xlucyxdiamondx

Yes! Civilization. People. Networking. REAL shopping. REAL art. REAL theatre. REAL business. REAL impact. My real life is just beginning!



I'm so sick of living in this pot hole of a town. With its small town politics and phonies. Gossip and jealousy. Wal Mart. Blegh. I was complaining a while ago that no one cares about me. What a crock.

The theatre doesn't care about me. Four years ago, I thought if I worked hard, got straight A's and put my heart into the program that I would get some recognition. What did I get?

-No understanding
-No appreciation
-No education in any real life sense of the word
-Tired
-Self conscious
-No career opportunities
-Let down

What sort of department is this, anyway?

I started working at the news just this semester. But I have two possible job opportunities in New York City. Real jobs, too. I don't mean an internship. In the News, if you work hard and put your heart into it, you are lifted up. You are recognized and given rewards. Someone's there mentoring me and telling me how it's going to be in the real world. And it's someone who actually knows. It's not some old fart professor guessing how it is now, judging on how it was for them 30 years ago...

And another thing. The Communications department has its share of professional jealousy and drama. But the students are generally accepting and the teachers never cross that personal line. I don't deserve to be gossiped about by teachers and students. I am a nice, friendly, competent, hard working, loving, happy person. I like that people see that in the Comm department. In the theatre...forget it. My name is tarnished by ugly words coming from ugly places. It doesn't matter what I do. I'm not the one gossiping. I am real. They are the phonies. Fakers! People with no positive self image unless they make someone else look bad. Well, that's why they are doomed to stay here in this small town and roll around in their own filth like p-i-g-s.

MOMA. Times Square. Wall Street. Sky scrapers. Vibrance. The Guggenheim. Heart. The big picture.

It's scary because a lot of things are up in the air right now. But I know it will be OK. I have some more lessons to learn, and that's excellent. A challenge for once! ...And I don't need anyone to ask me about it. I have good things ahead of me. Who gives a damn if anyone cares. I care. Matt cares. I have truth and happiness. I have a great sense of wealth.

There is a lesson to learn. I have learned what I do not like in friends and work. From now on, I will surround myself with people who actually care about me and who care about the big picture.

"Soon we'll be away from here, step on the gas and wipe that tear away, one sweet dream came true today."

Peace out!!!!

For those of us who have been following his career as a singer/songwriter, surfer, and environmentalist, Jack Johnson’s newest album has been highly anticipated. At long last, his fourth solo album, “Sleep Through the Static,” was released last Monday on his own label, Brushfire Records. To go along with his environmental mindset, the album was recorded with 100 percent solar energy. Johnson’s career has been climbing since 2001 with his first album, “Brushfire Fairytales”. His success is mainly due to his wide fan base of kids, parents, and people of all ages. But now that he is riding high on the mainstream waves, could he be losing heart?

Johnson’s signature sound consists of super chilled-out acoustic rhythms and rolling beats that can almost transport you to a hammock on a sandy beach. His music is an experience of its own, because you can hear the ebb and flow of the ocean waves as the song moves. His deep, chocolaty voice and reflective lyrics enhance the meditative feel to his music.

Last year, he told Rolling Stone that his next album was going to be “darker” with electric guitar, and a different sound. What happened? It is dark, but the dark part of the album is only found in the lyrics. Actually, if you ignored the lyrics all together, you could mistake it for any of his other more upbeat albums. Not to say that the album is ‘bad’. The electric guitar does give a different feel to his style, but it is still very much the same old game.

Perhaps the darkest song on the album is the title track. He reflects on his disappointment with the apathetic attitude he believes people have towards the war. People can now watch the war from their beds, just turn it on and off as they please, or just ‘sleep through the static’. In a slow groove, he laments, “who needs please when we’ve got guns / who needs keys when we’ve got clubs?” Other slow and contemplative tracks include, “All at once” and “They do, they don’t”.

Though the songs are laced with melancholy lyrics, they don’t carry the impact that some of his other songs on previous albums. None of the protesting songs on the new album hold a candle to the passionate and railing song called “Crying Shame,” off of his third album, “In Between Dreams”. You can just hear the anger and sadness in his voice as he sings, “We could try to put it out / but it’s a growing flame / using fear as fuel / Burning down our name / And it won’t take too long / Words all burn the same
/ And who are we going to blame now? / It’s such a crying, crying, crying shame”. Sadly, there are no really unforgettable tracks on the album like the ones you may already know and love such as, “Banana Pancakes”, or “Traffic in the sky”.

There is one track in particular that I flat out dislike. “Angel” is a quiet, sweet song about his wife, but the lyrics are near terrible. It actually sounds like something John Mayer would write. “I’ve got an angel / she doesn’t wear any wings”. I bet Jack Johnson hates being compared to John Mayer, but I think he deserves it with this song. The part that sends me heading for barfs-Ville is the contrived wordplay; “She gives me presents with her presence alone”. Come on! Was he really trying to write something to top “Your Body is a Wonderland”?

If you like Jack Johnson’s other albums, there’s a good chance that you will like this one, too. In my opinion, the album is guilty of what it accuses everyone else of doing—ignoring the real issues. If he really wanted to make a statement, I think he should have done something different than his usual. I also think he is adding to the problem of global warming in that only the wealthy can afford to live “green”. If he were truly the everyman that he claims to be, would he live such an extravagant life? They say that fame changes people. Jack Johnson is surely not excluded. Even though “Sleep Through the Static” is still a good album, it is lacking the heart that is in the rest of his music.

