Whoa! "Praise song" lyrics I actually like!

For as long as I shall live
I will testify to love
I'll be a witness in the silences
When words are not enough

And the award goes to...

Man, if I hear something like this one more time...

(excerpt from an AP article about Steve Carrell's Golden Globes win):
"Later, when he collected his award, he said he hadn't bothered to write an acceptance speech. Instead, he read one he claimed was written by his wife, Nancy. It ignored his career and instead praised his wife, noting that she had put aside her career for his."

Funny gag aside, this is what half the male award winners always say. "This is for my wife, who sacrificed so much for me."

I wrote a little song once called "I won't make you better", and I even had a little speech prepared, as to what I would say to introduce the song, in my imaginary concert. (do I have a rich imagination or am I hopelessly delusional? You decide) Here's how the speech went:

"There's this guy I used to date, who is destined for great things. He is kind, articulate, and brave. Ladies and gentlemen, this man is going to change the world. He will be a senator, a diplomat, or some kind of leader. Not the corrupt, power-driven kind though. No, no. He will be the sort of leader that inspires devotion as well as respect. He will not lose his values through his rise to power, and will continue to fight for "the little people" till the end.

Ladies and gentlemen, this man will have a great woman by his side. She will be strong, smart and brave. She will support him when the going gets tough, take care of the details of daily living when they're more than he can handle, and chastise him when he gets too haughty for his own good.

They will work as a team, and her husband will receive a Nobel Peace Prize, his Journalism Award, his election to a higher position, or his Academy award. And as he stands on that stage to accept, he will look to her first and say, "This is for you." She will smile and her eyes will fill with tears, and she will know in that moment that all the strife, all the hard work, all the sacrifice has been worth it. She has made the world a better place, by making him a better man.

Ladies and gentlemen, this woman will be a great woman, a worthy woman, a person of honor.

But it's not gonna be me."

Movie Martyrs

Last weekend, the minister at the church I've been attending used the storyline of the movie "It's a Wonderful Life" as his sermon. This reminded me of another movie-with-a-moral, "Mr. Holland's Opus."

I truly hate "Mr. Holland's Opus". The main character, Mr. Holland, wants to be a composer, but he also needs a job, so he beomes a high school teacher. His teaching style can only be described as a series of magic tricks. For example, a student plays the clarinet only in shrill squeaks, and Mr. Holland says, "play a sunset" and suddenly she can play a beautiful melodic line. Imagery is good, but it can't replace the nuts and bolts of technique. It's as if you told someone who doesn't speak English to write a sonnet, and said, "think of the ocean" and they miraculously produced Shakespearean verse. No one would believe that, but for some reason people think musical ability is some mystical talent from on high, rather than a learned skill, so the scene doesn't look ridiculous to most.

Never mind that he'd rather be composing, never mind that he has the worst attitude towards his students humanly possible, he manages to miraculously transform his high school music program into a great one. Lemme tell ya, even with a great attitude, turning around a failing school program would be hard enough. I can't imagine the results if you didn't care.

Ok, putting aside the fact that the movie is completely divorced from reality, it does have a message to impart. After years of being a music teacher, Mr. Holland has never found the time to be a great composer. He feels like kind of a failure, but then his students show up at some retirement banquet or whatever, and play a piece of his music. They tell him "We are your symphony." Boohoo, weep weep. Then they play the most godawful piece of music ever written. In an act of mind-boggling hubris and ignorance, he titled it "An American Symphony." Never mind that thousands of symphonies have already been written by American composers, some of which are considered fundamental parts of the canon of musical literature. At one point, he has some rock guitars play some crappy melody, so I guess you're supposed to think "whoa!!! Look at him innovate and combine genres!" even though rock guitars have already been used in symphonic music (and without sounding like muzak, like they did in this case). Even though the symphony has been infused with rock, jazz, blues, Indian music, Latin dance music, etc. by various composers already.

So really, it wasn't any great tragedy that Mr. Holland didn't become a composer, because he sucked! Wait - I dont' think that's the idea the writers were going for. They meant to say that he made a much greater impact on the world by teaching others and giving them confidence than he would have done by focusing on his art. I'll admit, some people need to hear this message - they have such grandiose ideas of what they're capable of, that they miss the good they can do right now, in their community, and with their families.

But a lot of people, especially women, are guilted into giving up their dreams with this kind of fable. They enter helping professions or stay at home with their kids, letting other people or their children be their "symphony" or their "novel" or their "invention" or their "programming language" or their "work of art".

Some people might get a lot out of this message, or the message in "It's a Wonderful Life," another heavy-handed morality tale (which is, admittedly, better done than "Mr. Holland"). I, however, spend that whole movie wishing George would just leave the town that he's propping up with his selflessness, and go out and see the world like he's always dreamed of doing.

