First-Person Faith

Originally written September 18, 2022, 6:51pm. 

 

Something I've noticed about Christian music that you don't really see in any other genre is second-person songwriting. The big late-'80s arena rock bands were especially bad for this (Petra, Stryper, and DeGarmo & Key all loved this approach).

Don't get me wrong, I love Petra. But this approach to songwriting creates the tiniest 'holier-than-thou' feeling. It's always 'you feel lost and confused, your life feels empty, oh look, here's Someone who can take all your pain away.' (This also feeds into the insidious prosperity gospel that is the foundation for modern Evangelicalism, but that's another blog post.) This is why we look back now and feel a slight cheesiness in the music of Petra and Stryper, while bands like Prodigal and Daniel Amos (you knew I was going to bring them into this) still sound lyrically fresh some forty years later.

Why?

DA and Prodigal wrote in first person. Prodigal was especially good at this; it was even noted as one of their strengths by critics of the time. Pick literally any Prodigal song and you have a masterclass in first-person characterization. Their cheesiest song happens to be one of only two songs that they wrote in second person (Emerald City). (The second song was Bobby, which was written with such immersive detail that it feels like you are living that life, in first-person.)

But look at a song like Masks or Answering Machine or I Don't Know Who You Are or The Big Sleep -- all of those are emotional heavy hitters, and every one of them is in first-person. Daniel Amos has songs like Here I Am; Big Time/Big Deal; Dig Here Said The Angel; Props; Half Light, Epoch, And Phase; and perhaps the most devastatingly tender song ever written, The Twist.

 

Where Petra and every late-'80s-solo-male-CCM-radio-vocalist-ever wrote songs that kept the listener at arms' length until they repented, DA and Prodigal were taking their listeners by the hand and whispering I know. I understand. I'm here.

 

And isn't that really what Christianity is based on? Jesus, Emmanuel, God-With-Us, coming into our lives and taking our hands and saying I know. I understand. I'm here? 

 

Being held at arms' length makes you a project. Being sat with while you cry makes you loved. And if God is love and we are supposed to be reflect Him, why are we holding people at arms' length? That's not at all what He did. My theory is this is why a lot of the late-'80s-solo-male-CCM-radio-vocalist songs feel cheesy or hollow today... they feel so far away, so distant, so not how the God they preach really is.

Staying Alive (So Far)

I was hoping to post something, anything noteworthy to reassure (?) you all that I haven't died yet, however, nothing much has happened. We are both still sick. I have missed church two weeks in a row and today was my first attempt at going back to work since the Saturday before Easter... and I am paying for the effort dearly. I have not had to go back to the hospital, but this past Friday was the first day I didn't need my rescue inhaler at least once. We are both still coughing quite a bit.

 

The only thing that has really happened is on Saturday a friend and I drove to the nearest city to wait in line for Record Store Day -- my first ever. I wasn't really interested in any of the official RSD releases, but I'm always down for the opportunity to go to a record store. We had planned this months in advance, and it turned out to be my first real excursion since my asthma attack on the 7th.

 

I left with four vinyl albums and nine CDs (plus a tenth CD that my brother wanted). None of it was stuff I had been looking for for decades or anything, but I knocked a couple of songs off my iTunes wishlist and got some 'starter' albums for the Beach Boys and the Supremes (both artists I have long been interested in learning more about but never pursued). I also added to my late '90s/early 2000s dancepop collection.

 

Also on the music front, I've also lately discovered the wonders of the Internet Archive and been using it to find new music to love. I found some '80s/'90s Japanese jazz fusion and a treasure trove of Christian alternative and rock albums that have been on my wish list for DECADES but remain elusive even on Discogs.

 

I've been going through the to-listen pile as well. Even though my music habit slowed a LOT during the years I worked in fast food, apparently I managed to accumulate a few titles from the local thrift store that went straight into the box with the other records and never actually got played (some of them were still in the original shopping bags with the receipts). So far I've imported heavy hitters like Servant's Light Maneuvers (can't believe I've been sleeping on this album for five years -- this one was an immediate favourite), Paul Clark's Aim For The Heart (which is perfect for my recent love of early '90s jazz and weather channel vapourwave), Leon Patillo's Dance Children Dance, and David Edward's Get The Picture from this 'source.'

 

I haven't 'synced up' my computers yet with all the new music, but my guess is I'm closing in on the 6800-song mark.

What I mean by 'synced up:' I import CDs and vinyl directly onto the MacBook Pro, which has a CD drive and Audacity but is too old for internet; and I download new iTunes Store/Bandcamp purchases onto the MacBook Air, then use an external drive to manually shuttle music and album artwork between the two.

 

I have a Smart Playlist on each computer called 'Updates,' and it's set to include all songs added after a certain date. Whenever I want to 'sync up' my music library, I start by going through that playlist on one of the computers and adding those tracks to the external drive. Then I go to the other computer and copy over the tracks from the first computer, then copy new tracks from the second computer onto the external drive using the playlist. Then I go back to the first computer and add the new tracks from the second one, referencing the Update playlists on each computer to ensure I've got all the tracks. Once I've got all the new tracks on both computers, I change the date on both Update playlists to that date, so all new music added after that goes on the playlists until I start the process over again.

 

It's a bit complicated and time-consuming, but to me it is absolutely worth it to keep things organized and to ensure that all my music is readily available on both my main devices. Mirroring my music library in this way also ensures that 1. I have downloaded copies of all my music, they're not just on some cloud somewhere where they could be deleted at any moment, and 2. I have a full, up-to-date backup of my music library in three places: the Pro, the Air, and the external drive itself. I have heard far too many horror stories of people losing decades of rare music to drive failure.

 

I've also been reading quite a bit, since my lungs are too easily exhausted to do much else. I dug back through my childhood and read some old obscure mysteries that I used to borrow from the library all the time as a kid. It's been a very enjoyable experience so far.

 

I don't know how to wrap up this post. My ear is killing me and so is my throat. No amount of tea is helping. I'm just so tired of being sick. But so far I am breathing okay.

