Birthday Cards

Albums

Calexico recently released a new album, called Carried to Dust. I recently acquired it and it is a very musically diverse, pleasant album.

I also have been spinning The Fleet Foxes recently. The track "White Winter Hymnal" is dangerously catchy.

TV on the Radio just released a new album, Dear Science. I have not listened to it thoroughly yet, but what I have heard might actually deserve the rave reviews this album is getting.

Hipster: the Anti-Culture?

Adbuster magazine recently featured an article called Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization. Well worth the read. The writer's concluding paragraph is especially insightful:

"We are a lost generation, desperately clinging to anything that feels real, but too afraid to become it ourselves. We are a defeated generation, resigned to the hypocrisy of those before us, who once sang songs of rebellion and now sell them back to us. We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous things, destroyed by the vapidity that surrounds us. The hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new. "

21

I can now:

Buy alcohol (legally)

Rent a car in some states

Gamble (legally)

Vote if for some unforeseen reason the XXVI Amendment is overturned.

My first act in celebration will be... taking a Greek exam at 9:00 AM.

Nihilism never sounded so good

Today I was reflecting on how many of my favorite lines in my favorite songs are completely contrary to what I believe. For example:

In the down tempo acoustic ballad "Amie", Irish troubadour Damien Rice wails,

"Something unusual, something strange,
Comes from nothing at all
But I'm not a miracle
And you're not a saint
Just another soldier
On a road to nowhere."

Yet Rice is unable to fully commit to this declaration, asking "Amie" to:

"Tell it like you still believe
That the end of the century
Brings a change for you and me"

This theme is certainly nothing new in music, as Simon and Garfunkal had already espoused linguistic deconstructionism in the early sixties with their number one hit "The Sound of Silence". In this beautiful song, the singer laments:

"In the naked light, I saw
ten thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening.
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dare disturb the sound of silence."

Here Garfunkel gives a haunting voice to Simon's dark conclusion: ultimately human's are incapable of truly communicating with each other.

Perhaps the logical culmination of postmodern philosophy is best seen in the work of the Argentine-Swede post-classical guitarist Jose Gonzalez. In "Cycling Trivialities" the song writer declares:

"Don't know which way to turn.
Every trifle becoming big concerns.
All this time you were chasing dreams,
without knowing what you wanted them to mean.

So how's it gonna be.
When it all comes down you're cycling trivialities. "

Later in the song, Gonzalez is led to conclude:

"Who cares in a hundred years from now.
All the small steps, all your shitty clouds.
Who cares in a hundred years from now.
Who'll remember all the players.
Who'll remember all the clowns."

The song concludes with several minutes of a single repeating musical phrase, with subtle variations occurring randomly- essentially a musical incarnation of naturalistic nihilism.

Unrelated Photographs From the Past Week

Toms

As an early birthday gift from my parents, I just purchased this pair of Toms. The cool thing about this company is not just their fashionable footwear but the fact that for every pair of shoes purchased they donate a pair of Toms to a child in a developing nation. Looking hip never felt so good.

Picture below are a bunch of South African children who received free shoes through this program!

Weather Report

Due to damage from winds reaching 80 mph, the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary where I live and study is without power, possibly for the remainder of the week. As an R.A. in the dormitories, I will be roughing it out with the students who do not have family close enough to go home.

Unfortunately, three beautiful, old trees were knocked over by the gusts, but thankfully no buildings on campus were damaged.

Class has been canceled for the entire week. Hopefully I can use this time to get caught up... or at least less behind.

Guest Blogger at Sojourn Music

Today I am the contributing writer for Guest Blogger week at Sojourn Music.

You can read my post here.

An Unsuspecting Smile

It's been almost two years since the release of "Brother, Sister", but I'm amazed with Aaron Weiss' lyrics. (cf. "I'm still Waiting To Meet a Girl like my Mom who's closer to my age")

Take for instance the song "in a Sweater Poorly Knit":

"You're a door-without-a-key, a field-without-a-fence.
You made a holy fool of me and I've thanked you ever since.
if she comes circling back we'll end where we'd begun
like two pennies on the train track the train crushed into one

or if I'm a crown without a king, if I'm a broken open seed
If I come without a thing, then I come with all I need"


Gosh I wish I had written that.