quote-of-the-day

"I would say that music is the easiest means in which to express, but since words are my talent, I must try to express clumsily in words what the pure music would have done better."
--William Faulkner

"michael meets mozart"

They make some really cool music:



A friend sent me a link to another of theirs, just the piano, called Song for Sara and so that's how I found this one. Definitely worth checking out, especially if you like the piano.

quote-of-the-day

This from rereading Perelandra this past week:

"As he stood looking down on her, what was most with him was an intense and orphaned longing that he might, if only for once, have seen the great Mother of his own race thus, in her innocence and splendor. 'Other things, other blessings, other glories,' he murmured. 'But never that. Never in all worlds, that. God can make good use of all that happens. But the loss is real."

And this (instrumental), from one of the soundtracks I love:



They both remind me of the other.

more language: american dream

Sort of in the same vein as the post about Turkish. This song, actually, to me is really sad. A lot of the Romanian music I like usually is. Just as an aside, for this reason I like good hiphop, I like how it's political, its observations of the state of things, its social commentary. True for this as well.

Anyway, here are some verses and their translations from the song below. (Full lyrics here.)

Acum nu te mai duci la munca, te duci la job
You don't go to work anymore, you go to the job

Nu mai avem cartiere naspa, avem ghetou
Raperii au flow, sunt underground yo
Totul este cool, nimic nu e misto
We don't have crappy neighborhoods anymore, we have the ghetto
Rappers have flow, they're underground, yo
Everything is cool, nothing's misto*

Tre' sa fii in trend, altfel nu e de gluma
"Is this the life" nu suna asa bine-n romana

You gotta be in trend, otherwise (?)
'Is this the life' doesn't sound as good in Romanian

So if you go through both you see that half the song is English (if a little bit Romanianized) and so it is with how people talk. I mean, I suppose it's exaggerated if you're talking about regular conversation with young people. But there are so many borrowed words that you really can talk like this. And is it really Romanian? Some kind of weird hybrid?

I like to watch how languages evolve, I like to think about how English is changing. It's fun, it's interesting. But I'll admit that the Romanian in this song is not pretty the way the language normally is. Whether it's really changing that much, I have no idea. The sixteen-year-old I share a room with doesn't talk like this (although she doesn't know English either). Nor do most people I know.

But then I don't think that's really the entire point of the song. And there's a ton that could be said about it. Maybe I'll write about that soon... Anyway, a large part seems to be summed up here:

I can be what I want to be
Losing my dignity**
Cause I gotta lot of life in me
Let me live my American dream

*from what I understand, misto actually comes from the language Gypsies speak?
**sounds more like they're saying vanity to me, but all the lyrics I read say dignity

the show goes on

Gonna be gone for the next week, a glorious week without internet full of clean air and people I like. And after that, I'll come back to Bucuresti, but then it's gone again and so for about the next month I won't be around all that much but I'm planning to post when I can. In the meantime, I can't stop listening to this song (that second verse--''one in the air for...!'' thanks to a lovely friend for recommending it):

papadió

Lyrics in English:

The memory is lost, it all starts all over again
I forget the stone, and turn back to stumble,
Fear, selfishness, racial prejudice
And there's always gonna be a story to justify it

That we're different, I'm not objecting to that
I respect your beliefs, your way of thinking
But I'm sure of one thing and you can't deny it
That we are all children of the same Dad

Chorus
Who gives me life?
Papadio (Papa = dad, dio=gave--I'll let you come to your own conclusions)
Who blesses me?
Papadio
Who gives me the moon?
Papadio
Good fortune?
Papadio

That money is really good, I'm not gonna deny it
And that everybody likes it is pure truth
But it doesn't compare to your way of love
And there are things in life that can't be compared

They want to forget morality
[next line--not sure]
We go back again
To what a little memory would have saved us from

Chorus

I find you in a smile and in the eyes of my children
In the sunrise and in the cry or a friend
The body of a woman that makes me say your name
And the song of my people that makes me cry out, ay hombre

The end of war
Papadio
Peace in my land
Papadio
My shield and my spear
Papadio
All my hope
Papadio

Don't dwell on the things that can hurt you
[this line, not sure']
It's better to keep your mind on things here
Where it can still be fixed
That a little bit of love could save us.

