Discography

Sometimes I wonder if I'm a product of my music interest, or if my music interest is just a side effect to who I am.

Let me explain.

Young Erica listened to a cassette tape of Kenny Loggins singing children's songs and lullabies. I don't mean this in a The Wiggles kind of way. They were calm, peaceful, almost folk songs.

It's where I met Pooh Corner, unicorns, comets, horses, and the existence of other cultures (as exhibited in To-Ra-Loo-Ra). They gave me this calmness, this widening of the mind. I started making music videos in my head to this music, before knowing music videos were really a thing, that video had ever killed the radio star, before knowing an artist could record songs they hadn't written. I learned the words painted the pictures I would see in my head. And I liked it.

Young Erica found another album in her mother's collection. She'd stolen Kenny Loggins, and returned for more. It's this album that I believe did it, this album that made my above mentioned speculation evident.

I think about this album a lot, especially lately. Because it made me think. And that's the key. Kenny Loggins drove my mind across the sky with St. Judy's comet and through forest glades with the last unicorn, but Sixpence None the Richer made me think. I didn't know what it meant. And it was frustrating. I didn't know what inconsistent angel things were, how a womb could be artistic, who "she" was in 'Sister, Mother.' I didn't get it. I was left to figure it out, and when I learned to read I read through the lyrics printed in the cover. But I still didn't know. This album is heavy on imagery, metaphor; it's poetry. It's an album of poems, and the answers are hidden in subtext and verbiage and unique to the listener. It's words painting pictures.

I have an odd reverence for words. You've probably gleaned as much if you've read this blog before. My favorite thing about Kenny Loggins wasn't his voice or the beautiful album art. It was the words, the story. I was devastated when I read who'd written the songs and saw Leigh Nash was only responsible for one of them; I felt cheated her lips were speaking someone else's words. The thing I loved most, and what still remains the deciding factor, about Jason Mraz was his words.

It had to come to this. He released an album Tuesday. Why else would we be here?

In the past couple of years I've let go of my tight grip on lyrics to hear the themes in the music itself. It started with Jason Mraz. I'd heard his songs so much the words were already ingrained in my subconscious, so I started feeling the beat, started noticing the way the rifts changed, started hearing the layers. Music has become a new journey for me; I've realized it's not just the words, but the way they play with the music. Hearing Mraz for those first months was incredible because each time I heard a song again I'd get new insight into what words he was using, what he was truly saying. When that went away I started having epiphanies about the melodies.

And now back to my musing at the first: am I a product of my music, or do I have this taste because of who I am?

Where's the causation? Is there any?

I've often attributed my prose style to Sixpence None the Richer, claiming the album introduced me to words that masked what they meant, thus giving me the natural knack I have for spewing imagery. I'd been raised on it. But as the last few months have gone on, I've found myself slipping back into my old tastes as far as music goes. I've ventured off to Indie and Alternative Pop, but I'm tucking myself back into acoustic folk pop. I turn a happier ear to the music reminiscent of that first album, the mystique and metaphor on which I was raised. And I'm aware now that it's more than the words I appreciate; I've noticed a distinct similarity between the two. I've always said I like the music I like because the words are usually more akin to what I'm interested in. Which is mostly true. But there's been many a song I've enjoyed for lyrics and felt so-so as far as music goes. (A certain duet between Eminem and Rihanna comes to mind.) And a couple albums with instrumental tracks have taught me that music can speak without words. Willis showed me a Japanese artist whose songs hit me very deeply, but I don't speak Japanese.

Then Wednesday happened. Yes! came in the mail a day late, and after I enjoyed my new t-shirt, notebook, and poster, I popped in the album and leaned back on my bed to let Jason Mraz's latest work envelop me for the first time.

It's a meadow. It's soft clouds lilted by the pink hues of a setting sun breathing through branches accompanied by a faint breeze. It's sand flaking out to sea as the waves roll over it lightly. It's nature. It's peace. It's beauty. I hesitate to say it's my favorite album only because it's so new, and of course his newest endeavor is my favorite. I said this of his last installment, Love is a Four Letter Word.

But it's the difference of this album to every other that makes it hit me in such a unique way. I'm well versed in his music, and I recall lying there, listening to this album for the first time thinking how I love how he has changed. This sound is something I couldn't place in his past. But I could place it in mine.

