If I'm going to do a series on science and religion in media, I feel like I should talk about the type of media I like, the stories that I'm drawn to. It'll help you readers see where I'm coming from and understand why I wrote about this film instead of that because chances are, I haven't seen that film because I'm just not that into aliens.
Like most of humanity, I'm a sucker for a good hero's journey. Also a good Cinderella story. And a good underdog story. Listen, I like stories. I like a good tale. It's why The Winter's Tale is one of my favorite Shakespeare plays. It's about telling stories, like The Tempest is. Also, I like meta things. Community is one of my favorite shows and I can't even pretend like The French Mistake isn't one of my favorite episodes of Supernatural.
Speaking of, I love supernatural stories. I love ghost stories, I love monster stories, I love all the tiny little ways we take horror or ideas about horror and twist them to talk about ourselves. I like what happens when you take humans and give them special abilities, or put them in binds. (I also enjoy dark humor-- I saw Sweeney Todd seven times in theaters.) In digging into Welcome to Night Vale, I got to dig into gothic literature and in reading that list, I realized that I love most things gothic. The meta-scare. That's my jam. Something that Buffy and Angel do really well as well.
Buffy and Angel brings me around to another thing that I love, which is the Whedonverse. It started with Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog and never really stopped. I just find that there's a lot of heart there amongst the campy and I think that's what draws me in. I love a good story with heart. And maybe some quips. And female empowerment. Which is why Much Ado About Nothing is my actual favorite Shakespeare play.
At the same time, many of the influences in my life that weren't produced by Disney (at the time) have star in the name somewhere: Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate. I have a fascination for the adventures you can have when Earth isn't the extent of your set. It changes the questions we can ask. It makes us dream bigger. I mean, superhero movies do that too, but in a different way. And let's be real, they all end up in space soon enough. Thor, anyone? The first Avengers movie? Guardians of the Galaxy, which had to use its soundtrack to tie us to the familiar? We have a curiosity about the things that could be out there in space. We like to dream bigger. It lets us examine our humanity. (This, I think, is the time to note that A Wrinkle In Time was extraordinarily formative in my life.)
And bringing it back around to that humanity, I'm a fan of two sets of stories that put different lenses on our view of humanity: Hooker with a Golden Heart stories and dystopias. Moulin Rouge and Pretty Woman are two of my absolute favorite movies. And in terms of dystopias, I really count anything that's a reality slightly off from our own. Hunger Games, Man in the High Castle, The Matrix, Wall-E, all that kind of stuff. I like it when we push our boundaries in fiction, just to see how we'd react. I like to be fascinated by the bigger questions.
So, in summary, Firefly was the best show to ever exist and it's a miracle that they didn't make it to a musical episode because then I would never need to watch anything again. Perfection would be obtained.
Also, Parks and Rec and The West Wing. Couldn't find a category for those.
Friday, April 29, 2016
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Upon a Tuesday Evening
So here's the thing.
I'm walking back on a Tuesday (Tuesday! who ever thought I would be in love with a Tuesday!) evening rehearsal in a tiny room in a secondary school of the university at or around 8:45pm with the sun still brightening the horizon in April and it. is. perfect.
(Imagine rolled r's and a lilt with that perfect.)
In the back of my mind, I have the Whitacre Hebrew love songs that we were singing playing, but in the front of my mind, my heart is skipping along to the Teddy Bears on Parade song that my small baby teddy bear used to play when I was a tiny human, a wee lass, a little kid, and how that absolutely used to delight, me and I cannae think of a better thing to connect me with the person (imagine a pear-soon, again with that lilt that makes it sound much more reasonable, like the time I imitated David Tennant's accent when pronouncing the name of that tiny music building beside Hill Hall on Carolina's campus), again I say, connecting the tiny person I used to be with the person I am today, nearly skipping up the sidewalk to the place where my body rests night after night.
The moon here is perfect.
The weather here is perfect.
The words that the people say here are perfect.
And this simple perfect, this daylight as the evening rolls on, is everything that I've ever wanted as a human. I hae found where my soul rests and it seems that it rests here, on the pavement, not as tired as it should be, laid down relative inches away from a mighty eruption of the earth, dead since long before I was born, this modern convenience next to an ancient lack thereof and I wonder what it would have been like, when this little island was yearning to separate from a continent, when these hills were connected to the lava underneath, or even, centuries upon centuries later, when the people boiled with passion that overflowed and fought for their right to this piece of ground, by means much more physical than a parliamentary bill. I feel like I walk beside this time bomb, dancing in its heritage, holding to its long-forgotten life, relishing in it.
The moon is beautiful tonight, rising over the crags.
The song in my head is beautiful, waltzing back to the three-year-old I once was.
