No Man Is An Island

I never wanted to be fake, to be a poser, to put on different masks for different crowds. I never said I loved the Back Street Boys because I only had one album and hadn't ever mailed in to join the fan club. Months after having listened to Jason Mraz religiously I still didn't claim he was my favorite artist. To me, to declare something/someone as your favorite would negate knowing more about them/it than the average person on the street. I found a poster for sale on Mraz's website and wanted it. But I stopped my 7th grade self from running to dad asking him to order it for me. 

I didn't know enough about him yet. I wasn't really a fan of Jason Mraz. Not yet.

And that's why I look like an uber fan, being able to tell you where he's from, how he got into the music business, what this song was written about, his brother's name, etc. Because according to the unspoken rule I'd always lived by, I couldn't truthfully declare myself a fan until I knew as much as possible. So while my improv troupe pokes fun at my "obsession," I reside with the knowledge that I'm a true, sincere fan.

Which is why mourning posts on Facebook bother me. I understand the reasoning behind it; Robin Williams was indeed an excellent man, bringing characters to life in the greatest way possible. But I have a hard time believing the 18 year old on my newsfeed with keep true to her declaration that he will "always be one of [her] favorite actors." It's easy to forget, especially in this modern world of high speed internet and smart phones. Remember all the hub-bub about Michael Jackson's death? Remember how the world was shaken, how an incredible artist was gone too soon, how everyone started listening to his music and covering his songs and releasing full magazines containing every article they'd ever published of him.

Remember when his five year death anniversary happened?

You don't?

I didn't either. Until I was in line at the Walmart and noticed a reprint of the MJ-only People's Magazine.

And then I thought "That's right. It's June. That's right, he's been gone a few years now."

I took art classes in junior high, convinced I'd become the world's best artist. Newsflash, I'm not. But on several instances in those classes we would study world renowned artists, and in most occasions we'd watch a docudrama about their lives, the moral of every story being sometimes though the work you produce is incredible, people won't realize it until you're gone.

This of course being time passes after their death and someone realizes the quality of the work and exposes it to the world and then they become a classic that is lauded for their innovation and creativity and studied in art classes through the ages. 

Technology is doing the opposite now.

Robin Williams was found dead, and Facebook, like it did five years ago, exploded with well-wishing mourning statements from people touched by his work. I'm not being cynical, I assure you. Just two weeks ago I watched Jumanji and was struck with the reminder of how much I appreciated Robin Williams and his role in that movie, among others. But what I am saying is our attention spans are fleeting. I struggle to sit down with a book nowadays because I'm so used to the quick, easy read of mindless internet articles. I've grown accustomed to my two second attention span. And I think the rest of us have as well. 

Which is why the most fitting way to remember someone is post about it, maybe share a video it took us a minute to find on YouTube, and forget. 

And five years from now you'll be at a Walmart, and Robin Williams will be on the cover of a magazine near the bottom of the rack, pushed to the bottom by the latest Kardashian scandal, and you'll think "Oh yes. I remember when he died. It's been a while, I guess."

So I'm not declaring this death has wrecked me to my core, I'm sad, definitely. How could you not be? Will I buy all of his movies and think about him every day? No. I'll probably invest in Dead Poets Society because I frankly haven't seen that yet, and if his death is similar in anyway to Michael Jackson's it'll yeild a surplus of his movies suddenly stocking shelves so it shouldn't be hard to find. Robin Williams won't live on as the man who changed my life, who brought me comedy and taught me to laugh. But I'll be struck with appreciation each time I flick through TV channels and pause as Hook comes back from commercial break, I'll smile as my kids watch Aladdin in the other room, and I'll remember him -like I always have- when there's a surplus of mosquitoes or a news story about stampedes. I'll admire his opportunities and the fact that he was able and willing to share them with us; that he had a leg up on the artists of yore in that his legacy was in circulation before he was ever gone. 

But I'm not going to say I'm his biggest fan. 

It's not about me. 

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.

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

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.

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.

You and I Both

A lot of girls are looking for a knight in shining armor or a stranger in a white hat.

I'm looking for a man in a powder blue tux.

It was back when Music Television was Music Television, and my older brother sat as he always did watching the latest music videos. He called me into the room, and I entered, begrudgingly assuming he'd beckoned me in order to insist I bring him a beverage.

"What?" I grumbled in my elementary school way.

"Look at this guy. Watch this."

I entered the room further and stood watching the screen.

He was in a bank, holding a piggy bank, clothed in a powder blue tux, and the cops in their riot gear started dance-fighting with him, and all the while he smiled and sang, even as they slammed him onto the hood of the cop car.

I remember thinking this man was amazing.

It wasn't until a few years later, as I discovered YouTube as a viable source to stalk my newfound favorite musician Jason Mraz, that I decided to actually watch his official music videos, and loaded one for a song I knew from his first album.

I smiled to myself, in my adolescent way, at his cuteness as he tried to woo the bank teller with his piggy bank, but it wasn't until he entered the frame in a powder blue tux that the memories came flooding back, that the connection was made that I'd seen this before. I'd held great feelings of respect and adoration for this man before I ever knew of him or wanted to know of him. I had know idea the significance of our first meeting until the second happened.

