A birthday IS going to come

When I discovered Jason Mraz and started doing more about it than listening to one song on repeat, he had a website designed in the manner of his second studio album MR. A-Z. One section on the site was titled "Journal," and that's where I discovered my first blog.

I loved his writing. I loved seeing in his head other than the songs I'd started to memorize and sing in the solitude of my bedroom. It made him a person, these puns about Kevin Federline--Mr Please Make Fun of Me--and memories of launching grasshoppers on firecrackers with his brother. He was a real, regular guy.

And then they updated his website, and all the journal entries were lost.

I hated it. I was devistated. But shortly thereafter discovered a wonderful thing.

He'd made an actual blog.

He'd created a blogspot account and was still sharing insights into his lyrical head.

Determined not to lose out again, I started reading the blog with intensity, saving each post into a Word document so if the unthinkable happened again, I wouldn't have a void.

So I kept them.

Not all of them, sadly, high school became more hands-on than junior high and I steadily got out of the habit of regularly checking the blog, and if I did, it was usually during class while procrastinating writing an analysis on a book I hadn't read.

After he ended things with TP he deleted all the posts.

Four years of posts. Gone and replaced with this.

But I've got just about two years of them, and I'm sure if I dug the internet enough, I'd find them somehow.

But it's been a while since I've read his stuff. He still writes now, but it's few and far between and they don't often offer such an extended look into his phsyee. So today, for his birthday, I'm going to post one of them. On my blog. Because one guess as to what lead me to start it.

Happy Birthday Mraz.

Thursday, October 2, 2008

A change IS going to come

Last year Bob Dylan compiled a song list for Starbucks’ Artist Choice Series. In addition to offering up a keen selection of country, blues, and jazz, he also supplied notes and commentary as to why he held the songs in such regard. BUT, the best part was the forward.

He wrote, "When I was asked to put together this collection of songs, I wasn't sure what to do. So I just grabbed a bunch of things I was into recently. Some people have favorite songs, but I've got songs of the minute -- songs that I'm listening to right now. And if you ask me about one of those songs a year from now, I might not even remember who did it, but at the moment it's everything to me.”

I bring this up as today’s lesson: Nothing is final. One day you’re high. The next day you’re low. You might have a funky, expressive, or awful haircut today, but soon it will grow into something else, something new and random. Maybe you grew up liking pop music and boy bands, but now you like a specific mash up of Electronic & Classical. You might decide you don’t want to smoke cigarettes anymore; that it’s just not who you are. Maybe you were a staunch republican but now have curiosities about the well-spoken and well-organized Democratic Nominee. Perhaps you were madly in love last week, but woke up today feeling comfort in solitude, without a desire to be held.

Everything is fine. Not finAL.

We tend to instantly identify with “things.” And we believe in so much, when in fact, a belief isn't known to be true. It's a hope for the truth. We hold grudges because of what someone said when we were young. We store hurtful words and replay them in our minds until we think it to be true. And some of us believe a TV commercial and think we need a faster computer, a smarter phone, a stronger pill, a more relaxed-fit jean, etc. We think that certain things, thoughts, or actions make us who we are and sometimes we become addicted to those thoughts or behaviors and then become too afraid to let them go.

I write and post a lot therefore many people assume I have every self-published word memorized or that I live these shared thoughts constantly. This is not the case. My brain doesn’t reference myself very well actually, and I’m sure I contradict myself every other day in one way or another. One day I feel like I have all the wisdom of the world and the next day my soul wears thin and I stutter just ordering ice cream.

And everything is fine.

Because I trust in the ever-changing climate of the heart. (At least, today I feel that way.) I think it is necessary to have many experiences for the sake of feeling something; for the sake of being challenged, and for the sake of being expressive, to offer something to someone else, to learn what we are capable of. These meanderings, rants, and blogs for instance, provide a great deal of comfort just sharing it, even though i put a part of myself on the line to be criticized or considered an ass.
Oh well, Courage is triumph of the soul is guess. and an Ass can still be of great service.

So Remember, You have the right to change your mind.

About anything.

Anytime.

This is not the ending.

P.S. – No doesn’t mean forever. It simply means, “Not right now.”

And on the topic of Not right now, whatever happened to you in the past is not happening now.

You will be safe behind your honest decisions and mood swings.

I promise.

-mraz
Berlin

Posted by mraz at 6:37 AM 103 comments

Part 1

It's not often I go to the library, but when he asked if I'd like to go study I decided there was no harm in saying yes. Studying is difficult, and if you're not stalling with music or a trail of humorous pictures on the internet, you just might find yourself stalling by staring at that girl you're with, realizing maybe she's something more than what you thought, and why hadn't you noticed it before?