If I'm a product of my music interest, Yes! is my current Sixpence None the Richer, an album for another decade of life. If my music interest is a side effect of who I am, this is another album I'll be yapping about for months. Because it is me. It is everything my heart wants. It's like coming home. And I try not to say this in the cheesiest ways, and hope I've made a fragment of sense this entire post. I just wonder if this album would speak to me in the way it does if I'd grown up with a different introduction to the realm of music. I wonder if I'd be who I am if it weren't for that first album, and for the albums that have followed. In the way I wonder if I'd be fundamentally the same if I hadn't been raised in the Church, I wonder if music has made me what I've become. Music is a gospel, after all. As Matt Nathanson sings, "I found religion at the record store." I lost myself in the melody and found myself in the words.

carefree summer

"I don't believe in signs, Erica."

I faltered mid sentence and glanced at her briefly before turning back to the road. "You don't believe in signs?" I had to assure I'd heard her right.

"No. You're always talking about things like they're signs and I don't believe in signs."

Perhaps it's my innate skills of word working that has me constantly searching for deeper meaning in the text of life. Perhaps, in the way more analytical folks see patterns and numbers in the day to day things, writers and dreamers search for the metaphor within. That's what separates the disciplines; empirical vs spiritual. The deduction of how things work rather than why things work and what it all means. It's the artist in me. It's the religionist in me. It's what keeps me optimistic--my constant search for a clue of destiny, fate, the best to come.

There are moments in my life where I've felt what I believe to be pure peace, true joy, perfection even. But these moments are just that, moments, so the teaser of possibilities fades away, appearing only so I'll recognize it when I do finally stumble upon it. They'd come when I would read. I got into "chapter books" and novels in elementary because they made me feel something; dropped me in this world I didn't know about, took me places, had me experience things I never did. I would feel free, liberated, carefree, alive. It happens when I listen to Jason Mraz after any amount of time without hearing his angelic tones. It happens when I take the stage under another person's name. But it never stays. The book ends and it's over, the song ends and I'm empty, the show's done and the character evaporates into the vapor cloud that possessed me. I've wanted to capture it for years. I started writing a book in ninth grade that was/is titled in all my saved documents of it "carefree summer," because I wanted to write a book that embodied that feeling, that breezy life they always had in books (breezy naturally meaning feel-good, not simple and without adversity). I wanted to harness that peace, that joy, and maybe give myself the ability to keep it otherwise.

I've been muddled the past couple weeks. The semester is progressing, I'm growing more established in the new routines of my job at a credit union, the elementary school musical I'm directing is coming to the apex, and I don't know what I'm doing with my life.

I want to teach theatre. I won't find a job in that. I won't get paid for it. And should I be lucky enough to score a spot in the field, it's not a job I leave at work. Theatre doesn't stop, especially when you're the one running it all. I don't want to teach English. I'd be good at it. I can see that, but I've never wanted to, that's never been my desire. I want to write. I want to change my double major to creative writing and learn the things I really want to know to accomplish that part of my dreams. I won't find a job in that. If I happen to write something worth publishing, it's not going to rake in billions of dollars unless it somehow becomes the next teen fandom. I want to go on a mission, but I don't want to quit this job and lose that money and drop my schooling and....

Everything's just felt so wrong. Like the credit union was a mistake. Like taking generals this semester to get my associates done was the wrong course. Like I should have stayed home today.

But not this week. I can't pinpoint the exact moment it happened, but I'm going to guess it started Monday. I drove out to Ogden, and now that I do that regularly I've grown tired of the one CD I've been listening to for a couple weeks, when it usually takes a month or so before over-kill settles in. I popped in a recording of a Pickleville Playhouse melodrama and listened to the music and selected scenes of dialogue from the show, my insides burning with this excitement and happiness.

And it hasn't stopped all week. I'm addicted to it, to this feeling of feeling good. I can't get enough of this carefree summer, and other than the minor set back when an elementary school student left me a rather insulting note, this feeling hasn't gone away. I've gone from school to work to Friendsday to rehearsal to a live theatre production to lounging in my friends' apartment/duplex, and it hasn't gone away. I've been swarmed in this carefree summer all week, and I don't know what I did to get it, but it suddenly occurred to me I'm living that life I've been craving from the beginning. I'm at that point of peace and joy.

