Make You Sing: Peter Bradley Adams

Posted by yseult on Feb 4, 2010 in Soulfood

I don’t know about you, but I personally am finding myself in a bit of a starve for good songwriter music at the moment. There really isn’t a lot of good albums about to come out (apart from the new Peter Gabriel one which I can’t wait to listen to), or that have graced us this winter. Sure, Brandi Carlile has released her long-awaited album just a couple of months ago and Sivert Hoyem has also a new album out that I like. But, I find myself delving deeper and deeper into the shuffle function of iTunes in order to discover older music that I haven’t listened to in a while.

Obviously, I ran across Eastmountainsouth sooner or later, since they keep being bumped to my shuffle list. I had already covered the group as a true songwriter jewel, but seeing as their only album never had a sequel and it doesn’t look like they ever will do music together again, I thought about posting a follow-up to Peter Bradley Adams, the brains and voice behind Eastmountainsouth.

Since 2001, he has released several albums with various female singers to contrast his ‘the dreamy-voiced Adams’ as The Boston Globe called him. Gather Up (2006), Leavetaking (2008) and the latest album Traces (2009) all hold more or less the same layered quality of harmony that was so typical for Eastmountainsouth and that drew so many in.

Out of the three I feel like Traces – a fitting title – has come back to those roots in a way that closes the circle while giving this artist more maturity and depth, even if I wouldn’t have thought it possible. There is a certain calm quality about the construction of his songs and the sound. ‘Even’, ‘polished’, are words that springs to mind, and ‘touching’ another one.

In May 2009, “Leavetaking” the IAP awarded Peter Bradley Adams IAP’s the award “Best CD’s of 2008″ for Best Singer-Songwriter-Male.

Even so, with awards and even with steady releases, Adams has never truly made it into the charts or has been featured in popular TV Series (usually a good way to get people to notice you).
This circumstance earns him a special entry in my series. I hope you enjoy.

The Official ‘The World’s Gone Mad’-Rant: Farmville

Posted by yseult on Feb 2, 2010 in Issues

I can assure you all or disappoint everyone right here: this will not be an article about Farmville. But what this will be an article about the problem that the new social media can bring to your immediate relations. Boring, right?

Indulge me for a moment, it might be worth your while. Maybe it’ll irate you to read what follows, maybe it will give you something to think about. Your pick.

Web 2.0 was supposed to bring us all closer together. Fair enough. With Facebook and Twitter and co. everyone has found their little niche in which the investment that it takes to stay in touch with people has been minimised in order to maximise the immediate access to everyone. You don’t have to actually talk to someone to know that they’re still alive and actually doing ok. Just look at their Facebook activities or have a quick look at their latest tweets. All good. No need for an intervention.

Now, I don’t want to bring out all the usual sociological observations about the change in social interaction and how peer pressure passes through these new media nowadays or even the economic ideas behind something like Farmville. It’s been said. What I am more interested here is on a much more basic level than that. The online games. Facebook has done a good job at implementing the different games into an easy accessible game fix during the day directly in Facebook. I am the first one who likes the occasional Bejweled and I am also on Farmville.
Lately however a rather conservative and yes, Christian part of my acquaintances on Facebook have started to become nothing short of obsessed with Farmville. The stressed out status updates have worried me for a while, and when I heard in a podcast about the matter, that some people actually to believe that this game helps them to ‘solidify’ friendships and help them knit together more distant contacts from their work or a priest to his parishioners, I am falling rather silent and that pretty quickly.

Yes, I am also on Farmville, and sure it’s a fun thing, but do I map my days according to it? Or does the game still follow my day? That’s the main question to be asked here. But let’s stay on the idea that it solidifies friendships and contacts for a moment. How does someone reach that conclusion (other than excuse the addictive influence the game has already had on their lives) ?

Having friendships, an exchange of opinions and human contact in general takes time, it takes energy and it can be tiring. Particularly when you work in an environment that delivers a certain service, in a way people always think that you have to be receptive to them no matter what. So, these games lower that amount of energy that is needed in order to keep up with your friends, or colleagues. Because at other times, you are not up to give the time in order to stay ten minutes after mass or after work in order to get the community juices flowing and knit the group or friendships together. Or you just can’t be bothered to pick up that telephone and spend 40 min. talking to someone. Why not drop them a line on their wall or help out on their farm. Surely that’s enough.

And all of a sudden, you find yourself having spent 40 min. on Farmville. The same amount it would have taken in RL to talk to someone, listen and process something. Instead you’ve been clicking about 250 times on a virtual farm and in all actually built nothing.

Yes, of course Zynga and thus Farmville does charity and yes, of course it’s just fun.

