10. My One and Only-Just so you know, this marks the fourth time I've blogged about Adele's 21. There are so many 2011 memories that are as inextricably linked to this magnum opus of pulsating soul-pop as they are to the place they occurred; there was the time "Rolling in the Deep" came on in the dressing room after the closing of a show and helped me shake off my already-overwhelming wistfulness, the time when one of my dear friends mastered "One and Only" on the piano and then knocked it out of the park at our choir concert, the time when "Don't You Remember" lent me a cathartic helping hand on a gloomy August drive to a then-tentative future. But, perhaps most importantly, there was the moment that I saw "Someone Like You" had reached number one on Itunes, and realized that I wasn't crazy, for so many others finally knew what I'd been proclaiming feverishly from the start: this is one of the greatest albums of our generation.
9. O Magnum Mysterium-One day, I'll pay my respects to Christopher Hitchens and write a backpack-breaking treatise on what, religiously speaking, I believe to be true. For now, a simple summary will do: I've come to think that to believe in God is to engage in a mysterious, highly beneficial conversation with the infinite, a conversation that ought to be intimate and highly individual. As such, I've long abhorred group worship; it's a wonder I made it through all our high school gym-masses without coming down with some sort of mental disorder. My college's Vespers service proved the perfect anti-dote to my skepticism. A short, simple gathering in which a few hundred people stand together and sing hymns, Vespers concludes with a Trinity tradition; the lights are dimmed, small candles are distributed, and the room is slowly illuminated as the congregation sings "Silent Night". It was beautiful enough on the surface, but what really struck me was something else; something tucked away in the sweep of the melody and the swerving symmetry of the flames, something more than the sum total of shifting particles. I still refuse to believe that one can truly come to an understanding of the infinite in situations such as this, but maybe, just maybe, if lucky, one can brush up against its awe and mystery.
8. Salman, Saleem, Surprise!-When for whatever reason I choose to stop reading a book, I get rather ceremonial about it; I toss it dramatically into my "unread box", where books I don't like go to wither and die. Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children was a victim of this policy, a novel so wordy, so dense, and so deeply rooted in Indian culture that it just made Mr. American Lit feel downright dumb. After a semester in college, I decided to take another crack at it. Deciphering the tale of Saleem Sinai's life was as easy as pie this time around, and not just because Rushdie himself flew down to San Antonio to lecture on the book. In the time since my first try, I had also learned how to read more critically, more comparatively, and more patiently. Plus, I mastered the most important principle of college: if you don't know something, there are 525, 600 reference books that do.
7. Prompocalypse-It's like some experiment a nutjob sociology prof would cook up; assemble a prom group. Good. Now take away the prom. As I'm sure most of you know, my senior prom was sidelined by inclement weather and some positively apocalyptic power outages. What a lot of you don't know is that instead of dancing the night away, my friends and I came back to my house, ate french toast, danced to the most embarrassing songs in my Itunes library, and watching godawful infomercials well into the wee hours. I'm not about to segue into some maudlin speech about how it Isn't The Place, It's the People, nor will you find my bitching about my loss of a special, nay, sacred high school rite. My point is this; this instance, along with a thousand others, is rock-solid proof that I had, and continue to have, the best high school friends a guy could ask for.
6. A New "Nope!"-By that same token, I also have the best college friends a guy could ask for. Early on in the school year, my friends and I stumbled upon a trashy treasure of a commercial for a taxidermist named Chuck Testa. This isn't about the video, though I'd highly recommend it if you're in the mood for a good lawl. The fact is, when I chose to go to an indisputably smart school, I worried that be stuck on Serious Island--that I'd have to sacrifice my quirky personality in order to adapt to such an intellectual climate. In the midst of our 8000th view of the Testa spot, I realized that I'd found friends who, in addition to having my back in every conceivable sense except that of actually possessing ownership of it, were also blessed with a sense of humour as wickedly strange as my own. Their ingenuity and compassion amazes me every day, but the shared sensation of laughter takes the cake; Rabelais said it best when he stated that "I'd rather write about laughing than crying, for laughter makes men human, and courageous."
5. Don't ask, my ass-If America's original sin was slavery, homophobia's our follow-up. In some senses, the way we've dealt with the homosexuality issue is even worse--at least with slavery, we called the monster what it was; we felt blacks were inferior, plain and simple. Our legal stance on gay rights is convoluted and sickeningly condescending, filled to the brim with "as long as"'s. We welcome gays into our community--as long as they don't get married. Our churches respect their preference for the same sex--as long as they don't act on it. And of course, the whopper--they're free to serve us as the national level, as long as they don't openly state their sexual orientation. I'm proud to say that this third claim is no longer true. In a year of wide-ranging political let-downs--Rick Perry's abominable campaign spots, John Boehner's blood-sport rhetoric, the Orwellian travesty of the SOPA act--the decision to axe the Don't Ask, Don't Tell law was a rare, refreshing dose of common sense. Jargon like this is a wall of willful ignorance, and this year we started to tear it down. This chronically disgruntled liberal was, for a moment, proud to be an American.