 Don Miguel Ruiz is known as a shaman of the Toltec tradition. The Toltecs were an ancient group of scientists and artists who were interested in exploring and preserving the spiritual knowledge of the ancient ones. It is not a belief system, but a way of life that embraces spirit and honors every spiritual master who has taught on the earth. Ruiz explains that there are four simple agreements that you can make in your life daily to experience greater personal freedom.

The book focuses on the idea that everything in life is a dream. “What you are seeing and hearing right now is a dream. You are dreaming right now in this moment. You are dreaming with the brain awake. Dreaming is the main function of the mind, and the mind dreams 24 hours a day. It dreams when the brain is awake and it dreams when the brain is asleep. The only difference is when the brain is awake, there is a material frame that makes us perceive things in a linear way. When we go to sleep we do not have the frame, and the dream has the tendency to change constantly.” –Excerpt from “The Four Agreements.”

Ruiz writes in the voice of a shaman as he puts in plain words what seems difficult to understand. He says that before we were born, other humans created a big “outside” dream that we call society’s dream or “the dream of the planet.” The dream of the planet is a communal dream made up of many smaller, individual dreams, which together create the dream of a family, the dream of a community, the dream of a city, the dream of a country, and finally a dream of humanity.

The book is a quick read, interesting, and easy to understand. The four agreements are very simple, but very profound:  Be impeccable with your words, don’t take anything personally, don’t make assumptions, and always do your best. I recommend this book to anyone who is searching for more consciousness, looking for more freedom from suffering, or simply searching for more inner peace.

            As the lights dim in Popejoy hall located on the University of New Mexico's campus, the ambient pulsing of "Sleeping Lessons" echoes through the house as everyone stands up in their seats and stares at the empty stage.  There is a shiny drum set up on a platform center. Two keyboards are on opposite sides of the stage and the sacred guitars are sitting on their stands freshly tuned and waiting for loving hands to play them.  The pulsing makes the anticipation almost unbearable! Suddenly, a thundering uproar from the crowd welcomes the Shins from behind the proscenium arch. They are joined by Eric Johnson, the newest member and front man of the indie group, "Fruit bats".  He settles at a small table and begins a sweet stretchy riff on the slide guitar—very different from the version on their newest album, "Wincing the Night Away."  As soon as James Mercer's quiet and profound voice sings those first few words, everyone goes wild.  The song builds up to a beautiful crescendo and the music gets louder and louder, until you're flying away on a wild musical roller coaster ride.

The audience was in for a rare delight, because the Shins were feeling playful.  Maybe because they were back in their hometown of Albuquerque, maybe because they sold out the house, maybe they are always that way. But almost every song they played sounded so different from the album tracks.  Mercer added sweet strumming acoustics to their classic song, “Caring is Creepy,” and as I watched him soulfully play the harmonica around his neck, visions of Dylan were flickering in my mind.

The Shins are just on the brink of pushing indie music into the mainstream.  Their popularity first kicked up some dust when they were featured in the movie, “Garden State,” where Natalie Portman introduced them as the band that will “change your life.”  Since then, they’ve skyrocketed in the underground world and the new album debuted at number two on the billboards last February.  But this group of humble pies won’t let fame or success get to them...for now, anyway.  James Mercer said in an interview with Pitchforkmedia.com that he doesn’t think about fame much, since he’s too busy with his projects.  “There's a lot of this that I don't understand when I think about it, like why we're going to be playing larger venues and why we're getting radio play. What are the Shins going to be, how are we going to be perceived if and when we're at a level of My Chemical Romance or Coldplay or some shit?”  Or is that impossible? Is there a ceiling they will reach and it just won't happen? “I'd be happy just doing exactly what we're doing right now. We're comfortable, we're getting plenty of press, we’re certainly busy. But one thing I worry about is that Malcolm Gladwell tipping point-- it's kind of like once you start to play the game of trying to be huge, there's nowhere to go but down.”

Their over all performance at Popejoy hall was only proof that these guys don’t care about pleasing the paycheck-givers.  Observing their behavior and their attitude on stage, all I could see was a few kids having a good time and playing the music that makes them happy.  They weren’t afraid to improvise, or change up a song’s tempo.  Their overall show has really improved lately.  Mercer told Pitchfork, “We want to entertain people. People are paying a lot of money now to see us, and I think that for the first time we're going to pay a little bit of attention to how the show comes off-- more tertiary details that might exist, like we might have a backdrop or something. No big projection movies or anything like that, but we want to step it up.” Back when they were starting out, the show was bare bones, drums, guitars, keys and the guys.  Lately, they’ve worked hard to make the concert experience more enriching for their fans, and still let their music be the centerpiece.  A dozen moving ERS (Ellipsoidal Reflector Spotlights for the non-techies) looked almost like lasers at times, dancing to the folk-pop beats.  Then later, twinkling lights gleamed all over the walls and ceiling as Mercer crooned the last song off the new album, “A Comet Appears”.

This is the best time to fall in love with the Shins.  Even after a European tour, selling millions of albums, and selling out venues night after night, they’re still as regular as you and me.  After they finished the planned set and walked off stage, the house continued cheering for what seemed like forever.  The guys came right back on stage, flattered, and played six more songs.  They are the picture of a relatively huge band that still has their heads screwed on straight.  I hope they continue to blur the line between monstrous success and the unknown-underground.  If anyone can do it, I believe they are the ones who can keep their integrity and conquer the tipping point.

 

Hello, LiveJournal world!  Lucy D has arrived.  

I'm new to blogging...it's like having an e-self.  Dive right in, that's what I say!  

I'm looking forward to many crazy e-ventures!

xoxo