It’s Gwyneth or me, baby.

There was a rather bleak period in my life (pre iPod/iTunes), when I’d get in my car and drive around listlessly just so I could listen to Coldplay over and over and over and over and over.  I believe my sisters were worried about me (perhaps rightly so!) and ultimately had an intervention.   To no avail.  You see, Chris Martin got me.  He felt my pain, he really did.  And his voice was so beautiful and the piano chords progressive and haunting.  Those songs were a baseline soundtrack for a dissipating, confused, empty, sad transition for me, and I rode those piano escalations as if I were clutching a life vest in a cold ocean.  Not to get too dramatic about it or anything… 

Coldplay’s last album, X&Y, did not merit the same constant-play status as did Parachutes, A Rush of Blood to the Head, or even their live album. The lyrics were a bit too rhyme-y, the emotion a bit too contrived.  So I was nervous about their new album Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends – would I be forced to abandon Chris?  Fortunately for him and me both, that seems not to be the case.  I’ve only downloaded the two songs iTunes will allow me to so far — “Viva La Vida” and “Violet Hill.” But I have had them, yup, on constant replay.  These two tracks are far from heartbreaking; in fact, they have an undercurrent of defiance while still embracing that Coldplay sense of longing.  I know that Pax Arcana will make fun of me, but I urge him to listen.

Speaking of Pax, as my source for all things hip and musical Pax Arcana recently enlightened me that Radiohead got with the program and is now finally selling its individual songs on iTunes.  (I can’t find the post, Pax — send it to me and I’ll link to it here!)  So, thanks to the “happy studying” present/bribe iTunes card I received in the mail from Uncle Ropes, I spent the weekend downloading, along with the two Coldplay singles, some Radiohead (I’ve been too nervous to use Limewire anymore for illegal downloads).  The result is an achingly mellow, satsifyingly gloomy playlist perfect for an equally as gloomy Monday spent outlining BarBri lectures.  Enjoy(?):

Driving Sideways — Aimee Mann
Stolen Car — Beth Orton
Violet Hill– Coldplay
Hear Me Out– Frou Frou
Viva la Vida  — Coldplay
There, There– Radiohead
Falling Slowly– Glen Hansard
Creep– Radiohead
If You Want Me– Glen Hansard
Why Georgia — John Mayer
When Your Mind’s Made Up– Glen Hansard
Maybe I’m Amazed– Jem
All at Sea– Jamie Cullum
Jerusalem — Eddie from Ohio
Silent House — Dixie Chicks

As I noted before, I don’t like movies that are suspenseful, scary, violent, or downers. And so therefore I didn’t see many of this year’s Oscar nominated movies.  Last night, however, we watched Once, which won the Oscar for original song, and whose tagline is “How often do you find the right person?” (which right there makes it my kind of movie!)  Here’s what else makes it my kind of movie: it is a surprising love story in that by not being a typical love story it’s all the more poignant  and heartbreaking; it’s Irish and is set in Dublin; it’s about music; and, both physically and musically, the main character is a cross between Damien Rice and Chris Martin (check and check check check).  My sister and her husband (who met through their Middlebury a cappella group and who dabble in the guitar) recommended it, so after the first few minutes (a long scene of the main character busking on a Grafton Street sidewalk), Tim was skeptical (“They probably liked this only because they’re musicians…”).  But I was already hooked, and soon enough, Tim was too.  We have, of course, already downloaded the soundtrack.

 What was most touching to me, however, was a more subtle revelation about the artists.  A quick recap of my day to set the mood in which I watched the movie:  I took the MPRE in the morning (and still feel like I may have failed it), and Tim immediately picked me up so we could trek to the Babies R Us in Everett to buy some childproofing stuff for our about-to-be-quite-mobile 8-month-old. I find huge stores like that enervating to begin with, and the driving rain and traffic didn’t help.  In other words: not a good way to relax after a tough and important exam. So, despite a lovely bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape that we were saving for a special occasion, I still hadn’t completely unwound from my self-induced yuppie stress.  Back to the movie:  the story is about a musician who sings on the streets of Dublin, but lives at home in the suburbs, helping his aging father in his vacuum-repair shop and a young, Czech émigré who sells roses and cleans houses, and who ducks into a music store on her lunch hours to play their floor model pianos.  She helps the singer with lyrics and harmony, and he decides to record a spec CD to take to London to get a record deal.  He asks some other buskers who perform down the street from him to help out on the tracks – another guitarist, a basist, a drummer.  All five of them practice in John’s tiny bedroom and spend an entire night in the studio recording.  What gave me goosebumps was the transforming effect of the music.  The characters were no longer a vacuum-repair guy, or a housecleaner, or street buskers.  In a poignantly powerful detail, one of the guitarists even wears a tie into the recording studio.  It was worth it to them to live a relatively meager quotidian existence for the chance to do their art:  music was that important.  And, in the movie at least, this passion was tangible and authentic.