That's how it should be. He'll come before I expect him, I may not even recognize him for a while. He'll be there, a part of my life that is significant enough to have a memory, but vague enough to be buried under the dirty laundry from my science classes. And then the moment will be right, I'll have found him, perhaps not even aware he's the one, and one day it'll click that I've seen this before, I knew this before, and I just needed to remember.

A lot of girls are looking for a knight in shining armor or a stranger in a white hat.

I'm looking for a man in a powder blue tux.

Sometimes it may seem dark, but the absence of the light is a necessary part.

I could spend a few hours trying to vaguely poetically describe where I'm at right now, or I could quote Jason Mraz and save us all some trouble: "Over the horizon is another bright sky."(93 Million Miles). Dawn is breaking, everyone. Here comes the sun. Over the horizon is another bright sky.

The Sky Can Become Our Possibility

The other day I posted on Facebook that I'm once again suffering from a severe case of My-Life-is-Excellent-itus, because frankly, it'd been a good day.

And things keep getting better.

Anne Frank, and sadly I'm paraphrased because I haven't read her diary in some six years, said she would lay in bed and think about what had happened that day and how she'd responded and how she could fix mistakes or react better next time. She'd review her life.

I often review my life. And for a long while it's been the whole scope of things--how that one day playing with my grandma's neighbors in their backyard with their puppy affected me as a child and transferred into who I am as an *cough* adult. I write with metaphor and often it's based on those moments as a kid that seemed utterly insignificant but now stand out as something utterly important, even if it's just for the fact I remember them.

I was on a date, ironically shortly before the optimistic life realization. They may or may not be related. You can twist/interpret my words as you may. I was on a date and we, as happens on introductory dates, were divulging information about ourselves.

And I kept running out of things to say. I made it through Jason Mraz and Back to the Future and suddenly I was drawing blanks. I'm not interested in things. I don't have hobbies. I felt very much insufficient and pointless. And my lack of sharing, of taking advantage of this guy genuinely wanting to hear me brag about myself, has nagged me for the past few days. To the point that today when I was at work and suddenly remembered a moment in my grandma's neighbors backyard where we were playing house in their little shed and a bee swarmed us and we had to abandon the little red bowl in our haste to safety.

I realized that I have a life behind me. I have memories and interests and experiences that are uniquely mine and mean absolutely nothing to anyone I cross paths with. But that someday I'll have shared those things. Someday someone will know my pointless stories. And how can I give up a few hours into a date, believing I've got nothing more to disclose.


I wasn't going to talk about that. What I sat down to blog (or rather stayed awake to blog/delayed watching Arrested Development to blog) is that I'm not so much looking at the long-range scheme of things, such as those memories from a childhood at grandma's, but the more recent things.

I auditioned for Pickleville Playhouse (in Bear Lake) in March, I think, and had I made a show it would have entailed rehearsing in Logan and living in Bear Lake for the summer for performances, which I would get paid for. It was an interesting and very much desirable idea.

But it would mean going seasonal at work and holding off on any Bountiful/Centerville life I would possibly have had that summer.

So I started to make ultimatums.

-If I don't make Pickleville I'll get red highlights in my hair.
-If I don't make Pickleville I'll buy a pet rat.
-If I don't make Pickleville I'll go on a mission.

That's the truth. I'm not exaggerating.

I didn't make Pickleville. I made Improvables. I didn't make Pickleville. I made 12 Angry Jurors.

Today at work I ran into the previous PTA president at West Bountiful Elementary, the lady who hooked me up with the directing gig. She told me she wasn't next year's PTA president, but that I was coming back next year for the musical, that the producer-mom would contact me in the summer about picking a show.

I got an email with the Improvables June schedule and I'm playing a show at Playbills'.

My director for 12 Angry Jurors told me she thought I'd be a great theatre teacher and then gave me tips/suggestions/offered advice for when I get closer to finishing up.

Things are right. I'm not going on a mission, and that's alright. I'm majoring in theatre, and that's alright. That guy I worried soooo much about didn't want to date me but found someone else, and that's alright. I'm so at peace right now that I can't even describe it. I just...I know I'm where I need to be. I know I'm who I need to be. I know these things are falling in place and I'm welcoming them with open arms. I love that I can look back and see how I just needed time for the mission question to make sense, I just needed time to grow acclimated to the theatre department, I just needed time for the river of life to wash my concerns downstream and for the irrigation gate to drop, sparing me from wasting water on a relationship that wasn't a relationship and wasn't going anywhere. I needed to get my head past the clouds.

And now that I'm there I love looking down and seeing how perfectly logical the path was the whole time, and I can scoff at myself, whom I now perceive to be an ignorant elementary school girl, and my impatience to just press on. I love seeing what I couldn't, and the peace that comes from knowing no matter how horribly lost I felt at those moments, no matter how much it nauseated me at times, regardless of those nights I cried, I was never truly lost. I was never truly wandering aimlessly. I hate to be cliche, but there were footprints in the sand, carrying me. All things are calculated for learning.