Life, in this moment, is its own kind of glory, fading into the evening the way the sunset will, but not yet. The air will cool, to something that my body will call cold but my skin will call chilled, and I'll think with a laugh back to the people who think, with glance toward the not-yet-opened window, that this is warm, and I'll understand that this is a place I can stay, my own thin place, my place where the earth and the air and the sky above endeavor to connect me to something that is not here, but is risen. And I'll feel it, that connection. I'll revel in its here-but-not-yet-here actuality. I'll roll over and hold on to it, this wonderful dream of the person I was allowed through some miracle to be.
And then I'll learn to let go.
somehow
I'm walking back on a Tuesday (Tuesday! who ever thought I would be in love with a Tuesday!) evening rehearsal in a tiny room in a secondary school of the university at or around 8:45pm with the sun still brightening the horizon in April and it. is. perfect.
(Imagine rolled r's and a lilt with that perfect.)
In the back of my mind, I have the Whitacre Hebrew love songs that we were singing playing, but in the front of my mind, my heart is skipping along to the Teddy Bears on Parade song that my small baby teddy bear used to play when I was a tiny human, a wee lass, a little kid, and how that absolutely used to delight, me and I cannae think of a better thing to connect me with the person (imagine a pear-soon, again with that lilt that makes it sound much more reasonable, like the time I imitated David Tennant's accent when pronouncing the name of that tiny music building beside Hill Hall on Carolina's campus), again I say, connecting the tiny person I used to be with the person I am today, nearly skipping up the sidewalk to the place where my body rests night after night.
The moon here is perfect.
The weather here is perfect.
The words that the people say here are perfect.
And this simple perfect, this daylight as the evening rolls on, is everything that I've ever wanted as a human. I hae found where my soul rests and it seems that it rests here, on the pavement, not as tired as it should be, laid down relative inches away from a mighty eruption of the earth, dead since long before I was born, this modern convenience next to an ancient lack thereof and I wonder what it would have been like, when this little island was yearning to separate from a continent, when these hills were connected to the lava underneath, or even, centuries upon centuries later, when the people boiled with passion that overflowed and fought for their right to this piece of ground, by means much more physical than a parliamentary bill. I feel like I walk beside this time bomb, dancing in its heritage, holding to its long-forgotten life, relishing in it.
The moon is beautiful tonight, rising over the crags.
The song in my head is beautiful, waltzing back to the three-year-old I once was.
Life, in this moment, is its own kind of glory, fading into the evening the way the sunset will, but not yet. The air will cool, to something that my body will call cold but my skin will call chilled, and I'll think with a laugh back to the people who think, with glance toward the not-yet-opened window, that this is warm, and I'll understand that this is a place I can stay, my own thin place, my place where the earth and the air and the sky above endeavor to connect me to something that is not here, but is risen. And I'll feel it, that connection. I'll revel in its here-but-not-yet-here actuality. I'll roll over and hold on to it, this wonderful dream of the person I was allowed through some miracle to be.
And then I'll learn to let go.
somehow
Monday, April 25, 2016
Pictures, Podcasts, and Penseés: Horcrux Edition
Welcome back to another installment of Pictures, Podcasts, and Penseés, the blog posts I've written in order to not have to think about writing blog posts. Each one contains a picture taken by me, a link to an episode of a podcast I love, and a quote from Blaise Pascal's Penseés. Enjoy!
Picture
A rocks glass at Mr. Smith's piano bar in Georgetown. I believe this was taken during the trip to DC that a good friend of mine and I took in January 2014. 2014 was a genuinely crappy year, but this was a beautiful moment during it.
Podcast
Dear Hank and John 023- OH MY GOD IT'S BURNING
Find it on iTunes or listen to it on SoundCloud by clicking here.
Brothers John Green (YA author of everything that's ever made you cry, like The Fault in Our Stars and Looking For Alaska) and Hank Green (YouTuber extraordinaire, founder of VidCon and so many other things) have a comedy podcast talking about death. There are so many genuinely funny episodes and so much great advice that the whole thing is worth a listen (it's another podcast that I've sat outside for half an hour longer than I planned so that I could finish listening to). This episode is one in which, among other things, John shares tips on how to listen empathetically, which is beautiful, wonderful, and useful.
Penseés
Picture
A rocks glass at Mr. Smith's piano bar in Georgetown. I believe this was taken during the trip to DC that a good friend of mine and I took in January 2014. 2014 was a genuinely crappy year, but this was a beautiful moment during it.
Podcast
Dear Hank and John 023- OH MY GOD IT'S BURNING
Find it on iTunes or listen to it on SoundCloud by clicking here.
