Islam is a beautiful religion. One of its most wonderful aspects, for me, is the Call to Prayer. I’ve heard it in in Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Turkey, and the West Bank. Even for a Christian, it has a calming, centering effect.
I am completely remiss in not posting this last Sunday, when the holy month of Ramadan officially began. In the Islamic tradition, the month of Ramadan marks the month the Qur’an was revealed to the Prophet Muhamed. Ramadan is also the time when the doors of Paradise are open and the doors of Hell are closed, with the devils within chained up.
To all of my Muslim readers: Ramadan Mubarak. Kul ‘am wa enta bi-khair.
I’m off for a long hike in the woods. Every time I go for a hike I think of Joseph Fire Crow. I first heard of him through the “National Parks” series. So this song will be running through my mind as I’m scrabbling up rocks and hopping across streams.
It’s cool and rainy here in our nation’s capital and I’m looking at a pretty mellow, introspective Saturday. If you are, too, I’d recommend putting this song on.
England plays Uruguay today in the match that could see either side knocked out of the final. For England to lose today, it would mean the first time it got kicked out this early in more than fifty years. So to all of my followers in Blighty, and all England fans everywhere, here’s a bit of “there shall always be an England” courage for Hodgson’s men. Come on, you lads!
High school. High school, high school, high school. Wow.
Okay. Before we jump into the backstory here, let me just say that I am forced to post this song today because I am going to a very good friend’s wedding and therefore it has to be a love song. This week being Shame Week, I had no choice. And all men are Socrates. Okay. Moving on.
I really do love this song. It’s beautiful. But it’s like eating Frosted Flakes with maple syrup. It’s way, way, way too cloying and sweet and over the top. You know what time in your life is made for things that are over the top? Say it with me now: high school! Hooray! Sometimes in French class our teacher would play us French pop songs and we would have to transcribe the lyrics. It was a genius way of teaching French and it also gave high schoolers the greatest gift of all: ways to look effete and worldly at 15 years old. I thought I was soooo sophisticated for loving – and being able to sing along to – Francis Cabrel. Until I went to France on an orchestra exchange and my host family asked me what music I liked and I said, “oh, moi j’adore Francis Cabrel,” and they were like, “…vraiment?” And I was all like, “…merde.”
But I was undeterred! The angelic boy chorus that comes in around 1:30 gave me visions of eternal, perfect, heartbreaking love, because when you’re a teenager, love and pain are obvious synonyms. (Spoiler alert for any teenagers reading this: wrong! They’re antonyms. Trust me.) I put it on a mix I’m horrified to admit I called “Romance Mix” that I brought with me to college. I played it during my first relationship, and the breakup of my first relationship. It slowly fell out of rotation through my early and mid-20s as relationships became less of an item of necessity, like a purse, and more of an item of choice. Now, a decade on from university, I kind of like its treacly intensity. The older you get, irony becomes lame and earnestness is more appealing. Even if whatever is earnest is also just a tad cloying
Wood varnish, modern dance, and New York City. Those are the three things that come to mind when I hear this.
Wood varnish: I am seven. My mom refinished…man. I lost count of the number of things she refinished in the house I grew up in. Our beautiful old upright piano, tables, chairs. Not to mention all of the other home improvement projects she had going on. A Michael Jones cassette was part of the music rotation she would put on the paint-splattered radio-tape player that kept her company when the fumes were too strong for a kid to deal with. Michael Jones was soon supplanted by Paul Simon’s “Graceland,” and I took “Pianoscapes” for myself. It heavily influenced my own early compositions. Don’t get me wrong – this music isn’t that great. But what it did do for a little kid writing her own stuff was make it okay to experiment with melodic changes, time signature changes, and rhythmic changes. It also made it okay to write “songs” that were more than ten minutes long. You’re welcome, neighbors.
