song

I'm not sure it's even healthy for a song to be this cathartic.
Leonard Cohen wrote it - listen to Jeff Buckley's or Brandi Carlisle's verson.


I heard there was a secret chord
That david played and it pleased the lord
But you don't really care for music, do ya
Well it goes like this the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall and the major lift
The baffled king composing hallelujah
Well your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to her kitchen chair
She broke your throne and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the hallelujah
Baby i've been here before
I've seen this room and i've walked this floor
I used to live alone before i knew you
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
But love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah
Well there was a time when you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show that to me do you
But remember when i moved in you
And the holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was hallelujah
Well, maybe there's a god above
But all i've ever learned from love
Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you
It's not a cry that you hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah

On a more upbeat note, I'm really enjoying Sarah Harmer's true, simple songs, check those out too.

the grace game

I had a dream last night that I was in an arcade with some co-workers. We were playing these weird video and pinball games. I played one that didn't have any game, really, you just watched cartoons - the cartoon reminded me of that old (MTV) show, Daria, except all the people were drawn sort of like stick figures, and it was kinda twisted. Another game had a Donnie Darko theme, and there were these cartoon drawings of the girl from the movie (holding a can of spray paint - does she spray paint things in the movie? I'm thinking no.) and the guy. The game was cool, though, because when you put a quarter in, a bunch of change would come out. Not like a slot machine, where you have a chance of getting money back, it always came out! I thought how nice an idea it was to have a game that gave away money.

and the artist is...

Ok, the cool tent structure on campus I posted about a few days back was actually made by this guy, in conjunction with an art show by the aforementioned crazy chick. I found this out because I saw a guy putting air in the tires of a car that was decorated much like the tent, at the gas station near my house. I asked him, "hey, did you have anything to do with the tent on campus?" He was like, "sure, I made it!" So I got a chance to tell him how much I liked it. What a great experience!

Family visit

It was great to have my mom, grandma, and cousin Anders visit me this weekend for Easter. Anders has a way of saying something in three words that would take me an essay to say. For instance, we all went for a walk on the Unversity of Iowa campus, and we looked at a courtyard which has this structure as its back wall, and is filled with odd sculptures of various sizes and shapes, some rusted, some bright and made of marble, all abstract. It has a sort of macabre, midnight-in-the-garden-of-good-and-evil kind of beauty to it.

Anders looked at it and said, "This courtyard is weird. In kind of a good way."

My very first tornado

My town got hit by an F2! Check it out!
(Thanks to KGAN and the University of Iowa Public Relations Department for the pictures - I'll try to post mine soon!)

art

I think it was this crazy chick whose art was outside the art building today. If I'm wrong I'll correct this. Anyway, there was a little temporary structure erected on the grass, with iconic words and phrases painted all over it. On the inside of the structure was MLK Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech, written the way he spoke it, larger words where his voice raises in the recording. Those words always strike me, this time it was the urgency - the this-summer-will-make-history-ness of it. We need that now. We need more art, more life, more reality,
MORE TRUTH.

First of all,

I really really apologize for my last post.

Second of all, I've discovered my extreme dislike for being a secretary (*cough* administrative assistant). It's ok at artsy-fartsy educational companies that know you don't give a damn, but it's a lot harder when you have to pretend you care. Some guy from my office came up to me today, while I was obviously busy with something, and said, "Do you know how to send a fax?"

Ok, seriously. I've been there for 2 weeks, and he's been there for over a year, and he's asking me advice on how to use the office equipment? I was like, "ok, you put the paper here, and then you punch in the number." For crying out loud.

Basically, I was sooooo jealous. I wanted to be the rude person with the "important" job, running up to the secretary with my important fax, saying, "This has to go out soon! Help me, I have no clerical skills! Also, can you order me 10 reams of paper? You know, the long weird-looking paper?"

If you ever want motivation to stop farting around and get your career back on track, get a shitty job, surrounded by people with jobs they love. It does the trick!

Well,

I can officially kill myself.

Your superpower

I had a conversation with a friend once, in which the question was asked, "If you had a super-power, like a comic book hero, what would it be?" My friend wished to be able to fly, I wished to stop time. It seems things go by so fast that I can never hang onto them, and what time I do have, I often squander. Today, listening to a piece by Nystroem (a Finnish composer) in my car, I realized that's what music does - it seems to stop time. Maybe because it's the only art form that uses time (a piece of music always occurs in a space of time), it has the ability to transcend it.