Nachmo, Day 10 - Breathing And Reruns

Rehearsals have officially started for my next theatre show, and we're officially choreographing this show out of order.

Also, yesterday, I hit the 10-minute mark, as in ten total minutes of music choreographed. This is on pace for my stated goal of 30 minutes of choreography during the challenge proper. (The show is actually 54 minutes long, but I'm trying to be reasonable about my expectations for a 31-day challenge.) (Obviously I am going to try to exceed thirty minutes, but I will be happy with thirty if I don't manage any more than that.)

The mouse incident did have me lagging behind a bit, but yesterday I went on a tear and choreographed over two minutes' worth of material. Today so far I've done nearly another minute, but I know where I want to go from there so I should be able to knock out a bit more tonight. I might need the buffer for this weekend, as I have a meeting for a potential choreography gig, dinner with the in-laws, and a long rehearsal with my remote choreography gig.

As for the show itself, I choreographed the first two pieces, then skipped ahead due to overwhelm and did the sixth song. I'm now on the seventh song, and that will take us into the intermission.

Things are starting to take shape a bit -- I've got a couple of motifs, and am trying not to worry too much that I'm grossly overusing them. I'm trying very hard to let the piece breathe a little bit more and not try to stuff tricks and overly complex rhythm changes into EVERY SINGLE SUBDIVISION of the music. That can be impressive, but my pre-pandemic work especially suffers from too much razzle dazzle rather than too little. I hate how slow and boring modern dance is, so I overcompensate by overstuffing the music with a volley of sounds like gunshots on a battlefield. I am trying to recognise this when it happens and pull back on the reins, just a little tiny bit. (I'm hoping this will also 1. be easier on my memory once it's time to learn it, and 2. communicate the whole 'memory loss' theme a bit more.)

I'm really proud of how the playlist turned out. Honestly, I stuck in a couple of early-'90s smooth jazz songs I had, then searched 'melancholy vapourwave' on YouTube. I got exactly two videos as a result, but both videos supplied me with enough music to populate the rest of the playlist. As I listened to those YouTube mixes, I slotted each contender into a rough song order on my Notion tab for the show. When my final paycheque came in on the 30th, I bought the songs and stuck them in the playlist. I listened to the playlist exactly once through, on the 31st. I think I made two or three swaps, but the song order is actually largely the same as originally written down on the fly. The transitions are really smooth, and the 'vibe' throughout the whole show flows and shifts really well (other than the second song, as discussed in a previous Nachmo update). That's incredible, considering I heard some of these songs exactly twice in my entire life before the first of January. (Usually my playlists are full of songs that I have known for years, if not decades, that I am intimately familiar with and could sing to you, note-for-note, in their entirety.)

 

This music takes me back to a simpler time. And one of the biggest things about memory loss that surprised me was how much my brain simply played 'reruns' of memories of simpler times -- memories I hadn't even thought about in decades. My brain played reruns of every memory I ever had at my grandparents' old house in the country (I was not quite five years old when they moved into town), long-forgotten moments in the trailer we lived in when I was a child, and many hours of 2021-2023 slipped past me as my brain kept me sitting in the sunlight in my old pink bedroom (which by then no longer existed as mine, or as pink, for that matter). I couldn't really think any new thoughts -- there were none to think, I couldn't hold onto the concepts long enough to match them together into a new thought -- so my mind just dumped me into my past, as vivid as if I was still there. I completely understand now why old people talk so much about the old days -- as far as we're concerned, we are still living there, still in 1959 or 1982 or 1997, still living in those fleeting moments before everything changed, before wi-fi, before iPhones, before the pandemic, before all the loss, before freaking hipster music.

 

It was a comfort at times to live in the golden years again, but it also stopped me from engaging with the present, from making new works and new friends. I would wake up from driving my old Pontiac Montana down the highway in 2012 and find myself in a year I didn't know in a world I didn't recognise with people I'd never met.

Anyway, that's part of the experience I'm trying to capture in the show, especially as we move into the second act -- that disconnect between physical reality and our mind's reality, and how we don't even know -- or can't control -- that it's happening.

Tickling The Ivories

I recently bought myself a piano keyboard with some Christmas money.

I hadn't touched a piano in years -- not since I left Saskatchewan in 2019. I had taken piano lessons in both the first and last years of my degree, but since I had come into the program essentially without an instrument and since the program director was an opera singer, I had by default become a voice major. The worst and most detested voice major in the program, mind you, but a voice major nonetheless.

What I had really wanted to learn was piano. But I didn't advocate for myself -- I felt embarrassed that I couldn't even read music and here I wanted to be in the music program. At least in voice you could fake it without reading music. You should be better than this was the thought that constantly dogged everything I did -- dance, voice, piano, anything.

I took eight years' worth of music theory in the space of two. I learned enough piano to play my own melody lines in practice and to sight read new choir pieces. The rare time I attempted to play something on the piano in its own right, I noticed the peace that settled over my soul as I watched my fingers work out a recognisable -- and not unpleasant -- tune. But then the voices of everybody I knew would come back in my brain, shrieking and strident: you should be better than this.

When I left Saskatchewan in 2019, I was so tired of hearing that voice that I abandoned singing entirely. I celebrated my final day in the practice room, before my last show there. I would never have to set foot in those rooms again. I would never have anybody give me a failing grade on the voice God gave me ever again.

My piano skills died with it. Due to the absolutely insane schedule that school demands performance (read: voice) majors keep, the only time I really got to play piano was when I was learning a new song for my voice lessons. With my voice lessons firmly and definitely behind me, I also no longer played piano.

For a while, I forgot that I had ever known how to play. The pandemic came and took all the theatre opportunities away, so I lost my ability to sight-read music as well. I remembered the hellish hours of voice training during college, but the fleeting seconds of piano were lost.

This past Christmas, my husband offered to buy me a piano keyboard and showed me the one he had in mind. It looked great, but it was more money than I knew he could afford to spend on me and talked him out of it. But then a relative of his gave us both a not-insubstantial amount of money. Despite my pleas to put mine in our savings account for a house, my husband insisted his relative would have wanted us to spend it on something fun.