(p.s. I tend to translate clumsily and there are a lot of expressions I'm just not familiar with so if you speak/understand Spanish, feel free to correct me or let me know a better way to say it. Thanks!)

cele doua cuvinte

A few weeks ago this song was introduced to me (it's in Romanian, but the video below has English subtitles although you should really click this version as well, because that actual music video is pretty funny). I put it in my favorites on youtube and so since I'm usually listening to those songs on shuffle while I'm working on stuff, I've heard it a bunch of times. It's pretty catchy.



So being the language nerd that I am (and having this song stuck in my head pretty frequently), I decided to write some new lyrics to it while keeping some of the old. Forgive the bad grammar. And the rough translation. I'm still learning.

Sunt femeie, da eu sunt complicat
Nu sunt deloc simplu; ce-am in minte am s-in gura
Spun deschis tot ce gandesc, tot timpul
[the next three lines aren't finished]
[this one representing the second line]
[and the third--easier to follow along?]

Refren: Si sa stii ca eu
Eu incerc dar nu prea reusesc
Cred ca nu e specific femeiesc
Totusi, o sa-ncerc sa iti spun... [nimic! nothing! silence! aha]

Sunt femeie, nu sunt genetic structurat
Sa nu spun nimic. Adevarat.
Si sunt convins ca le fel s-a-ntamplat
Si cu aia dinaintea mea
Toti stramosii mei au avut de cusut, de spalat, de gatit
Puisor si varza, si mamaliga, numai cu cainele le-au vorbit
Pe scurt, la sfarsitul zilei: foarte multe cuvinte

Refren

Si nu-inteleg de ce nu-mi acorzi credit nici macar cat un TV
Care sa-l asculti chiar daca esti obosit
Pe bune, nu stii ce vrei. E suficiente sa te uite in ochii mei.

Refren

In the end: Bah, nu pot!! Buna, ce mai faci? Eu sunt bine, am mers la... ecc.

English version (rough):
I'm female, yes I'm complicated
I'm not at all simple; what's in my mind is in my mouth too
I speak openly about everything I think, all the time
[line one]
[line two]
[line three.. don't have them in english either]

Refrain
And you know that I
I try but I don't really succeed
I don't think it's specifically female (btw this line I have a hard time translating.. not so sure)
However, I'll try to say: [nothing! silence!]

I'm female, I'm not genetically structured
To not say anything. Truth!
And I'm convinced the same happened
With those before me (again not sure about the last two lines)
All my ancestors had to sew, to clean, to cook
Chicken and cabbage and mamaliga, with only the dog to talk to!
In short: there are so many words in my head!

Refrain

And I don't understand why you don't even give me as much credit as a TV
Which you'll listen to even if you're tired
Really, you don't know what you want! It's enough to look in my eyes.

Refrain

In the end: I can't! Heeeey, what's up? I'm good, today I went... etc.


Hope you have as much fun with this as I'm having!

hey-o, galileo

The other day at work we spent the nearly all eight hours filing in the conference room, the radio playing the whole time. I'll admit I don't listen to the radio all that much--not because I'm picky about what I'll listen to but just because not having a car means the only music I listen to is on my computer--and so I don't think I'd heard any of the songs before. There was one that kept playing and I swore it was saying 'hey-o, Galileo!' and of course the actual lyrics were something entirely different, something like 'gotta let go,' but I liked my version and I kept singing it that way and the whole thing reminded me so much of high school I don't think I spent an hour of those eight in that room.

My sophomore and junior years the bus came to pick my neighbor Crazy Amy and me up at maybe 6:10 in the morning. I remember I'd head over to her house at a quarter till and we'd sit in her living room and watch MTV or VH1 while she got ready, switching the channel back to the one it was at before she turned it on so she wouldn't get caught having watched it (her mother would be gone in the mornings and I can't remember a time she wasn't grounded).

In the winter it would still be completely dark out that early so after we got ready we'd stand at the end of the driveway in the dark, just talking, looking up at a whole sky still spread out with stars, no sign of morning. Those bus rides were usually quiet before the sun came up, a sleepy, humming kind of quiet. And Amy and I were so different in so many ways but the tensions of growing up in ways that filled that silence to the very brim and no matter what people said, no matter how often they told me to spend my time with people who weren't in trouble, we were the same. We were clasped together by it.

