Method of Modern Love.

Walking down the street, plugged into my iPod, Hall & Oates:

Me: [singing, and none too quietly]  ♩♪ ♪♫  M-E-T-H-O . . .
  
Guy, working in his yard, deadheading dandelions. Looks up.

Me: [                   ] [walking on, looking neither right nor left]

Guy, looks back down at his dandelions. Keeps snapping off their nimbusy heads.

Me: [fifteen, twenty yards away, not looking back] . . . -O-F-L-O-V-E, 

It's a method of modern love.  ♩♪ ♪♫

--because singing blue-eyed soul in the streets is the Constitutional right of every American.

I love music.

Here is one of my new favorite things:

I arrive at school about 7:30 a.m., so that I have a full two hours plus a little before my first class to get everything sorted: class plan solidified, poems responded to, etc. My office is a good office, but it's got no windows. So often I go over to the student center with my books and papers, and plug into some music. You know, like the kids do, creating my own sonic atmosphere that shuts out most of the bustle and the music playing on the soundsystem. It's like being in a little world of my own, one that's part of everyone else's world, but with better music, and lots of light.

This week I have been listening again to Sufjan Stevens' The Age of Adz.  It is brilliant. I was a late listener to Illinoise, which I also find to be brilliant. This is, as everyone probably now knows, a complete change of direction for Stevens, sonically and lyrically and in pretty much every way you can't think of. I can't quite get over how good it is, and how much better it gets once you accept it on its own terms.

"I Walked" is a song from one partner in a failed romance to another:

Lover, will you look at me now?
I'm already dead to you 
But I'm inclined to explain 
To you what I could not before

The song has an utterly gorgeous melodic line. I happen to know that, in a big busy room, when you're wearing headphones and so is practically everyone else, you can sing along softly and no one will call you on it.
 

"I Want to Be Well" is both plaintive and fierce:

Illness likes to prey upon the lonely, prey upon the lonely
Wave goodbye, oh, I would rather be, but I would rather be fine

I want to be well, I want to be well
I want to be well, I want to be well




Just one more song I found myself singing along with--"Get Real Get Right":

I know I've caused you trouble 
I know I've caused you pain 
But I must do the right thing
I must do myself a favor and get real
Get right with the Lord

This story gives a pretty good window into the recording.

If you haven't already given this album a listen, you can hear it all the usual places...but make sure you give it more than one chance. It will grow on you.

(p.s. blogged every day in January, in case you're keeping track.)

Conversation with singing son.

me: Hi! my friend Ann said she saw you today at the Legislature--

  I'm so sorry I missed that!

  what did you sing?

9:51 PM Isaac: you can see that on line or hear a bad recording anyway

 me: yay! what did you sing?

9:52 PM Isaac: mostly snoop dogg covers

 me: awesome.

9:54 PM Isaac: we sang the national anthem prayer of the children Battle hymn of the republic and utah man but not bob dylan as per my incessant requests. or snoop dog-- my requests were not so incessant for the dogg

9:55 PM me: my friend Ann said you guyz were jaw-droppingly good.

 Isaac: yeah well drop your jaw to this

  http://recordings.le.state.ut.us/mp3/House/rhouse-0126090.mp3

 Isaac: you will hear Russel M. Praying and Former Speaker Bumbling

  we are after that

 me: Is Bumbling his name? Mr. Bumbling?

  The Honorable Bumbling?

9:58 PM because that would be awesome.

 Isaac: no it is Cxxxxx as in I am a doof Gxxx Cxxxxx

 me: The Honorable Gxxx "Bumbling" "I Am a Doof" Cxxxxx, then. Great.

9:59 PM Thank you for the link! I am going to post it on my blog, btw.

 

10:04 P




M    Isaac: What are you posting that I ain't got no status or that I sang for the lechislatyour

 me: lechislatyour

  It's cool, man.

10:05 PM Isaac: That is how I say it now it seems to fit them better.

  it sounds like leach or lech or something

 me: I might use that spelling, also--it's good.

10:06 PM Isaac: it is like they are going to lech your is sooner or later

 me: Excellent analysis.

  

Sing.

Today, I went to the headquarters of Short Stuff, aka, an elementary school.  Singing Son asked me to accompany his Honor Choir at the holiday assembly.  

The whole event was the kind of thing that could cheer a person up immensely, even on a morning when a massive winter storm was a-brewin'.  Here are some of the reasons:

• The kids, of all ages, are pretty cute when they sing, even the ones that think singing isn't cool.
• A mix of holiday and world and popular music.
• One of the best set of actions to go with "The Twelve Days of Christmas" that I have ever seen.
• The principal wore both a Santa hat and a red Hawaiian shirt.
• Way fun to see Singing Son in action:

Greeting song from lisab on Vimeo.

[the first part is a Senegalese greeting song, from children to their elders; the second is a song from India.]