I have never in my life possessed a sum of money more than $20 with no option to spend it on the practical things of life. I sat on that money for literal months as I tried to think of something 'fun' to buy. I thought of a bass guitar -- something I had wanted to learn for years. But reading reviews on beginner basses overwhelmed me, and I wondered if I was really going to have the energy to learn a new instrument with my few remaining scraps of energy at the end of each day.

But then I remembered the piano keyboard my husband had shown me months earlier. I had some piano experience. I wouldn't be learning a whole new instrument from scratch. And I knew my husband would approve since it had been his idea in the first place.

So I ordered it, it arrived, and my mother and sister (an advanced pianist) sent me some sheet music my sister was no longer using. I found a copy of Michael W. Smith's Great Is The Lord is the pages they sent, and while that's not my favourite worship song or even my favourite MWS song, the memories of listening to it on my dad's vinyl copy drove me to pick that one.

The first week was mostly a rude awakening of just how much music theory I had forgotten. I spent days just trying to remember how key signatures worked (my theory books were all at my parents' house), and it took about as long to remember the notes of the bass clef (the treble clef was more hardwired into my soprano brain, but even that had taken a hit). But it began to come back to me, and I even began to develop some smoothness, then to play both hands together through some parts of the song.

And every time I sat down at that keyboard to run through the song, I felt a brush of... peace? maybe even joy? tickle my shoulders. It was so soft that I didn't even notice it at first. But after a few weeks, I realised it was the same feeling I get when I dance. That same peace, that calm, that assurance that all is right with the world, if only for a moment. And I began to remember having that same feeling the few times I played piano in its own right at college. Practicing voice had only ever been a source of stress and fear and frustration. Playing piano had been so lovely and calming that I had avoided it because it was 'wasting my time...' if I wasn't in a state of maximum stress while doing it, it probably was because I was using it to procrastinate on doing something useful... right?

But now, nobody is grading me on my voice or my piano skills, so I'm continuing to practice piano and relish the peace it brings me. I still don't have a space to dance in (and at the moment, I also do not have a healthy back to dance with), but at least I have this, this one modicum of peace in a world that feels increasingly and heavily against me. I'm only sad that it took me this long to realise that piano is what I should have been pursuing all along.

NF -- A Brief Overview

Been a while since we talked about music here. Something about having a day job and a husband cuts back a LOT on the music-listening time. It also doesn't help that said husband and I have VERY different musical tastes. While we've both introduced each other to a handful of new favourites, our music libraries as a whole remain 'his music' and 'my music.'

The one exception is the rapper NF.

NF has been on my radar for a long time, ever since How Could You Leave Us dropped. I saw it on social media, then the same year my college brought him in for a conference. As he was the only act at the conference who was NOT singing hipster worship, I attended purely on principle. I figured if there were more butts in seats at the not-hipster concerts, maybe they'd quit bringing in hipster acts.

The auditorium he performed to had a capacity of about a thousand people. It was not even half full.

I remember sitting in the pew, analysing every bar he gave us. With my mind steeped as it was in oceans of grief and the 'nothing is EVER good enough' rhetoric that my instructors poured into me like hot lead every single day, I simply thought his rhythm was a bit off... but I also remember thinking that I loved the lyrical concepts.

'I'll check back in five years. He's got potential to go somewhere, but he's not there yet,' I told myself.

Our paths crossed every so often. I remember seeing the Clouds video when it first came out (was thoroughly confused by it but noted the cleaner, sharper rhythms), and I was really impressed by his technical and storytelling skills on Story.

This past Friday we attended one of his stops on the Hope tour -- this time in an NHL arena that was definitely over half capacity with people very hyped to be there.

It was nothing at all like the show that gangly kid five years ago gave us.

Oh sure, the show was sophisticated and even I, a fairly seasoned (and jaded) performing artist with decades of experience, was truly wowed by some of the special effects, entrances, quick changes, and props. I actually feel as if I need to say 'spoiler alert' whenever I talk about this concert online because there was just so much sleight of hand and lovely surprises.

But over the past five years NF leaned into that lyrical strength he always had and leveled his rhythm game up alongside it. This show hits hard, both lyrically and musically, and that is exactly what I love in music -- all music. Hope (the song) alone is worth the price of admission to that show, and it was even before I saw all the live special effects. We bought Hope (the album) when it first dropped back in April, and that is the album that has truly made me a fan. I had bought Clouds shortly after it released, but that was more as a gift for my husband than for me. Hope, however, may just be NF's Darn Floor. In fact, I would go as far to say that NF is to rap was Terry Scott Taylor is to... almost every other genre of music. The lyrical incisiveness and the clear love for and dedication to their craft is very similar (though NF doesn't quote quite as much William Blake).

If, like me, you are thirsty for good music, NF needs to be in your collection.

Stop Press: Album Release!

Music fans, rejoice!

If, like me, you missed the Kickstarter project (in 2019!) and were too poor to afford the astronomical shipping ($75???) for the CD pre-order, Terry Scott Taylor’s This Beautiful Mystery is now FINALLY available to order from his Bandcamp page!

I have deliberately avoided listening to this album. I have not bought or streamed the digital versions of any of the songs (though they have been available for a while). I want my first listen to be alone in the dark with a hard copy, with nothing to disturb or interrupt the art. I have no idea what it will be like, but I saw the email and dropped everything to order it because I am that confident it will be worth it. I have never done that ever with any purchase in my entire life. But I will not let this one get away from me again.

Terry Scott Taylor is arguably one of the greatest songwriters to walk the earth. Full stop. He has had nearly 50 years of professional songwriting experience, and it shows. His craftsmanship is unsurpassed. If you have never heard the work of Terry Scott Taylor, do yourself a favour and get this album. Your life will be the richer for it.

It is FINALLY NOW AVAILABLE ON CD on Bandcamp here. But hurry -- it's a limited run. Once these are gone, there will be no more.

Enjoy.