So I'm living in it. I'm taking it as a sign that things are right, here. That I'm where I'm meant to be standing regardless of what I thought now would look like. I'm taking this moment for all it is. And next semester can come when it comes. My next show will come when it's time. A mission will come when it's right. I don't need to plan ahead or worry about tomorrow. I need to lift where I stand in today and keep this carefree summer before it goes away.

This was hard to write with Take On Me stuck in my head.

I dreamed I wrote a song in my sleep last night.

My best friend and I signed up last minute for an open mic/battle of the bands type thing, and showed up unprepared. We had to perform three songs.

I started hitting some beat on a folded up card table and just sang anything and everything. It became a wonder of a song, stripped down to my vocals and the beat I created, a phantom piano somehow chiming in. It was completely impromptu and it went on for at least six minutes. And it was, in that moment, as grandeous in beautiful simplicity as Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody is in complexity.

And when it ended the crowd was amazed, one band much closer to fame than us even remarking "Can we try that song?"


And I woke up feeling unaccomplished and lacking.

I've forgotten creativity.

My sophomore year of high school I took a hiatus from life and stewed in the books I was assigned to read for English and the pieces we wrote and the character complexities for the book I've still yet to write. I observed the world and scripted it, in notes to myself or musings. I swam with creative fish. I forsook participating in reality.

I've started doing the opposite. I'm so absorbed in the moment, keeping a keen ear on conversation, reworking my humor to be the quick spit-fire it used to be (it's more fitting for improv), realizing that my life is founded on the choices I make in these days...I'm trying to do it right.

And I've forgotten creativity.

I felt so unaccomplished and lacking because I used to do things like that; not compose brilliant songs that would rake in all the Grammys, but I used to write lyrics and simple tunes in my head. I used to create with my mind constantly. And don't get me wrong, I still do that. I've come up with three improv characters this weekend alone, but all the tried and true methods I used to employ I've somehow discarded with the trash.

And I'm not complete anymore.


That's one thing I've been learning a lot of lately; completion. I need theatre in my life, I need elaborate creativity that an audience or reader only barely scratches the surface of. I need words, words, words. I need to be happy. I need to be with someone who knows he wants to be with me. I need to clean my room. I'm discovering all of these things I never thought would matter that are now suddenly more important than remembering which song they're playing on the radio.

I was concerned that I've been out of commission these past two months; that since November I've written two notebooks full and at least forty blog posts on creative/personal things my mind sees fit to craft. I was concerned I haven't been channeling that spirit at a time where I should have felt so very much.

And maybe that's a sign these roads were never right to begin with. Maybe that's a sign what crept up on the path wouldn't complete me. Maybe we have to live mistakes to learn.


**

(I wrote this Friday):

Remember when we thought we knew
And it would slip in place like fitted shoes
Worn with years of walking, moulded to our arch?
We fantasized and dreamt and planned
For years and things without our hands
As though we had exception to make of ourselves.

And then the courses shifted short;
We stood aghast with ill report
That life could so destroyed become.
Foolish acts of foolish minds,
Disbelief falls fast in kind
That mortal men can plot a fate
Assured from the starting gate
And all would be a bliss, a bless,
A simple unchallenging test
For happiness to come.
That God would take the easy road
And let us carry less a load
To ease the journey home.

There's beauty in intricacy,
Art in surprise.
We'd give it up if it meant smoother skies?
Or strive to be complacent, set
In the plan that God sent
And learn in whatsoever state I am,
Therewith to be content.

**


I like how clouds have shadows. And how like Peter Pan that can't manage to catch them. No amount of sewing could bring a cloud near enough it's shadow. So they drift gracefully in a cerulean sky, smiling at me and my camera with the full memory, pulling apart angel hair, casting dark spots on the patchwork.

So I live in a meadow; a stationary existence, watching time pass with the faint current of the sky, amazed and afraid at the limitless expanse above me, beyond this air ships and the seal that keeps them earthbound. And the sun keeps shinning, and I keep acknowledging it's there, and the clouds cover me moment after quiet moment, and the light dims but persists. The light always persists.

And even clouds have dark sides. Even clouds have shadows. Even clouds can block the sun.

