Music is Expensive

Picture from Amazon

*sigh*

Let me begin by saying that I have spent a lot of money this break.

Somehow, I ended up buying a lot of CDs. I don’t regret that. I’m just sad because I’m broke.

Anyway, if you have a chance and want to listen to some good music, listen to these:

1. Frame the Clouds by Christa Wells

2. The Invitation by Meredith Andrews

3. Amarantine by Enya (Christmas gift from my my younger sister, actually)

4. Fireflies and Songs by Sara Groves

5. My Medea by Vienna Teng (I got a couple of songs from Warm Strangers and Waking Hour, and by far, “My Medea” is my favorite.)

6. Us by Regina Spektor (Soviet Kitsch)

7. Hero by Regina Spektor (500 Days of Summer)

Links lead to their respective Amazon pages, if available.

"these are the scars that silence carved on me... I am a constant satellite of your blazing sun"

A friend of mine introduced me to Vienna Teng by sending me a link to “Gravity”. I noticed three things: that Vienna Teng was Asian, classically trained in piano, and that the song was awesome. Most of her songs are a sort of hit and miss with me – if I hear a song and I love it, then I’ll really love it and listen to it on repeat for the next 48 hours. If I don’t like it, then I really don’t like it. Some of the lyrics don’t catch me, and some do. However, there is no doubt that Vienna Teng is gifted in words and melody. Her music has a very unique feel.

“My Medea” is a good example. Haunting and intense, the song refers to a woman in Greek mythology who left a trail of destruction wherever she went. She murdered her children, murdered a pair of lovers, tried to destroy her former husband, Jason (yes, that Jason). I wonder what eventually happened to her. Vienna Teng also drew from the legend of the labyrinth (Crete?) and “a curse for every mile of ocean crossed” which sounds familiar but which I can’t place. Ouch.

It took me a while to understand the song.

Amarantine is my favorite Enya album so far. Even with the songs with the made up languages, I was humming along, not knowing whatever the heck I was singing. It was cool. “Amarantine,” the title track, is my new favorite love song. I am also in awe of Enya’s lyricist, Roma Ryan. She paints pictures with words, while Enya, the “sonic architect,” builds towers out of sound. Altogether, the music has the effect of making me feel as if I’m a pilgrim who has been on a long journey and has only just found her way home.

And indeed, home is a theme that Roma Ryan and Enya explore in this album.

You know when you give your love away
It opens your heart, everything is new
And you know time will always find a way
To let your heart believe it’s true.

— Amarantine

(Who says that rhyming poetry is for 5th graders? Heidi Montag has nothing on Roma Ryan.)

Amazon had a $5 for one mp3 album deal over break, and I got “Fireflies and Songs” by Sara Groves. I hadn’t listened to any of her music beforehand, just heard references to her by Meredith Andrews and Christa Wells (Sara Groves’ vocals are featured on “Frame the Clouds,” incidentally). A housewife and mother of three children, Sara Groves released nine albums, her most recent being the one I just bought. I immediately fell in love with her songwriting, but her voice was an acquired taste. At times, I felt that her voice was a little too scratchy. The real beauty is perhaps in her lyrics. They are very very honest – so much is about everyday life. Kitchens, fireflies, friendship, tables, and houses. So much is about singing “for the beauty that’s to be found” as written in the gem “Setting Up the Pins.” Another favorite is “Love.”

love I made it mine
I made it small I made it blind
I followed hard only to find
it wasn’t love
it wasn’t love

love of songs and pen
oh love of movie endings
takes out the break
leaves out the bend
misses love

love not of you
love not of me
come hold us up
come set us free
not as we know it
but as it can be

People can identify with the small things, like chairs and tables and children and kittens, but perhaps that is where we look last for the important things. Things we need to be reminded of. To me, her songs will always be about the beauty found in ordinary things, the aliveness to be liven in everyday life, the grace of God reflected back in little simple things like friendships and kindnesses, and a love that is bigger than we know.

Will I buy anything else by her? Perhaps.

(And the song “It’s Me” brings a lump to my throat every time I hear it. Shhh don’t tell anyone.)

Meredith Andrews is so darn cute.