Modern dance: I am ten. I took a bunch of different styles of dance when I was a kid but modern dance was the only one that I really got into because – surprise! – there aren’t a whole lot of rules. Perfect. One homework assignment was to create our own dance and set it to music. The person who came up with the most popular dance (decided by a very public vote) would choreograph a whole group routine. I used “Tapestry.” I did not win.
New York City: I am thirteen. For my thirteenth birthday, I got to go to New York City and visit my godmother. She lived by the courthouse in Manhattan and worked in the fashion industry. She was (and still is), very tall and very glamorous. She took me shopping to buy my very first make-up (Clinique – what’s up). She bought me my first pair of black cigarette pants. We ate escargot and went to the theater. It was incredible. We also went to a bookstore that had a CD section and I bought the CD version of the now six-year-old cassette tape. I put it on her CD player when we got back to her enormous apartment and I remember walking around her very modernist two-bedroom, looking at the city lights glowing in the dark, with this piece pouring out of the speakers. That’s a very happy memory.
I recently got a few boxes delivered from a storage unit I had more or less forgotten I had. One of them had photos in it. It was marked, “Photos.” Another had scratch-and-sniff stickers in a jewelry box, an orange stopwatch in a plastic bag with some loose Euro coins, and approximately seven different guidebooks of Washington, D.C. It was marked, “Random.” The third box was marked “DO NOT PUT ANYTHING ON TOP OF THIS BOX” and was filled with all of my old CD binders dating back to senior year of high school. Oh man. This was going to take some time.
Leafing through page after page of CDs was way more intense that looking at old snapshots of myself and my degenerate college friends. It was a tour of my innermost thoughts and – worst – tastes and preferences. “Oh Christ” was a common thought that sprang to mind every three or four page-turns. Talking about this with some friends over beers last week, it became clear that they – and therefore the entire universe of still-alive humans – have music that they still love but are too ashamed to tell people about.
I am not ashamed. I am going to air my dirty musical laundry for all to see. Welcome, dear readers, to Shame Week. We begin our tour with the odd little British group The Dream Academy, whose song “Life In A Northern Town” is a nice pre-chewed bite of moodiness, punctuated by a howlingly out of place “African”-style chant in the chorus. Oh, and there’s an oboe. Okay.
It can take a long, long, long time to figure things out. The sermon in church this Sunday*, preached by the absolutely marvelous Stan Fornea, talked about this at length. Specifically the idea of mystery, and how we as Christians, and American Christians to boot, are problem-solvers: we don’t like dealing with the unknown. We like certainty and facts. We apply this to the religious sphere by attributing things to God that aren’t really God’s problem. As hard as it is to swallow, some stuff might just be completely random.
I think this is absolutely maddening and also delightfully freeing. To not have to ascribe meaning to a screw-up, a bad day, a good day, a human interaction, any of it – to not have to dig around in the dirt for some ultimate purpose – means we can throw up our hands, say “aw the hell with it,” and try again. Or not! Devoid of the suffocatingly cloying “everything happens for a reason” maxim, a fluke is just a fluke. You’re not destined for anything. We aren’t forced to give a damn. It’s kind of great.
“How come I end up where I’ve started? How come I end up where I went wrong?”
Who knows. But you get to decide whether, and how, you want to figure it out.
*Yeah, it says Luis Leon; it’s Rev. Fornea. Trust me. Also – you’ll have to trust me on this too – Rev. Fornea preached without notes. He’s amazing.
I know. It’s the first work day after a long weekend. We’ll get through it together. Throw your shoulders back and march into the office with vigor and aplomb. Make up a story about how you got that sunburn that’s even better than the truth. No one will believe you actually went paddle-boating anyway.
I do love a good 90s pop throwback sound. I also love a three day weekend after a long period of suck. And I especially love being able to wander around D.C. with my man, watch movies, hang out with friends, and do absolutely nothing of any value. So, Saturday. Man am I big fan of Saturday.
The Daily Tune-Up 