I'm just doing what I'm here to do. I'm pressing on, unable to understand what's lurking in the clouds, but hoping with all my faith it's for my good.

And that's life. It's a sunny day that's slightly overcast, and some moments you find yourself bathed in shade, but you get past the cloud and the sun's still shining.

Even if I don't see it, the sun's still shining.

Believe not God is in your heart, child, but rather you're in the heart of God.

"I found God when I thought I was happy, when I thought this is as good as life can get." -Al Fox

I'm not going to be long with this one. I just had that need to write again.

First, let me just say watch this video:




There's not much more I can say than this. I echo everything, and it's interesting to me how similar a circumstance I share with someone whose past is entirely opposite of mine.

But I suppose it's not that we are different, but rather that Christ is the same. "Forget not whose hands you're in...You have a God and He is yours."

My first year of college, both semesters, my LDS Institute class was held in the same room (110 to anyone who knows the Ogden Institute on Weber's campus). There's a picture of Christ in the front corner of the room. It's not that generic one that I have in my room, or that Al Fox has on the bookshelf behind her. It was  a different artist's rendition, and it was the first one that made me think of Christ as existing, rather some childhood fairytale.

I suppose that's the trouble with being raised in the church, seeing that picture in every primary lesson, or every time I glance across my bedroom. There were lots of fanciful stories I was told in my exuberant youth; stories of pigs building houses, bears eating porridge, a girl dangling her hair from a tower, men walking on water, a man feeding five thousand with loaves and fishes, a woman being healed by touching a cloak's hem...

Everyone has their conversion moment. Even if you've grown with the gospel set before you and wrapped around you. There's the moment when it stops becoming folklore and the reality clicks into place. Where suddenly I know Joseph Smith did see God and Christ; I don't just know the story. I know.

Suddenly I know Christ walked this earth, that the atonement is more than a word, that Gethsemane was more than a garden. That there is reality and truth in these stories.

That reality and truth are these stories.

I was sitting in Relief Society in my single's ward a few months back, and they passed around a stack of wallet sized pictures of Christ with little quotes on the back. I was handed the stack and I grabbed one out of the middle and passed it along. The pictures had been different, but somehow I ended up with this one.

That's the one from that institute classroom. That's the one that, to me, is Christ.

I stuck the little picture in my Book of Mormon, and every time I open it the picture falls out. I've been so afraid I would lose the little picture and never remember the artist (Greg Olsen) and would lose that little miracle of having it brought to me. So one night I decided I'd check out the guy's website to drill his identity into my mind, and see how much a print of this would cost.

I was on my phone, and couldn't decide if I should take the initiative and buy it for myself or wait until farther down the line when marriage and moving out happen, perhaps requesting it as a gift from my mom.

I was going to navigate from the page when the thought struck me to set this picture as the background on my phone.

"I couldn't do that. What if it doesn't fit? The picture of Jason Mraz that is currently my background isn't saved in my phone. If this picture doesn't work I'll have to scour the internet for my old background."

But then I realized my greatest temptations come with this phone. That my steepest mistakes have stemmed from holding the internet in my pocket.

So I changed the background.

And I couldn't stop smiling.

Sorry, Satan. Chalk up another point for Christ.


I haven't been perfect, but it's harder to ignore that wrong doings are wrong when I'm looking in the face of Christ every instant I check the time.

This Is What I Look Like Today

Sometimes I think that if I was the only girl around you'd have no trouble in choosing me.

I guess I forget that the beauty in being chosen is that, to the person who chose you, you're the only one that matters. Regardless how many girls are around.

**

Excuse me for wanting more from this
Than a secret kiss
And dial tones.

**

I imagine you like the cloud of melancholy from every cliche cartoon. The ones that hover overhead or slightly to the side, constantly contributing to the woebegone atmosphere of the victim. I always thought that if the cloud would just go away and stop raining and reminding them of their discontent that they could get over it, move on, happy up.

But they always lingered. They always hovered just close enough; and that was the point. Out of sight out of mind. Perhaps. But even having stuffed you in the cardboard box I emptied yesterday, along with the residue of dust and fragments of lint carried by a season occupying space, even having wedged you in the corner under my dresser beside the stack of notebooks from junior high I can't bare to part with because some day I'll take the time to read the evolution of my literary tactics, even in the dark garnished in mistrust and seclusion you manage to materialize as a cloud. Even out of sight you find a way to my mind. Even, dehydrating in the dust, you find a way to vaporize and congeal into the little black rain cloud hovering over my honey tree.

I suppose it's my own fault. I doubt you sit across town in your car with binoculars trained on my window with the shade drawn and lamplight spilling out thinking to yourself memories to telegraph to me like Casper through the electrical lines. I doubt you're consciously the cause of this.