She loved music, I remember. She introduced me to Guns N' Roses and Mötley Crüe and other bands that made the naysayers crazy. Somewhere around that time she shaved the bottom half of her hair and would alternate dying the top part pink and black. And her family brought me to Florida with them twice, trips that opened my eyes to the possibility of a world outside that I could be a part of, that I could learn.

I think about roots and I think about her and her music and how, sometimes on those dark mornings, our breath coming out like stars washed in streetlights a quarter mile away, she'd talk about her mom and I'd talk about mine. We didn't understand but it helped to say it, to stand on the gravel and listen to each other shift, waiting for the light to come out, hoping then we'd be able to see. Sometimes on the bus I'd borrow her cd player and while the whole sky lit up orange, fast wild sunrises the bus could never keep up with, I'd realize she'd taught me words to the songs that were all wrong. She'd change them when she'd write them out. And I understand now.

dumbledore and jesus

I spent the other night listening to the soundtrack from the sixth Harry Potter. It really has some amazing tracks. Sara Cafe and I watched a documentary about JKRowling and it's strange to me because in some ways I want to shake the woman but in others I fully relate. She writes idealized father figures. Those usually come out in older brothers for me.

It's interesting to me how her big theme is that loving people is the most powerful thing, how love will triump in the end of it all. Theologically this is interesting in the sense of God's truths shining through whether people give recognition to him or not, although I think she tends to be a hair off, that good and evil in people aren't counterbalanced, aren't like yin and yang.

But theology aside, I love the fact that love wins, that Harry wins, that there is hope for good things. After rewatching the sixth movie I went back and reread something I wrote about the fear in a specific part of the movie and everything hanging in the balance, the fact that ''good'' might not triumph. I told the Colombian roommate that was how I imagined the disciples must have felt after Jesus died. This guy who was their hope, who they didn't really understand but must have at least hoped he was really God--and then he dies. It's like when Dumbledore dies (or when Gandalf does). You think, this wasn't supposed to happen this way. And the uncertainty--this could really all fail, could all be lost. Having Dumbledore's funeral or Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, wrapping Jesus' body in myrrh and aloe and linens.

There is a difference--God has already won. But something in me, perhaps the writer side of me, comes abck to this moment where everything is unsure and so very human. Jesus seems more personal to me in no other part of the Bible than this, and what it means I'm not sure, but the music during these parts knocks me over. Something in me knows it--I don't know. This track--Inferi in the Firestorm--there is hope, but you don't know what will happen. (The part I'm talking about starts at around 1:08). (Also, this is a slightly better version because it's an actual clip but I can't embed it...)



If you clicked the video clip version, you'll have noticed that Dumbledore parts the fire like Moses. Pretty epic, even if is Harry Potter. I'm sure there are all sorts of things like that you can get into, but first, let me just say: music like this just gets me. Vast, reaching music. And when you pair it with that moment when you don't know yet, when people are fighting for good and for hope and you just want so badly for good--well, this is why I'm endlessly sentimental or literay romantic or whatever you call it. Big, epic stuff just gets me. But I do think that this goes along with that idea of story, of living good stories. I don't mean melodrama and constant crisis. I mean something like doing good (not well), living out your part in that story that's way bigger than you are.

interesting

"My eyes are small but they have seen the beauty of enormous things."
--David Crowder

&

"I am so small I can barely be seen. How can this great love be inside me? Look at your eyes. They are small, but they see enormous things."
--Rumi


I see Mr. Crowder has been reading Rumi. I am impressed.

"i can ride my bike with no handlebars"

Let me tell you, I am sore. It's Spring again, or at least it feels like it outside, which means my body wakes back up and starts moving around again and my heart has not been thanking me for the three-ish months of hibernation. But in the last two days I've ridden my bike about ten miles and threw some frisbee for about an hour, none of which is much at all, generally, but it's good to move again.

I'm sort of split-fence when it comes to working out. I used to be a runner and this time four years ago I could run a good eight or nine miles without thinking twice, but except when I've got someone pushing me, I don't really like working out or running for the sake of doing so. If it's something I'm doing because I'm doing something else physical--soccer, hiking, ultimate, etc.--then bring it on. I just get bored by doing it to do it.