Brothers John Green (YA author of everything that's ever made you cry, like The Fault in Our Stars and Looking For Alaska) and Hank Green (YouTuber extraordinaire, founder of VidCon and so many other things) have a comedy podcast talking about death. There are so many genuinely funny episodes and so much great advice that the whole thing is worth a listen (it's another podcast that I've sat outside for half an hour longer than I planned so that I could finish listening to). This episode is one in which, among other things, John shares tips on how to listen empathetically, which is beautiful, wonderful, and useful.
Penseés
[76]- To write against those who made too profound a study of science: Descartes
[77]- I cannot forgive Descartes. In all his philosophy he would have been quite willing to dispense with God. But he had to make Him give a fillip to set the world in motion; beyond this, he has no further need of God.
[78]- Descartes useless and uncertain.
[79]- [Descartes.—We must say summarily: "This is made by figure and motion," for it is true. But to say what these are, and to compose the machine, is ridiculous. For it is useless, uncertain, and painful. And were it true, we do not think all philosophy is worth one hour of pain.]
Friday, April 22, 2016
Science and Religion in Media: Welcome to Night Vale
The thing I've noticed about studying in the humanities is that you start to see your topic everywhere. Books, TV shows, superhero movies, podcasts... to me, science and religion is there, mostly in the background but sometimes coming up to the forefront to wave and say, "Consider me!"
So, if I have my life together and can get some posts banked, what I'd like to do on Fridays is offer you a sampling of how science and religion plays into our media and the questions that are being gestured at. There's no better way than to start off with a video and a script from a (five-minute) talk I gave on Wednesday on science and religion in Welcome to Night Vale. I wrote a longer paper on all the things I talk about and I'm happy to send it along to whoever's interested. Enjoy the weirdness and the nerdiness, my friends!
So, if I have my life together and can get some posts banked, what I'd like to do on Fridays is offer you a sampling of how science and religion plays into our media and the questions that are being gestured at. There's no better way than to start off with a video and a script from a (five-minute) talk I gave on Wednesday on science and religion in Welcome to Night Vale. I wrote a longer paper on all the things I talk about and I'm happy to send it along to whoever's interested. Enjoy the weirdness and the nerdiness, my friends!
Welcome to Night Vale reflects the status of science and
religion as sources of knowledge in contemporary American culture. If you watched the video, you've got the gist, but in this written portion, I’ll try to hammer it out a little bit more concretely. I'll give
you some background on Welcome to Night Vale as a gothic novel, go
through the representations of science and religion in the book, and draw
conclusions from there. I should specify that the “religion” I’ll be talking
about is primarily Protestant Christianity, since that’s the monolithic
religious resonance in the cultural discussion.
My main text is the Night Vale
novel but I’ll also bring in information from the podcast. Welcome to Night
Vale, for those who don’t know, is an American narrative fiction podcast
written by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor, which takes the form of broadcasts
from a community radio station in a small town in southwest US desert where
every conspiracy theory is true. That’s the construct. More than that, Night
Vale is weird, with an undertone of horrifying.
There’s a cat floating four feet off
the ground in the bathroom at the radio station. Mysterious hooded figures
patrol the dog park, which doesn’t allow dogs. There’s a literal five headed
dragon who runs for mayor and an almighty Glow Cloud on the PTA. And that’s just
in the first five episodes.
Night Vale is an example of American
Gothic literature and Gothic literature in general uses its horrors to reflect
cultural anxieties. Frankenstein, for example, is not just a story about a mad
scientist who “creates” life from body parts he stole from dead people, it’s
about, to quote from the Rutledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, the 19th
century's “anxieties surround[ing] the fast-developing natural sciences” and
the “nature of the self in the face of scientific rationality.”
American Gothic over its history has
dealt with slavery and the conquest of indigenous peoples, all the way up to
contemporary concerns like the impact of the Cold War or the post 9/11
surveillance state. Night Vale touches on all of this, but what’s interesting
for our purposes is how it treats science and Protestant Christianity as as
equal but incomplete sources of knowledge.
Knowledge in Night Vale is a scary
thing. It’s guarded by government agencies, the city council- who are so
frightening, they’re not actually depicted in fan art-, or the most terrifying
creatures in Night Vale, librarians. So instead of engaging with the subjects
themselves, Night Vale embodies science and Christianity in the characters of
Carlos the Scientist and Old Woman Josie.
Old Woman Josie is a respected
community member with whom the angels live, so it’s to her that Jackie Fierro,
one of the novel’s protagonists, first turns for help. In a town where there
are bloodstone circles and cults galore, Josie’s angels are the closest thing
you get to an explicit Christian reference point. The angels go off on missions
from God, they offer angelic protection, and they’re described as being tall,
winged, and accompanied by trumpet sounds. The City Council denies the existence
of angels, and in the world of Night Vale, that’s proof that there’s something
very real going on.