“The Invitation” by Meredith Andrews was one of those purchases I didn’t think I would love as much as I did. I’m not really into a lot of “Christian” music. Don’t like Chris Tomlin (I can hear the shocked gasps now) because his music and lyrics seem too vanilla for my tastes. Not intense enough. I like more intensity, more edginess. I like to listen about grace, and goodness, and love, and peace, but it all has no form and substance without the fall. Because for humans, so much of our lives has been defined around falling, being crushed, being shattered, being shaken, being broken. Which is why we are so desperately in need of grace. Grace would have no meaning if man had not fallen… the sacrifice cannot exist without a reason. One must acknowledge the fall while being defined around grace.

God is indescribable, unchangeable; but all we know of God comes from our experience of Him. In trying to speak only of God’s qualities, we more often than not come up short because there is so much we don’t know. Yet that doesn’t stop us from trying. The old hymn writers were good at this. Because of our inadequacy, and perhaps from our own inexperience of God, it’s hard to find new and fresh ways of talking about God. As someone who’s tried her hand at poetry, I can say that it’s extremely hard to not fall back onto the old cliches that instead of drawing the soul to something greater, drop them back into blah.

beauty in pain?

That, or a lot of Christian music seems to be cheesy pop love songs with all the words “baby” and “love” and “darling” replaced with “God” and “Jesus” and “Savior.” Don’t get me wrong, I like love songs, depending on the melody or the lyrics. But singing the words “I can’t stop falling in love with you” 8x in a row makes me feel really weird. Seriously, I wouldn’t know those were songs about God except for the words “God” and “Jesus”. God is many things: lover, friend, Father, confidante, brother, etc. He is captivating, etc. But I’m not sure I want to think of God captivating me with his “intimate kisses.” Oh dear. Does that give you weird mental images? I’m sorry. I can’t remember the name of that particular song, so I’ll spare you.

In talking about being shattered, broken, etc., many can identify with such feelings. However, the challenge is in finding a balance. We’re broken, but we need grace. We need grace because we’re broken. One cannot be morbidly upsetting in writing about being broken, and one cannot be so airy and fluffy in writing about grace, otherwise it’s no better than feel-good bubblegum pop that’s all air and no substance. It’s my thought that, similar to the struggle of describing God, many Christian singer/songwriters fall back on the same ol’ same ol’ cliches, and while there is nothing inherently wrong with that, it fails to satisfy.

"I was alone, but you found me where I was hiding. And now I'll never ever be the same."

So I was pleasantly surprised to listen and find so much depth and wisdom in the lyrics. There are such gems as the upbeat “You Invite Me In” where Andrews sings that “You invite me in/Doesn’t matter where I’ve been/Your arms are open wide/There’s nothing left to hide” echoing the account of the prodigal in Luke. Who doesn’t want to leave their shame behind? And yet that is the chance offered.

Or how about “You’re Not Alone”?

My favorite track is the deliciously piano-based hymn-like “Draw Me Nearer.”

In your nearness there is healing
What was broken now made whole
Restoration in its fullness
Lasting hope for all who come

In your nearness I take shelter
Where you are is where I’m home
I have need of only one thing
To be here before your throne

Her music is just so darn uplifting in its message of hope. “God is extending an invitation to you, to you personally, calling you by name,” she says. “He knows where you’ve been and he knows your background. He knows your family situation. He knows the things you struggle with, but he’s calling you by name and he’s inviting you to come in and to meet with him and to know him.” How encouraging!

Christa Wells. Picture from her blog.

And yet, one of the best purchases I made was “Frame the Clouds” by Christa Wells. I first heard about Christa Wells when Amazon offered me a free mp3 off this, her independently produced debut album. I can’t stop listening. She has a way of painting pictures with words. This album is definitely marked by Christa Wells’ plain honesty. The lyrics are profound in their simplicity. Favorite track? “Frame the Clouds.” I recommend this album.

