the sun was unbearable, made worse by ample concrete and lack of shade. But something about the music eased the annoyance of waiting for public transportation. It’s an explosion of harmony in your ears… swirls of Americana with alt-rock sensibilities… Conor Oberst’s angst-ridden vocals layered upon textured timbre.

That the album’s sometimes nihilistic message comes out so hopeful and jubilant is an irony of songwriting. The melodies are perfectly suitable for dancing along with when you’re alone in your apartment (not that I would know), though the lyrics are often somber and sad.

Unlike Robert Johnson at his metaphoric Crossroads, the decision to move on your own proves more meaningful than waiting for direction. “God helps those who help themselves.” (And never let the Devil tune your guitar.) On Cassadega, Oberst examines what it means to move, choosing many paths but always arriving at the same destination: life sometimes sucks but that’s okay.

“Dog-faced apologists pleasing themselves on the burning sand…”

I like to think everything happens for a reason, though I often wonder if I apply reason to everything in an effort to make moments seem more meaningful. If you don’t go overboard and your days are more enjoyable, what’s the crime, really? It beats cocaine.

(From his 2005 album, I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning, included because it’s so damn endearing…)

There’s a celebration at the root of it all – the sound of hope and new beginnings – that a little pain only made the good times sweeter. In this expression we get the blindness of heat dissolved in the vibrancy of light… and we learn to enjoy the sun like an evergreen growing in a concrete jungle…

♥