On Unplanned Affection
Can I be allowed a fangirl moment? Just one? Come on, you guys know I never get all girly on you. Just this once. I promise. Then it’s back to the dice rolling and the snarky commentary and the who knows what.
Last night was the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. You know, that one time of year when it’s excusable to stare at girls in lingerie on prime time television for awhile? That one.
So this is the part where I tell you how much I looooooove Maroon 5. I’ve been trying to catch them live for awhile now (they’re pretty high up on my rapidly dwindling bucket list of performers to see in concert) and Nick has done an amazing job of converting me. Maybe a little too amazing of a job. I might be in love with Adam Levine, their lead singer. He’s great. He’s got this amazing voice and style that, when stripped of all the modern technology beefing up the song, makes him sound like he should be playing at sock hops with his hair slicked back and one of those big old school Buddy Holly microphones. He also basically told Fox News to suck it, which is absolutely amazing. Not to mention he’s terribly attractive. I mean just look at this guy:
See? SEE?
Ahem. I told you this was going to be a fangirly blog. I promise it’ll be over soon.
So anyway, back to the actual story at hand, Mr. Levine here played with his band at the Victoria’s Secret fashion show last night, where his girlfriend Anna V was walking the runway. Yes, you read that correctly, this guy who got blessed with entirely too much attractiveness is also dating a Victoria’s Secret Angel. You might recognize her from the Never Gonna Leave This Bed videos if you’re already familiar with Maroon 5. Yeah. She’s that girl.
So while he’s playing and she’s being hot and we’re supposed to be focusing on the clothes, no seriously, what they’re wearing not what’s underneath, this happens:
Cute, right? Freaking adorable. He’s doing his thing, she’s doing her thing, and they just go on and hold hands and just kind of say “screw you, world! We’re in love! Try and stop us!” right there on national television.
It’s just so refreshing. I mean after I spent a solid two minutes squee-ing and giggling and hitting play a couple times, it’s just nice to see two people so in love and so willing to share it with people. Even in Maroon 5′s music videos – did you watch “Never Gonna Leave This Bed?” They basically snuggle in bed in a glass box on a truck going down the road where everyone can see them, not caring who sees it.
We just seem to focus so much on negativity in our culture, don’t we? Nobody cared when whats-her-face Kardashian got married, but as soon as she announced she was getting divorced – now that sells papers. We want to hear about scandal and badness and terrible stuff. I guess people want to feel better about their own lives.
But this stuff – something as simple as two careers and two workplaces colliding brings something so adorable and heartfelt and really makes you feel like the world can’t be all bad.
Sure, someone backstage was probably chewing her out a-la Jonathan Groff in Season 2 of Glee where Finn & Rachel’s kiss spoiled the competition for the team (was that a spoiler? oops.) going do you know what you’ve done you’re supposed to be upholding the blah blah blah blah…
But who cares?
Love is beautiful. Enjoy it – whether it’s yours or someone elses, whether it’s a boyfriend or girlfriend or wife or celebrity you can only dream of meeting or a book or a stuffed animal or even yourself – just enjoy it and let it happen.
Drop the drama and walk the runway on national TV. Tell someone they mean the world to you.
What’s the worst that could happen?
Read MoreThe Creative Curse
I’m writing this a day ahead. That’s weird, isn’t it? It always feels strange to me to write blog post in advance, no matter what the cause; I like having them lined up and ready to go so that I have something “every day,” but at the same time…who knows what will happen tomorrow? Later this afternoon? In five minutes? Before I complete this post, I could get a phone call that will completely rock my world upside down. Whatever I would write in this post would instantly become null and void and uninteresting. But we can’t really worry about that kind of thing, can we?
Lately I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the concept of being in the right place at the right time. I’m the kind of person who always ends up at the front row of concerts, I’ve won several of those “be the first 30 people to…” contests, it’s not so much luck as it is lucky timing. Five seconds this way, a minute that way, everything could have changed.
I’m sitting here now, in a Starbucks, just like every other hipster/businessman/struggling writer does from time to time, typing away on my laptop, trying to look busy. I thought I could come here to get away from the distractions of my office, and it’s sort-of worked. It’s also sort of given me some time to think.