Like her friend Sara Groves, Christa Wells sings and writes about the simple things of life, interjected with a lot of grace. However, the way she paints pictures with words is unique and not really like anything I’ve ever heard. Sara Groves’s songwriting makes me think of flowers; Christa Wells’s makes me think of solid oak. She sings of falling in love in “All the More”, citing little things like his grin and the desire of wanting to be kissed “I was raised not to asked to be kissed, otherwise I would’ve.” He was perfect in so many ways, but in the end it was his imperfections, his humanity, that made her fall in love with him further. Or how about “A Thousand Things,” a balladic song about human suffering? Someone suffers, tells about it. But that’s not the end of the story: someone else at the next table, also suffering, hears about this and takes it to heart. “Exquisite” pain draws people together, but so does grace. An outpouring of pain, and grace in the midst of such pain, is like a drop of rain that waters a thousand fields, hence the title.

a thousand fields nourished by a single drop of rain

Then there is the mournful “Life Costs So Much,” a condemnation of sorts against the failure to acknowledge the cost of life , living empty lives our own way, the assertion that “we’ll get along” while hiding our souls in shame. Merely existing, and certainly not living.

“Don’t Call It Love”, “I Want To Know That Man”, “Weightless”… I don’t believe there is a single “miss” on this CD. For instance, in the swingy “Don’t Call It Love”, Christa Wells takes difficult subject matter – passing judgement – and handles it with grace.

I’m tempted to sit back in my overstuffed chair

with a gavel in hand and a tired-eye stare that says
I’m not surprised you’ve messed it up again
I’m tempted to sigh, I’m tempted to yawn
if you’d only do life the way I’ve told you all along
It could be so easy
If you would only be more like me

But oh, that’s the beast that brings us down
It’s the devil in a satin gown
So don’t, don’t call it love (don’t call it love)
love wraps herself around the wound
and weeps while she speaks truth
So don’t call this love

Indeed love does… as well as make music.

"If there's a God who would enter humanity to capture the love of a rebel like me... I want to know his name." - "I want to know that man" Christa Wells

It’s rare to see a singer/songwriter who can spin such melodies and words in a way that they speak to the heart. Or perhaps these singer/songwriters get overlooked over the bubblegum pop babble, the Miley Cyruses and Jonas Brothers and Demi Lovatos and Emily Osments. It’s really a shame, because such artists should get recognition. Such music is in the end more wholesome than empty fluff. One may make a person feel empty-good for a while. The other may make a person feel more challenged, more less-whole, more longing-for-wholeness, more empty. As it should.

The only way I can describe this music is the feeling of a journey to make — a journey to love’s beginning. A journey where instead of walking the other way, one walks into grace. A journey to recognize beauty in faces and places, like the man who “poured himself out for a stranger for years, for no kind of pay.” A journey where one strives to become more Christ-like, I suppose.

A journey I’d want to make. A journey I’m making.

I am listening to the album as I write this, and I feel as if I’m uncovering a new little gem every time. The songs have that much meaning.

It’s also available on iTunes, but I got the CD, available on Christa Wells’s website, because it’s easier to lend CDs to people.

Music to buy in 2010, in no particular order, and because I like making lists:

maybe someone played so well that his fingers bled roses.

1. As Long as It Takes by Meredith Andrews (coming out in March?)

2. Brooke Fraser‘s Third Album (unnamed, and tentatively scheduled for summer 2010. Again, I recommend her. She’s my favorite singer/songwriter, and anything from her is bound to be excellent. She puts so much of herself into everything she writes.)

3. Love Makes Music EP by Christa Wells, Nicole Witt and Other Various People. Two songs written by Christa, two songs by Nicole, and one song written by both.

4. Rest of the Ride by Nicole Witt. Just found about her from the Love Makes Music EP project. She’s good. More country. But good. I like country.

The end of 2010 will possibly see me in debt.

*Update: I only bought a few of the CDS on the list: Meredith Andrew’s was one of them. I also bought Brooke Fraser’s album “Flags,” which I should review at some point, and which was excellent. I highly recommend it. I never did buy the EP by Christa Wells and Nicole Witt, but I did buy “How Emptiness Sings” by Wells, and which I will be reviewing at some point because it is also extremely insightful.

I also changed my mind about liking country.

The Agony and the Ecstasy

I sculpt whole works out of words,

Just as a sculptor chips a David from his marble.