But this is the trouble, the trouble I've hit with celebrities and all of the "for sure" "romances" I've hitherto encountered: I've internalized you. I've taken all I know, all you shared, all the moments between us, all my overly optimistic hopes, and constructed an understanding of you in my heart. Enough so that you live there. You breathe there. You occupy space there and leave candy wrappers and dirty laundry there. You've moved in. I moved you in. I unpacked your dufflebag of video games and the boxes with the picture frames and posters and the bracelet you thought you lost. I helped you set up camp and then sheltered you in with a lean-to that eventually became a hope house because I didn't have the funding to build above the ground. And perhaps I sheepishly thought you'd stick around long enough for this to become something, for me to have causation to purchase the lumber and construct a castle where you could wander the airy halls and sing all the songs I know only well enough to recognize.

And in reality you are in your car, driving to some date with someone else, or leaving work or buying a pizza. You have no mind for me, you take no thought for me. And that's why it's not awkward for you. To you our relationship is what you apply to it, and as you apply nothing more than the occasional eye contact and half-hearted smile, there is nothing between us. Nothing to get in the way of your plans and ambitions, nothing to hinder your pursuit of everyone else of the female gender.

And that's the case, outside.

But I internalized you. I've taken you to heart.

So I'm shadowed by a cloud.

And it's been raining a lot today.

Burning Bridges

Someone broke my glasses when I wasn't looking.
Which is a feat, as they were perched upon my face.
The rose colored lens were popped out and discarded
And reality came with a sharp focused harshness
That I had no capacity to fathom,
For to my eyes all was still filtered rose.
To my perception all was still pristine.
Or all should have been.
I expected to be as ever;
But the lenses were gone,
Leaving me with the illusion an illusion was still maintained.

And that's why it hurt.
That's why it stung with confusion
And misconstrued belief.
That's why the picture stopped making sense.

Why do we hold this sand?
Why do we expect to lose not an ounce?
Why do we convince our minds to see so clearly
What is so clearly wrong
Until the time comes
When the sand has dripped too thin
To ignore it has changed,
And the view so out of context
That it comes to light the lenses went missing long ago?
I started seeing reality,
And interpreted it through rose tinted ideals
That no longer applied.

The time had changed.
The sand had fallen.
I can't keep believing this trick of the eye.
If they ask, I'm okay now.
If they ask, I understand.
It took time to set in this goodbye.


**


This is another of those poems that I fear only makes sense to me because I...I know what I'm trying to say.

So let me take another route:

I woke up last night. In a metaphorical sense, meaning the lightbulb came on and I understood. I wasn't in that dark clouded haze I must have been spinning through leading up to that moment, because suddenly all was illuminated and bright in a way unlike before. And I realized my problem with the circumstance was that I wasn't looking at it with a present eye. I wasn't beholding it as it was unfolding. I was filtering it to a thing of beauty, shifting it through rose colored glasses. Because there was a time when my ideal, my image in rose, was the reality. There was a time when the rose was truth. But I failed to recognize the change, failed to determine the falling away, and continued to pass reality through the rose, mystified and destroyed that it didn't fit anymore. That somehow the way things were going wasn't the way I could see, wasn't as softly tinted and peaceful. Suddenly reality wasn't rose.

But my perception of it was.

Naivety? Ignorance? Synonyms of the feeling.

I didn't evolve with my surrounds, is what I suppose I'm getting at here. From the starting gate I saw rose and in truth it was rose, but as we pressed on and the color changed to my surrounding circumstance, I remained plateaued on rose. I stayed stagnant with a fluxing world. To call back an old metaphor, I expected the painting to stay the same as my vantage point changed, expected the dimensions to be as sure and strong as they had been headlong.

And once I realized the world wasn't rose anymore, once I stopped trying to wedge reality through a lens no longer made to fit it, I was at peace. Almost instantaneously.

I mean, if I think about it and hash it out and pull at all the details to support the rose hypothesis, I start to break down and wallow in this bygone confusion and... Those rose moments were an island of goodness in an ocean of diarrhea  The island, the hiccup of hope, doesn't change what life in this space had fundamentally become.

I realized there was no need to be jealous or bitter or depressed that it was someone else and not me. It hadn't been me for a long time, and if I'd been tenacious enough to take the glasses off sooner I would have seen that.

As I said of it in my journal, "It's time to officially close the case and lock the file, to remember it but not riffle through it and dwell on a past hope."

Desire can cause heart attacks. Desire, it won't bring you back.


But you don't have to worry anymore. The glasses are gone; I see truth as truth and I'm strangely accepting of it. We're still good.

Now to move forward, into the dark of tomorrow.

I'm letting myself off the hook for things I've done. -Jason Mraz-

I cried all the time as a child; easily and often. A boy in sixth grade teased me endlessly because his first memory of me was from kindergarten when I had punched my yellow Capri Sun straw through the back of the pouch and cried.

As stagnant and constant as Dad's instructions on the proper way to greet an angel and how to deduce if the angel was of God or the devil (D&C 129), were Dad's herbal "drops," as we called them. Bach Flower Remedies, at least the ones we employed, are vials of liquid with a little dropper attached to the lid. You take two or three drops under the tongue or in water to help ease different ailments. If it burns when it sets in, that's the signal that you need help in that area--each vial remedies a different condition. (For instance I use Mimulus and Impatiens for stress and impatience. Rescue Remedy is a mix of various drops--it's the cure-all.)

Our primary use of these drops was/is for nerves.