There are things I want to do with my life. I want to travel certain places, meet certain people, do certain things. I want to eventually break out of this half-assed freelancing part-time waitressing mold and have a career. I feel destined for one. I feel destined for something; maybe it’s just a matter of getting off my ass and creating publishable work, or coming up with a concept or idea that will completely break the mold. The next Farmville. Fiasco. Facebook. Yahtzee. It doesn’t matter what it is, just something.
I constantly feel the need to create, like it’s in my blood. I’m either making graphics or drawing or writing or singing or making music or making code. I just make. It’s like a disease, I can’t stop doing it if I tried. I just can’t harness the creativity, the energy. I can’t ever seem to focus it on one project or one idea. I see my friends – at least, you know, internet friends, but people I would consider friends anyway – writers, musicians, artists. They just create. They spin thousands of words in a day, whip up a new idea in an afternoon, record an album. And here I am – jack of all trades, master of none, just feeling the creativity rush through my veins and out my finger tips into whatever I touch. It can be cooking, cleaning, rearranging, baking, drawing, stacking, building.
It doesn’t matter what I create, as long as it’s something.
Sometimes I feel like I need to just sit back and see where the ride takes me. Constantly I’m feeling pressured to make something worthwhile; an album, an adventure path, a novel, a clever website. Because what good are skills and creativity if you can’t put them to use, yeah? Every time I try, though – it doesn’t feel right. I’m fully aware you have to have resumes and references and examples – but nothing I try to create feels right, it doesn’t feel like I’m supposed to make it. Like mentally I want to skip the trial and error process and make a beeline for professionalism. That doesn’t happen in today’s society.
I’m sure that idea is just around the corner. Or hell, maybe it’s not. It takes us years to achieve greatness, sometimes. I’m still young by most standards, I have time.
I just wish I knew what my “idea” is. What my “thing” is going to be. Will I be a musician? A writer? A storyteller? A designer? A developer?
When is something going to click beyond just “being creative” and become a thing? Will it ever?
I like to sit at Starbucks because it feels like it’s where Opportunity Happens. Even if it’s not, even if it’s just me sitting in a coffee shop spending too much money on hot chocolate, blogging away instead of actually working on something that could be “it,” I feel better than sitting in my own apartment.
Who knows, maybe someone will approach me one day.
Maybe after I finish this post. After all, we never know what will happen tomorrow.
Read MoreA Single Moment
I wrote a song today.
I’m not sure if or when anyone will actually hear it, I’m kind of considering saving it for my first trip busking instead of attempting to record, but what’s important is: I wrote a song.
I was listening to an interview with Lisa Hannigan some time ago, and that paired with the Swell Season documentary, both of them sort of hinted at this thing, you know, where you write a song based on a fixed moment in time. Maybe you don’t feel that way anymore and maybe it was only five minutes five years ago, but sometimes those moments are song worthy.
Flashing back a bit, those of you that have been following for awhile will certainly be familiar with my whirlwind move to Wisconsin, and it’s occurred to me over the past few months that I didn’t really take much time for myself in all that – I did, but I didn’t. I had a lot of things bottled up that were – and still are – eating away at me slowly from the inside. Things I didn’t feel comfortable talking about or don’t want to bother anyone with, but that are still there.
I love music and I love playing music, and I have an awful habit of trying to write songs that are good instead of writing songs that mean something. I look at all of my favorite artists – pretty much the entire Irish music scene, really – and all of them, I love them because they make you feel. Because the musicians are clearly feeling something while they’re playing.
So today I started musing with a little chord progression I’d discovered while learning a cover of someone else’s song, and it turned into words. All at once this specific moment from years ago popped into my head, and it became a song.
It was between moves, one apartment to the other, at a time that barely matters now – but I had accidentally scheduled the electricity to be cut off a day early, so we were stuck in compelte darkness trying to move the last of our things. Trying to clean up messes we’d meant to, make sure we didn’t leave anything behind. But it was dark – and there’s only so much you can do; with flashlights or without them, you just can’t get the job done in the dark.
For some reason or another, that memory flooded my head. So I wrote. eAnd I played, and I just let words flow, and there was music.
I’ve been playing a lot lately – mostly by myself, or alone, or when no one’s home – my fingers hurt, my touch screen on my phone doesn’t seem to want to acknowledge my left hand, but I’ve felt better lately than I have in awhile.
