just swell

I’ve started mostly paying for music again, and it’s wonderful, because now I don’t listen to crap, and I support indie music aside from just when I go to shows, AND I get to find out that the Swell Season released a new deluxe album, and I just downloaded it a few hours ago.

I’m not sure that most people would like them, given that a lot of what makes them awesome is the movie “Once,” so if you haven’t seen it, you may be confused. Also, though their concerts are cool, they play with the Frames, so even in a place as small as the Rialto, say, it’s still a loud cacophony of noise compared to their studio recordings, in which you can actually hear the musical part of the music. However, while they’re not my favorite people in the entire world, I really like them a lot and respect their way of doing the whole music thing. The Swell Season is really a band for musicians, I think, especially for musicians who love the Irish musical tradition. Which is awesome.

The first problem with understanding the Swell Season is that there is no real way to categorize them. Not that “genre” is ever really helpful, but where do they go? Indie music, yes, but are they folky? Bluegrassy? Irish? Something else? Their albums are collections of songs, but the songs don’t always have much to do with each other. You have Glen Hansard writing himself songs to sing, and they’re interesting lyrically, because if you just read the lyrics, they look like bad poems, but somehow they work. Then sometimes he likes to get loud with his Frames buddies. And then, out of the blue, everything will stop, and here comes Marketa Irglova with the most depressing, heartwrenchingly sad, sad song that makes you want to die, but it’s so pretty and so universally personal that you can’t help but think she’s amazing. And then, if you listen really closely to the other songs, you hear her harmonies behind Glen, and you wish that they would have evened out the levels a bit.

What I love about them is that they make music that tells you how much they love making music. It’s not really trying to be this perfectly produced gem with songs that music supervisors are clamoring for. They are not going to end up on “Grey’s Anatomy”–at least, probably not. But, just like I’m at my happiest when I am belting any song while driving in my car, you can tell that they just love what they’re doing. And they each have this unique background that they’re coming from, and they just sound like people experimenting and having fun and sharing–”We do this in Ireland.” “Oh, really? In the Czech Republic, we do this”–and just being musical. The Swell Season is like music in progress.

Definitely this album is easier to like if you’re not really music-y or if you’re not me than their previous one, which was a bit too hard to discern what the harmonies and melodies were. I’m liking it so far. Yay music! It makes me want to get writing again. G-d, I miss writing so much.

movies are less good but more fun to watch

**This post may have vague, unimportant spoilers about the movie “Revolutionary Road.”

As I get older, I like movies on a whole less, but I enjoy watching them more. Weird? Not really. Most movies are just not all that phenomenal, though there are plenty that I adore. Like, the writing is great, but the rest is so-so; or visually it’s cool but there’s no real story; or it’s awesomely realistic but also boring; or the acting is amazing but the story is just lame or too easy or not well-adapted from the book or just done too, too many times.

Yesterday I watched “Revolutionary Road,” which was a tad disappointing after all that Oscar buzz and all. Not having read the book even, I can guess that it’s probably a bit too dense and that the movie is too simplified, but still. Throughout watching, I could guess everything that was going to happen, and not in a good way. Just in a I’ve-seen-this-in-Closer-and-We-Don’t-Live-Here-Anymore-and-tons-of-other-relationship-movies sort of way. And I “got” the point too easily, I think. Nothing about the story really challenged my thinking in a new way.

The acting, though, was great, and so were the sets and costumes and all. I’m generally more of an actor person than an actress person (though that might just be because I fantasize too often about all the movie stars I’m going to meet someday and marry), but Kate Winslet has always been one of my favorite people in the entire world. I just love her and pretty much everything she does. Just as no one does teen angst like Winona Ryder, no one does sympathetic adulteress like Kate Winslet.