Even so, Josie and her angels are
unable to completely solve Jackie’s problem and so she turns to Carlos the
Scientist. Though he’s more caricature more than anything else, he’s the
closest thing to a scientist that Night Vale has. Carlos collects empirical
evidence, runs experiments, and gathers a consensus from other scientists when
investigating problems. He also trusts the evidence of his senses- Carlos
believes in the existence of mountains, another thing that’s also often denied
in Night Vale.
Carlos and Josie enter the story in the
first 100 pages and then move to the background, working together to solve a
secondary plot problem involving trans-dimensional flamingos. It’s up to
protagonists Jackie and Diane to use the information they get from Josie and
Carlos to solve their problems on their own.
Through the plot of the novel, then, Welcome
to Night Vale deals with the American postmodern concern over trustworthy
information sources by taking the novel’s characters on a journey that leads
them from religion to science to seeking out information and truth for
themselves. Night Vale places scientific reasoning and Protestant Christianity
on an even footing, tools to be used by the characters as they move forward.
Let's take a second to put this discussion of science and
religion back in the larger context of the novel. For Night Vale, the real
value is to be found in human relationships. Though the plot is driven forward
by the angels and Carlos, it’s Jackie’s journey to find herself and Diane’s
effort to preserve her family that make up heart of the novel. Night Vale
encourages us to use all the resources we can find, be they scientific, religious,
or otherwise, to make our own meaning for life in a universe that is at best
mostly void, partially stars.
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
"Updates"
Right! First blog post back after essays. I'm so excited. And so glad those things are out of the way. Man, what a drain. Good, you know, always good, but still, you know, just so much work. And for 3,000 words, almost every single one of them a battle, knowing what has to stay, what you have to fight to keep in, wondering if the people reading them will be able to understand the contours of the iceberg under this tiny little floating mountain of frozen information... Learning was simple at one point, wasn't it? Proof of mastery of concept used to be a 100 question times tables quiz that you could fill out in a minute or less.
I wonder if I could still do that.
But no, yeah, let's do this blogging thing! Something less regimentally creative. And nobody's grading this. No one's going to dock 5% if I'm two minutes late. Just me and my thoughts. And the people reading my thoughts. And the people in the gigantic warehouse of servers where they save the internet every day. I harbor a secret thought that there's one person in the warehouses where they save the internet, some security guard, who walks past the rows upon rows of all the obscenities we know the internet is made of to the place where people's stories are told on the internet, a thousand million blogs to scroll through, the thoughts of the privileged, and that one day the guard will flip past mine and stick around for just a minute and I can be part of the memory-based preservation of Who Humans Were. I'm a part of that.
Which is a kind of pressure in and of itself.
What do I write about, with that kind of pressure here? What would the universe need to know if it only had me as a specimen of humanity? What if sometime in the distant future when the world is a desert planet of a wasteland and aliens come by and they find the one warehouse with the one server that miraculously turns on and all that physically exists as remnants of the human race are a couple of Sno Balls and the last flickering light of a monitor displaying this blog post? What would you even say?
Sorry?
And thank you? Thank you for seeing me?
(I'm going to hold back. I'm not going to hashtag it. I'm not going to use that joke, the ironic placing of a fleeting internet fad alongside the eternity that could be found in discovery by something else. That's our generations marketing, the hashtag. We made joke when we visited the Colosseum, years ago, my friends and I, as we read up on what they had found when excavating, that if our sports stadia were excavated in that distant future that we can't properly imagine, being people who are so deeply steeped in a world where our experience seems perpetual, that if those future humans were digging us up, they'd think that we worshiped at some mystical temple of Golden Arches. Placing a hashtag here as a joke makes me nervous, like I'm jinxing twenty-first century humanity into being remembered in some dusty tome in another species' library as those who worshiped the Great #.)
Okay, get it together. This is not a helpful way to imagine things. This is not how we do things. Let's talk about life. Let's talk about how life has been. You got this. You do it all the time.
Hi, everyone!
I stubbed my toe last week and the nail turned lilac. So that's news.
Also, look at this cherry tree in bloom I found! So cool!
Man, time really is getting on, isn't it? Who would have thought? Who indeed?
Well, that's all I've got for right now! Look for posts in the next couple of weeks talking about my trip to London to see The Winter's Tale, plus some Scots stories, and probably other stuff! See you soon!
Nailed it.
I wonder if I could still do that.