It’s amazing what music can do, isn’t it? It can turn a day around, heal wounds that medicine can’t, and connect you to a person you’ve never met.
It’s like it’s human nature to turn words into song – and I love that. I love how honest it is. How natural. It gives you a sense of place, of belonging.
It’s a bit of a lifeline, isn’t it?
Read MoreSecond Rate(d)
I don’t often blog about what’s going on in the play-by-post role playing world. Partially because it’s not usually all that interesting, and partially because due to the accessibility of it (play-by-posters are not often just the geek-types you encounter at your local game shop; many of them are…well, more normal? Is that a good way to put it?) ….the entire subculture can be riddled with drama on a constant basis. Drama I usually try to stay out of.
So, barring that, a little backstory – I know I’ve blogged about this here and there before, but the short version is that play-by-post roleplaying is a type of roleplaying that happens on a message board or forum wherein each player writes a portion of a story going back and forth. You might say “George walks across the room.” and the next person might say “Annie watches George, confused.” It’s pretty easy.
Except that it’s not.
Like any hobby, people have a tendency to overcomplicate things, you know? Just like the crunch-geeks get all excited about new rulesets for tabletop games, these people…they come up with arbitrary rules a lot of the time. You see rules like “you must clear it with an administrator before your character gets pregnant” or “each post you make must be at least 500 words.” I understand some rules, y’know, but for the most part it’s just like playing Pathfinder with some DM who wants to make house rules left and right about how many times you’re allowed to use your blue dice vs your green dice.
But I digress.
The thing that’s gotten me over the past few days is this whole ratings issue. When people start rating their games, the average person tries to slap a movie rating on it. You know, MPAA style – “This board is PG-13″ or “This board has R-rated content.” It doesn’t make much sense given that it’s writing and not a visual thing and the MPAA isn’t exactly explicitly clear with how they do things in the first place, but it works. It’s something. I even went so far as to write up a set of guidelines to give people a general idea of what PG-13 might entail.
Then there’s this RPG Ratings System that came along. It’s a great idea in theory – lets take a look at all the major things that people are put-off by in a forum-based roleplaying game and let admins break it down in a straightforward manner so that you can be blunt about what is and isn’t allowed. Language, Sexual Content, and Violence are all rated on a scale of 0-3. 0 for not at all, 3 for “pretty much free for all.”
And here’s where my problem with this lies: people don’t want ‘real’ ratings, they want to be told they don’t have restrictions.
I even started a thread recently on a resource board I’m on, and the first question – Do you look for high ratings because you actually intend to post mature content, or do you just not want to feel restricted? Many of the first responders all said the same thing – they might play that in the future, but they don’t know where the character is going to go, so to be safe they just look for high ratings so they know they won’t be restricted in the future should they change their mind.
What’s worse, my second question – do you look for a more detailed explanation of what is allowed as far as each individual board’s content rating, or do you turn around if you see a low rating? Many people don’t even read further if there is a low rating like PG or PG-13 or something with lots of 2′s and 1′s on the RPG Rating system. They just assume they won’t fit in well there.
I’m someone who runs a PG-13 board. We allow a little bit of everything, a little bit of please-tag-your-post-mature-if-you-think-someone-may-get-offended, we have a swear filter on the software by default that people can turn off, so the sailors among us can swear to their hearts content and the rest of the world doesn’t have to see it if they aren’t comfortable with it. I have a very, very detailed list of what is and isn’t allowed on my board that doesn’t stop at the whole sex-violence-swearing thing, but goes into detail about things like alcohol, substance abuse, what underage characters can and cannot do. I spent a lot of time on it so that players can know exactly what they’re getting into.
And now I’m here to find out that some people wouldn’t even bother reading that? Because we’re “only” PG-13?
That’s the other awful thing – in the play-by-post world, everything seems to be ALL AMPED UP ALL THE TIME. If you play on a “PG” board, it’s probably My Little Pony with no deviations from the original plot. If you play on a “PG-13″ board, the worst someone is going to do is bonk you upside the head with a rubber mallet. The online roleplaying community has collectively allowed themselves to throw all the actual ratings to the wind and let “R” and “Mature” be universal labels of “Anything goes! We’re awesome! Check us out because we allow everything!” And that’s crap. Like, really shitty.
