Alexander.

Today, I feel like Alexander.

Not Alexander McQueen.

What a headache. Like something's growing out of my skull...

Not Alexander Calder.

'Round and 'round we go...

Not Alexander Hamilton. But close.

And certainly not Alexander the Great.

His full name was "Alexander, the Great Head of Hair."

Today, I feel like Alexander, the disgruntled ginger in that childhood classic, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day.

My hair looked more like this today.

First off, it must be noted that it is Wednesday on a short week. And as we all know, short weeks feel like the longest weeks.

The work day was a mess of nonsense. I have strict rules delineating my work-life balance, and one of those rules is fight-club-esque, which is to say: I don't talk about work when I'm not at work. So I won't get into it. But suffice it to say, it was dismal and frustrating.

I bolted early (don't worry, ye gods of HR; I stayed late an hour yesterday and I'm going in early tomorrow) with the express purpose of getting home in time to do this:

Because: CULTURE! PHILLY! INTERACTING WITH EDUCATED HUMAN BEINGS ABOUT HIPSTERISH THINGS!

But 76, a summer rainstorm, and SEPTA had different plans for me.

76 was a parking lot. No surprise there, but the on-again/off-again sprinklefest raining from the heavens made my fellow commuters especially intransigent today and carbon-monoxide morass was torture. It literally gave me cramps. (Yes, after four years of this kill-myself stressed-out commute, my right leg will actually begin to cramp up after more than an hour in stop-and-go traffic. Is that a pity-brag? I think, probably.)

Once I finally arrived (triumphantly!) in my neighborhood, finding a parking spot was like looking for a high and tight backstage before curtain at a Broadway production of HAIR!

None.

Anywhere.

It took me 35 minutes of circling before I gave up and inched my way into the tiniest spot imaginable. My parallel parking neighbors are going to hate me. By "inched" I really do mean there's about an inch of space between my bumpers and their bumpers. That's why they call them bumpers, right?

Reverse. Love tap. Drive.Love tap. Reverse. Love tap. Drive. Love tap. Reverse. Love tap. Park.

A shortest-stop-possible at my apartment (by this time, it was 5:33 and the 38 was departing at 5:47 from three blocks away) to trade heels for speedy flats, and I was off. HERE I COME, MARKET STREET!

I made it to Market at 5:45. If I grabbed the bus, I'd be 10 minutes late to the talk but 5/6 is a pretty solid fraction, so 5/6 of hipster-cultural enlightenment would be a pretty solid way to end my day! Stay positive!

Now, where's that bus?

...I waited until 6:15, but the 38 never came. My 5/6 of possible talk-hearing ticked away and when the cultural fraction was whittled down to just 1/6, I abandoned my endeavor. You know that anxiety you get when debating whether to eschew one bus stop and race to another one, and that sinking suspicion that the second you leave, the errant 38 will come rolling up behind you? I hate that feeling.

But in this case, there wasn't any errant 38. There weren't ANY 38s.

Luckily (sarcasm),it had started pouring buckets from the sky. I hurried along under my umbrella, keeping well back from the street to avoid car-splash. Pacing myself to cross an intersection as a light turned red, a Toyota Corolla decided it hated me, so it ran the red and splashed up a tsunami of warm dirty street water, soaking me.

Oh yeah. You know the scene.

Because: delightful.

My only recourse was naive optimism, so I counted my blessings as I climbed my 50 stairs. (One of my blessings is having the good health to be able to climb 50 stairs to my apartment.) I expressed appreciation to God and the cosmos that I have a roof to sleep under when it rains, that I can afford to ride the bus, that I am a card-carrying Museum Member. I begrudgingly acknowledged that I bought my soaked clothes with my own paycheck, and I bought them new and off the rack. I am not fighting Cancer, and therefore I have hair that drives me crazy when it gets frizzy in this weather, and for that I am thankful. My car is 16 years old and has 212,000+ miles on it, but it is still driving (knock on wood). My job, oh fellow survivors of recession-era joblessness (aka: my bohemian adventure in the Great Rocky Mountains), is a job, and it pays my bills (including the bill for the sushi dinner I am SO going to order from Fat Salmon in about 30 minutes).

I'm trying to be a big person. I'm trying to listen to the Bing and Rosemary in my mind and count my blessings.

Poor quality image, but I made the sacrifice for scene authenticity. 

But I still kind of just feel like Alexander.

Sun Glare

Right before the twilight golden hour sets in, you have optimum sun glare.

You know the time, when the sun still sits a good hand length or two above the horizon, but still seems like its skittering out of the sky, skewing it’s rays and reflections off windshields, lighting up unexpected glares off lampposts, piercing through tree limbs full of juicy green leaves with the tenacity of a laser beam.

Sun glare.

Walking headlong into it, sometimes you can’t see much of anything. Maybe just an outline, or exaggerated shadows, or color scheming like an Instagrammer gone mad.

You can’t see clearly, so you feel like you can’t see.