I can't recall a single audition I've attended without having taken Rescue Remedy in a water bottle with me. They work. I 100% agree that they work. I've tried other herbal remedies and walked away none the better off, but I can say tenfold I'm always more calm and at ease after these.

But I'm not giving a product review.

It's backstory.

The day I was to meet Jason Mraz was one of the most stressful days of my life. As the morning wore on I grew more and more panicked, and I knew the only thing that would fix me would be drops.

Mom and I drove around Golden Colorado after eating breakfast at a quaint little bistro--seriously, side note, I love small towns--and happened to find an organic health shop. We went inside.

They were under new management, and all the Bach items they had were left over from the old owner; they were just clearing out stock. They had a Rescue Remedy for Pets, and several human remedies. I read all the labels, none having to do with the thing my mind primarily connected drops to--stress. I found one that wouldn't help me prior, but would save my life after, or so I thought.

I have this issue of being confident with myself until after the moment has passed, and suddenly everything I did/said/expressed on my face was the wrong course of action and I'm a failure and I suck.

Pine "allows you to accept yourself and your actions as they are rather than feel guilty or blame yourself for the mistakes of others."

With my track record, I knew after experiencing the most daydreamed moment of my young life, that anything I did would later be deconstructed as horribly wrong and pathetic.

We bought Pine.

I used it for the first time tonight; maybe because an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and I'd never seen the point in curing the metaphorical heartburn after it had set in, maybe because I've learned to deal with my over-analytical mind. All night tonight I was cherry bombed with What If's. I was going mad, concocting different ways things could have gone, different paths I could have trod, different doorsteps to end up on, but immediately following came the frustrated voice that it doesn't matter. There are a hundred different ways each instant can go--there were three separate beginnings of this post I contemplated before diving in, and those are only the three I contemplated. There were many other ways to start this.

For once I had a voice of reason breaking through the hypothetical, drawing my eyes to sturdily acknowledge that it doesn't matter. What happened happened, it could have gone a separate way, but I didn't chose that way. I didn't even see that direction until hours later when I replayed the occurrence for the two hundredth time. Life is not a "choose your own ending" book with a series of scripted outcomes you eenie-meenie-miney-moe your way through to wind up with one of four outcomes. Life is walking in the woods. Life is heading off in one direction and weaving through the trees and over rocks as you see fit; maybe you could have gotten there from a different route. Maybe you could have gotten there sooner or taken your time to find a more beneficial path. Maybe you could have turned slightly more right and ended up at a different spot all together--it doesn't matter. You got there. You made it, you passed. That's it.

It doesn't matter "what if" I remembered Jason Mraz's favorite board game was Scrabble and used Scrabble letters instead of screenshots of his handwriting on the tee shirt I made. It doesn't matter "what if" I had him sign the CD case like I'd always imagined instead of the last-minute book decision. It doesn't matter "what if" I took another ten minutes plotting out all my courses before deciding what to send in that text. It doesn't matter "what if" I'm misunderstood or taken out of context or tossed aside. I did what I did. I didn't do what I didn't. It doesn't matter. I got around that tree, I passed that stump. There's no sense in going back and observing all the things I could have done. It's behind me.

It doesn't matter.

I used Pine to shut myself up, to accept myself and my actions as they are and move on.

There's nothing behind me but what was. There's nothing ahead but what will be.

Talk Is Cheap

I've been beginning to drown. My lungs clench up and my heart falters and I can't breath. I sway for a moment, and have to talk myself out of drowning.

One route to not drowning has been this song by Eric Hutchinson:





I know what he's intended the song to mean: stop talking, let's do something. You want to make a change, stop complaining about the way things are and go make the change. Talk is cheap. I get it. But for me, right now, it's leaning more toward his other meaning: say what you mean.

"Some people don't know how they really feel, some people can't talk about what is real. And I could never chit-chat all day long...And everybody's talkin' while they're stringing me along. I'll go by what you do, 'cuz talk is cheap."

The whole chorus, really. It's sort of become my mantra of positivity, to evade the ever present possibility of drowning. In the past two days it's already been played 17 times on my iPod, and over a thousand in my idle mind. And in the course of typing this post I've listened to the above YouTube video three times.

I bought Eric's album in like, June. It was unfortunate for him to release his sophomore album the very same day Jason Mraz released Love Is A Four Letter Word, because, well... It's Jason Mraz. And even when Eric Hutchinson was numbered in the favorites lump (which he's wriggling his way back into), he was only ever Second Favorite.

I literally referred to him as that through sophomore year and most of junior year. Then I realized I had too many Second Favorites to individually label one specific Second Favorite. From there he fell from grace.

I tried listening to Moving Up Living Down on the bus one day sometime after meeting Jason Mraz, when my future and music taste suddenly slammed into a wall. I couldn't make it through.

I wasn't ready for this song. I didn't need it then.

I cannot stress enough how much I need it now, when everything else is reminding me of my innate need to seize up and drown, give up the ghost and float down the ravine and onward into the underworld. I need a reason to breath.

The Lord's told me patience. I need patience; a diligent patience in which I progress but still wait. That's what this song's given me. I mantra through which to accomplish patience.