I’m pretty proud of my choice of board rating and refuse to back down, but it annoys me that people even bother putting ratings at all on their board if they’re just going to do it so that they’ll get more members, or so that people don’t “feel” restricted. Me, I put PG-13 to give people a general idea and to keep those creepy people (you know the ones) off my board. Then I elaborate to basically make the point of “hey, you can really do a whole lot, just don’t get all smut-a-rific up in here, okay?”
At the same time, it makes me want to come up with new names for the “MPAA Explanations” I came up with. Not that anyone’s going to universally adopt it, but maybe by throwing something else out there for people to mess with it might clear up some of this confusion. At least for me. Maybe by using something completely different I can try to ward off the whole stigma of “PG-13 MEANS RAINBOWS AND CLOUDS.”
I think at the end of the day, the thing that bothers me most is, when we look for a good movie, we look at how good the movie is first, and if it looks interesting, we don’t let the rating deter us from seeing it. Okay, so that might vary slightly for teenagers who have to sneak around Mom and Dad to see a “Rated R Film,” but seriously – how often do you go “Oh, that looks really good but it’s only a PG-13 rating, I don’t think I’ll watch it.” You don’t. Period.
When you pick up a new video game, you don’t go “Oh that looks really good but it’s rated Teen, and I don’t think it will be gory enough.” No. You just buy it anyway, because it probably looks good.
Whereas with roleplaying games, it’s completely acceptable to go “Wow, this site looks like a perfect fit for me, but It’s only a PG-13 rating, so I’m going to skip it.”
Dear Writers Moonlighting As Roleplayers: Newsflash – you’re challenging yourself more by adopting a new rating. Try something new once in awhile. You may find that you’re only as restricted as your imagination lets you be. I’ve written out perfectly violent scenes without so much cracking a “2″ on the RPG Rating scale. It can be done.
Challenge yourself, don’t limit yourself. You might be surprised.
Read MoreMusings On A Film
Somehow, despite how busy Nick and I have both been lately, we managed to escape to the city yet again – this time to Milwaukee to see one of the limited showings of The Swell Season, the all black-and-white documentary film about the band of the same name.
Nick and I discovered the Swell Season sort-of by accident; our exploration of the Irish music scene always seemed to bring up a few of the same names, including the famed Glen Hansard, front man of The Frames and a good friend – at least, as far as we can tell – of Damien Rice. Glen’s music sways from feeling like a traditional Irish ballad to heartfelt half-screaming lyrics to upbeat rock numbers with his band, hitting a series of different genres along the way. He quit school at age 13 to start busking on the streets of Dublin and hasn’t stopped playing since.
So in the backstory department, Glen eventually meets up with the beautiful Markéta Irglová and the musical chemistry was near about instant. The two wrote songs together, formed their duo “The Swell Season” and eventually ended up co-starring in the Fox Searchlight Film, Once, a story of a Czech immigrant girl who falls in love with a busker from Dublin – sound familiar?
The Swell Season documentary followed the two of them… well, post-film. I knew going in that it had been a tough road for the pair, and would be tough to watch - Markéta and Glen had fallen in love, then fallen out of love, and very recently Markéta married someone else. Where there should have been a wonderful love story, it was uncomfortable, painful, heartbreaking…but like any good heartbreaking story or love story, it was beautiful.
The film goes on tour a bit with Glen and Mar as they perform here and there, their lives on the tour. Entirely in black and white, it’s very easy to see that – unlike Once, which felt a bit like a fairy tale, we’re seeing two very real people living out very real lives. We meet Glen’s parents – and see some footage of his father’s last days before he drank himself to death, a gut wrenching realization once he shares this fact – as they remark on his fame, his Oscar award. His mother so proud that it seems to hurt him at times, and while he’s struggling with how to deal with fame, she tells him she wouldn’t have it any other way. Typical parental issues in a very atypical situation for two people to be in.
At some point, the film takes a turn, too – we see Markéta struggling with with fame as it grows, a crowd of people gathering after a show and Mar refusing to go out because she can’t stand the people acting like she’s anything special. From that point on, there’s dissonance between them. We don’t see the happy, loving couple that we saw in the beginning – we saw two people that got into something and had to figure out how to get out of it in one piece.
