The Cure's "Disintegration" is the all purpose album for those in the dumps. Regardless of your source of solace or depression, whether it be loss of love, self-esteem, hope, or worse, you will find a companion in "Disintegration". It is better to embrace the gloom to work through it and to put your focus on a movie or an album, than your own life sometimes. If not now, it will happen in the future. When it does, you can pull this one off the shelf and let The Cure heal your wounded soul as a sympathetic presence.
Here are my 5 favorites from the album, with "Lovesong" being my favorite.
Well I'm not stoned. Despite my tendency toward slow speech, I am neither high nor from the south. The alternative, according to the opening, is far more likely. I am certainly feeling like I can't do anything right. Or perhaps I cannot do anything better? I am not smarter than I am, faster than I am, better than I am. It is a bit paralyzing. Yeah, I'm going with paranoid.
Go do something else. You've spent enough time listening to me whine.
While looking for videos of "Christian Petzold – "Minuet in G Major" played on the cello, I came across this piece by Ethan Winer. So cool. One dude. One cello. Lots of time and a bit of music software. I had to share this bonus song!
I had a dream. I was at work and my team had to perform a song as a band, but we barely had any time to practice or any time to even pick the song. But before the performance I would have to play a solo piece on my Cello without any practice at all, in front of the entire company. When I awoke, my thought was "Yup. That is basically how I feel all the time at work." I'm frequently part of a larger project while at the same time working solo on a project. It can be intense.
In the dream though, I had an easy solution for selecting the solo song. I would play "Minuet in G major, (BWV Anh. 114)". I know this song cold. As a friend of mine use to say about me… "[TSotD] gets all the chicks cause he plays the cello". Although a gross exaggeration of my prowess, this song is certainly a crowd pleaser when played live.
The song was previously thought to be by Johann Sebastian Bach, but is now credited to Christian Petzold. I was taught it in the spirit of the Suzuki Method, and thus have referred to it as "Minuet No. 3 by Bach" for years and years, as it is printed in my Suzuki book. Anyone classically trained on a string instrument knows this song and can likely play it by heart. I'd image most pianists and harpsichordists know it too.
Here it is on the harpsichord, the originally intended instrument:
Of course when I played it in my youth for a competition, it was more like this:
I've done the solo cellist on stage bit, but no that is not me. That is how I felt in the dream, except no piano back up. Just me out on the excessively big stage, bright hot lights shining down on me, looking out into the dark of the audience. I woke up before I could play it, but the song was stuck in my head all the same.
Keeping with the "dreams" theme, perhaps some of you remember the 80's movie "Electric Dreams" where an architect, Miles, buys a state of the art computer. After a little champagne spill, the computer, named Edgar, becomes a self aware intelligent life and also emotional. Both Miles and Edgar fall in love with the neighbor, Madeline, who is a cellist. In one of the scenes, Madeline and the computer play a duet of this song through the heating vent, although she thinks it is Miles. It is a little Short Circuit (which came afterwards) meets 2001: A Space Odyssey (which came before).
I am sick today. Just one of several unfortunate events for me today. Others include my coffee maker not properly dripping the coffee into the pot, but rather out onto the counter, the outside and inside of the cabinets below, and then all over the floor, including grounds of course. Another was when I went to make an egg sandwich only to discover the egg whites were not white, they were green like antifreeze. No Green Eggs and Ham for me please! There are other things, but they are less hilarious, and far more disappointing. So I am going to go back to bed, with this "Intro" from "The xx" stuck in my head, to put a big X on my day. It is a sad sort of tune for a sad sort of day.
Hopefully tomorrow will start out better. It will at least be different and a Saturday.
I can't decide. Do I like the original classic by The Temptations more than Fergie's "Here I Come"? I guess it depends on the party but I have to hand it to The Temptations!
It is January and I am just tired all the time. I believe we're all supposed to be hibernating or at least getting a couple extra hours of sleep each night. Instead I'm working working working. I was hoping a little country might pep me up to help me get through the work week. This song came on and as I listened to the lyrics, the perma-frown I've had for a couple weeks now turned into a smile. It is as though the song was written for me.
There's gotta be something more
Gotta be more than this
I need a little less hard time
I need a little more bliss
I'm gonna take my chances
Taking a chance I might
Find what I'm looking for
There's gotta be something more
I did decide to give my boss a piece of my mind yesterday. I gave him my 2 cents, over and over. $1.50 later I was feeling much better, a heavy weight lifted. I wish I could say the same for my boss, but I guess that is his problem now. Heh.