But no, yeah, let's do this blogging thing! Something less regimentally creative. And nobody's grading this. No one's going to dock 5% if I'm two minutes late. Just me and my thoughts. And the people reading my thoughts. And the people in the gigantic warehouse of servers where they save the internet every day. I harbor a secret thought that there's one person in the warehouses where they save the internet, some security guard, who walks past the rows upon rows of all the obscenities we know the internet is made of to the place where people's stories are told on the internet, a thousand million blogs to scroll through, the thoughts of the privileged, and that one day the guard will flip past mine and stick around for just a minute and I can be part of the memory-based preservation of Who Humans Were. I'm a part of that.
Which is a kind of pressure in and of itself.
What do I write about, with that kind of pressure here? What would the universe need to know if it only had me as a specimen of humanity? What if sometime in the distant future when the world is a desert planet of a wasteland and aliens come by and they find the one warehouse with the one server that miraculously turns on and all that physically exists as remnants of the human race are a couple of Sno Balls and the last flickering light of a monitor displaying this blog post? What would you even say?
Sorry?
And thank you? Thank you for seeing me?
(I'm going to hold back. I'm not going to hashtag it. I'm not going to use that joke, the ironic placing of a fleeting internet fad alongside the eternity that could be found in discovery by something else. That's our generations marketing, the hashtag. We made joke when we visited the Colosseum, years ago, my friends and I, as we read up on what they had found when excavating, that if our sports stadia were excavated in that distant future that we can't properly imagine, being people who are so deeply steeped in a world where our experience seems perpetual, that if those future humans were digging us up, they'd think that we worshiped at some mystical temple of Golden Arches. Placing a hashtag here as a joke makes me nervous, like I'm jinxing twenty-first century humanity into being remembered in some dusty tome in another species' library as those who worshiped the Great #.)
Okay, get it together. This is not a helpful way to imagine things. This is not how we do things. Let's talk about life. Let's talk about how life has been. You got this. You do it all the time.
Hi, everyone!
I stubbed my toe last week and the nail turned lilac. So that's news.
Also, look at this cherry tree in bloom I found! So cool!
Man, time really is getting on, isn't it? Who would have thought? Who indeed?
Well, that's all I've got for right now! Look for posts in the next couple of weeks talking about my trip to London to see The Winter's Tale, plus some Scots stories, and probably other stuff! See you soon!
Nailed it.
Monday, April 18, 2016
Pictures, Podcasts, and Penseés: Part 6
Welcome back to another installment of Pictures, Podcasts, and Penseés, the blog posts I've written in order to not have to think about writing blog posts. Each one contains a picture taken by me, a link to an episode of a podcast I love, and a quote from Blaise Pascal's Penseés. Enjoy!
Picture
Podcast
Penseé
Picture
This is the base of the Wright Brother's National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, taken on a weekend trip right before I left for Scotland. The full inscription is "In commemoration of he conquest of the air by the brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright conceived by genius achieved by dauntless resolution and unconquerable faith." #FirstInFlight
Podcast
Nerdist Writers Panel #1: Damon Lindelof, Jane Espenson, Erin Levy & Drew Z. Greenberg
Find it on iTunes or listen to it on the Nerdist website by clicking here.
Did you like Lost? Did you like Buffy? Do you like listening to smart people talking about their jobs and the things they love? Then you will love this episode of the Nerdist Writers Panel. You'll also be exposed to the delight that is Jane Espenson, who is one of my heroes and basically the person I want to be. After that, you can start at the most recent episode and listen backwards. I personally love any episode that has Doug Petrie, Dan Harmon, a Whedon, Hart Hanson, Vince Gilligan (the Breaking Band guy, who seems to be such a lovely human), Bill Lawrence (the Scrubs guy), Rob Thomas (the Veronica Mars guy, not the musician), and all the ATX panels. They also have the staff of Key and Peele early on, BJ Novak from The Office, and The Lizzie Bennet Diaries people, plus a fantastic comics series that features Len Wein, the creator of Wolverine, who just makes me smile every time he talks.
If I'm listening to anything and laughing out loud, I'm probably listening to this. The What's Your Pitch panel had me in stitches on the bus to Glasgow the other week and the 11.22.63 interview with Bridget Carpenter had me walking laps before a concert because I could not stop listening. I can't help it, y'all. This is my joy in life.
Penseé
[69]- The infinites, the mean.—When we read too fast or too slowly, we understand nothing.
Friday, April 15, 2016
Music Videos Special Edition: Musical Encouragement
***NSFW language ahead. Apparently musicians like to cuss and reference less-than-sensitive topics. Who knew?***
The title may be misleading. My aim here is to make you feel like music is something you can make too. So, we'll start off with...
1. 4 Chord Song by Axis of Awesome
NSFW language warning aside, this is a perfect primer to how you can literally play hundreds of popular songs with just 4 chords, something that makes guitar, piano, and ukulele playing so much more accessible.