The entire story was beautiful. Difficult to watch, at times, but beautiful. It’s refreshing to see something so honest from people who are supposed to be “famous” – if they achieved nothing else, they showed that people are…well, just people, regardless of fame, regardless of the awards. Glen Hansard is just a guy who plays guitar, and Markéta Irglová is just a girl – born only a few weeks after I was, in the same year – who plays piano. There is nothing special about them except their honesty, which shines through in the film, in their music, and in everything we see of them.
Markéta will be in Chicago in a few weeks on her first ever solo tour. Glen, I’m not sure if or when I’ll get to see him, but should I get to meet either of them, on the street, after a show, in a pub, or wherever – I’m not going to get excited and ask for an autograph or photo, I’m going to thank them. For giving me inspiration to keep making music, for being so humble in their situations, and for being willing to share their story.
Like Markéta said in her Oscar acceptance speech – “fair play to those who dare to dream.” I hope all of theirs come true, because even after achieving fame there’s still something left to be gained.
Read MoreAn Ocean and a Rock
Remember that blog post from awhile ago where I said I was embarrassed that I hesitated to buy tickets to Lisa Hannigan’s show in Chicago?
Yeah, no. Strike that. Post-Concert, I can now upgrade (downgrade?) my status to officially mortified.
The trip getting into the city was easy enough, Nick and I learned our way around the “L Trains” pretty quickly, including a hands-on crash course on what you do and don’t do. And by “hands-on” I mean “we were the only people who seemed to stumble when the train departed since there were no places to stand” and “I sucked it up and sat next to a stranger after the first two minutes and was not assaulted in any way.”
We spent the afternoon cruising around on the subway and wandering around the city, out to Navy Pier and up the “Magnificent Mile” while we talked about Lisa and Damien and enjoyed the day off in general. We had a late lunch at our favorite pizza place1 and ended up at the absolute fanciest malls I have ever seen ever.
Somehow over the course of all this, I ended up – as I often do on Very Important Days – with a terrible migraine. I had done all the usual steps to prevent it but apparently the pull of the universe was just a bit much and by the time we lined up at Double Door I could barely see straight. Thanks to our fear of getting off at the wrong station / getting lost / me wanting to get the train ride over with, we ended up at the venue near 30 minutes before they opened the doors, with one lonely dude waiting in line at the front. He actually asked us if we had heard John Smith (the opener) before, and I said yes2 and the way he was asking if he was any good, I swear I thought that was John himself trying to mess with us. As it turns out, it wasn’t, thank God.
Once we got in we sort-of beeline’d for the front, and boy oh boy did we get a good spot. I somehow have the extremely good luck of being at the Very Front for every concert I have ever attended3, and this was no exception – actually, this was probably the closest I’ve been to any musician ever. Not bad for someone who shares the number one spot on my must-see list.
John Smith, the opener came out about fifteen minutes after the show was scheduled to begin, at which point I was immediately able to forget my headache as he launched into an a capella song that rapidly became an amazing guitar song “about death,” in his words. Nick and I were completely enamored and ready to buy CDs (which he was sold out of!) – his music fell somewhere between Ben Harper, Trace Bundy, the O Brother, Where Art Thou soundtrack and Mr. Damien Rice himself – all in all it was amazing. He made a few jokes about us not knowing who he was (been there myself – nobody wants to be the opening act) and even one about him “being a big deal in England” (followed rapidly by shaking his head and mouthing the words “no I’m not”) and frankly, we would have gone to see him play solo. This guy is definitely on my radar now – we haven’t gotten our CDs yet, but we plan to! Watch out for this one, internet.
After a short spell (mostly filled with me trying to keep my head up, strangely as long as there was someone standing on stage making music I felt fine) Lisa and her band came out. Without a word, they immediately launched into Paper House, by far one of my favorite songs on her new album – at least, before we saw her play live. Now I’m honestly not sure which one is my favorite. I managed to capture most of the song on video – to be honest I was not entirely expecting her to play it first and was a little surprised to have to get my camera back out so soon!