Making sacrifices for the greater good is noble. However, sacrifice in and of itself is not neccessarily noble. The sacrifice is only as good as the good it does for the cause.
The problem with these morality tales is not that they suggest that some people need to work toward more practical dreams, it's that they are often used to support the idea that EVERYONE should. A professional musician or composer is not a lesser person, morally, than a teacher. And could George of IAWF have done more good if he had gone out into the world, and brought his small-town values to a job as CEO of a large company? Maybe not, but in the black-and-white, everything-happens-for-a-reason world of the movie, it's not even CONSIDERED as a possibility.

Artists and dreamers are not inherently selfish. That an artist helps her fellow human beings in an indirect fashion does not make her work less noble. In the same way, a person who follows his dreams and leaves his small town for larger things does not neccessarily diminish his community. He may not be working with or teaching them directly, but may indirectly inspire those he left behind to accomplish greater things. For a person like this, his "symphony" will indeed be a symphony.

My favorites

I had this misguided idea, not too long ago, to create a list of the 50 Greatest Songs Ever. I think it started with hearing "Under Pressure" on the radio, and thinking, "If I had a list of the 50 greatest songs ever, this would be on it!" The more I worked on it, though, the more impossible and arrogant an idea it seemed. So I decided to forget objectivity and make a list of MY favorite songs. My criteria for selection were that each song had to be one that I had known for a long time, and heard a lot, but not gotten tired of.

Here goes!

“Oye Como Va” – Santana
such a tight band sound, I love it

“All Along the Watchtower” – J Hendix (written by b Dylan)

“You can’t take that away from me” – Gershwin, many performers’ versions I like – Dianna Krall is a fav., Rosemary Clooney, Frank S. It’s not just a nostalgic reverie about a lost love – it’s a profound song about the things that last.

“Let him fly” – Patty Griffin (as performed by the dixie chicks)
simple, universal – every woman has been here.

“Aqualung” – Jethro Tull
prog rock at its finest

“Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World” – Neil Young
this is my “pissed off” song

“Duncan” – Paul Simon
beautiful story song

“Like a Prayer” – Madonna
like “Duncan”, this one’s about sex and religion. Yeah, I think I’m a little screwed up…

“losing my religion” – R.E.M.
I played this in a piano recital in high school. Scary but true.

“I used to love him (but now I don’t)” – Lauryn Hill and Mary J. Blige
“Father you saved me/and you showed me that life/was much more than being/some foolish man’s wife”

“The Drunken Piper” – Natalie McMaster, fiddle, Cookie Rankin, vocals
Gaelic song. No idea what it’s about, but the singer does this singing that sounds like fiddle playing, and it blows me away

“I Take my Chances” Mary Chapin Carpenter
“Now some people say you shouldn’t tempt fate/and for them I would not disagree/But I never learned nothing by playing it safe/I say fate should not tempt me.”

“Leaving Las Vegas” - Sheryl Crow

“Things have Changed” – Bob Dylan

“Paranoid Android” – Radiohead

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve service at my old church in Maryland is always an emotional experience for me. I always spot a lot of people I grew up with. Most of us don't live in Maryland anymore, many of us don't attend church, and this is the one night a year (or in several years) that we come back to our roots. I saw the sister of a friend, who told me about her latest adventures, a Sunday school teacher from high school, and my ex-boyfriend from high school and college. I always feel a little odd when I see my ex-boyfriend - we dated for 4 years, and my friend Paul calls him my "ex-husband". He could have a point there; perhaps the range of complicated emotions I feel when I see him approaches what someone feels when they see an ex-spouse.

During the service, I realized noticed a familiar voice was reading the Bible passage. I thought for a moment, then sat up straight in my pew, and said outloud, "That's my shrink!" And indeed it was - the woman I went to for counciling is also a minister, and she was one of the service leaders that night. Luckily there was only one other person in the balcony, who probably didn't hear my exclamation. When I came down for communion, I gave her my warmest smile, and she returned it as she handed me the bread. Her eyes seemed to say, "I wondered what had happened to you!" Her wise guidance was part of what led me to Iowa. It was a strange, full-circle feeling, to be coming to her on a trip home from a different place, to be with her in such a different context.

They turned off all the lights in the church, and lit one candle. We then began passing the light from one person to the next, until the sanctuary was illuminated again. It's such a cliqued metaphor - the amount of light that one candle can shed in a room full of darkness - but in this dark moment in our country's history, I think it's a good one, nonetheless.

The soloist sang "O Holy Night", which includes some great language: "Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother, and in his name all oppression shall cease." It was interesting to think that song was probably being sung in restrictive, hateful churches all over the country at that moment, and that maybe just a little bit of its message of social justice might be filtering through the minds of those who heard it. At Christmas, we celebrate the birth of a man who led a religious movement. We celebrate the idea of God coming to live with us, to be a part of us. But for me, it helps to remember specifically who that God is. Remembering what Jesus' ministry was all about, and what our Christianity can and COULD be gives the holiday its deepest joy. Imagine that we mark not the birth of some vague diety, but the birth of justice, the source of power for the fight for freedom and the struggle for peace. That's the kind of savior I can rely on. That's something worth all the parties and pagentry and noise the season can bring. That's something worth celebrating.