Absorbed that? Perfect! On to:
2. Riptide by Vance Joy, as explained by The Ukulele Teacher
If you have a ukulele, this is an absurdly accessible place to start and let's face it, the ukulele is a great access point to playing pop music in the first place. But it's a good walk through of a song with a simple chord progression regardless- you can take what you learn here and apply it to piano or guitar with minimal difficulty.
Not convinced on the benefits of ukulele playing? Well...
3. Ukulele Anthem by Amanda Palmer
Ukulele thing of wonder, ukulele wand of thunder... They're only $19.95, that isn't lots of money.
But to do this whole "cover music" scene, you should maybe spend some time thinking about vocals and how they've grown over time.
4. Evolution of Music by Pentatonix
It's like if Pitch Perfect did those 100 years of style videos we've all been seeing on Facebook. But maybe you feel like all these words are getting in your way? Well, don't worry. We've thought of that.
5. History of Lyrics That Aren't Lyrics by collectivecadenza
Their history of whistling is also fabulous, in case vocals in and of themselves are a bridge too far.
The title may be misleading. My aim here is to make you feel like music is something you can make too. So, we'll start off with...
1. 4 Chord Song by Axis of Awesome
NSFW language warning aside, this is a perfect primer to how you can literally play hundreds of popular songs with just 4 chords, something that makes guitar, piano, and ukulele playing so much more accessible.
Absorbed that? Perfect! On to:
2. Riptide by Vance Joy, as explained by The Ukulele Teacher
If you have a ukulele, this is an absurdly accessible place to start and let's face it, the ukulele is a great access point to playing pop music in the first place. But it's a good walk through of a song with a simple chord progression regardless- you can take what you learn here and apply it to piano or guitar with minimal difficulty.
Not convinced on the benefits of ukulele playing? Well...
3. Ukulele Anthem by Amanda Palmer
Ukulele thing of wonder, ukulele wand of thunder... They're only $19.95, that isn't lots of money.
But to do this whole "cover music" scene, you should maybe spend some time thinking about vocals and how they've grown over time.
4. Evolution of Music by Pentatonix
It's like if Pitch Perfect did those 100 years of style videos we've all been seeing on Facebook. But maybe you feel like all these words are getting in your way? Well, don't worry. We've thought of that.
5. History of Lyrics That Aren't Lyrics by collectivecadenza
Their history of whistling is also fabulous, in case vocals in and of themselves are a bridge too far.
Wednesday, April 13, 2016
Pictures, Podcasts, and Penseés: Episode V
Welcome back to another installment of Pictures, Podcasts, and Penseés, the blog posts I've written in order to not have to think about writing blog posts. Each one contains a picture taken by me, a link to an episode of a podcast I love, and a quote from Blaise Pascal's Penseés. Enjoy!
Picture
Since I'm never going to be warm again, here's a picture of the rally monkey I got and the field before the Angels game I went to during our West Wishes adventure this summer. It was so nice.
Podcast
We Got This #55- Coffee or Tea
Find it on iTunes or listen on We Got This's page on the Maximum Fun website by clicking here.
We Got This gives definitive answers to useless debates. Mark and Hal are both performers in the Thrilling Adventure Hour in addition to being two of my favorite people. All the episodes are worth a listen, starting at the beginning with Should you put ketchup on a hotdog? Always funny and occasionally rage-inducing.
Penseé
Picture
Since I'm never going to be warm again, here's a picture of the rally monkey I got and the field before the Angels game I went to during our West Wishes adventure this summer. It was so nice.
Podcast
We Got This #55- Coffee or Tea
Find it on iTunes or listen on We Got This's page on the Maximum Fun website by clicking here.
We Got This gives definitive answers to useless debates. Mark and Hal are both performers in the Thrilling Adventure Hour in addition to being two of my favorite people. All the episodes are worth a listen, starting at the beginning with Should you put ketchup on a hotdog? Always funny and occasionally rage-inducing.
Penseé
[71]- Too much and too little wine. Give him none, he cannot find truth; give him too much, the same.
Monday, April 11, 2016
Pictures, Podcasts, and Penseés 4
Welcome back to another installment of Pictures, Podcasts, and Penseés, the blog posts I've written in order to not have to think about writing blog posts. Each one contains a picture taken by me, a link to an episode of a podcast I love, and a quote from Blaise Pascal's Penseés. Enjoy!
Picture
This is a very truthful sign outside the World's End pub on the Royal Mile here in Edinburgh. It's one of the first pictures I took after landing here.
Podcast
Alice Isn't Dead episode 1: Omelet
Listen to it on iTunes, click here to listen on SoundCloud, or press play on the video below.
