I left Arizona on July 26th. That happens to be my sister’s birthday. In all the hurry, I forgot to call her. Oops.
Since then, I’ve been to Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina. I’ve posted about my trip to the MacCready Reserve already, but I’ve got much more to tell you about. If you’re lucky, I’ll get it up before I’ve forgotten most of the details.
I head back to Arizona this week. As wonderful as it’s been to see friends and (some) family and to explore non-desert ecosystems again, I’m anxious to get back home. The pressure changes of air travel and the region I’ve been traveling in, irregular sleep schedule, and unfamiliar stress of heat and humidity have led to more migraines than I want to think about.
My sister introduced me to Florence & the Machine this week. You’re probably already familiar, but in case you aren’t:
I’ve been doing a lot of writing lately, mostly for work and the graduate school application process, and I’ve got a lot to do yet. The music I choose while writing is essential for me to be productive. Over the next few weeks (months?) I’ll share the music associated with my best writing sessions. And please tell me what your best writing music is!
David Lang won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Music for The Little Match Girl Passion. It’s truly beautiful. You can read what Lang has to say about the work here and listen to the entire piece here.
Since then, I’ve bought just about everything she’s made that I can find. I’m particularly in love with The Symphonies: Dreams Memories & Parties. This review (which also includes some interesting background information) about captures how I feel about her music:
it had me from hello, from the first violin strains, the first bass notes. Her music is haunting, ethereal, evocative of strange forest creatures playing music and abruptly halting when a human wanders down the trail within earshot. You get the feeling that what you’re hearing is a kind of musical love-note at times, then in other tracks, while taking a darker turn, the beauty of the piece is such that you overlook the tone of threat that is existing in the lyrics. This is music that you can listen to over and over for ages.
SublimeFemme brought the music of the wonderful Sabrina Chap to my attention this week. I knew about Sabrina Chap through the incredible collection of stories and art, Live Through This: On Creativity and Self-Destruction, but had no idea she was a also musician. Her music is very fun, but also clever, and wonderfully queer.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. — Dwight D. Eisenhower
, but had no idea she was a also musician. Her music is very fun, but also clever, and wonderfully queer.
Chatter