I paint pictures with words,

Just as an artist uses her brush and watercolors.

I make the words flow like melodies,

Just as the songwriter at her piano.

I am like the photographer,

With his eye out to capture the shot,

Pleasing to the eye.

Like all four, I struggle continously

To create what is set on me to create.

To follow where the muse takes me.

—————————-

Writing, like good art,

Is both sadness and joy

Beauty in the midst of pain

Both agony and ecstasy.

————————-

I wrote this when I was reading Irving Stone’s autobiographical novel about the great sculptor/artist/architect/poet Michelangelo. The title of the work was “The Agony and the Ecstasy.” Having watched the movie as well, this seemed very fitting. A writer in some ways is like an artist. Both have to struggle hard to depict what they’re thinking of painting/writing/sculpting out onto their mediums. I work on paper, they work on stone, canvas, or an instrument.

In the book, the author speaks of this as both Agony and Ecstasy. For while it can bring much happiness, it can also bring pain. It can feel like torture at some times, but at the same time nothing else can bring greater joy.

It really is both agony and ecstasy.

Driving through the Rain (Part II)

I’m sorry to admit that I learned how to be violent when angry. It was the only way of getting any attention. It was easier than sitting down and explaining why I was angry and how I really felt and what I think we should do better. My father is not one to listen when he is angry. Few people honestly know how to do that. Few people do it well. So I’d throw things, and simmer until I was exhausted. The problem never gets resolved, and I leave myself with a nagging sense of incompleteness.

As I got older, things got worse, not better. The fights became more frequent as the teenage years are some of the most stressful times for parents. Parents see their children changing before their eyes and don’t know what to make of it. A simple “grunt” is so easy to read as disrespect. Without patience and God’s grace, it’s almost impossible to navigate through these years without some scars. Maybe my parents felt as if they were looking at someone completely different from the son or daughter they’d had for years. My brother changed a lot during this time. He grunted more, stayed up later, woke up later, and talked back occasionally — you know, the normal things teenagers do. They try to test their limits and end up pushing all the wrong buttons. It pushed all of my dad’s buttons, and he was none too happy. His face also became longer and his eyes became smaller. To this day, that’s something my mom can’t figure out.

My dad saw many things that my brother did as deliberate attempts to provoke. Maybe they were deliberate, maybe not. I don’t think so. I do know that my brother was figuring out what was going on in him, and it wasn’t easy. He had this massive case of acne that he had to take meds for. The medicine made him sleepy all the time and less productive. That ticked my father off, big time. Plus my brother didn’t have the best time management skills.

And me? I think I’m still figuring out what was going on with me. I think things are still happening. I’m still trying to figure myself out. Where am I? Where am I going? Who am I? Those are questions every teenager wrestles with. On top of that, there’s the changes that are going on with my body, the peer pressure, and the boys. Oh yes, the boys. And the hormones. At one point, my hormones were all out of whack. I had to take pills to keep things all balanced out and keep myself from getting anemic.

I know that it was extremely hard and still is extremely hard to keep my emotions on check. One moment I would be laughing, the next I would be in tears. One moment the sun was out, the next I would be depressed. My friends couldn’t understand it. I couldn’t understand it. All I could do was grit my teeth and wait for things to even out.

What the tempestuous emotions meant was more than simple ups and downs. I also got angry a lot easier, sometimes irrationally. My parents had trouble understanding why I had to get so angry so easily. The worse thing was that my anger could get violent. After years of watching my father and grandmother struggle, it was now my turn. This wasn’t a good thing… not at all. I had to learn how to deal with my anger, and deal with it in a way that wasn’t destructive to me or others.

The bad thing was the urge to inflict self-harm. I never understood why people even cut themselves when they were depressed or angry or helpless. It did nothing good. That was before I got the urges. It’s not something I can explain really well. I just know that it happened, and even though I knew perfectly well that it was wrong to hurt myself, I couldn’t seem to stop myself from doing it. It was as bad as cutting myself with a little pocketknife (no scars) to as little as scraping my skin with the sharp end of a paperclip. These episodes didn’t happen often, thank God. But when they did happen, it was as if someone else was in me. Something dark and dangerous. My anger.

