All Apologies
My life has had to become very quiet over the last few months.
No shows. No yoga. Almost no music or writing. At all.
Shortly before Labor Day of last year, the universe decided to send me a little gift-wrapped package that I didn’t know how to deal with and inside that little box was/is the possibility of MS. I’ve become a “Dr. House” patient for the moment, so I sit in the dark. Waiting. There are those that have been supportive and understanding and too many more that have not been, including two employers and a yoga community that I was a part of for the last eight years. I am grateful to the ones that have stuck around.
Still, darkness is as darkness does. Being that choosing to leave my house isn’t something I’m wont to do lately, I’ve sought out stories and soundtracks to other people’s lives in order to go somewhere, anywhere else that wasn’t here. Perhaps we all need a vacation from our own lives and what better way then to crack open a book. I’ve ridden along with a British spy in Africa in both the 40s and the late 60s, relived the Paris I dreamt of as a child, and had a good long conversation with an aging Brit about the illusion of memory’s impermeability. The internet and films have also proved a worthy distraction when face to face interaction has been too daunting.
What this has also amounted to, however, is the inability to function in my own life. No amount of good tunes or books or internet distractions (or for that matter, anything) has eased the fact that my balance is shot, I can’t feel my feet, and I just haven’t felt like myself in months. Even trolling for music—I love discovering new songs or albums to color my personal soundtrack—has become impossible.
For now, until life lightens up, the words of others will tell the story. Obviously, if you don’t automatically recognize where “All Apologies” comes from, you missed a most-epic period in music.
Google it. Seriously. There was music before all of this rehashed, hipster synth-pop.
“Nights In White Satin” ~ Midnight Movies
I love this rendition of an old Moody Blues tune…modern, haunting, and perfectly appropriate for a Hitchcock thriller.
Selling the Experience of Reading the News
With the exception of my father and a handful of others hungry to hang on to the nostalgia of breaking open the NY Times over an espresso and breakfast on Sunday mornings, everyone I know accesses their “need to know” news via the web—why pick up a paper when you have the news of the world in the palm of your hand and in many cases, for free?
Back when I used to read print newspapers, the aesthetics of the reading experience were really important and went so far as to determine which papers I favored over others. For example, the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News was my go-to read largely because it was printed magazine style without the “below the fold” aspect that the Denver Post employed and continues to employ. The NY Times carries with it both in print and reputation, the air of sophistication—it’s an old school, urban newspaper highly regarded for it’s vast coverage of news worldwide. There was always that certain self-importance one felt when sprawled over one of these papers in a coffee shop in the early hours of the day. The Wall Street Journal with its clever penciled renderings of the notable contributors echoed a similar thought: this was a publication for smart people.
The list goes on and on. Time and Newsweek were other publications I once read with a religious fervor until my life was swallowed up in the film industry. Either way, when I came back to reading the news, the platform was and remains totally different—blogs, Twitter, FB, and a plethora of other news sources have taken over the place in my life that news-specific publications once held. Again, the same factors come into play: page layout, site navigation, diversity of coverage, et cetera. In short, aesthetics.
The irony in this is that instead of focusing on what they’re delivering to readers, the newspapers have allowed themselves to become entirely enveloped in the crush of, “How do we get people to pay for content? How do we survive the move to digital?” The stereotypical layout found on most news sites today is columnar with a mash of bold headlines, images, and occasionally video. Some websites do this well. Some do not.
Case in point: Newsweek/Daily Beast versus Time. Layout is the same, but I’m more keen to read Newsweek than ever visit Time’s website. Why? They’ve copied Newsweek down to the colors, but chosen to put too much on the homepage in a serif font (which does not translate well online,) avoided sectioning in any identifiable way, and can you say, “Too much red?”
Newspapers, in the digital era, are no longer selling the news. They are selling the experience of reading the news.
“Past Present Future” ~ Oliver Tank
The music of Oliver Tank is continually crushingly beautiful.
Source: SoundCloud / Oliver Tank
“Lovedead” ~ Army of the Universe
Of all the music I had the luxury of being introduced this year—either via friends, chance, or by way of being a music journalist—this band and their producer completely blew me away. This track was the lead single of their debut album, “Mother Ignorance.”