"I don't want to wait for you 'cuz talk is cheap. I don't know how you spend your time; I'm done wasting all of mine. 'Cuz talk is cheap."

I'm not lending my life and happiness on other's shoulders anymore. I'm bottling up those parts of me that want to bleed and blend in with everyone unconditionally. I'm shutting down what tears me down. I've made my resolution: "From now on I'm listening and saving my breath."

Because talk is cheap.

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.

Signed Sealed Delivered

Before I dive into it, reader, I want you to know how it happened. I want you to know how my dearest wish did come true--just in its own time.

I had several opportunities to get Jason Mraz's autograph this year. Had the stars aligned right I guarantee it would have happened, and it was going to happen, just not the way I expected.

It started in January 2012. Jason Mraz posted an Instagram contest, where you were to talk a picture of what I Won't Give Up meant to you and hash-tag it #IWon'tGiveUp. He would pick 25 winners who would then be featured in an art gallery in New York with their photos printed on canvas and signed by Jason Mraz who would also attend the gallery. I entered the contest with the help of Emily and Erin, Emily because Instagram was not available for Android phones at the time, and Erin because I needed someone to be Cinderella.

I should have realized our Earth-friendly friend wouldn't be won by the commercialism of glass slippers.

In March, I was in my theatre management class when I got an email saying the album was finally available for preorder, and that the first 150 people to order a physical album would be signed by Jason. I ran to order the album less than half an hour after the email had been sent. I was sure I was one of the first 150. I wouldn't find out until the album came, and by the time the album came it wouldn't matter.

I'd know by then I'd be meeting him.

I got an email April 7th, the album set for release April 17th, saying that because I had preordered the album, I was part of a pre-presale for the tour tickets, and as part of this they were doing VIP packages. The money would go to the Jason Mraz Foundation. I read the email, about getting to meet him, front row seats, a gift basket.

I had to go.

The next day I intended to order the tickets on my laptop sitting in my English class, because I figured no one would notice. But as the bus pulled into campus I started to panic. I decided to ditch English and sit in a secluded place and do my thing stress-free. It was lucky I went with my nervous stomach, because my laptop wouldn't go to the VIP page at fifteen minutes to ten, when the tickets were to go on sale.

I walked as fast as I could to the computer lab in the Student Union building and luckily there was a computer free. (Someone was most definitely monitoring me from the clouds, I'll tell you that right now.) I got all the pages loaded and watched the little clock at the corner of the screen turn to ten.

I hit refresh and filled out the information at light speed, horrified I'd mistype a number in my credit card number or something simple like that and miss my chance completely. I received my confirmation email and went back to the VIP page.

There were no more tickets left.

I'd made it.

Now that you're caught up, reader, we can plow ahead.

I walked up to the secluded box office and greeted the girl. “I have one of these.” I said, passing her the printed VIP page. She looked at it, confused, and started to pose a question to her coworkers when a girl farther back in the booth said “Is it the VIP thing? What’s your last name.” I told her and she handed me the envelope.

I remember thinking it wasn’t all that miraculous looking for what it contained.

I handed her the form for my mother’s ticket, and walked on wind back to the car.

It was happening.

When I got my first Jason Mraz album Live at the Eagle’s Ballroom, I was too afraid to listen to all of it. I was embarrassed by what people would think, because I really didn’t know much about his music other than the fact that I really liked The Remedy. So I didn’t listen to much of it. It wasn’t until after Mr. A-Z showed me how much I truly did love his music that I was able to get over my stigma and listen to the live album.

We parked our car on the road, behind all these glamorous girls in their late twenties who were breaking out the champagne for their tailgating. I felt inferior in my “I wore this shirt when I met Jason Mraz” tee shirt. It’s something I’ve suffered from, a sense of Mraz-related inferiority. I sometimes joke that I’m such a big Jason Mraz fan because I felt threatened that Ellen was more into him than me, so I began studying harder and remembering all the little things so no one could question my fandom. But then I get in places like this and think “Surely these people like him more than me. I’m not a good enough fan to be here.”

“Erica.” I angrily reminded myself, sitting the passenger seat of the rental car with my stomach in a knot. “If there is anyone you are worthy of saying you’ve met on a tee shirt, it is undoubtedly Jason Mraz.”

I seem to forget that just because I’m the biggest fan in my general area, it doesn’t mean I’m the only fan like that in the world—which I would soon come to have as fact. And when I encounter more of them it frightens me. But tonight would permanently change that.

We got halfway to the steps leading to the Red Rocks Amphitheatre and doubled back for our deli sandwiches; with half an hour till house I figured we’d have plenty of time to eat on the steps, but of course I was hardly hungry and only ate for the sake of having something in me to avoid passing out.

People kept looking at my shirt, pointing it out to their friends. It all seemed rather non-verbal. I acted like I didn’t notice. My mother asked if I wanted to move up closer just as a guy with a meet-and-greet wristband walked past to get more to the front. We would only have fifteen minutes after the opening of house to gather for the meet-and-greet. We moved farther up the steps.

