There Will be Blood, Anxiety and Music...Typical.

Sorry I haven’t written in a couple days. What happens usually is that I get on line so desperate to communicate with a person, to have a conversation, that by the time I think to add another entry to my blog, I’m way too tired. I’m writing this one first on Word while in my bedroom, where I have a bunch of windows and doors open because the wind is blowing and it’s nice to get some fresh air in this stuffy 4^th floor apt.

Last night I rented “There Will Be Blood”. I watched the beginning last night before I went to bed and then the rest after I was done with my work today. I think I might have had really high expectations for this movie so they just ended up not being met. I know there are many people, some of them my friends, who might be offended by this comment, but I just wasn’t intrigued or touched enough by this movie. I guess that’s not always my requirements for a movie but…..maybe it is, I don’t know. I mean I got it, I understood what was going on even though most of the movie is silent (minus the brilliant soundtrack) I studied theater and movies and so on in school, I get why it’s so deep and afflicting and challenging and all that, but I just didn’t care. I guess I kinda cared about H.W. but since he (spoiler alert) ended up being an oil man too, I just didn’t give him much apathy. So that’s what I think about that Movie. I liked “No Country for Old Men” much better. Isn’t there some kind of competition going on between the two of them? Well they get a point from me.

Today I woke up with a lot of anxiety. I still don’t know what I’m going to be doing/where I’m going to be staying from the 18^th till the 21^st. I hope I can reach the Graveline’s and get a free place to stay in Normandy, but as soon as you put contacting some one up to another person, don’t count on it getting done when you want it to. My Boss offered to call them because they don’t speak English, she speaks French and English fluently. The only problem being that she’s in England and she’s leaving for South Africa tomorrow so who knows if that’s going to happen. So that get’s my heart pumping. Add to that the fact that I might not have any money left when I get back to the states. I am trying to save as much money as possible by staying with old friends in Europe, eating bread and cheese and granola bars for most of my meals, and so on, but I don’t know how much I’ll actually be able to put away once I get home. This makes me really anxious mostly because I came here so I could make a good amount of money, not spend it while I’m here, and then put it away and save up once I get home. Now I find myself having to buy train and plane tickets and food for myself and hostels and so on. I don’t want to come home broke, that’ll be worse than a lot of things. Especially since I have so much I want to do before I settle down and get a job in the fall, visit friends in Chicago, Go to Boston, go to Canada….now I’m thinking I’ll have to trim that down a bit. It’s upsetting.

I have this drug I take when I can feel a brick sitting on my chest and I find it hard to breathe and I’m afraid an attack is coming on, it’s called Ativan, you may have heard of it. But I don’t like to take it unless I know I’m either going to have a really bad episode or if I’ll be going to bed in a couple hours, because the thing makes me so very drowsy. I took it a couple nights ago because I was tossing in my sleep so I just took it so I could fall asleep; I ended up sleeping through my alarm and waking up an hour late for work. I was actually woken up by one of my boss’s. They seemed to think I was unwell and were very worried, so that was sweet, but I still felt a bit foolish.

Anyways, I don’t want to take an Ativan today, even though this anxiety has been with me pretty much all day and the lump in my throat and the stone in my chest won’t go away. So what I do to stave off the infection is listen to music. It’s probably the second best drug I could take, maybe better because it doesn’t make me sleepy. Music helps me breathe better; it can even be a cure at times. It helps me stop and see and think about the things that are here and now and important and beautiful. It helps me notice the little things and how neat they are, that helps my problems feel less big and scary. So I took my ipod, trotted out to the woods and put on “Come thou fount of every blessing” sung by Sufjan Stevens and then basically the entirety of his album “Seven Swans”. There are some beautiful path ways and little nooks out in the forest, it was calming to just hike through while listening to music, every so often stopping to take it all in.

I think it’s interesting that everyone probably has an album or a song they can put on to make themselves feel more calm or happy or what ever. Like, I can usually tell if Jon is in one of those moods because he’ll be listening to Nine Inch Nails or something, which for me can either be really pleasant or anxiety ridden depending on the song, it’s a coin toss. Where as, if he walks in and hears some Sufjan or some Sigur ros on, he….well he doesn’t usually get what I consider to be “pretty” music.

Little tid bit from the past. When I was a camp counselor in Colorado after my Freshman year of College, at the end of every week that we had kids, as soon as they were all packed up and gone and all the counselors were down in the lounge unwinding, I would sit in the very back corner, curl into a ball and listen to “Njosnavelin” by Sigur Ros from their “( )” album. (yeah it’s weird, they’re Icelandic) The song is so gorgeous and releasing and it was always the perfect way to end a fun but stressful week. It was my time to reflect and release and thank God for all he had done. And everyone knew that it was time to leave Leigh the heck alone. And if someone tried to come up to talk to me, some one would grab them, look at them and basically shake their head. Music is powerful.

I’ve come to the conclusion many times in the past year that I need to do something with live music, weather it be make it myself, produce it, or open a place up to let others make music, I need to do it. Because whenever I go to a live show, I am the happiest I have ever been in that moment. I feel the closest to God, and I never fail to thank him for giving us this gift, this thing that lifts us up to let us be with him for just a moment. And for those of you who don’t know about the kinds of shows I would go see in Chicago….I’m not talking about Steven Curtis Chapmen. Hehe. No, More along the lines of Battles, Holy Fuck, M.I.A, Druids of Huge (yes them), Panda Hawk, White Devil, The Tim Lowly Ensemble, Cool Kids, Flosstradamus, Brad Mehldau, Ryan Cunningham and countless other musicians, bands and noise bands that I’ve seen in this past year.

Noise is a type of…performance art? That can sometimes be argued as music. Me and my buddy Nigel went to a lot of Noise shows this past year, and a bunch of times he’d come out of a show saying “I could make a good argument for that being music”. But the reason I love going to see noise shows is to see how creative people can get. Some ones kit can range anywhere to just a couple levers and knobs, to light bubs and jars with cables attached, and depending on whether the lights on or off, or the position of the jar, you get a different noise. I mean isn’t that cool? It’s the experience, it’s the atmosphere, when the lights go out and you can almost feel your ear drum burst, that’s what I love. Recordings of Noise bands...I’m not so excited about that.

This is getting really long… and I could literally go on for ever about a number of topics having to do with music. It’s a powerful thing in my life and it refuses to let me forget the important role it plays in shaping who I am.