Pistachio came next, and let me just say that I was completely enamored with this song live. It’s one that I always listened to on-and-off from Sea Sew but occasionally skipped, but suddenly I found myself falling in love with it. I also fell in love with this crazy table organ thing she was playing which was one of – I can’t even count how many instruments she pulled out. The woman is amazingly talented and each song she brings out an assortment of new toys, looking absolutely tickled to death about each one. But right, the table organ thing (someone correct me on what this thing is seriously:)
Next up was A Sail, a song that I had been a little hesitant about on the actual recording, but it turned out to be phenomenal live. Nick and I both shot each other a look during this one – though we’d heard it before, we hadn’t really heard the lyrics. “It’s long gone, that carry on from December / it is no matter / if you remember.” Maybe nothing, but as people who like to read into things a lot – well gosh, the whole song reminded us an awfully lot of Damien’s “I Remember” (which he sang with Lisa) in the lyrical department. Almost like a call and answer of sorts.
Ocean and a Rock and Venn Diagram were every bit as beautiful as I’d expected, though both dwarfed a little bit by the beauty of the songs off of Passenger. I loved these songs on her first album and both were great – especially live – but it’s hard to put them up next to the newer ones. While there are some musicians where I’ll admittedly be a snot and go “Well this isn’t as good as their earlier work” – Lisa Hannigan is only improving the more and more she plays.
This next one took me a little bit to track down on YouTube (here’s a recording, though not from the Chicago show) – this was easily one of my favorite songs. Called, at least by this video and her set list, Flowers. She actually started up with a bit of crowd banter at this point and told us about how they were having “classic movie night” and that her choice had been Point Break. She called this song – and her playing of the electric guitar – the musical equivalent of shooting a gun in the air and yelling “Hyeahhh!” – this song. This song. It’s not on either album and I genuinely have no idea where to find it other than YouTube but it just blew me away. I expect to hear this on the soundtrack of some modern western or something in due time.
Little Bird came next, another song that I liked and caught a recording of, along with some more crowd banter, followed by O Sleep, a song that she originally did with Ray LaMontagne on the album. This was another song that captivated me in the recording that didn’t disappoint live – especially as a duet with the phenomenal John Smith.
As the songs rolled out and she chatted with the audience, this one was dedicated to such-and-such and that one to someone else, so imagine all of our surprise as we’re standing there and hear her say in her sweet, quiet voice: “This one is for Stephen Colbert.” As soon as she started playing we all cheered and knew it, I Don’t Know, a song she’d performed on his show previously. This is one of my favorite Lisa tunes; prior to the show I would have told you it was my absolute favorite but now I’m honestly not sure! It was great live and so much fun to see Lisa dancing around.
Passenger followed to great excitement of the audience; if you’ve heard the song by now you know about the opening line – she even introduced by saying “And this song is written about you!” It begins – “Walking ’round Chicago / I have smuggled you as cargo / though you are far away, unknowing.” The crowd response was so great and cheerful she had to stop and restart the whole song again! Each time a midwestern city/area was mentioned it got a huge applause and cheer.
Once the song was over and she was getting ready, a guy yelled out “What’ll I Do!” to Lisa’s surprise – she could tell (and so could we) that he was being cheeky after peeking at the setlist, but nonetheless she pronounced “This is for that guy!” and got on with the song.
A few things to be said about “What’ll I Do” – I absolutely did not like this song before I heard it live. While the others that I changed my mind about I had sort-of liked, this one I did not like at all. I wasn’t sure about it. It sounded odd, or different, but live - live you can really see how much this woman loves performing and absolutely must do it with every fiber of her being. It’s so full of energy and life and for a song that could have been so depressing, it just fills the entire room with happiness. You couldn’t help but clap along, stomp along, dance if you wanted to. It was just so classically Lisa.
Safe Travels, Don’t Die was the next choice, to my surprise – I thought for sure that song would be last, but nope! The song is hilarious as she warns you against various dangers (she introduced it as “some tips for life”) such as sitting too close to screens, bungee jumping, and playing with gasoline pumps (another Point Break reference was here, too.)
Finally, Lille. A song I’d been dying to hear live since I first heard it, and a famous one in the Big Book of Lisa Hannigan and Damien Rice’s Big Quasi-Romantic Musical Tale. The first song she wrote when they split up, purposely the last song at her concerts and the last song on the album. It was extraordinary seeing her play this – in two ways, one that it was downright beautiful and heartfelt, but on the other because I had read an interview with her once where she said she liked that song because it always made her smile, and that “even if I’m not smiling when I start, I’m smiling by the end” because the song is just so hopeful. Instead we got a passionate, emotional Lisa who looked on the brink of tears for the majority of the song. There was a certain sadness to it that despite my familiarity with the song, I hadn’t been expecting. It was magical and beautiful and a completely amazing moment.