In Memoriam: Armond Morales (1932-2022)

 I only found out yesterday that Armond Morales of the Imperials passed away on the 5th at age ninety.

Armond Morales' deep bass is a thread that has run through my entire life. I am by no means an Imperials aficionado, but my dad is. One of my earliest childhood memories is of my dad playing the Imperials' Big God (the only song I'm aware of in which Morales actually sang more than one solo line) so loudly that the dust literally fell from the ceiling.

My dad loved that song and he loved the band that made it. Albums like Let The Wind Blow (1985), Sail On (1980), Stir It Up (1992), One More Song For You (1979), ...This Year's Model (1987), and of course Big God (1991), were all in heavy rotation on my dad's hi-fi system when I was a child. ...This Year's Model comes up often on this blog as it has become one of my favourite albums too (the opening track is absolutely killer). My mother once told me a story from their dating years when Dad took her to an Imperials concert and during a medley proceeded to predict every song before it started. My mom thought he was psychic. She later learned that the exact same medley had been released on their 1990 album Love's Still Changing Hearts and my dad had it memorised word-for-word.

The Imperials have been a large part of the soundtrack of our family's life. For Armond Morales to be gone is truly the end of an era, both for the Christian music industry and for our family. The great tragedy is that nobody who listens to Christian music today realises what they have lost.

Morales managed the Imperials from the 1950s until 2017. Most bands don't even last a quarter of that time, let alone with the same manager. Even Bob Hartman's rock giant Petra is several decades behind such a milestone. The Imperials put out one solid, catchy album after another, year after year after year, from the Elvis era till the years of Hillsong's radio dominance. They shifted with the musical styles enough to sound current, but not enough to sound dated today. They navigated lead vocal changes with ease and grace and always managed to bring four-part harmonies about simple faith into whatever era they found themselves in. They were always, unfailingly, the Imperials, but they never sounded 'old,' like many gospel quartets do today. They gently guided old fundamental Christians into the current sound by staying unflinchingly true to their faith roots and as a result are a big part of why there even is such a thing as 'Christian radio' today.

Armond Morales was a quiet giant in the history of Christian music. We would do well to reflect on what he achieved and what mantle he has left behind for us, the faith-based artists of today.

The End Of Yet Another Era...

Last week I found out 'my' dance school (that I attended full time from 2009-2013 and then again 2015-16 and part time until Pandemic) is closing at the end of this month.

It hurts.

I've gone through so much change and upheaval already -- leaving my parents' picturesque house for good, leaving everything and everyone I ever knew, marriage to a man that in all honesty I barely knew before the ceremony... but I held onto that one constant that once the pandemic was over, once we could move out of the literal pit we currently live in (the town is in the bottom of a valley), I could go take Mrs. Clark's ballet class again and I could drive to class listening to White Heart as I looked at the streetlights and drive back home listening to Daniel Amos as I looked at the big dipper in the endless Alberta sky. That hope fueled me through much of this difficult first year of marriage and the pain of being separated from my friends and family back home. And now that hope to relive those wonderful days again, when everything was possible and everything was beautiful, is gone forever. I won't even get to take one last class at that studio. I don't even get to make that drive one last time.

I didn't know my last time was the last time. It's like a sudden death, in a small way.

I essentially quit dancing in the fall of 2019, despite being at my parents' house (read: within driving distance of the studio) due to the damage that my college professors did to me. They convinced me I wasn't good enough to even bother trying, so I stopped. I was too depressed to get out of bed, let alone go to class and feel even more inadequate about my abilities and myself as a person. I remember even texting the teacher and apologising for my patchy attendance, explaining that depression was kicking my butt. True to form, she was completely compassionate and understanding -- she always is. I thought I would come back. I really did.

I did up until last Sunday, when my sister told me the news.

I met M there, among other great people. I got my first pair of pointe shoes there. The teacher graciously watched and gave feedback on multiple choreography pieces I've done -- she even let me teach one to the ladies' class and let my sisters and I perform another in one of their shows. She hired my dad and I to build what turned out to be her last studio space. For most of my teen years, that class was my only joy in life. It quite literally kept me alive more than once. It wasn't just 'dance class,' it was that specific dance class, taught in that specific place by that specific person, surrounded by those specific classmates. It is irreplaceable, and now I can't go back. That dance school was quite literally a part of who I was, and with that gone -- among so many other things I've lost in the past two years -- it feels like my soul is untethered from me, floating aimlessly through space. I have no anchor left for it. I feel lost and alone in a world I don't recognise and never wanted to be in.

There are other dance classes and other studios. But dance will never, ever be the same again.

An Ode To OG Girlpop

Yesterday my husband and I got talking about the first-ever cassettes we bought, and it unlocked a memory that I hadn't even thought to recall in probably ten years.

I was seven years old and it was ZOEgirl's self-titled album. I was such a music nerd even then that I remember my sister purchasing Raze's Power on the same day (she always had cooler taste than me at that age -- I definitely listen to Raze far more than ZOEgirl today). Young as I was, I already owned several cassettes -- mixtapes that my dad and I had collaborated on in front of his big stereo system that occupied a more central place in our living room than the television. To own my own real, honest-to-goodness cassette album was a special thing indeed. I remember sitting in the parking lot of the hardware store (my parents had wisely taken us to buy music first and then gone to spend 45 minutes at the hardware store after we had a distraction in our hands -- and yes, music was a sufficient distraction for both my sister and me), and reading the liner notes -- all the lyrics, the credits, everything. I read the copyright year on the spine, the way my dad had showed me on his own albums at home. I was only just beginning to understand the concept of years (as in, we are currently living in the year 2021), but I knew the year 2000 meant it was a new album (I did not yet know that this would be one of maybe a dozen albums that I would actually buy new over the course of my life -- the overwhelming majority of the music I've bought since then has had copyright years beginning with the number '19').

Naturally, I played that ZOEgirl album a lot. When I ventured into that dusty section of my iTunes this morning following my husband's question, I found that not one word escaped my memory despite the 'last played' date being May 2017 (exactly four years and one day earlier, in fact).