I really like to be able to watch movies now with a bit more of a critical and educated eye as I get older and learn how to read better. Close reading skills and a good English teacher can make you a good movie-watcher without being annoyingly too cerebral about everything. Not that I know all that much technical stuff about film, but I know enough for the average person, I suppose. I love to analyze the stories like you do a book and to be able to gauge good and bad acting better than I could when I was little.

But really, most movies are nothing new. And since movies are stories or statements or essays or lives, as a writer, that scares me. It’s supposed to be the way you tell a story, not the story itself, right? Is that why literature continues to exist and evolve? But what if you tell an old story in a fairly old way? What’s left?

normal people and famous people and those in between

So I touched Ira Glass tonight.

I also heard him speak and saw him, you know, like all the other people in Centennial Hall did. But then my friends and I went up and acted silly and talked to him.

Anyone who doesn’t already know how awesome Ira Glass is is a fool. Hi spresentation was pretty awesome. He just has such a wonderful voice, and it was just an interesting presentation, though in some ways disappointing. Ira Glass is not someone you feel like listening to while sitting upright in a chair, smooshed against lots of other people. For some reason I felt one of my headaches come on, which didn’t make it any nicer to be uncomfortable, but it’s also one of those things that is weird to experience in person when you’re used to radio or the podcast. I wanted to be lying on the floor or on my bed with my eyes closed. That is how you should experience This American Life.

Regardless, it was cool. And of course I went up with the rest of my friends afterwards to go talk to him. I wanted him to sign my ticket, since I didn’t have anything else for him to sign. And while waiting in line was fun, just because we all got to hang out and because I talked to this other nice random girl who is about to graduate from law school. But meeting interesting people in this way makes me feel very, very uncomfortable, because I can never make myself look smart or interesting while doing it. Even if I had a burning question to ask Ira Glass, it would never be something that would just come to me while I’m standing in line with a ticket stub and a ballpoint pen. Just like people want to wait after concerts to meet the artist, it was something that needed to be done, but I also didn’t want to. I’m sure if I spent hours with him, we’d find something interesting to talk about, and I could actually make myself appear as smart as I’m pretty sure I am, and I could ask some good questions. But accosting someone after a performance is awkward and nerve wracking. I’m not one of those people who can just go up to a stranger and spill all of my life and dreams and ask for advice. Is it because I know the advice will likely be something I’ve heard before or because I know the advice of a famous person isn’t necessarily better than the advice of someone who knows me better? I’m not sure.

It’s a strange form of networking, and I’m not sure whether it’s better to be good at it or bad at it. Generally, I am pretty good at meeting strangers (at least adults and professionals…I’m terrible at people my own age) and being friendly, talking about myself, and ending up with advice or encouragement or connections or a job offer or something. It’s this conniving but genuine thing that I’ve sort of mastered. And I’ve just been lucky, I think. But when you’re meeting someone who is famous, even when they’re only famous to you, like Ira Glass, it’s hard to gush without sounding swoony, to ask for advice without being a cliché, to ask questions without being boring. I never know what to do.

Not that I’ve met a huge amount of famous people. But it’s still awkward. I hate listening to people fall over themselves at a book signing or an event like this one, and I know it’s mean of me. Who am I to tell someone to be less excited? Just because I’m inhuman doesn’t mean they need to be. But it’s so embarrassing. You know those times when other people, even when they’re strangers, do something so weird that they’re not embarrassed by that you end up being embarrassed for them, just because the thing you share is both being human? It’s horrible. I’m such a bitch sometimes.

crowd theory

I’ve realized that the reason I don’t enjoy large, loud concerts is because I am less capable than most at succumbing to a collective. Last night was the huge stadium concert, which actually looked fairly unimpressive, because the stadium seats 56,000, and about 12,000 people actually showed up to the concert, though close to none actually went to the entire six-hour event.