Biking is different though. I grew up riding my bike all the time, spending hours and hours of my day riding with my brother, my neighbor, whoever, just riding all day and turning brown and getting into all kinds of trouble. And so if I could spend my day riding around town now--well, no complaints. My car is currently out of commission, at least legally, and while I can drive it, it's so unsafe that I decided to go ahead and make the jump to the bike. So I rode my bike to work today and it's not a bad ride at all, only two miles, and as much as I thought it would kill me to do it so soon after waking up, it was nice.

The plan for the summer includes a lot of bike riding. If I get the Link job, I'm gonna work a less than I normally do this summer and, apart from fund raising, I'm hoping to get to go to the beach a good amount. Ride down there with a couple of friends a couple times a week. What's that?--to work twice and to the beach twice--a good twenty-four miles a week? Anyway. I'm just ready to run around outside and do handstands and play volleyball or pick-up soccer or play tag on the beach on a night where the moon is huge and the water is still like a lake and we're splashing into the water, hiding underneath, to keep from being tagged it.

It's funny, the song Handlebars by Flobots just started playing. The first time I heard it I was in Colombia and it seemed so random and crazy in the middle of all the Spanish that I thought it was the most hilarious thing I'd ever heard and then I heard it again when I came back to the States and I realized it was incredible. Deeper meanings aside, though, we used to do that, ride our bikes with no handlebars. We used to ride standing up on them (feet on the pedals, knees holding on to the seat, hands in the air... like you just don't care!).

Aaaaand, speaking of human ingenuity, I've got to rig up a basket for my bike out of the inside cardboard of two paper rolls and some rubberbands and duct tape, so on that note--happy Wednesday!

here's my heart / thankful

Tonight was amazing, and God is so good. I'll tell you what. I love my church. And, and oh goodness, well I don't even know how to start this blog so I'm just gonna kind of go for it.

First, there was an amazing quote about giving thanks and Thanksgiving by Abraham Lincoln that Pastor Jeff read at church tonight and I've looked for the last twenty or so minutes and I can't find one that includes all of what was read, but if I can put that up later, I will. And I realized that the lyrics to Come Thou Fount are incredible. He was talking about how we go to God with things and ask him to come through and then he does and then later we do it again and he comes through again, and that goes on and sometimes we forget to really thank God for all the things he does in our lives, all the ways he blesses us.

He referenced a pretty cool place in 1 Samuel (7:2-17) where the Israelites have been really comfortable with all the ways God has blessed them and start to turn away from him and they're worshiping these idols and all of that. And Samuel comes in and says that if they're really going to return to the Lord with all their hearts, they can't serve the other gods anymore, they can only serve him. So they do that and all gather together at Mizpah to worship him and right around that time the Philistines decide they're coming after them again and long story short, Samuel's praying for them, he doesn't even stop, and God saves them in a crazy way. So after that, Samuel says that they should remember that moment, and so they build a monument to acknowledge and thank God for what he did for them.

So I tend to swing back and forth on the things. This is true in general, but especially so in God stuff, and slowly I'm becoming more consistent. One of the ways I'm still trying to get there is being thankful for the things he does for me. If I think about stuff, I'll be thankful in that moment, but I'm not thankful all the time, and I'll go whole stretches without saying, look at these things you have done for me, God! Thank you for blessing me and growing me and teaching me and bringing me closer to you all the time. One of my favorite verses, Psalm 30:11-12, which I put up the other day, says:

You tuurned my wailing into dancing;
you removed my sackcloth and clothed
me with joy,
that my heart may sing to you and not be
silent.
Oh Lord my God, I wil give you thanks
forever.

Oh Lord my God, I will give you thanks forever. Forever. Man. I love that, and the thing is, I totally want that. I want to be forever thanking my God.

We came home after church, Alicia and I and our friends Matt and Chris, and we were intending to pray about the evangelism thing we've got coming up (this Thursday! yikes! so close!) and we ended up having this crazy amazing talk about the message, talking about all the things God has done in our lives. And he has done so much. I was going to do a post over Thanksgiving, because I've never actually done one and for various other reasons, the obligatory I-am-thankful-for post, and I just ended up not doing it. The driving home post was forefront, but I'm wondering now if it's not too late.
Lately, I feel like God's been doing a lot of pointing out places in me in which he could be bigger, he could be better glorified. There's been a lot of reevaluating and reorganizing and a lot of putting a-shaped things through b-shaped places, and it'd go on way too long to get into now, but it's pretty awesome. It's hard, but it's good, it's God. And I'm so thankful for it.