Was ZOEgirl great? No. If you don't have memories attached to them, they're probably pretty forgettable. But to us Christian girls of the early 2000s, they expressed the faith we were being raised in in a way we could relate to (and, most importantly for some of us, dance to). Even listening to them today was a breath of fresh air in the current collective spritual climate of doubt, anger, and cynicism. The songs, especially on this debut album, describe life as a Christian with a simplicity and joy that I have not seen or felt in Christiandom in a very long time. Every song points to Christ alone -- not works, not 'goodness,' not pedigree, not strength. Every. Song. And every song speaks of God with joy, adoration, and complete trust. There were mainstream CCM bands at the time with far worse theology than this flash-in-the-pan girl-pop band aimed at teenyboppers (back when 'teenybopper' was a serious designation for a specific subculture). Perhaps I should have been less surprised to see singer/songwriter Alisa Childers on the front lines of contemporary Biblically-sound theology twenty years after the release of this album.

Is the music dated? Definitely. In terms of production and instrumentation, this fits in squarely with acts like Aqua or Jump5. Is this a bad thing? Not to me. It takes me right back to the simplicity and joy of my childhood before my mom's depression got bad -- back in the very early days when she was able to be properly present with us. The light, sparkling music also accentuates the purity of the message ZOEgirl was presenting. It's also still very definitely danceable (which, along with 'do the lyrics assume I actually own a brain?' is my personal litmus test).

ZOEgirl is a product of their time, for certain, but it's hard to find an act so pure, even in that era. For that, they deserve a second look. They're still not even in my top 100 favourite artists of all time (although they might have a chance at number 100 if Terry Scott Taylor didn't have so many bands loading up the top of the list). But they will remain firmly entrenched in my memory and in my iPod for what they were able to give a mature-for-her-age girly-girl music-nerd seven-year-old.

Music

If you've been around here long enough, you may remember the music-collector days, circa 2010-2013. However, five years of college and six of unemployment put a real damper on the whole 'buying obscure music from out-of-country' thing.

Now, for the first time in a very long time, I have both a relatively stable job and am not paying tens of thousands of dollars every couple months in tuition fees. You have no idea the financial freedom I have. I am working minimum wage, but I have more 'disposable income' now than I have EVER had in my entire life. I'm still not well-off by most people's standards, but I feel like I'm living a life of luxury. I can buy cheap muffins regularly now instead of only buying them on special occasions. There is a massive weight off my shoulders that I have not felt since before I left for college. Lecrae's sentiment that 'being broke made me rich' is spot-on.

Anyway, all this to say that now that I actually have a couple extra pennies to spare at the end of the month, I took advantage of a few Boxing week sales from a couple of music dealers who specialise in my obscure genre of choice. One such dealer was Girder Music, and one such deal I took advantage of was the Halo/Scott Springer remastered 4-CD pack. I've had my eye on both Halo albums (particularly Heaven Calling) for years now -- since before college, but there was always an album I wanted more... then, of course, there was that college-induced financial drought.

I didn't realise at the time I bought that CD pack that the purchase included full downloads of all four albums, so even though the CDs only shipped today, I get to listen to them at my leisure, starting now.

Due to all the aformentioned circumstances, I haven't been able to buy and enjoy any of these really rare albums for a long time now. And just sitting and listening to these included downloads from this obscure early-'90s band that nobody's ever heard of was such a powerful experience that it made me tear up.

This was the music of a time in my life when anything was possible, my mental health was at an all-time high, I was surrounded by talented, creative, fiery people (who were not yet dead), and my creativity was at its absolute zenith. Even the mere act of sitting and listening to music without thinking about how I should be working on an assignment instead was almost foreign to me. For just a few moments, I've been able to grasp hold of a thin thread of what my life used to be and relish that safe, secure, on-top-of-the-world feeling that I used to have without even realising it.

Hopefully I can do a more in-depth review of the albums once they arrive, but until then I just wanted to chronicle how much I loved simply listening to the music of my younger years after such a long drought.

What is Good?

The last two days have been full of despair and fear. I have exactly $20 cash to my name. One of my most promising opportunities for the summer may not even happen -- leaving me very much in the lurch and forcing me to make long-term decisions sooner than I anticipated. And overall I've been feeling very alone. I just want to spend time with someone, but it seems everyone's busy. And this makes me frustrated because I feel guilty for needing so much people-time.

I was reading over the last few posts on this blog the other day and I realised that it's been pretty depressing here as of late. I want to do a 'good' post, a sort of hopeful post, but I didn't know how or what about. So I'm just going to bullet-point it.

- This past week I've finally started work on Kyrie again. I'm truly loving writing this story right now. I'm trying not to think too much about how many plot holes and loose ends there still are and how many characters are severely underdeveloped.

- Peanut butter banana smoothies. Some days this is literally the only thing that makes me happy.

- I recently obtained a copy of Crumbächer's incredible album Escape From The Fallen Planet on vinyl. This is one of my top five favourite albums of all time, and I've wanted it on vinyl for several years. I finally got a chance to listen to it today, while reading the lyric sheet.
I've known and loved this album (on CD) for years now. It was one of only three albums that I could stand to hear for about six months following my cousin's sudden death, so I played it a LOT. But there were always a few lyrics that eluded me, and now, reading them in full, soaking in the rich, full sound of the vinyl, I discovered (as I had rather hoped) another layer of conceptual and sonic depth to this album. This is what I love in good music. This is what I look for -- I look for the music that will give me new things for years and years to come, no matter how many times I play it.

- My mom and my brother came to visit for a few days. It was nice to walk around campus actually talking to someone rather than wandering about all by myself.

- On Friday one of my friends came up and gave me a hug.

- Michael W. Smith's '80s output. (i 2 (EYE) and The Big Picture.) Also the Imperials' ...This Year's Model.

Upheaval and Music (A Snapshot)

Life has been in upheaval lately.