It was near the front of the line that a middle-aged woman spotted my shirt, without my knowing, and blurted rather loudly “You’ve MET him?!?”

Accosted I stammered, “I’m going to.” She then went on to say that she would die and that she was so jealous and how-did-you-get-to-meet-him-I-would-have-paid-that-much-I’m-nervous-for-you, and the venue employees began to move aside the barricades.

“I have bad news,” one worker said, walking down the stairs to be more in the center of those of us waiting. “If you have tickets for rows 1-12 you need to go back to the box office. There’s been a mistake.”

Part of the perk to getting the VIP meet-and-greet was the second row tickets (they save first row for ADA access) and a gift bag. The calmness that had been settled serenely about me from the moment I passed my VIP form through the box office window shattered. “Mom.”

“No.” Mom said. “There’s no time.” (the box office is completely separate from the amphitheatre and would take at least ten minutes or more to get there, get the tickets, park, and walk up those brutal stairs).

“Mom I can’t…” I was literally a fragment of a second from crying, until the man to my left, the one with the meet-and-greet wristband said “He said if you just came from the box office you’re fine.”

“Are you sure?” Mom asked.

“Yeah. We’re meeting him too.”

Suddenly the clammy hands of death weren't gripping my neck and my tear ducts, there were no demons from hell clawing at my legs through the red ground below. The man’s misspeak about the tickets had passed and we were filing forward into the amphitheatre.

I found the place we were meeting, and I believe I was the third person there. A woman in a green shirt came over and stood by me. “Is that your mom sitting on the second row? Seat 54?”

“Yes...” I responded.

“She’s watching our blanket for us. She told us to watch out for the girl in the blue shoes.”

I laughed. “Yeah that’s my mom.”

The woman and I talked a little bit. Her name was Jen and her husband, who arrived shortly, was Aaron. 

They were from Northern Denver, if memory serves.

“I’m from Bountiful, Utah. It’s kinda by Salt Lake.”

“Like the northern part or southern side?” Jen asked.

“Of Salt Lake or Bountiful?”

“Salt Lake.”

“North.”

Jen nodded. It was at this moment I noticed three brilliant things: 1)Earthman; 2) Philly—she’s the one that runs RKOP, an internet forum that started up when Jason was just a coffee shop regular, and has now become the name of his fan-marketing; and 3) Elmo Lovano and Christina Perri’s bassist walking less than a foot in front of me. (Elmo plays the drums for Christina. You learn these kinds of things when you follow your favorite musician’s band and opening act on Instagram.) I didn’t have time to take a picture as they passed, but I happened to catch them as they walked on the level below us.

That's Philly. I was too shy to talk to her.

Earthman has peanuts for earings, a rainbow beard, flair, some type of stuffed creature on his shoulder, and a tendency to trip straight on his face while carrying a tub full of beer cans through the audience.

Elmo Lovano and...blonde bombshell, as Christina called her.

A woman who wore stage-hand type apparel introduced herself as Rachel and came around to check our names off a list.

Jen asked me why I came out to Red Rocks, and I explained that I had resigned myself to only seeing him when he came to Utah for album tours, and that when they released the tour dates and Utah wasn’t on it, I had decided to go see him in Colorado. And then I heard about the meet-and-greets and HAD to go see him in Colorado.

Time went by, I watched the new arrivals and talked with Jen about how I forgot her name and how she’s been having heart palpations all day, and Rachel and some dude came over and reigned us in to give us the low-down.

“Jason will only sign one item. Whether that’s a shirt, a CD, just one item. I will get really mad if you try to go for two, and then you’ll ruin it for everybody. Give Rachel your camera when you come up. She’ll take two pictures per group. And that’s not two pictures per camera and iPhone. If you came in a couple, you are getting pictures taken as a couple. No singles unless you came by yourself.”

“Lucky.” Jen said to me out of the corner of her mouth.

“I’ll take some action shots, so you won’t just have posed pictures. I like to have fun.” Rachel said. They had a pretty solid good cop/bad cop thing.

They took those of us that donated to the Jason Mraz Foundation (which I thought was the only way to get a meet-and-greet, but evidently that was the only way to get a meet-and-greet with a gift bag) and took us through the barn door to give us our gift bags. Among other things was Jason’s Polaroid book A Thousand Things, which he published around 2008, which I have owned since 2008. The man said it was “highly suggested” Jason sign the Polaroid book because he would stamp it with a hand-carved stamp from Korea.

I will not go into details about the turmoil that next took place. I had to decide if I wanted him to sign the CD I had planned on him signing since the beginning of time, or a book that he would stamp with a one-of-a-kind stamp.

“Will Jason have a marker?” A boy in a plaid shirt asked a few people behind me. He, aside from me and another girl near the back of the line, was probably one of youngest ones there.

“Yes! Good question!” Rachel said. “He’ll have one.”

Suddenly I was worried. “I have a question.” I leaned in more toward Rachel. “Can I…give him something?”

“Sure.” She said, slightly bemused. “If you have something for him, you can give him something.”

I felt everybody watching me and slowly turned to the front.

I began to talk to Jen and Aaron about how I didn’t know what to do, and mid sentence I spotted him.