So good can't always be good. Every cloud has a shadow, whether it casts over me or not. And there's nothing that can stop the way they wander.

It's Winter Where I Am

Music is of maximum importance to me, and while Jason Mraz is undoubtedly my favorite musician, that doesn't mean I don't dabble quite a bit in the affairs of others. Jason Mraz is my go to: I can listen to him when I'm happy, sad, trying to take a nap, any number of things I don't need to list. But, I've found he is an anomaly, primarily because with other musicians I have to be in a certain mood.

And it has to be the appropriate season.

I'm a very visual person; when I memorize lines for a show, or back when I played the piano and performed in piano recitals, I'd memorize the location of the words or notes on the page. It wasn't the words themselves that stuck with me, but the way the page looked. Which is why it was such a big deal when Taylor wrote allover my Charley's Aunt script, but that's beside the point. Like memorizing lines, I memorize and take in music with regards to what I'm seeing at the time. Which is why I avoid listening to exclusively Jason Mraz on the bus; the last thing I want is to connect his brilliance with the monotony of an hour drive through backstreets day in and day out. To satisfy my own overwhelming excitement for winter and winter music, I am going to impart to you, the three readers of my blog, the best winter music. Beginning, naturally with

Matt Duke: Winter Child 

I found this album my junior year (2009-2010) of high school. I listened to it through December, driving my car through the biggest snow of the season with it playing. This album has become winter to me, to the extent that I nearly feel nauseous trying to listen to it when there isn't snow to be found. The sky has to at least be grey before I can pop this baby in. Which is a little disappointing if you're Matt Duke. Sorry your music didn't transgress the season restriction like Mraz, Matt.

With Winter Child it's more than the fact that I found it in winter, it's that the songs have this dark/moody quality to them, even the upbeat ones like Tidal Waves. Matt Duke doesn't write filler popsongs, at least not on this album. Even the "happier" songs are really about something darker like committing suicide. It's appropriately titled, so I've appropriately categorized it.
 
-Tidal Waves

The trouble with not having stalker fans like Mraz is there are hardly any youtube videos of this guy. But his lyrics are miracles.

Charlotte Sometimes: Waves And the Both of Us

Charlotte's first album is labeled under winter because, after finding her single How I Could Just Kill A Man in the summer of 2008 (by watching the top 20 music video countdown to see how rad of a job I'm Yours was doing) I knew I'd love everything she sang, so I held out for Birthday Christmas where I could get her whole album.

It happened. And I was right, she is in the trifecta of Favorite Female Artist, swapping places with Daphne Willis and TP depending on my mood.

And the season.

Charlotte pulls an Alanis Morissette with her first album, focusing her songs on heartbreak and wrongdoing and moody womanly opinions. She now expresses that that's really not what she's about anymore, but it's an excellent album, and it's dark enough to pair with snowfall and have a good time.

-Build the Moon

I've always thought this would be the ballad I'd sing on American Idol.

Come on. Tell me you don't plan things like that.

Matt Nathanson: Modern Love

This was the first album I listened to in its entirety on the bus, so Matt Nathanson should be excited that I moved this album from that-boring-bus-album category to winter.

Matt's album doesn't have as defined a reason why it's so wintry to me other than the fact that this is what was in my car at the end of last fall semester and beginning of spring semester when I was constantly driving to and from campus in snowish/sloshy conditions.

But there are songs like Love Comes Tumbling Down, Kept, Drop To Hold You, Bottom Of The Sea, and Kiss Quick that flow with snow. Perhaps because they're slower songs. Perhaps because the melody's richer. But to me, Faster is just as snowy as Kept, regardless of how happy-pop it is.


-Kiss Quick

I'm addicted to this song. He's good with poetics, this man.

Diane Birch: Bible Belt

This album is also from my junior year, though I believe from the other side of December, after Matt Duke. Diane has the dark jazz sound with a rich, flawless alto voice. Her piano chords dance around like snow in a flurry. She's awesome. And very wintry. If I knew things about different keys, I'd probably have more substantial reasons for this album being winter. I feel like they have a darker quality, like a minor, perhaps.

Now I'm just embarrassing myself.

She's probably one of my favorite winter picks. I should have put her higher up.

Seriously get this album for all your winter loving. I'm just remembering how great it is.