She and the band left and came back quickly for an encore as expected; they opened it up with Home, a song from the new album that I hadn’t listened to much prior to coming, and then of course Knots, the loud, stomp-your-feet track she released as a single not too long ago. Talk about a song that just captures you – when she plays this song live it’s like an entire carnival crammed into three minutes. The different sounds and instruments, the energy from the entire band, it was just great.
As a closer, much to Nick’s delight, a rather creative version of Depeche Mode’s Personal Jesus (or as my setlist says, “Personal Jebus.”) She played it with some sort of creative drumming-on-a-dulcimer-with-a-string-bow technique and the entire band was just on fire. In Nick’s words “it wasn’t the best version of the song, but man they were having fun up there.” They were! It was like a party and a metal show all at once!
After the show I managed to nab the last setlist from the stage thanks to a helpful bloke who worked for the venue while Nick was in line to get a CD. While I was returning to the line, though – there she was! Ms. Lisa Hannigan herself sitting at the merch desk, chatting away with everyone – and Nick only a few folks away from the front. They were out of CDs but we purchased a beautiful poster and had her sign it for us and had a nice little chat that I wish could have gone on forever.
Lisa was so incredibly nice, sweet, friendly, beautiful, amazing – I cannot possibly give enough adjectives to fully explain how rewarding the experience was. I especially loved getting to chat with her – however short it was, and even though Nick and I kept coming up with a billion things afterwards we wish we could have said! Here was a woman that I had been following and inspired by since I was in high school – right in front of me! Chatting away! It was wonderful.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. To Lisa, to John Smith, to the entire band, to Double Door – this was the most magical, completely captivating performance I have ever attended. I hope to see you again soon. :)
1. It should be noted that I, Manda Collis, noted Pizza Aficionado, have dubbed Chicago Style Pizza superior to New York Style Pizza.
2. I only knew of him because I googled him before the show to see if we’d like his music. AGAIN, GUILTY.
3. There have been a few exceptions such as stadium shows and shows with fixed seating, but I’ve definitely been within arm’s reach of Regina Spektor, Michelle Branch, and Dashboard Confessional. Good enough.
Read MoreCheers, Darlin.
Many years ago, I found solace on the internet. I found friends where I had none, a community out of nowhere. And these people, like most people, listened to music.
I love music, and always taking new suggestions, I watched the little meter on AIM tick down as I downloaded a copy of a song called “Rootless Tree” by some guy that I thought I had heard of before, but never properly listened to.
The gentleman was Damien Rice.
I started listening. I got a hold of an album, somehow, and played it nonstop on repeat. It was the most incredible music I’d ever heard; raw, emotional, acoustic shit that made you think. And it was beautiful.
I did with his music what you do with good music: I shared with someone I cared about very much, and we would spend endless hours with one album or the other on repeat. I believe 9 had been released not long before, and while it was wholly different from his debut, O, both were completely captivating. If I still had the computer I had then, you’d see numbers for those albums higher than any other out of my days and days of music.
Some time passed and around the time I stopped hearing from the person I cared about that I had shared the music with, Damien and his partner, Lisa Hannigan, split. It may have happened before we stopped talking, it may have happened after; I remember being vaguely aware that he mostly toured alone, then, and wishing I could go see him, or them, but surely there would be more tours and more shows and more albums.
Years passed. There were no more tours. There were no more albums.
A few years ago, we started talking again. Somehow Damien came up, and Lisa, and how there had been no more anything, and not long after I found the article. They hadn’t just been making music, they had been in love, and the music that I loved so very, very much had been a factor in their split. It was heartbreaking. The thought of not hearing music from them together anymore was heartbreaking. The reality that this extremely talented musician I had been following for years may never make another album or go on another tour or play on another stage properly again. What if he never made more music? What if that was it? What if we had two albums, and two albums alone for the rest of forever? The same music that got me through several years and stuck in my head forever, the music that got me to actually pick up and play my guitar, the songs I played on stage as my own way of telling people how I felt… all of it gone.
It’s not any one thing that holds people together or breaks them apart – and while Lisa and Damien showed me that everything is fragile, the same person who found the same appreciation for their music that I did now shares the same apartment as I do. We still listen to the same songs, the same two albums forever on repeat, finally accepting that there may not be another.