Anyway. Not my point. (But they should have had it in McKale so it would look more impressive.) I really, really enjoy good concerts. I do. I adore music, and there is something really special about witnessing its creation and performance live. But I am really not a very flamboyant spectator. This is how I know I would not be a good famous singer, much as I’d like to be famous. I can’t really free myself to move around a lot or scream or anything. I sing along, yes. That I feel almost compelled to do, and it’s hard to keep my mouth shut. But moving around and waving my arms and showing “my diamonds,” as Jay-Z asked us all to do, is hard to do.

Waving my arms is the worst. I feel supremely uncomfortable and self-conscious when I am doing that. I’m sure it’s actually gotten harder since leaving high school, since I don’t dance anymore. But it’s never been something I’ve been able to do naturally. It’s a strange feeling, but even though I feel stupid not doing it, I feel like I have a physical aversion to doing it if I actually try to be one of the crowd.

There’s this thing called crowd psychology, and you can google it or look it up on Wikipedia if you like. I think the best example of this is English soccer fans, if only because I’ve already had a long conversation with my friends about that particular theory and how it’s manifested in that group. But basically, it’s the idea that people do things they would never do otherwise when they’re in groups, and it’s also very easy to be caught up in a sort of collective conscious and feel the same, act the same, and react the same. This is how people can end up rioting after they win a soccer game, or how they can feel an amazing rush of adrenaline when they and their friends go after a rival team’s fans and start beating them to a pulp. Ahh, the rush of physical fighting! Such a guy thing. I really don’t get it.

This is also how people feel when they go to a school football game and find themselves with a passion for their team that they never knew they had, or they notice that they’ve never had such a potty mouth before, or they realize that they and everyone around them is saying the same things, “oh!”ing at the exact same time, stamping their feet together, clapping the same rhythmic pattern, or what have you. Crowd psychology. Try and say you’ve never experienced this.

But I swear I don’t have that. I feel detached from other people almost all the time. I have definitely felt some moments of belonging, so I guess I’m not a complete alien, but those moments are things like bonding with the party room crew while we were sitting by the haunted house at Bennington College, or snapping a photo with my Kenya group soon after we’d returned, just before we went inside to graduate from high school. Group pride, certainly, and a sort of collective understanding and a feeling like in that moment, I loved those people more than anyone else, but never have I really lost myself in a moment that became a collective moment.

Even when Obama won the presidency, ecstatic as I was, I felt like I was faking it. I cheered because, yes, it was a wonderful thing, and because everyone else was doing it, but it was conscious. That’s not crowd psychology. It didn’t take me over; I just observed it and blended as well as I could. And even then, in a moment that I was truly happy and hopeful, I was not part of a collective conscious.

So last night, though I loosened up as the night went on, and I shouted the lyrics to “99 Problems” like nobody’s business, I felt completely aware of how out of my comfort zone I felt. And shouting the lyrics and dancing a bit was the only thing I did. My arms feel too heavy to wave them like everyone else; I don’t understand that whole diamonds thing because I’m definitely not as cool as I like to pretend I am; I did not shout out to Kelly Clarkson, “Kelly, I love you!”** repeatedly, and even if it had happened to be a Mariah Carey concert and I was thinking that same thing, I wouldn’t say it. I was lost in the musical conscious, but that’s not tangible, and it’s not even human. I am incapable of being part of a crowd.

I take back my earlier statement. I probably am an alien.

**This same girl at one point turned back to me and asked me something; I think the question was, “Aren’t you so happy right now?” which, looking back, is a really nice feeling to have, and I just smiled, because I wasn’t yet ready to buy the whole Kelly Clarkson deal (though after her entire set, I am sold–hers may not be my favorite style of music, but the girl is well-trained. She can belt, she can sing, she can scream–all in one song). Later, Kelly played a song from her new album, and this girl immediately grabbed her BlackBerry and googled the lyrics so she could sing along. Best. Concert. Moment. Ever.

***Also, check out Cindy Pon’s blog, book, and contest. She’s giving away a beautiful brush painting/bookstore gift certificate, plus a signed copy of her book, which looks awesome. You should click on the book cover now. Do it.