It felt that I had to release it in some way. Or drown in my emotions. Or break from the strain.

You can always say no. There’s always a way out. You know that in your head. But when you’re angry, that emotion overrides all reason. You actually WANT to cut, even if you don’t want to cut. It’s confusing. You don’t want to be controlled.

One time I was angry at a friend of mine. Our friendship had degenerated to the point where he went out of his way to avoid me. I did my best, but he didn’t care. I was angry with him. I couldn’t talk to him. I still can’t talk to him, and I’m still angry at him. Oh, you won’t see it, but it’s there. Lurking under the surface. Just the teeniest drop will cause an explosion. Even if it’s my father speaking angrily to my sister, I will blow up. Until I can’t tell what I’m really angry at, my father, my friend, or me? I feel that I won’t be able to resolve this unless I go talk to him, but I can’t do that.

I wish there was something to do. For a while I entertained ideas of going up to him and slapping him or something silly like that. Just to get his attention.

However.

Even though it’s easier to throw things rather than talk, I still believe that we should make an effort to communicate. To talk things out instead of immediately shouting and destroying the furniture. Too few people do that nowadays. If we learned how to listen first and speak later, perhaps the world would be a better place.

If we did our best to work together to work on this problem, things would be better.

Also we have to understand that anger is not a bad thing. I was listening to a Christian radio station a few days ago on a driving lesson and the pastor stated that “anger is not a bad emotion. It’s something that we can use for good.” We don’t know how to use it for good, though. All we know is that it can destroy. And that’s what we do with it, whether we like it or not.

What can we do?

PART II ends here.

Memories from Camp

Picture from Flickr Creative Commons

One of my good friends recently announced that he and another good friend are engaged. The wedding will be sometime next year, God willing.

They met at a camp. It was a week long camp for youth. Christian. Anyone ever heard of Awana? The camp used to be Awana camp until it got served with a lawsuit (molestation charges, if I remember correctly. Pretty bad for a Christian camp) and had to shut down the camp. But then, the lawsuit didn’t say that they couldn’t operate under another name, so that’s what they did. They became RBGY camp. (Red Blue Green Yellow. Why? I don’t know.) They just no longer affiliated themselves or were run by people who got paid by the Awana organization.

But back when the camp was still Awana and not RBGY, my friends met each other. (I met them there, in fact.) They became great friends. Then they fell in love. And this past Saturday, on Memorial weekend, he proposed to her on top of Mt. Monadnock, which coincidentally is a short walk from the camp site.

She accepted.

A lot of things happened at that camp. That camp was the first chance for me, a homeschooled kid, to spread my wings and get to know people without having to be around my family. It was my first shot at building friendships, and while most of my new friends never really kept in touch with me, it was a great feeling. I remember getting a roommate who was terribly homesick for the first three days of camp. She cried easily. In spite of that, we were great friends and hung out a lot. I also remember the older kid who painted his nails black. The counselors made him borrow a friend’s nail polish remover.

I also remember not wanting to go home afterwards.

The signpost for the facility we used

And then I graduated to the high school kids’ section. My first year, I had two particularly pretty roommates. One of them changed her clothes every five minutes, and would carefully arrange her glossy dark brown hair just so, to give the appearance that it was just slightly messy and that she hadn’t just spent 15 minutes on her hair. The other one had a smooth, perfectly tanned body. In our room, she would pull up her T-shirt and tuck it up so that it would be a cropped shirt. So much against the dress code, but still… she could totally pull it off.

I remember another girl who wasn’t especially beautiful. I mean, she didn’t look like Gisele Bundchen or even one of those magazine cover people or even what people think is beautiful. But she was special. I think her name was Danielle. The boys liked her, and, being ignorant and all of 12 years old, I couldn’t understand them. One guy bashfully asked her to sit at the banquet (end of week, closest to dating you’ll ever get at a camp like that) with him. Danielle turned him down. Another guy asked. She turned him down, too. Then the son of the camp’s game director expressed an interest in her. He signed up a buddy to help him row a canoe into the middle of the lake, with her sitting in said canoe and making small talk with him. “So, how about it? Would you like to go sit in a canoe with me?” Danielle said yes. They went.