This is the new fiction podcast from the creators of Welcome to Night Vale. It's perfectly creepy but also mesmerizing and it's just started so you can hop in at the beginning.
Penseé
Picture
This is a very truthful sign outside the World's End pub on the Royal Mile here in Edinburgh. It's one of the first pictures I took after landing here.
Podcast
Alice Isn't Dead episode 1: Omelet
Listen to it on iTunes, click here to listen on SoundCloud, or press play on the video below.
This is the new fiction podcast from the creators of Welcome to Night Vale. It's perfectly creepy but also mesmerizing and it's just started so you can hop in at the beginning.
Penseé
[66]- One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life, and there is nothing better.
Friday, April 8, 2016
Music Videos Special Edition: NPR Tiny Desk Concerts
If you haven't yet experienced the joy that is the NPR Tiny Desk Concert, I need you to be about it. I'm going to select my personal favorites, but there's a playlist here. Basically, they get artists to come in and give a three-set concert in their office. It's magical. It's a perfect snippet of music with all the stage banter.
0. Adele
I wasn't going to include this one on this list because the Tiny Desk Concerts get all sorts of chart-toppers (John Legend's TDC, for example, can be found here), but Adele's so good in it, it'd be a shame to start with anything else.
1. Andra Day
In the description for the video, one of the NPR staff talks about how they broke their rule of always seeing a live performance before booking an artist for this one and tell me you, Andra Day does not disappoint. if you came for Adele, stay for Andra Day.
2. T-Pain
Take all your autotune jokes and shove them up your ass. This is magical.
3. Noah and the Whale
If all you've ever heard from Noah and the Whale is Five Year's Time, you are in for a treat, my friends. I bought their album based off of this concert and it was half the impulse-buy level that most of my digital purchases are. Additional shout out to what is apparently a related video, Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes: Tiny Desk Concert, where Home is on point.
4. Nickel Creek
I feel like Nickel Creek is the modern folk darling, and NPR has been very kind to Nickel Creek-related projects (The Punch Brothers TDC is here, the Watkins get their own TDC here, and I'd be completely remiss if I didn't even mention to the set that YO-YO MA and others did with Chris Thile, here) but the story told before Rest of My Life makes this video my choice for the shout-out.
5. Hey Marseilles
Hey Marseilles' album To Travels and Trunks is one of my go-to albums when I'm not sure how I'm feeling but I know I want to feel something. Playing a live set with this many instruments isn't easy to pull off and something as simple as tuning can take you away from the performance, but if nothing else, watch this one for how happy they look with the Hey Hey's right around the four-minute mark.
Some names you may have heard and may be interested in checking out their Tiny Desk Concerts:
Iron and Wine
Death Cab for Cutie
The Decemberists
Passion Pit
Shovels & Rope
And some names that may be unfamiliar but I enjoyed listening to:
Dessa (who I've seen live and are just phenomenal)
Phox (was recommended to me on facebook and I have not regretted it)
Ages and Ages
The No BS! Brass Band
The Prettiots
Young Fathers
BONUS: As a bonus for going through all that, here's Scott Avett singing Where Have All the Average People Gone?
Not a Tiny Desk Concert, but something that NPR would be about regardless. Also, if you were looking for it, the Avett's Tiny Desk Concert can be found here.
0. Adele
I wasn't going to include this one on this list because the Tiny Desk Concerts get all sorts of chart-toppers (John Legend's TDC, for example, can be found here), but Adele's so good in it, it'd be a shame to start with anything else.
1. Andra Day
In the description for the video, one of the NPR staff talks about how they broke their rule of always seeing a live performance before booking an artist for this one and tell me you, Andra Day does not disappoint. if you came for Adele, stay for Andra Day.
2. T-Pain
Take all your autotune jokes and shove them up your ass. This is magical.
3. Noah and the Whale
If all you've ever heard from Noah and the Whale is Five Year's Time, you are in for a treat, my friends. I bought their album based off of this concert and it was half the impulse-buy level that most of my digital purchases are. Additional shout out to what is apparently a related video, Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes: Tiny Desk Concert, where Home is on point.
4. Nickel Creek
I feel like Nickel Creek is the modern folk darling, and NPR has been very kind to Nickel Creek-related projects (The Punch Brothers TDC is here, the Watkins get their own TDC here, and I'd be completely remiss if I didn't even mention to the set that YO-YO MA and others did with Chris Thile, here) but the story told before Rest of My Life makes this video my choice for the shout-out.
5. Hey Marseilles
Hey Marseilles' album To Travels and Trunks is one of my go-to albums when I'm not sure how I'm feeling but I know I want to feel something. Playing a live set with this many instruments isn't easy to pull off and something as simple as tuning can take you away from the performance, but if nothing else, watch this one for how happy they look with the Hey Hey's right around the four-minute mark.