I am preparing to graduate this coming April (and none too soon, according to the powers-that-be...). I have planned several auditions for productions outside the college over the next couple of months -- hoping to hit the ground running so I don't experience the post-grad psychological crisis (because it's a real thing and it almost killed me last time). Also I actually managed to land an actual role with actual lines at the college (I know, I was shocked too). And I've now attended the funeral of a suicide (my very good friend -- a brilliant dancer and fearless writer).

I find myself re-evaluating my life quite a bit in the wake of all this. I am definitely ready to graduate -- not angry-ready, just ready. I sense I've more or less gotten all I'm going to get out of my current post-secondary stint and it's time to move on.

And my friend's death has redoubled my passion to live my life the way I feel called to rather than be pressured into spending it at some soulless desk job. I feel a bit of a burden in my spirit to live the life that she never will -- to dance just as brightly and passionately and to write with just as much verve and abandon as she did. It's up to me now to take up that mantle she left behind.

I don't know what any of this looks like. I guess I'll keep practicing and keep auditioning and keep performing. After all, that's basically the life I've always wanted anyway.

Tonight I'm listening to Michael W. Smith's brilliant album i 2 (EYE). This is the album that fits this night, this moment of my life, with its themes of providence and life (warts and all), and darkness and light and loss and sadness and camaraderie. As I've said before, where people cannot grasp the feelings in my soul, music can, and tonight this album is that music. I can't really describe it -- it's a strange mix of what MWS actually wrote coupled with my long bank of memories associated with this album and they all come together in this particular listening tonight. I wouldn't quite say it's bringing me comfort -- in fact as I Hear Leesha plays it's kind of ripping the hole left by my friend's death even bigger -- but it just fits. It makes emotional sense, on some deep subconscious soul level. It accompanies the upheaval with a sort of peace even at it brings me temporarily back to the times before everyone died, sitting in the Dodge Spirit in a Fabricland parking lot with my dad, playing this cassette over and over.

I'll help you find your way
When you're lost in all the madness
When you're blinded by your doubts
When you need someone to be there for you
I'll help you find your way...

Analog Media

Anyone who knows me (or has had the greater misfortune of actually living with me), knows I take in and use a LOT of analog media. Vinyl, cassettes, 35mm film cameras (and prints), physical books, pen and paper, journals, old PCs... entering my room is like entering a time warp (the lava lamp next to the high-end laptop doesn't help). (We should all count our blessings that I haven't yet fulfilled my dream of owning a Sega Genesis or a Pac-Man arcade console.)

On a recent trip to the city (during which I picked up my film prints from the lab, looked through some vinyl, bought a book -- it would have been two if I'd had the funds; and shot a bunch of film), I began to realise that the reason I purchase/collect/use SO MUCH physical analog media is because it will always be there for me, in ways people never are. You can pull out your favourite photograph at 3am and look at it and escape into the better world, however briefly. You can spin your favourite album at 11pm and as long as you wear headphones nobody gets upset and the poetry will still understand what your own soul struggles to comprehend. If you're alone for the tenth straight day you can sit and read your favourite book and have a companion in Lord Peter Wimsey. Analog media is there when people refuse to be or at the very least cannot be.

Yes, you can accomplish all that on an iPad (books, music, photography, writing, games) and it does take up FAR less space than a vinyl collection and eight camera lenses, but it's not real. You can't touch it, hold it, interact with it on a personal level. It's like playing a synthesizer violin versus playing a real violin. It's the same as texting someone rather than going for dinner with them. Technically, you're talking, but you're not really connecting. Connecting with someone or something is a much more full experience than I think we sometimes want to believe. We have five senses, but most of the time we try to reduce ourselves to one or two.

It's the little physical, in-person things that make analog media a companion on the lonely evenings. It's the feel of dropping the needle in the groove and hearing the soft crackle, watching the cartridge bob up and down. It's feeling the glossy edge of a photo print. It's hearing the spring as the shutter opens and feeling the tug of the film in the sprockets as you throw the advance lever. It's feeling the roughness of the pages as you turn them. It's hearing the soft scrape of the ballpoint on a fresh page in a hardcover notebook and running your fingers over the grooves of the writing on previous pages, watching how your own writing changes from day to day. It's pushing that huge 'Play' button on the cassette player, feeling the resistance of it as you push the entire playhead mechanism into motion. I haven't even talked about the smell of vinyl, and books (new and old), and the cassette booklet, and fresh ink on paper.

One of my favourite roles I've played is the Man in Chair from The Drowsy Chaperone, and that character helps me make my point here. The character is divorced, socially awkward, has some health problems, is a bit of a shut-in. He makes no reference to any friends or acquaintances or even workmates. All he has to console and intellectually stimulate himself is his vinyl collection. This is his escape and his comfort and his window into the world. He doesn't have people around him, so he turns to the next best thing -- vinyl. Vinyl is there for him when nobody in the real world knows he even exists.

How many times do you hear of people with depression or in hard times turning to music, in some form or another, in those times? How many people do you know who binge-watch Netflix? How many people with mental illnesses turn to things like painting or writing, especially during flare-ups? In all fairness I can only speak for myself, but when my depression hits the point (and it has at times) when literally everybody in my entire life gives up on me and outright refuses to interact with me because I'm 'so negative,' you know what? My Electric Eye vinyl still plays. My camera shutter still fires. The book's pages still open. None of these give me crap for not feeling the 'right' emotion at any given moment. They're just there.

I know these deep dark times will recur throughout my life. And I know that 99.9% of the people who say they're going to be there will not be. So I surround myself with analog media as a barricade against my own self-imposed demise.

On Encouragement

'Encouragement' is a concept I've pondered a lot since I began to take my calling as a performing artist seriously.

We as artists say we want to encourage people. We as Christians say one of our goals is to encourage each other.

So how does an artist encourage someone? Especially if you're a dance artist -- one who performs without words? Anyone can write a song with the lyric 'don't give up,' but how do you communicate that clearly in dance? Do you bother trying to say something so abstract so clearly? What about all the art that deals with the hardships of life -- the stuff that actually resonates because it touches on things so deep yet so common? Can only sugary sweet, 'safe and fun' art encourage?