A few years ago, in a fit of despair and clarity (the former often brings on the latter), I thought I might run off to Rome and sweep floors in a well-known yoga studio to pay for my classes there and to support myself freelancing.  I’m totally serious.  It sounds terribly romantic and naïve, but I felt I’d be forced to be true to myself and, by giving up material comforts, might finally become the “real” writer I’ve always wanted to be.  And yet, here I am, just months away from become a big-firm attorney.  It would be easy to say that materialism and things won out, but, of course, real life is more complicated:  this was, after all, just a movie that I watched last night.  Still, I have a deep and almost soulful admiration for true artists who put their music or their writing or their painting first and let that art sustain them more than creature comforts.  After taking the MPRE yesterday I thought, almost happily, that if I failed it and couldn’t sit for the bar, I’d have a whole summer to write a novel (which would, of course become so successful that I wouldn’t have to take the bar and be a lawyer anyway).  Oh, the irony.

The winter flu season has inevitably struck down our wonderful babysitter, who, her other employer tells me, has never missed a day of work due to sickness in four years.  So when Janet said she was feeling sick on Tuesday, I told her to head home immediately.  Everyone in our house is finally healthy, and I’m a big believer that when people start to feel sick, they should get in their own beds before infecting everyone else.  So I’ve had a few bonus days with the Little Bug.  I was going to get two papers written during this Winter Break week, but that’s obviously not going to happen (was it really going to anyway?)  Instead, I went to music class yesterday — for whatever music class can really be worth to a seven-month-old.  Actually, she was totally engaged with the other babies and bouncing to the music.  And I really don’t mind spending how ever much I’m spending so that she and Janet can wave some jingle bells around and do the hokey pokey every week.  After watching a 60 Minutes segment on Sunday about a brilliant young composer — how he was inspired by his early violin lessons and the passion he now brings to classical music — I called my mother to ask where and when and how I was first exposed to music.  I know that we had a scratched, hand-me-down, upright piano (that probably was never truly in tune) in our family room, and by the time I was four I was clamoring to learn how to play it for real.  Those four-year-old lessons didn’t work out so well, but the next year I tried again and was hooked, taking lessons through my senior year in high school and then even for a semester in college (what?).  Music at some points has been a consuming passion (like, in high school? When I locked myself in my room and made mix tapes featuring deep, deep songs by Billy Joel and Pink Floyd?) and other times has been one of the main focuses, for better or for worse, of my extra-curricular life (Tigressions).  I do know that my parents sang to us all the time:  we used to joke that we could name a word and my mother could come up with a song for it (”Mustard! Try mustard!”), and my father taught us to harmonize in his beautiful baritone.  I want to give my daughter the exposure I had — singing around the house, music in the car, a piano to experiment on — so that she can choose for it to someday infuse and enrich her life as much as it did (does) mine.  They key word here, though, is choice.  I don’t want to force it on her, but just want to provide the environment that allows her to discover and hopefully embrace it on her own.  I think that’s why it stuck with me:  my parents never forced me to take piano.  But music was in some form or another always around me.  After I started lessons with much enthusiasm and success, they did insist that my sisters take lessons, however, and I think that’s why they rebelled and didn’t last more than a few years.  Although Jennifer, who took lessongs much longer than Erin, did end up in an a cappella group in college, as well.  (I also remember one car ride when a three-year-old Erin tried to sing “ABCD” and we were all horrified — horrified – that she couldn’t sing it in tune (how awful is that?))  I’m not really sure what my point is, other than to immediately contradict myself and wonder if maybe a little direction actually might not be so harmful.  If you have to start by forcing the issue, perhaps you can open a child’s eyes to something they might eventually enjoy? Isn’t that a theme of parenting in general?     

Anyway, one of the (many) things I love about my husband:  while he may not have been in an a cappella group (or even close to it!) he, too, loves to sing and sings around the house (and, in fact, it is he who finally got me to watch American Idol after years of protesting in principle).  Most sweetly, he sings to our daughter, making up songs just for her.

Someone once asked me:  if you had the choice between either only television or music in your home, which would you choose?