View from Mt. Monadnock's summit

The same girl was an accident magnet. She sprained her ankle (or something close to it), and then got bitten by a horsefly. Then along came bonfire night (spill your confessions, what God taught you, resolutions to do better, etc) and Danielle said, “This week at camp was really…” (at this point, a spark flew toward her face) “…ow.”

Good times.

Finally, I remember a particular year where everything seemed to go wrong. That was the year they ceased to be Awana and became RBGY. As a result, much of the management was new, including the game director. And the games were extremely competitive.

That year, there was a kid whose name I forgot. Shame, but he was really an awesome person once you got to know him, in spite of first impressions. But this kid had a lot to work through. I don’t remember the details, but he wasn’t an especially happy kid.

Anyway, people got mad at each other during the games (did I mention they were extremely competitive?), screamed at each other, and swore at each other. It was that bad. The said kid somehow found himself involved in a lot of it. (Let’s call him Elijah rather than “said kid.”) It’s not about whether it was Elijah’s fault or no, he just hadn’t learned how to control his temper. And… he didn’t like a lot of people and said so.

Then Elijah said, “I like Abby. She’s a cool person.”

Whoa. Me?

A lovely picture of Mt. Monadnock.

It was a year when emotions were fried, when people lost patience with each other. But the sharing during that last night… that was phenomenal. In spite of all the things that went wrong, there was still a strong sense of connection and belonging. People felt that God had touched them that week. And that that simple touch had brought them to their knees in awe.

Unfortunately, that was the last year I ever went to that camp. I wonder what happened to Elijah, even now. It’s been a while.

But those memories are going to stay with me for a good long time, possibly forever.

My engaged friends are going to remember it as the place where they first met each other.

What places evoke memories in you?

Gathering Blue

I first read The Giver during elementary school. My  mom made me read it. But I loved it, though I admit that I found it disturbing. A world that is perfect in every way… each family is happy and loving and good-looking. Yet, and I’m sure I remember correctly, all the deformed people are killed or sent away. There was no place for them in that futuristic paradise. My 9 year old mind couldn’t quite comprehend what the author wanted to say, except that the kind of thinking that the people in the novel had was bad. My 14 year old mind could have understood more fully.

But both minds always wondered what had happened to Jonas. Recently, I was on Absolute Write’s forums and someone mentioned that Lois Lowry had written two books to follow The Giver.

Whoa. Why didn’t anyone tell me? It would have saved a lot of worry and stress and sleepless nights wondering what had happened to poor Jonas!

Gathering Blue was published in 2000, about six years after the publication date of The Giver. The story runs along the same vein. Kira is a teenaged girl living in a futuristic village, a village that leaves the maimed or weak for dead in the wild. Her mother has just died, and her father had died years ago. “Taken by beasts,” they had always told her. To make matters worse, Kira had been born with a twisted leg. According to the rules of the village, she should have been left out to die when she was born. With her twisted leg, Kira will always be unable to work in the fields or contribute to society through hard labor. Or so they say.

Though the villagers allowed Kira to live, they openly despised her. Her only friend is a young boy named Matt.

After a disagreement with a villager woman, the Council of Guardians summons Kira to be judged. However, she realizes that they have plans for her. Her almost magical talent, that of weaving and creating patterns with a needle and thread, can be put to good use. But Kira finds that things aren’t as perfect as they outwardly seem. What she finds will change her world forever.

We actually don’t find out what happens to Jonas until the book after this one.

I found this book a quick read. Lowry crafted the story so well that I could see it in my mind. It’s deeply horrifying in parts, like the part where Kira finds that the Singer, a man deeply revered and honored in the village, has his legs chained together all the time. Whenever he walks, a trail of blood follows because of the chains digging into his flesh. However, Lowry emphasizes in the novel that in spite of the horribleness of such a society, hope exists.

At the same time, the writer raises some important concerns. What kind of world or society do we want to have? What kind of society are we building right now? If we’re not careful, we could head into a society where deformed infants are left to die and adults with broken limbs are put to death quietly. People who are unwanted are murdered. All in the pursuit of perfection — is that what we want?