I waited on one side of the door, sensing him just beyond the wood, trying to find ways to still my beating heart. But that's a task harder than studying when you've just watched him come back with your frappuccinos in hand, only to have a wayward book enthusiast stumble against him, and life moves in freeze-frame as the drinks bump and fall, your whipped cream sloping on his dark-wash jeans and dolloping on the floor followed by the bursting of one drink's lid and a free-fall of blood and it dawns on you something's amiss as the world speeds back up, your heart in your ears, everything suddenly sounding like Darth Vader breathing down your neck in triple time. The film over your ears is punctured by a scream you connect with his vocal tones and it hits you that you're watching grueling murder, the kind you find in comic books and bath salts, and instinct tells you run.

I kept my right hand pressed against the door, inches from the door knob, questioning anyone who ever designed a room without a peephole, hearing him paw at the wood in a frantic forgotten way as a clatter resonates from upstairs. Fight or flight doesn't offer much by way of cognitive choices when faced with the glassy eyes of the middle-aged man who gnawed out your soon-to-be-boyfriend's jugular. Perhaps it would have registered more clearly had I versed myself in first-person shooter games or high speed sports like racquetball. Nonetheless, I moved and went for the closest enclosed space I could find, and while it was an empty conference room, there was no rain check to be had and no backdoor to exit through. I was stuck in a twisted conundrum of starving now or starving later, the only altered implication being whether I died due to starving or starved due to dying.

Noche Nada

The sand cushions out around my soles, miniature billows of apocalyptic ash clouds, swarming a plague of ruin centimeters from my footfalls. It leaves a swan song in the fabric of my sneakers, a remnant of a lost time, holding out for the uncovering of archaeologists to comb and caress and discover why. I watch the sun glint along above me, a tracking system in the sky mapping my every move, hiding behind a canopy, leaving tattoos of shadows along my body.

I think about the way the clouds told me stories over the course of a day, an elongated sitcom sans subtitles. And there are breezes reminding me to breathe, and the steady heartbeat of my steps clarifies there's somewhere worth getting to, there's reason worth walking. And some sunset from now I'll find the mouth of a waterfall or a crystal blue lake and sit on the bank on a rock not smooth enough and know I'm home. But that's a sunset, miles away, and there are moons and dawns between. There's the breeze, the clouds, the checkerboard shade, and my feet carrying me through and beyond, leaving the path clear, muddled only by settled tsunamis of dust.

Unfold

Some of the things that make me want to blog are stupid.

This is one of those.

People ask me "Okay, well what's your favorite Jason Mraz song?"

How do you answer that? It seems stupid to say I really like all of them. And even the ones I have a lesser inclination toward are still significantly more enjoyable to me than most of what people splatter on the radio.

I just had a friend stapchat me that she was sad, and what do I do to feel better? I sent her a picture of this:

and included the title: Live at Java Joe's

Naturally I then had to go listen to it a little, because....seriously. If I ever experience an extreme tragedy or you see me sobbing for hours on end or am in a pit of depression, sit me down and play this album. It is almost a drug; more endorphins than you'd think a person could handle. I can't not be ecstatic when I hear this. Truly.

I started to notice a while back that one song seemed it hit me a little more than the others, but I'd convince myself no because those other songs are just toooooooo good.

It wasn't until he played it live in concert in 2012 (you know, hours after I'd met him) that I realized this was it. This was the favorite song. 

You see I wasn't expecting him to play it; it's only recorded on two live albums, there's no studio release of it. Oh, and the last time he'd regularly played it was, you know, 2004. 

Which I guess is actually a lie because this video I'm considering linking is from 2007. 

Like I said, it's dumb. But he just gets to me right in the creativity, so I have to share it. So I did. 

Now, please, treat yourself to a little Mraz music. (Please ignore the tools that think they know when the bell sounds come in. That's a sad thing that happens pretty much every time he does this song. Including when I saw it live. But I'm not bitter.) Just pay close attention to 3:03-3:31 for the best part. ESPECIALLY 3:20-3:29. That's where it's at. Literally my favorite moment in music history. The best nine seconds of your life. Seriously.

yet another untitled.

I can't imagine living
Where the seasons are the same;
My life would be so bitter
If I never had the change.
There's lightness in the snow that falls
And joy within the rain,
And a summer night is nothing short
Of healing spring's faint pain.

Each season gives a rinse, a dry,
To the way in which I'm seen:
Like a Sunday afternoon where
My spirit comes out clean.
I can't imagine living with
No sustenance, no change;
Where I am stuck with who I was
Before the water came.

There are other things.

"There are other things for us."
She said, staring down the barrel of a gun.
"There are other reasons we're standing here,
other songs that should be sung."
And the weapon's fired,
The clock's expired
And I find myself break a run,
Toward yesterday's
And far-aways
I'd never thought would come.

Until at moment's last, the summer smiles
In the soft ray of light from a moon
And I can't keep up the motion of
Breath having died too soon.
We struggle with our paces
And defend worried faces,
Praying all will soften to a swoon
When the owls cry
And ends are nigh
And never crests from gloom.

Don't pity him,
Don't pity me,
Don't tell me how to stand.
Or how the world is empty when
You're absent someone's hand.
Don't say I'm clear to disappear
And pray things plot my course
The way my mind has drafted it,
When I was yet in sorts.

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.