The gay couple at the front of the line was walking to him. I hadn’t even seen him show up. He was just suddenly there. I first saw him in profile, his head turned to the right looking at the couple. In the second it took me to register him before I pulled out my camera, all I could compute besides his existence was that he was wearing a green cardigan.

Here it is. The first picture I took of that green sweater. And the man abiding in it.

I watched him sign the books for the two men, and realized he had more space to write on the book, and he was using it.

“I’m going to have him sign the book.” I said. Jen and Aaron turned. “Thanks for…standing their while I made my decision.”

“Well, you have to make your own choices.” Jen joked, walking away to Jason.

“I have to be an adult,” I muttered as they approached him.

I noticed they had placed their bags on the ground, and as I now had two bulging totes instead of one, I promptly followed suit.

“That’s really clever.” The abrasive guy who told us Jason would only sign one item, said to Rachel.

“What?”

“Her shirt.” He was being really quiet about it, but I knew he was talking about me. I turned my eyes from Jen and Aaron’s conversation with Jason and showed the guy, Philly, and another girl part of the tour crew my shirt.

“That’s awesome.” Philly said.

The other girl held up her camera and I posed as she took a picture. “He’ll really like that.”

“What?!” This girl behind me declared. “I want to see!”

So I turned and showed them my shirt. Fifteen people watching me again.

“Are you going to have him sign it?” Her boyfriend asked.

“Well I was until he could only sign one thing.” He nodded and as I faced front Jen and Aaron were walking out.

It was my turn.

I handed Rachel my camera and told her the picture would turn up on screen if it took.

“Awesome. Thanks.” She said with a smile.

There are moments you dream about when the clouds are crossing the sky, or sleep is gently pulling your consciousness under. There a moments you perform in your head in so many ways in so many places, moments you wish on stars and eyelashes for, moments that cross from consciousness into your dreamscape and happen as if reality there. These moments are unlikely to ever come, and when they do, in spite of all the preparation and imagining, they never go the way you thought. You never say the right things or you say too much or too little. And in moments like this, where the majority of the moment depends on the response and attitude of the one facing you, you have no capability of matching it to what you’ve consistently imagined; because it’s in his hands.

He was shorter than I expected. I hadn’t gone in expecting a giant, I knew he wasn’t overly tall, but in every moment I had tried to pair myself next to him I’d suddenly become very short, constantly looking up to him. But there, walking toward him, I hardly had to tip my head. He was just a little guy.

I drew attention to my shirt as he approached me with his arms slightly extended.

If he was going to act like he was going for a hug, we were going for a hug. My left arm, holding my book and sticker, when under his right arm against his back, my right over his left.

I really don’t remember what it felt like.

Just that…he was there.

As we pulled apart he said in his smooth, mellow, may have done a joint voice. “You wore that shirt when you met me. [pause] I wore this sweater when I met you.” He touched the opening of his cardigan with his right hand.

“Thank you.” I said with a nervous chuckle.

We were posing for a photo. I cursed myself for having my items in my left hand, causing the dream of just once putting my arm around him to dissolve. Rachel took a picture.

“Rachel, did you get the shirt? Get the shirt.” The abrasive guy prodded.

Rachel readjusted the camera, Jason squeezed my right shoulder closer with his right hand.

It was over. I subconsciously took a step back, looking down at my book. “So I follow you on Instagram…and I brought you this sticker from Salt Lake.” I held it out to him and he took it, glancing at it for a moment, waving it a little.

“Thank you.” He said smoothly. I really don’t remember how, but I told him my name.

“With a ‘C’?” He asked.

“Yes.” I said.

“Did you drive here?”

“No, we flew.”

“Plane.” He nodded.

“We intended to drive but…you know.” All of my cognitive word processing seemed to have slipped away.

He had my book in his hand, he was opening it. “Erica with a ‘C’?”

“Yes.” I responded, watching his pen block out my name. I could sense Rachel was taking a picture and hesitated before looking up at his face.

“Thank you for taking the journey.” He said so very calmly.

“Thank…you for taking the journey.” I meant it as a breakthrough—as more than “Thanks for going on tour lol.” I meant it as “Thank you for quitting college for the second time. Thank you for driving alone to California to follow the dream you wished on stars for. Thank you for caring about the fans. Thank you for being so down-to-earth even if you’re a little high. Thank you for giving me a deeper love of words and an outstanding appreciation of music. Thank you for not giving up. Thank you for doing this tour.”

But I didn’t say that. I parroted back what he said. Word for word. But perhaps he understood, perhaps he somehow felt what was buried behind my bright-red blushing chest.

“It really is a journey. I love the journey.” He paused and gave his name little sunbeams. He took the stamp from the abrasive guy and stamped the LOVE blocks near my name.

“Have a great time.” His eyes were on mine and I couldn’t…

I really wanted to hug him again.

I hugged my book instead.

“You have…have a great show.”

He nodded and I basically turned tail and ran, the abrasive guy calling me back for my camera, which I had not forgotten, I was just going to grab my bags first.

I forgot until I’d left through the barn door with one last look at him to check that I actually had the pictures on my camera.

I did.