Music has a funny way with people. You can’t take the music out of someone, no matter how hard you try. You can break their spirit and break their motives and even try to take away their muse, but there will always be something else to write music about. Around the internet you’ll hear in a few places that supposedly the night Lisa left before the show, he did one of his famous versions of “Cheers Darlin” for her, a song I’ve oft played at my own performances. A toast of regret.
One by one, there have been songs. They have been few and far between and some better than others and nothing at all like the happy, upbeat songs we began to see on his sophomore album, 9. They are harsh and unforgiving and heartbreaking, but beautiful all the same. It took awhile for some of them to warm up. Others brought me to tears almost immediately, knowing what may or may not have been some of the inspiration.
And then there was Lisa.
Beautiful, talented, wonderful, amazing Lisa, with all of her kindness and all of her talent and her sweet voice, who stepped out on her own. She made an album by herself, completely different from all of the songs with Damien. If you’ve followed them through the years, listened to all the music, you can hear a lightness in Lisa’s voice that was absent before. No matter how beautiful her songs with Damien, they were always so grim – perhaps because of his own writing – but her music is light. It shows hope. The very first single she released, “Lille,” seems to speak almost directly to and about Damien. But it’s light. Hopeful. Accepting.
Nick and I have always said that we would do anything to see Damien. Get our passports as soon as we can so that we could catch one of his rogue performances in Ireland, expecting him to be wearing that same ratty brown coat he always is. Drop everything to travel across the country at a moment’s notice, no matter the cost. His talent is immeasurable, and the place his music holds in both of our hearts is something that hasn’t ever been filled by any other song. Different things mean different people; Damien’s music is something different for us. Something sacred.
Maybe a month ago I found out about Lisa’s tour. For once, she wasn’t playing in Ireland; she was celebrating her own sophomore album release by touring the United States.
She would be here. On a Monday, the least convenient of all days, in the middle of Chicago, a city I can navigate only as long as the battery on my phone lasts, two days after Nick’s birthday, a day we had already pre-planned.
I feel embarrassed that we hesitated to say yes.
The decision was a hard one, because of convenience, because of money, because we both felt ashamed that we didn’t know Lisa’s music as well as we had liked. I put her first album, Sea Sew on in the car, and we listened to it to and from work. It stewed in the back of our brains, songs constantly stuck in our head.
Nick pointed it out first, and I completely agree – if he were here to consult, Damien himself would want us to go see Lisa play. And that was that. We were going.
I woke up today excited that we were finally in the month of the concert, impressed that September was over, and on a whim decided to do my occasional check of EskimoFriends, a website that does a better job of following Damien and Lisa than Damien’s website even does, just to see if there had been news. Another random appearance somewhere, another single for charity, more music.
Instead I found out that recently, ten years after his first single debuted in Ireland, the musician that has so greatly influenced my own songwriting, has finally, finally achieved a top ten single on the UK charts. Someone sang “Cannonball” on a television show, and someone noticed. Loads of people noticed. Suddenly this person I’ve been following for the better part of a decade has a song I’ve never cared for as much as his other music right there next to Maroon 5, beating out singers like Rhianna and Katy Perry and rap groups and pop groups – right there, this little song by this rarely mentioned Irishman – a song he used to sing with Lisa. As if she never left.
Nine days. Nine days until we see Lisa, and today I am listening to her new album streaming from KCRW, the same station that produced some of my favorite versions of Damien’s songs. Today I am listening to “Cannonball” and remembering what it was like for me the first time I heard Damien sing all those years ago, and hoping for the people who discover him now, after everything seems to have passed, that they can appreciate the talent. That they can appreciate the fact that good music is timeless, and that we may never see another album from Mr. Rice again – but that the few he’s made have been, and will always be, enough.
I look forward to seeing Lisa in person. Her voice brings me to tears and fills me with hope all at once. Without Damien, I would have never known who she was, would have never turned on “I Don’t Know” for a pick me up a hundred times – where there was disappointment at the possibility of never hearing such beautiful music from her as a duet with Damien ever again, now there is something better: happiness, possibility, and one of the most talented women that I think has ever picked up a stringed instrument.
Cheers to both of you. Here’s to top ten singles decades too late – and to music, timeless as it is; to the way it rips people apart and pulls them back together again.
To hope.
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