There's a ton more I'm thinking about. There are the big things, the things where he's done the life-changing things, and in those places I've learned some of who he is, how he is. He's my rescuer, my father. He's hope for new life, redemption, and he's endlessly, infinitely good. And I'm learning more now about his grace, about how he is graceful, and it won't come easily but it is coming, and I'm understanding more, seeing more.

Whatever this is, I am thankful for it, and even if I'm still getting there, learning and growing and all of that, God is consistent and he's bringing me more and more toward him, and that's certainly something to be thankful for.


Come, thou Fount of every blessing,
tune my heart to sing thy grace;
streams of mercy, never ceasing,
call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I'm fixed upon it,
mount of thy redeeming love...
O to grace how great a debtor
daily I'm constrained to be!
thy goodness, like a fetter,
bind my wandering heart to thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
prone to leave the God I love;
here's my heart, O take and seal it,
seal it for thy courts above.
(from Come Thou Fount)

la historia de juan

about loving music

First things first: I think I'm gonna stop writing these posts late at night in an effort to be less emo.

That said, here's what's on the mind: music. I'm not really one of those people who knows a ton about music. I'm pretty easy to please, and although my favorite kinds are movie music and chill music, like they say, I'll listen to almost anything. I grew up listening to country with my neighbors and later, when I was a little older, just regular top forty. I always joke that I'm not very cultured, and while it's less true now I suppose, my brother and I didn't grow up in a way that would turn us into young adults with knowledge of wines and art, the Louvre and literature and music, good music.

And of course, what's good music, anyway? Well I don't know, how would I know? So following my half joke that I'm uncultured, I tell my friends to teach me, to show me music. So before I tell you the rest of this, first I want to say that one of my favorite things is to listen to people talk about what they're passionate about. I think it's, in part, just because I get really excited about things and then love it when other people do too, and also because when I'm feeling awkward or not sure what to talk about, the easiest thing for me to do is to get the other person talking about what they care about, because people really love to do that and it makes it easier for me when I need it to be.

So getting my friends to share their music with me was two-fold. On the one hand I wouldn't be the kid who didn't know All You Need Is Love is by the Beatles, and on the other I'd get to know about the things that other people really love which is always interesting and oftentimes serves to take the pressure off me.

And since then, I've learned so much about music. And here's the thing. It hasn't just been in one genre. I'll tell you something that's a pet peeve of mine and I hope it isn't pretentious and I hope I'm not that way about books, but I hate when people profess to love something, and we'll use music as the example, who are really into music, but all they love is screamo. All they care about and listen to and talk about and say is good is this one type of music, and to that I say, you don't love music, you love this type of music. Just like people who only love literary books don't love books, they love a certain type of literature. Maybe love is the wrong word for this. I think it is. What I'm talking about specifically is a friend of mine who will listen to any type of music as long as it's music, and he may not like it, but he can appreciate it. He recognizes the things that are good in it. He doesn't love metal or bluegrass exclusively, but he loves music and he appreciates it.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this from here, but tonight I listened to Porcupine Tree. Something I never ever in a million years would have listened to on my own, a band I've heard of kind of off and on for a little less than a year, but have never taken any initiative with at all. And I really liked some of it. Not all of it--not that I disliked any of it, but there were definitely parts that struck me more than others. And on top of that, this particular album came with a book of photography and I got goosebumps looking through it. I'll tell you what. You never really know. I'm learning to listen better, to people I mean, and it's funny how it works out when the vehicle is already your ears.

I could list the bands I've been introduced to in the last year or so, the music I've come to love, to appreciate, and the music I haven't. I love music, but I don't think I'll ever be one of those people who really loves music, who knows a lot about bands and different genres and decades and all of that. I just like to sit back and feel it, and words are my thing anyway, the first thing I ever began collecting and listening to and trying to create with.

And I'm learning that listening isn't just giving people the space to talk or share the things they love, but it's meeting in what's shared, something like taking it by the hand. And when you let go sometimes you find, there in your own hand, you've come away with your own piece of what they love.