But am I really and truly the only one seeing the obvious here? The world is becoming more and more solitary for each and everyone of us and not because it is becoming less and less beautiful (although that certainly is a reason), but because friendships that can be maintained only virtually, through the web, aren’t really worth a whole lot, are they? Or where are your Farmville friends when RL really hits you?
It doesn’t help that the only people that actually to say something about this state of ‘the world’s gone mad’ are people like Dr. Phil on MTV or other similar ‘convincing’ media outlets.
The idea to unclutter your life and start to become an influence in the people around you seems completely lost in this respect and yes, I am sorry, I am shocked at how many decent Catholics (Amercian and other) in my contact list have actually broken out in hysteria over their lost bonus’ every time Facebook has a glitch or is slow. These are the same people who are adamant about a lot of things (some of them might even condemn you to hell if you don’t vote properly, whatever properly is) and for them the impetus to love and be charitable is a truth in their lives. I doubt they realise just how much time it is that they are wasting and how much more could be done in the time they play Farmville.

It’s time to really ask what the social media is actually about? And what will it be about in the future years? Because in the beginning, it was supposed to be about people and their interaction either with content givers or creators or with other readers and users. Not to sound completely pessimistic, but if the nature of interaction is constantly lowered (Letter to Email to FB message to FB Wall Post to ‘I’m tending your crops’ on Farmville) then what about the nature of exchange and in that respect people themselves? Can there even come anything out of it that does not spell intellectual poverty?

SQPN: The Secrets of Farmville #1
Farmville entry on Wikipedia
Welwoche Ausgabe 04/10 u.A. zum Thema Facebook

Of Reality and Ideas

Posted by yseult on Jan 27, 2010 in Issues

The Apple Tablet and its craze offers more than just the prospect of a shiny new geek toy: my take on a rumour and a symbol of hope.

Mashable. com is usually not known for their intellectual insight in things. It’s a site for news about new media and computers. It’s a synthesising site, that will mash up all the news into small and quickly readable articles. It does a great job at it and I am glad that I don’t have to read 20 articles to get the same info. So, thank you Mashable.
However, I was amazed to read the lead title of one of their latest articles on the famed ‘ipad’ or simply the Apple Tablet this morning which is supposed to come out today: “Why the idea of the Apple Tablet May Be Better Than the Reality”.

Truly platonic.

The article then states that “as a rumor, the Apple tablet can be anything to anyone.”

A bit less platonic.

Still. The point stands to be argued. It’s a common truth that things that don’t have a substantiated reality either based in experience or axiomatic proof, are free to be filled with whatever it is that we need. The idea of being with someone, the idea of love, the idea of being in love, the idea of being successful, the idea of being famed… they all are wonderful in themselves and as such they guide our thoughts if not our dreams, because they are devoid of reality. Because come to think of it, being in love means a lot of work, staying in love even more; being successful means having to work and compromise and then compromise some more, being famed means you’ll expose yourself to a whole set of problems you wouldn’t have otherwise etc. etc.

Mashable states the same thing: “The anticipation and the lofty expectations surrounding the product launch put the Apple tablet atop a pedestal. Once the curtain lifts, it could take years before it returns to the same level of glory.”

The same is true with any high idea. It can be argued however that the ‘same level of glory’ is reached much earlier in the process. By filling what up to that point was just an empty idea, potentiality in every sense possible, the thing, your dream becomes truly real. And that in itself gives it more weight and more glory than a simple idea ever could. A lost love is always better than no love at all, and a dream in itself is bound to be killed either by use or reality.

The conclusion is basic really: dreams and ideas are bound to be destroyed, replaced and remade. Reality has that crushing quality like nothing else out there.

As for the whole question about the Apple Tablet. Will it be great? I have no doubt about it. Will it save the printing industry as Mashable states the Apple fans? Absolutely not. Will it be an actual concurrence to the e-readers such as the Kindle or the Nook? Probably not. Will it advance the victory over said e-readers over the traditional book? No.

There is a certain distinctive quality that comes with every single book that a Kindle or Nook cannot replace, no matter how many pretty author pictures they put into their digitalised book formats. The physical appearance, the weight, the difference in paperweight, the font, the printing style… it all gives a book it’s primary qualities while the text, good or bad, gives it its character. Nothing in an e-reader can come even close to that particular thrill that you feel when you take a book into your hands before buying it, because something in its cover, appearance or title called out to you. All these e-readers will ever achieve is to be a tool in a world where multitasking is a standard and where we fill even the smallest minute with some kind of chatter (the book in the train, music while walking, your Hebrew course while working out…). And as such, the Apple Table wont change anything. If the rumours are correct and it is in fact a netbook, I doubt it will even establish as an e-reader. Because I personally, don’t need yet another PC to distract me from what I really want to do: read. With the touch of paper on my hands and sometimes the wonderful warm feeling that comes when you toss a book wholeheartedly into a corner or on the floor because the author really, really couldn’t resist drawing that card on you. Imagine doing that with a Kindle?

The e-readers, reading on the computer, OCR, surfing on the phone, being online all the time, web 2.0… they all have been empty ideas at some point. And then we started filling them up with real life use, with our own version of their initial form. So, no matter how much people want to see symbols of hope in the clouds or their tea leaves, the Apple Tablet or a President, it never, ever lifts the responsibility from us to make use of that symbol. Evaluate it and then actually use it, fill it up with meaning.

