Category > music

Perfection in a Song

10 September 2008 By Mimzy 0 In music

With all the crap you hear on the radio these days–what is it she wants to have, “groupies” or “boobies”??–it can be hard to imagine that there’s new music out there that’s smart, melodic, and the whole heartstring-tugging shebang. But there is. Listen to this:

This is “The Luckiest”, by the piano artist Ben Folds. I’ve been checking out his music a lot lately, and I’ve liked a lot of what I’ve heard. But this song takes the cake. It was released in 2001, so it’s not that new.

I got this song on my computer yesterday or so, and in those 24 hours (a lot of which I’ve spent at school), I’ve somehow managed to listen to the song 28 times. I’m on the 29th right now.

What a beautiful song. The instrumentation, a quiet and subtle mix of piano, strings, and Folds’s own voice is moving. Those three sounds are all there is. No guitars, no percussion, no fake synth-sounds, no backup singers. And yet, I can listen to this 29 times in a row without experiencing anything close to boredom.

The lyrics are like poetry…

What if I’d been born fifty years before you
In a house on a street where you lived?
Maybe I’d be outside as you passed on your bike
Would I know?

And in a wide sea of eyes
I see one pair that I recognize
And I know

That I am
I am
I am
The luckiest

But it’s the details that I’m still noticing and falling in love with. All the piano chords and arpeggios, which are often soothingly predictable, but sometimes unusual and unexpected. The way Folds’s voice cracks as he begins the refrain for the last time.

Every once in a while I find a song like this that reassures me that, even as the people around me begin accepting more and more bullshitty things as “music” and give up poetic lyrics for pornographic descriptions of people having sex in a dance club, music like “The Luckiest” will continue to exist, thrive, and maybe even change the world.

And where was I before the day
That I first saw your lovely face?
Now I see it everyday
And I know.

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How Could They?

28 July 2008 By Mimzy 0 In Current Events, Israel, Photography, Travel, music

I wasn’t going to post on here about the details of what I’m doing in Israel, but this was an experience I did want to put out there.

Last Friday we visited the security barrier that separates the West Bank from the rest of Israel. It was a profound moment, as this picture I took attests:

“We will never forget”, an extremely powerful Jewish slogan, right next to “Free Palestine”, an equally strong Palestinian one.

So I was standing there looking at the line that divides my homeland in half, and thinking about that. Sometimes I don’t understand how anybody in Israel can be there and yet want to fight. Like the Hezbollah forces camped out on the mountain we saw a few weeks ago. How they can look down over such beauty and fire rockets at it will forever remain a mystery to me. Or the Palestinians with the bulldozers on King David Street in Jerusalem. To be surrounded by buildings and streets thousands of years old, palm trees and flowers everywhere, and yet go into an angry rampage and maul civilians on the street until you’re shot dead.

Or Haifa, bombed during the Lebanon War two years ago. Anybody who’s been there–for instance, me–can easily attest that it’s a breath-taking place. To me, it’s holy. There’s the Bahai Shrine on the mountainside, with its huge gardens stretching out above and below it. There’s the Technion campus and Mount Carmel National Park on the mountaintop. The streets Adar and Herzl, full past capacity of people, shops, and things being sold. The Neve Sha’anan district right above my grandma’s neighborhood, with its high-rise apartments in blue and white buildings, and wide boulevards with flower beds going down the middle.

Somebody looked at those places and bombed them. And will again, believe me. That’s realism, and for those of us brought up to believe there’s any decency in the world, it’s a bitter pill to swallow.

I’ve been listening to a song by One Republic called “Come Home”. It has a verse that basically summarizes that…

I get lost in the beauty of everything I see
The world ain’t half as bad
As they paint it to be.
If all the sons, all the daughters
Stopped to take it in,
Well, hopefully the hate subsides
And love can begin.
It might start now,
Or maybe I’m just dreaming out loud
Until then.

So…pray for peace.

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