Yet in my own artistic intake I continually find myself going back not to the happy, smile-a-minute songs, but to the ones that acknowledge -- no, press into -- deep pain. My favourite Terry Scott Taylor album of all time was written out of the loss of his grandfather and his oldest child within months of each other. It was in these expressions of melancholy and frustration and deep pain that I found solace. It was these songs, these albums, that gave the me courage to keep going. It was that knowledge -- that at least one other person on the planet, at at least one point in their life, had felt this despondency -- that kept my own despondency from swallowing me.

I came up against this concept again last year when, in the most intense and prolonged mental/emotional/spiritual struggle of my life (thus far), my church hung me out to dry. They told me I was too negative. Many stopped speaking to me, and those who didn't made no secret of their frustration with my despondency and repeatedly told me, 'you need to be happier,' 'you should be over this already,' 'you're not trying hard enough.' One person in leadership actually told me (in writing), 'Kate, it is your responsibility to encourage people by being happier.'

I was dying -- literally dying. And all they told me was 'it's your fault we don't give a crap about you.' They wanted me to earn what they should have been giving freely.

The other day, out of nowhere, the thought struck me: does 'encouragement' exclusively mean 'making someone happy'?

If so, then why do I get more encouragement out of one song born out of deep pain than out of an entire album that is so cheerful it causes a sugar coma? Why does one make me take a deep breath, wipe the tears from my eyes, and say, 'thank you,' while the other makes me writhe in near-physical pain from the confounded cheerfulness of it all?

Why am I encouraged by the things that acknowledge the brokenness and sadness?

Maybe because 'encouragement' is actually not so much about joy as it is about coming alongside someone -- walking with them, whether the journey is easy or not. Think of Sam coming alongside Frodo. It was dark, it was difficult, it was by no means happy. But Sam was an encouragement to Frodo because he was right there, literally beside him, sharing the experience of the darkness, even though he could easily have checked out and gone home. Maybe encouragement is about companionship and empathy, not fake smiles and fluffy words. Maybe encouragement is a lifestyle -- a commitment -- not something that gets switched on and off. (And I am almost certain that it's not dependent on whether you think the other person 'deserves' it or not.)

I've always said, since the very beginning of my career, that I wanted to do for others what my favourite artists have done for me. So that's my goal: one day, I want to be able to give the next wounded soul the same companionship and comfort -- the same encouragement -- that my favourite artists have given me.

Music News - New Kickstarter

I was going to make this a Music Day post, but then my friend ended up in the hospital and I've been kind of a wreck ever since. This is going to be the dullest advert ever, but here goes...

The fantastic Dead Artist Syndrome is currently short of their $10,000 goal to release their 1991 album Prints Of Darkness on vinyl and CD by about 55% (over $5,000). The campaign ends on the 31st (Monday), and if it's not funded, then there's no Prints Of Darkness -- which would be the scariest part of Halloween 2017. Let me also note that this album is currently unavailable anywhere... not even iTunes. If you want this thing (like I do), this Kickstarter is your only chance.

Support the project here.

Again, apologies for not making an actual Music Day post out of this like I normally do. I'm just emotionally elsewhere. Here are a couple cuts from the album to whet your appetite...

Dancing Without Touching

Reach

Dance With Me

Amy

Time is running out, so back this ASAP! Whether you are financially able to back it or not, be sure to promote the heck out of this campaign.

State Of My Choreography

The picture that inspired this post:

Full choreography sketch for a song, conceived/written in the time it took to listen to the song straight through once (three and a half minutes). This is a testament to how far I've come: less than a year ago the same amount of choreography would have taken me a full week.

Choreography, I've found, is part inspiration, but also part experience. The more experience you have, the quicker the inspiration comes (and really, this is applicable to a lot of the arts - I see this in my writing as well). You discover what you like and where you like it. You develop a sense of where things should sit in the piece. You get a feel for the art form and you start to be able to tell innately what does or doesn't work, even if you can't explain why. No amount of book-learning can do that for you. (It kills me to say this, because I love learning through reading.)

That's why if you want to be an artist, you have to be dedicated. You have to put in the years of work before you get good. You can find quotes from artists in any discipline to the effect that you have to write a hundred songs before you begin to learn how to write a song; you have to paint or draw a hundred pictures before you really begin to understand how to draw or paint; you have to put in ten thousand hours of work before you can say you have begun to master something. Choreography is no different. I've fully choreographed 78 songs (and probably started and not-yet-completed that many again, plus I have about a dozen that I'm actively working to finish) and I'm only just starting to feel like it's coming naturally. This has been fully five years since I finished choreographing my first piece, and I was choreographing snippets of things in my head long before I ever finished that one.

That said, I would be remiss if I didn't note that I was taking ten hours of dance per week last calendar year, that I was practicing tap every day except Sundays through this past summer and again since January, that I've been watching a TON of tap dance on YouTube in my spare time, that I have a subscription to Operation: Tap's online lessons and those have been invaluable in jump-starting my practice sessions, that my tap teacher at the college this year pushed me hard (because I asked her to), that I've been clapping rhythms to almost literally every song I've heard in the past six months, playing with different patterns. A lot of groundwork has been laid in my foundational tap dance technique over the past year and that has gone a LONG way in allowing my choreographic voice freedom of expression.

The next step is to figure out what exactly it is that I want to express.

Media Marathoning

Why are music marathons not a thing? We have Star Wars marathons, Lord Of The Rings marathons, Disney marathons, and heaven knows you can marathon any TV show you can think of (as long as the Netflix gods have deemed it worthy of their endorsement). These are seen as perfectly legitimate ways to either get away from it all (*cough* procrastinate) and recharge by oneself, or to have a party with friends and food and group selfies.

But why don't we do this with music? Why don't we ever invite the gang over to listen to the complete works of Steve Taylor? Why not spend a weekend listening to all of David Meece's albums in chronological order? Why not throw the entire Prodigal box set into the CD player and sit down with a beverage of choice or maybe some popcorn and listen to the whole thing straight through? Why not time travel through DeGarmo & Key's entire career? Why not listen to the complete ¡Alarma! Chronicles or Larry Norman's Trilogy on vinyl, for the heck of it?