4. Still Crazy After All These Years-You can't know The Feeling Until The Moment. Until you're a blood-deep Jerseyite watching Bruce race through "Born to Run", or the world's biggest ballad lover hearing the first strains of "My Heart Will Go On". Or, in my case, until you're a card-carrying Paul Simon fan who's waited half his life to hear that opening "Graceland" bassline played live. I filmed the entire song, but, upon replay, I discovered that all you could hear was my deranged fanboy screaming and all you could see was my camera bobbing in tandem with my body as I joined the less-than-sober members of the crowd in an impromptu dance. It was a concert full of unforgettable moments--the rousing "Here Comes the Sun" cover, the wrenching re-working of "The Sound of Silence", the flawless new material from So Beautiful or So What. For me though, nothing matched hearing my favorite song sung in the flesh by a man who clearly loves what he does, and continues to do it well five decades into his storied career.
3. A Kid Doesn't Know-The only thing more enjoyable than watching a performer nail a great song is doing said nailing yourself. When I learned my final high school musical would be Damn Yankees, I was a hare disappointed--dancing sportscasters and singing demons hardly seemed like a fitting way to close my main stage career. But smack-dab in the middle of the show is a gorgeous, grandly old-fashioned ballad called "Near To You"--an almost five-minute whopper of a trio piece filled with sweeping harmonies, increasingly complex orchestration, and, oh yeah, thirty seconds of pure a cappella at the end. It was the first thing we rehearsed and the last thing we nailed, but I think my castmates would agree that every inch of sweat and vocal strain was worth it. I've always been a pretty solid solo singer, but, for whatever reason, harmonies gave me trouble. Getting this song right, down to the last eight note, was a personal triumph for me, but the real joy was in the group experience. Rarely do you get three actors who are equally determined to do something incredible, and who have the talent to make it happen. When we finally got it (on opening night, no less), the audience reaction was overwhelming. After that performance as well as all of the others, I left the stage shaking with glee, still unable to believe that we'd pulled it off. One of my proudest memories as an artist. Period.
2. Cafe Talk-I read enough that I'm used to being moved; laughing or gasping or tearing up are fairly commonplace when I've got a good book in my hand. But few works of literature have ever hit me as hard as Ernest Hemingway's "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place". Not the hugest fan of Papa Hemingway, I initially SparkNoted the thing, but, after my professor lectured on it, my interest piqued enough that I elected to skim it. Then I read it closely. Then I read it closely again. And again. And so on and so forth, until it became my favorite short story of all-time. It appears at first glance a simple tale of two melancholy old men hanging around a restaurant past closing time, but if you're willing to look carefully, at the nature of the characters, at the tone of that famous elliptical prose, at the jagged poetry of the dialogue, you'll see a piece of writing so profoundly eloquent and inspired that it suggests the nature of our most basic rights and duties as human beings. The key, I believe, is this line, so lean and yet so richly complex;
"You do not understand. This is a clean and pleasant cafe. It is well lighted. The light is very good and also, now, there are shadows of the leaves.""
Use this line as the lens with which to examine the story, and I think you'll understand not just why it's good, but why it, and by extension literature itself, is fundamentally important and eternally essential.1. Maggie and Gracie-
In June, I failed to shut the door firmly as my parents and I left the house, and it blew open in the midst of a storm. We came home to find our dog Maggie curled up in her bed, content as ever. If that's not loyalty, I don't know what is. Nine days later, Maggie had been ferried back and forth among three different hospitals, put to sleep, and buried, felled by a kidney disease as terminal as it was undetectable. I hate to put such a tragic ordeal in my top spot, but this loss was indeed the defining moment of my year. It wasn't just the sudden death of a pet--though I do miss, and will always miss, my sweet girl. It was the realization that followed--animals do a lot for us. It's not that we need them--anyone who says a dog is as necessary as air or water needs their had examined. But I do think there's an almost unquantifiable beauty in the human-pet relationship; in taking on a pet, we assume responsibility for a being that does not speak our language. We cannot tell it we'll feed it later; we cannot pacify it with money or clothes or the husks of meaningless promises. They respond exclusively to our actions, to how we groom them, walk them, pat them, and hold them. And vice-versa as well. It's not just unconditional love; it's bullshit free love. I didn't know I needed it until I missed it, furtively at home and then fiercely, painfully, constantly in college.
But this tale is not 100% sob story. When I returned home for the most recent break, I was greeted by the latest addition to our family, Gracie. Ok, ok, we're only fostering her at the moment, but she's on the damn holiday card, so she's as good as ours, oui? She nuzzles me away from my desk at just the right moment, pelts me with new toys until I agree to throw them, and generally spoils me in the way that only something with four legs is capable of. Still, something's a little off. Writing about the loss of his old dog, Roger Ebert beautiful encapsulates the feeling by noting that "There will always be a hole in my heart about the size of Blackie." And so it goes with Maggie. Yet day by day I find there's room for Gracie as well. If nothing else, that's proof of how extraordinary this whole being alive thing really is.
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