A Short Word on Music

Today I sat in class and heard Tom Wait's "Whistle Down the Wind" so clearly in my head it was as if I were listening to the song through speakers in the room. Sometimes the power and beauty of music can totally surprise me, despite the extensive time and effort I have spent studying it. It continues to amaze me that music can have such a profound effect on our lives, controlling situations, moods, or even actions. I could not wait to leave my classroom and let the actual song play to me, and it was a familiar urge to wish I could sit alone for hours and immerse myself in the beauty of songs and music. I couldn't let a feeling like this pass without posting some sort of emotion that was triggered inside of me, and I guess that emotion was the purest sense of innocence, beauty, and love.

Bruce Springsteen Appreciation Pt. 1

Bruce Springsteen has done something extraordinary, something that he has only done, no one else. He has taken words and notes and his imagination to create the most cinematic and biographical music anyone has ever written. The characters that were first introduced in his first albums, and even before, are still being used today, as well as the themes and morals. Bruce Springsteen writes music for himself, as an outlet of expression and freedom, but he is also writing these songs for us. What he has done for his fans is something that can hardly be fathomed. I could write that he is the most hard working and respected man in music, but it would be a biased opinion, so I will simply write that he should be, by all counts. What I would specifically like to focus on is the songwriting done by Mr. Springsteen in the years between 1969 and 1973. He wrote based on stories that he came up with, stories based on his life, or other people's lives that he found significant. He created characters that did the things we could only dream of, but instead of making us jealous, he made us want to go out and do them to. His songs were loose and full of words, saying a simple idea through an entire verse. It can be argued that less is more, but in some cases more can be more meaningful. In songwriting, it can done either way, the simplistic approach or the descriptive. Springsteen has done both in his career, but in these early years, he took a Dylan-esque approach, and told us what he wanted to say, only hidden in stories of phantoms, lovers, and rebels. The music that was being made did not have expectations, many of the songs were written well before he was signed by Columbia Records in 1973. The songs of this time didn't have to live up to any standards, or impress anyone yet. Springsteen was writing to tell stories, through music, and that is exactly why the songs are widely considered among fans as some of the most brilliant work he has done. He wrote verses upon verses, often with no chorus, and performed up to 7 minute songs with only his acooustic guitar and his voice. Songs like Prodigal Son, Zero and Blind Terry, Song to Orphans, Growin' Up, Thundercrack, even Thunder Road are so vividly real to us, we can place ourselves in the place of these characters, these situations, and feel exactly what Bruce is feeling. He didn't hold anything back, still doesn't, and he is not afraid in the least to express his fears, desires, and hopes. He sings of faith, redemption, and finding a better place, a promised land. He writes of places we have never been, people we have never met, and things we only dream of doing. Any somehow, everything always seems familiar, like something we have experienced before, or might dream of doing. It is truly a beautiful and brilliant talent to be able to touch on such a personal level, the hopes and dreams of thousands upon thousands of people, and remain very true to your own self.

So Thank you, Bruce Springsteen, for allowing us to experience faith, love, dreams, redemption, and the feeling of a better day, just right around the corner.

Knowledge

I am sitting in my dorm room, looking out the window at a sunny and seasonably warm day. I sit here and once again experience one of the strongest emotions I have ever felt in my life, and one that continues to reoccur, and will continue until the vision is being played in front of my very eyes, instead of inside my head. The West has beckoned me before, and twice in my life I have answered, traveling to both the San Diego and Los Angeles areas in 2001, and San Francisco in 2004 with my family. In those years, I did not experience any unusual urge to visit the West, but in the past year, and especially in the past few months, there has been a consistent calling for me to experience traveling and perhaps living in the Western United States, and enjoying my life as it were meant to be, not tied into society as a student, or having to be taught unnecessary things, such as complex mathematics, or the science and anatomy of ancient species. These things that I deem unnecessary to learn certainly only apply to myself, as I am sure such topics greatly intrigue some people, and there is not harm to that. But for my own well being, and my own personal fulfillment, I can only envision myself learning from life's own experiences, those found in travel, adventure, risk, and days that hold the joy of not knowing what the next day will bring. I cannot learn what I need to know from the schooling I am receiving, such knowledge will not benefit me. However, I will stay here to fulfill the desires and needs of others, and earn a meaningless degree that simply says I have managed to tolerate the ridiculous method of standardized testing and formal schooling. I believe that I am not the one who needs to learn from them, rather they must learn from people like myself, who have realized that true and worthy knowledge comes solely from experiences and life itself, not organized classes with biased approaches and dictatorially run lessons. There is nothing to be learned from this method, at least not for myself, and yet I will continue to sit in the rooms and listen to the people who are superior to myself only because they have completed more years of schooling than I have. I will continue to stay at college and learn only outside of my classroom, and expect little knowledge to come from the curriculum they present. But I will continue to travel to the West in my mind, and teach myself through books, music, art, and imagination that I find interesting, because the only way to learn is to gain interest in the topic at hand, and there is no plausible way to force interest onto someone who cannot come across it naturally.

Relocation

I have decided to create a separate blog for my on going story I am writing, as to create space for this existing blog, which I plan to start writing for again. You can now see the entire story, and see updated chapters as they are written here: http://dlemirestory.blogspot.com/

Seek Older Posts!

What is blind faith, and can it be the death of us?

I encourage anyone who reads these posts to click "Older Posts" at the bottom of the page, I still believe strongly in the passages I wrote from the beginning.

There is nothing that can explain the mind, but there is music to express it through.