Granted, for bands like Petra or Newsboys or the Imperials, this could get a bit long. But it's an idea worth considering.

Your Music News Bulletin

Some notes from the bands I follow (and you should too).

The Choir is re-releasing their 1989 album Wide-Eyed Wonder on CD and vinyl AND they're recording a new album called Bloodshot... IF their PledgeMusic campaign is successful. There's only five days left and they're still 8% short of their goal. There are some pretty cool rewards for backers (including the entire Shadow Weaver album download for free), and it's also worth noting that Wide-Eyed Wonder is not on the iTunes Store -- meaning this re-release is the only way you will be able to acquire a copy. If this isn't funded, that doesn't happen. And that would be very sad.
Pledge here.
If you're not familiar with their work, you can listen to tracks from their 2014 album Shadow Weaver right on the PledgeMusic page.

After many, many years of rumours, false starts, speculation and general impatience from fans, Daniel Amos is finally in the process of issuing their seminal album Horrendous Disc on CD. The project is already fully funded (in fact, they just made their second stretch goal earlier today), but if you want in on some of the rewards (or to propel them toward their third stretch goal), go pledge here. But hurry -- the campaign ends on 31 March.
This is going to be a four-disc box set with photos and stickers and other goodies. And depending which tier you pledge to, there may be vinyl copies and/or t-shirts involved.

On a related note, the phenomenal Terry Scott Taylor now has a Patreon account, where we the fans can finally eliminate the middleman and fund TST's creative endeavours directly by way of a monthly donation. In return, we get access to the new stuff he's writing -- and there's a lot of it. If your life has been touched by the music of Daniel Amos, the Swirling Eddies, the Lost Dogs, or Terry's solo output, you should very seriously consider pledging at least a few dollars to this (if you're really broke, you can commit to an amount as low as $1 a month. It doesn't feel like much, but as an artist myself, I can tell you every little bit helps).
Pledge here.

Finally, for you vinyl aficionados -- the first-ever Christian vinyl subscription service launched last month. Right now they're only shipping within the US, but it sounds like they intend to expand the service as soon as they can. Basically you select a plan and for a monthly fee, you will get two (or three, depending on the plan you select) vinyl records per month. You can customise your preferences -- they have anything from eighties rock to modern rock to hip-hop to worship/hipster music -- and give them an idea of what you already have to cut down on the potential of duplicates. I don't have personal experience with this service yet because 1. I'm not in the States, and 2. I'm a broke college student, but you better believe once they open it up to Canada and once I have a steady job, I am SO signing up for this.
You can sign up here.

What Worship Is Not

I've been pondering and railing against modern 'worship culture' for years now. Longtime readers of this blog are very familiar with this. I often blame it on lackluster musicianship, overwhelming same-ness in the arrangements (across the board), repetitive and inane lyrics, the overproduced fakeness of the entire culture that apparently only I and a handful of others seem to feel.

The other day, though, I was listening to a song in this genre (for research purposes only), and suddenly I realised why people will say certain songs are 'anointed' or 'so worshipful' -- they're the songs which, for whatever reason (which remains shrouded in mystery even to a person who is very seriously considering making a career out of nonverbal physical demonstrations of emotion), incite them to kneel and/or raise their hands. And suddenly it dawned on me that maybe these people think that is worship -- that physical pose they take while this music is playing. It's a tableau dance, and it doesn't arise out of a spirit of worship, it IS worship. Suddenly the overwhelming aura of fakeness that this entire movement is drowning in made sense.

People, I think we're missing something.

Worship is NOT a certain series of physical movements. It is NOT the act of closing the eyes and swaying. It is NOT the act of kneeling. It is NOT the groans and grimaces. It is NOT the raised hands. It is NOT the sound of the keyboard and the amped up acoustic guitar. It is NOT the light show. Yes, all of these things can be the MANIFESTATION of our worship (or the 'consequences,' if you prefer), but -- and please do not miss this distinction -- worship is not the physical act.

Worship is a heart attitude. I'm not going to go in-depth on this here, but you can find any number of (doctrinally sound) theologians who say this. The physical trappings/outward expressions of worship are a representation, a reflection (to put it another way) of what is going on in your heart -- but they are not worship itself.

Basically -- don't call your weird cultish tableau dance worship. It's not. You can worship in any posture, singing/playing in any genre. But don't shame the ones who aren't 'led' to join your weird cultish folk dance.

Music Day - Why Should The Devil Have All The Good Music?

Title pretty much says it all.

I was first introduced to this sentiment at about age four through one of my dad's mixtapes which contained Chris Christian's knockoff of this week's song, and that's kind of been my rallying cry (both as a fan and as an artist) ever since. Why do Christians have to settle for a subpar subculture? Why does the music we make have to be seventeen times blander than than 'regular' music? What makes us so 'special,' so sensitive? Are our stomachs so weak we can't handle quality songwriting/musicianship? (Of course, one usually answers with the argument 'that's what the labels want' -- but I'm asking this of the labels themselves.) Why must Christian music -- or any kind of art done by Christians for that matter -- be the vegan-friendly, gluten-free, low-fat, caffeine-free alternative to music?

I digress. But you can see even in that mini-rant how profoundly this song has shaped my life, even through the indirect channel of Chris Christian's reference.

As for the original, it too was a rallying cry for a previous generation of artists who were Christians. It was also a bit of an apologia from the father of Christian rock to his brothers and sisters in the Lord who would rather pretend he didn't exist. However, I suspect none of them ever heard the message, given that it was couched in a swinging '50s rock arrangement. And even if they had tried to listen to it, they no doubt would have turned it off after hearing 'They say to cut my hair / They're driving me insane / I grew it out long to make room for my brain...'

Full of verve and sass and musical bounce. This was music that was unashamed of itself. That's rare in Christian music, kids. Observe and enjoy.

Title: Why Should The Devil Have All The Good Music?
Artist: Larry Norman
Album: Only Visiting This Planet
Year: 1972
iTunes here; YouTube here.