A crisis is never just overcome with symbols. But they certainly help to not lose hope completely.

Draw me a heart

Posted by yseult on Jan 26, 2010 in Poetry

Draw me a heart, my love,
to paint all over the walls,
over the airs of jealousy,
the hate and the flaws.

Draw me a heart the size
of your mountains,
your valleys and passions,
draw it large, draw it true,
and let me crawl up inside it.

Draw me a heart
to bury my fears in.
A heart for the future,
a heart for the past.

A heart in so many colours,
where flowers of blossoms past,
rain down on both our pains
and longings.

A heart so truthful,
it has no place in this world.

A heart so pure,
the sun would rival its glow.

Draw me a heart, my love.
Don’t leave me behind.
Let me paint it then,
over all the walls that keep
this darkness in.

A heart so pure, so truthful,
a heart so big, so bright.

It’ll be my world from now on.
We don’t need anything else.

A heart. It’s all it takes after all.

Talk it out.

Posted by yseult on Aug 11, 2009 in Communication

It’s funny how sometimes current topics and themes occur either in everyday life, in your lectures or thoughts. It’s like when someone gets a new car and suddenly you see that type of car everywhere because before you simply didn’t pay proper attention.
The same thing works for topics and thoughts. Recurring themes is probably our brain and subconscious’ way of organising our days and realisations to get things done. Or we could just say that it’s karma’s way of telling you that now is the time to finally get that particular lesson.

Whichever way we want to put it or analyse it, my current topic is communication. And in fact it has been for a while. Out of some silly idea of ‘I don’t always want to write about the same thing’ I’ve waited until I would have something more interesting to write about… but again, no such luck. The last four writing ideas on the back burner have been about communication. So instead of putting this one here as well on a list where it can wait, I am dragging it all out now. Because the wait for a new post is way too long and because I need to get back into some sort of stable writing in general.

Ever since I got married, I’ve been on the receiving end of some of the weirdest questions in existence: relationship advice. While certainly my relationship is one of the most amazing things that just works in my life (yes, mentally, psychologically and physically), I’ve never been particularly comfortable with talking about it. As if it was something out of time or I would jinx it by using it as an example. With the years that changed, simply because I saw how people in other relationships really use a system of powers and pressure that is completely absent from my marriage. It goes to show that when you really don’t want to be an example, you end up being one even more so. Or in other words I really had to say something about the usual relationship mistakes. What a shocker. The girl that waited until the age of 28 to get some action, actually had something to say about relationships. Who knows, I might just make a series out of this.

One thing that always seems to be a present bystander of any relationships are annoyances. The small things that the other does that keep upsetting you, that suddenly are the only thing that you see, hear, smell and yourself can think about. Does your spouse love rearranging the towels in your bathroom once you’re just out of the shower and actually have just finished putting them on the rack? Seriously, as if your way of folding them was so wrong and he needs to be cleaning up behind you. How insulting. How infuriating. How utterly useless and what a loss of time…!

Stop.

That’s right. Stop. That’s the right moment to stop the thoughts that start gathering momentum at the first occurrence, at the second have gained the physical force of an avalanche and at the 10th are reason enough to kick the other out of your home, life and future will.

Our minds and worlds are not permeable to everything and our thoughts and motivations aren’t visible to the outside. All the outside sees are actions. And with the wish to understand that should be infusing every relationship (lover or not), we start conjecturing, constructing and analyzing. And since we already are upset, the only explanation is tainted by annoyance. Only in rare occasions could we think that there was a good explanation to these actions. After all what possible GOOD explanation can there be to the fact of my husband rearranging the towels in our bathroom that were already stowed on a rack and thus per definition the bathroom cleaned up?

Asking would help. Talking about it would help. Breaking the cycle of ‘he’s just not happy with the way I do things. Tough.’ would certainly help. Because if you do, you’d be able to realise that there is no mean thought behind it, but that he likes doing it, that he’s not even realising that he’s doing it and that the way he does it, they DO use less space and dry faster.

Just like our motivations are not painted onto our actions, our partner doesn’t have a priviledged way into our mind or suddenly doted with the gift of telepathy to see what upsets us and what doesn’t. The debt of communication lies always on both sides of the couple. It’s the most important step any relationship can take. And one I’ve not lastly understood thanks to living my relationship over Skype for two years.

Not communicating even the upsetting things is not in any possible way something that ‘spares’ your partner. (Even though you can wait to spill it all until a difficult moment has passed for instance.) Not stating what goes wrong only suffocates your relationship under the silence and eventually the annoyance will grow so strong, the cover of silence can’t cover it anymore. Because the key to annoyance is: it can’t be evacuated other than by addressing it.

NB. In case you were wondering… yes, my love does rearrange our towels and it took me a while to realise the level of absent thought behind it and that it was just a way of neatly putting things in our apartment. Doesn’t mean hubby doesn’t like the way I clean or the way I hold our house together OR the way I fold the towels. I still love him. He’s a quirk. But so am I.