-Fools

I seriously love this lady. I'm going to go see if she's done something recently. I could use a new winter album.

Ingrid Michaelson: Everybody

This album is also from my junior year. I was really in a dark place through the end of December until May, really. If you've been reading this blog, that darkness is clearly illustrated by the slew of posts that came with the onset of this blog. I was shifting through music to find something that would take the pain out, but what I found was a series of musical installments that accepted the pain and the dark, cold world around me and reflected them back at me in a way I was able to calmly understand. I found winter in my heart and my music.

I hadn't really noticed that before. Interesting.

Maybe there was a deeper reason I felt like writing this post.

This album has the same storm of piano that Diane had, but with less of a jazz feel and more of a singer/songwriter. Ingrid is calming, pensive, soft. Winter.

Plus one song's title is Men of Snow. That has to mean something.


-Sort Of

This song is really empowering to belt in a very angry mood, which I'll admit to doing on occasion.



That's it. If you made it this far. I have a couple others, but it became rather obvious that my only foundation for winter albums is how "dark" they are.

Here's for a fun game. Go through the post and see how many times I said "dark." I'm guessing eight.

Am I right?

I hope someone besides myself benefited from this. Check out these artists. Let me know your winter music. No Christmas, please.

It's pretty obvious that's winter music.

Bonus Track!

I'll admit there is one Jason Mraz song that embodies winter for me. Maybe that's because it's so mellow, acoustic, and chill, or maybe it's because he mentions winter a lot. Either way, I love this song.
It's an unknown, so the only two live recordings of it were terrible quality. So stare at his naked chest and enjoy.

Baited Breath

I've been noticing you all week. I know I haven't hinted with my furrowed brow and deadpan expression, but it is nothing against you. I've endured too much of life as the chubby girl with no attractive feature but a sense of comedic timing, and have too far ingrained the idea that no one, from looks alone, would ever pick me out of a crowd. Forgive me for living as though I'm not noticed, and responding to those I notice as though they were as invisible to me as I to them. But I've been noticing you all week. I caught you looking, but did nothing about it; I was just getting on the bus. I stare down the new arrivals too. It doesn't mean I'm fascinated with the idea of mating with them, though I will admit I am constantly aware Prince Charming could board at any moment. But that's a daydream; I'm over hoping boys on buses will touch my trusses. It occurred to me today as I caught your eye with a blank slate that this could be the last I see you. That is not my normal bus, and save my professor should skip town again, I would have no way of boarding it. I thought perhaps you'd say something, as I faced front and opened my breakfast bag. Perhaps you'd close the gap of the aisle and speak. You didn't. I took a nap. I quickly took my favorite seat on the bus for home, ready to finish my leftover breakfast as a make-shift lunch, ready to put in my earbuds and tune out the sounds, when I met your eye. I decided to delay the music for a moment. I abolished all notion of eating, regardless how starved I was. You couldn't think I always only ever ate. You sat behind me. I felt anticipation seep through my pores. I was going to make a show of picking what to listen to, though the DJ in my head was already set on TP. You were going to watch, and comment about my music. But you beat me to it. I couldn't even plug the buds in before you spoke. You asked about my iPod case, said it was amazing. I answered the way I should have looked at you all week. I opened, unfolded, spoke freely, though scared. I'm bad at eye contact. I regret how often I turned around, I fear that's why you put your own buds in. I didn't want you to, but you did. You cut me off as I was fabricating a way to ask your name. That's what I hate you for: I have no name for your face, for your surprisingly tenor yet unbelievable voice, for your green jacket and you smile. I never remember eye color, even my own. I have my days. But your eyes were something. Perhaps inhabited by the light of your smile. I faced front, rejected, my eight earbud empty and waiting for you to change your mind. You didn't. I took a nap. Or, rather, attempted. If you did as you did to leave an impression, to deny me that "first kiss" on the "first date" to keep me coming back, you succeeded. I couldn't look pass that you could be watching me--that I wanted you watching me. I felt your Spanish-speaking phone call was a ploy to impress. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't And maybe it did, maybe it didn't What pacifies me, stranger, is that as you left you looked back. And I smiled, the way I should have all week. And the way I will when we cross paths again, whenever that may be. I'd prefer soon. I feel we're headed somewhere besides the bus route.