Something I said earlier on Facebook. I don't often like things that I say, but I think this one bears repetition. Plus the blog makes it way easier to keep track.

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I get a certain feeling when I look at work by Van Gogh or listen to work by Beethoven or Chopin. It's difficult to describe, because it isn't something we often see anymore.
Hell, it's not something we often see historically either. It's why they hold such value.

Anyone can take beauty and make something beautiful. Anyone can take misery and create something tragic, sometimes even tragically beautiful. It takes something far and away beyond that to take raw suffering and darkness and force from it something unimaginably breathtaking.

It's often overlooked, but it takes a belief - a faith, even - that what you are creating is more important than you are. I say that because such an act will consume you to the very core...that's the nature of the beast, isn't it?
But the result is a thing unique, a thing that by itself makes the world brighter for anyone equipped to perceive it.

The word, which falls short, is triumph. In that moment of perception you share simultaneously the knowledge of whichever creator's darkness and the reality of their victory over it.
And in that moment your own darkness becomes lesser for having been exposed to the truth of that perception.

I don't care if you get the same feeling from Beethoven and Van Gogh or from Lady Gaga and Andy Warhol or if you are driven to create your own work to feel it. While I'd argue that certain elements make it easier to find, the medium is irrelevant. Find your truth and cling to it and don't ever, ever let anyone take it from you.

Musical Moments #9

After a significant delay, I figure it's time to post about the Seether concert.

First, I'm going to take a moment to thank (heavy with sarcasm) the Diamond Ballroom for forgetting that the venue is in fucking Oklahoma for the evening.
That's right, they made everyone park in a large grass lot behind the venue. It was a damp drizzle all day long, and for some mysterious reason the powers-that-be forget that WET and DIRT create MUD. Leaving that parking lot was a massive disaster and I was not pleased. For future reference try and remember basic facts of the weather, because that was fucking pathetic - especially for a sold-out show.

Deep Breaths Outside

"Some day, some one will come along and change you, change everything. You'll discover what love really means, what it can do to you and for you. You'll become a different person - a better one, and all the things that confuse you now will make sense."

"Well yeah, I agree. So what happens to you when that one person leaves you behind?"

"..."

"Yeah. The apocalypse happened while you were busy being changed, being better. Now all your friends have lost the capacity to understand you, and so they move on as well. You get superficial relationships at best, and fulfillment never really comes. You pour your soul out to no one and nothing, hoping that maybe God will take pity and just kill you off. But He doesn't - whether to let you wait forever for something you believed could only happen once, or to let you suffer for your sins...it's hard to tell.

It's true enough that there's someone for everyone...but what happens if you use that someone up?"

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Impulses drive through the brain, snippets of electrical currents that come from nowhere and return to the void.
Feels like an ocean moving beneath the earth, whips cracking against illusions of solidarity.
Prayers pour, teardrops lost in raining fire, hopes clinging with broken hands to motes of dust...drifting out of reach...

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There's more to some of this, maybe. Blame introspective music, or whatever.

- C

Remind Me

"Impotent in your hatred,
I've been cut but never bled."

Not for you

I woke up this morning with a song in my head.

It isn't a song I can name, because it hasn't been written. Because I haven't written it.
I didn't have time, before I had to leave today, to sit at my piano and get the basic gist of it down so I could write it later.

Musical Moments #3

Right, so under most circumstances I will not do track-by-track reviews of albums. I simply have too much to say about songs.

EPs, however, are another story entirely. Thus, this week I will go through a few of the EPs that might have slipped your musical radar.
The reviews will be sparse in content. I am not going through every riff or every harmony. If you want more detail, go listen yourself. That is kind of the point of these things, after all - to whet your appetite enough to go find some awesome music on your own.

Musical Moments #2

Okay, I totally went to this concert -last- Saturday...but I didn't really feel like writing up my thoughts on it until now.

Musical Moments #1

Right, so reasonably often I find myself on a music binge. I'm stuck on this one song, this one album, this one artist. Other times I'm going for a variety pack, listening to everything I can get my hands on for a week or so.

I've always thought to myself, I should keep track of those moments. I can get hidden gems stuck in my library and lost there for years before I rediscover them.

Isn't something...

Hijacked from a meme floating around Facebook...both because I've seen the guy play in concert, and because it makes a particularly good point about what we've turned ourselves into.

Vision

It's strange, such a little thing, just beyond our reach. You know what I mean.
That tiny missing element hidden in everyday life, the one we all somehow miss.

It's a skew in the way we perceive the world, something absent. We see color, hear sound, feel, taste, smell...but we've become used to them. The appreciation has died, and all these things have lost their vividness. That little thing we had as children went away.

What was it? Innocence, perhaps, but more likely something different. Softer, more subtle, the thing that painters and musicians see from time to time in those perfect and elusive moments.

All this to say that we have a unique ability to look at art and listen to music these days. You know, the internet. But in the midst of all that digitalization, something is lost in much the same way as our perceptions have become lessened with age.

In a shorter form?

A snapshot of art, the picture of a painting or the recording of a song, even the casual reading of a poem...these are all essentially as valuable to really understanding the work as watching porn is to understanding sex.

- C


"Is there anything worse than a blind man?"
"Yes. A man with sight and no vision."

Beautiful Agony

Pain is like fuel to an artist, like gasoline in the midst of a fire. It isn't to say there are not other sources of inspiration, but very few are as motivating or as intense.

This is why a large portion of art and music and prose and poetry winds up devoted to the darker elements of existence. It comes more naturally.

But like any fuel, pain does not govern the direction you travel. This is the thing we all forget, us artists and musicians all filled with angst. We have the ability, however difficult, to lay claim to our pain and alter it - twist, compress, and change it until it is unrecognizable. We can take pain and from it create beauty, depict happiness and joy.

That's the hard part. Any malcontent can talk about agony - you could almost say it is a natural state for anyone burned by creativity. It takes a very particular sort of inner strength to grasp your torment and force it to become something else, to take what you feel and rip from it - unwillingly - beauty and peace.

Don't get me wrong, darkness has a place in art. It just seems that too often we get stuck there, and forget the rest. It is important, vital really, to be balanced. Without balance, our darkness, or even our light, can burn us out. Staring at naked truths for too long can leave you blinded in more ways than one.

Food for thought.

- C

Great Bands You Might Never Hear About

In honor of a thing I randomly did last year (10 genre-defining albums of 2010) I am going to share a bit more of my eclectic taste in music.

Somewhere Between

I don't typically post lyrics, but tonight I feel like it.

Early Mornings

Insomnia per usual. I've got class at noon, so I'm really only aiming for an extended nap at this point.
I figure maybe getting some thoughts out will help. Who knows.

This.

Forgotten Tunes

On a brighter, less serious note...

Songs you love but have largely forgotten about:
Go.

Slow Dancing in a Burning Room - John Mayer
Vitamin R (Leading Us Along) - Chevelle
Pink Panther Theme (Techno remix)
Sooner or Later - Breaking Benjamin
Sang Real - Dredg

Those are the heavy-hitters for now. There are more.

-C

Slow Dancing

It's not a silly little moment.
It's not the storm before the calm.
This is the deep and dyin' breath of this love that we've been workin' on.
Can't seem to hold you like I want to, so I can feel you in my arms...

Feel My Heart Race...

"Now I'll take the blame,
so forget my name..."