Some names you may have heard and may be interested in checking out their Tiny Desk Concerts:
Iron and Wine
Death Cab for Cutie
The Decemberists
Passion Pit
Shovels & Rope
And some names that may be unfamiliar but I enjoyed listening to:
Dessa (who I've seen live and are just phenomenal)
Phox (was recommended to me on facebook and I have not regretted it)
Ages and Ages
The No BS! Brass Band
The Prettiots
Young Fathers
BONUS: As a bonus for going through all that, here's Scott Avett singing Where Have All the Average People Gone?
Not a Tiny Desk Concert, but something that NPR would be about regardless. Also, if you were looking for it, the Avett's Tiny Desk Concert can be found here.
Monday, April 4, 2016
Pictures, Podcasts, and Penseés Part Three
Welcome back to another installment of Pictures, Podcasts, and Penseés, the blog posts I've written in order to not have to think about writing blog posts. Each one contains a picture taken by me, a link to an episode of a podcast I love, and a quote from Blaise Pascal's Penseés. Enjoy!
Picture
Picture
This is part of the cemetery out back of the cathedral ruins in St. Andrews, Scotland, looking out on the North Sea, I believe.
Podcast
Lore episode 4: Dinner at the Afterglow
Listen on iTunes or from Lore's website by clicking here.
Lore tells you creepy stories but properly research creepy stories, which is even better. As a warning, the stories told can be genuinely frightening. I'm a fan of every episode, but others than may interest are Episode 6: Echoes about the Overlook Hotel, Episode 19: Bite Marks, which features Greyfriars here in Edinburgh, and Episode 16: Covered Mirrors.
Penseé
[26] Eloquence is a painting of thought; and thus those who, after having painted it, add something more, make a picture instead of a portrait.
Friday, April 1, 2016
Music Videos Part Nine
I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. But after that last post, I had too many runners up not to do another. So here you go, my friends. The 90's Strike Back.
1. Ironic by Alanis Morissette
Put your pedantry away, enjoy the song, and remember, if you need a little extra goodwill in your life, that this is the woman who played God in Dogma.
2. With Arms Wide Open by Creed
I include this one only because it was the power ballad of our middle school dances and I have a weird nostalgia for Friday nights in our gym, sitting on the bleachers and eating pizza while all those popular losers danced on a fake vinyl floor.
3. Closing Time by Semisonic
Did you know this song is about the birth of one of the band member's kids? Yeah. I read that on the internet somewhere. Puts a new perspective on it, don't it. Also, points for Little Kid Me for listening to a song that explicitly reference whisky and beer. Scandal!
4. Mr. Jones by Counting Crows
Not to be confused with the contemporary Christian Band, Casting Crowns, which I maybe did for a medium-sized chunk of my adolescence and couldn't understand why people who usually sang about Jesus were singing about Picasso and grey guitars. But we got through it.
5. I Want It That Way by the Backstreet Boys
My dance style is best modeled by AJ's emphatic gestures while he sings his verse. But also, if you don't join in with the "Don't want to hear you say" coming out of the bridge into the next to last chorus, you're not a human. You probably didn't cry when Littlefoot's mother died, did you? Robot.
Whew. Turns out the 90's are a scary place to go back to. A lot of aggression. But...
...
...
...
I want it that way.
1. Ironic by Alanis Morissette
Put your pedantry away, enjoy the song, and remember, if you need a little extra goodwill in your life, that this is the woman who played God in Dogma.
2. With Arms Wide Open by Creed
I include this one only because it was the power ballad of our middle school dances and I have a weird nostalgia for Friday nights in our gym, sitting on the bleachers and eating pizza while all those popular losers danced on a fake vinyl floor.
3. Closing Time by Semisonic
Did you know this song is about the birth of one of the band member's kids? Yeah. I read that on the internet somewhere. Puts a new perspective on it, don't it. Also, points for Little Kid Me for listening to a song that explicitly reference whisky and beer. Scandal!
4. Mr. Jones by Counting Crows
Not to be confused with the contemporary Christian Band, Casting Crowns, which I maybe did for a medium-sized chunk of my adolescence and couldn't understand why people who usually sang about Jesus were singing about Picasso and grey guitars. But we got through it.
5. I Want It That Way by the Backstreet Boys
My dance style is best modeled by AJ's emphatic gestures while he sings his verse. But also, if you don't join in with the "Don't want to hear you say" coming out of the bridge into the next to last chorus, you're not a human. You probably didn't cry when Littlefoot's mother died, did you? Robot.
Whew. Turns out the 90's are a scary place to go back to. A lot of aggression. But...
...
...
...
I want it that way.
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