But maybe...maybe we're missing something.

What do you see when you can't see what you want to see?

Maybe compromised vision is about more than degenerate eyeballs and low visibility. Maybe it’s reframing your window on the world.

Like when the wind blows your hair in your face, and all of a sudden you can’t see so your ears pick up and the voices of your fellow pedestrians wring through a little clearer.

Or when you're at an art gallery trying to see a painting through a crowd of people, and because they block your view, they crop your sight down to an amazing little detail of a corner of a canvas you would have missed had you been all alone.

Or like when you’re trying to look through the glass windows of a building and suddenly you realize that in their reflection, you can see the sky.

It’s like when the car is awash in a torrential downpour, and the light plays through the water streaming down the windows, or else you’re hunched over the steering wheel with an eagle eye on the dashed yellow road lines, and they seem brighter than ever before.

Or like when the all-conquering ivy vines burst forth with new springtime vigor and completely engulf a building. You can no longer see its architecture or bricks stacked just-so. But you can see the wind through the leaves, whether it’s fierce or fine.

If buildings were built of leaves and vines....

Walking into that a dappled and sun-blinded glare, everything takes on a new color, and movement resonates differently, and if you turned your back to it, you wouldn’t notice it at all.

So, sure, sometimes our outlook isn’t so clear. We can’t see that far ahead of us, or something has gotten in the way of the view. But maybe it’s not a debilitation. Maybe it’s an opportunity to see a little bit of something you haven’t noticed before.

Ya Ya Wisdom

“There’s not a goddam breeze in the entire state of Louisiana.”

— Caro

“Girl’s, we CANNOT sit here and just puddle. Teensy get your keys. We’ll make our own breeze.”

— Vivi

Online Dating and Exit Signs

We all have moments (days, weeks) when we feel a little nonplussed with life.

Bored and perfect, or perfectly bored? (I think I've been watching too much Sherlock Holmes.)

You know that feeling, when the angel on your shoulder whispers, "Get over yourself, you egomaniacal silly fool" and the devil on the other shoulder jabs you with his pointy trident and hisses, "Mourn and moan you complacent and irrelevant person."

"Your life is a peach."

"Abandon all hope."

Okay. I'm being dramatic.

Online Dating and Exit Signs.  It's a code my roommate and I have that roughly translates to, "these are things I have to put up with/dedicate time to/accomplish despite having no interest in them whatsoever."

Hang a left at the point of despair and keep going. Just keep going.

Exit Signs, because she's an architect and has been tasked, on her most recent job, with arranging/fixing/situating exit signs (a more complicated task than one would think), and she doesn't like doing it but she has to.

Online Dating, because we're single girls in the city with busy lives and lots to do and yet haven't benefited from the vast network of city friends in that we haven't bumped into/been introduced to/had the serendipitous park run-in with any eligible bachelors. (note: I don't mean we've been introduced to, but haven't liked any. I mean we live in a barren wasteland of what feels like no men and certainly not enough who have actually been interested enough to ask us out. 

I know that's a silly thing to complain about, and I'm sure you doubt me on the veracity. But it's true. If girlfriend and I want to score a date, we have to Hinge, or Match, or Meet a Bagel, or say OK to Cupid or otherwise condense our realities into a measurable, algorithm-ical clever bite-sized snippets and throw ourselves into an Internet pond of subjectivity. Which I hate.

'Round and 'round we go. Where we stop, nobody knows.

Because come on. We've spent our lives trying to become complicated, multi-faceted gems of unutterable value. One-dimensionalizing ourselves is like a self-betrayal. 

Also, gentlemen, just ask a girl out. Ask lots of girls out. Ask so many women out that you become inured to rejection. Because even independent and self-confident women like to be asked out. We were all raised on Disney. We all love Jane Austen. And doesn't it make sense that independent, self-confident women are looking for confident men who pursue what they feel is worth pursuing (read: US)? If you're waiting for me to make the first move, THIS IS WHY WE'RE BOTH STILL WAITING. Go out on a limb. I'll make it worth your while.

We will WAIT.

Okay - I'll stop ranting, because that's not really the point.

The point is: sometimes in life, you've just gotta get up and keep going. Sometimes, your life has little luster because you can't see past the exit signs and online dating. So you put your head down and you keep moving through it. You "like" a guy, and you bust out your computer on a Sunday to nail down points of egress and you try once more to write something worth writing about (fail, try again, fail better, try again).

Most of all, you have a little faith that, at some point, the luster of life will flash again. 

If you're lucky, maybe sooner than expected.

Red, Orange, Yellow

There’s a Mark Rothko painting hanging in the Contemporary wing of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

It’s a Rothko-sized canvas, with the rich and vibrant color that bleeds when you stare at it too intently. Three swipes of red and yellow and pinky orange on a red-orange field hang, hovering in the middle of a huge blank bright white wall.

Hanging. Stuck. Vibrant. 

Alone.

It’s got passion and power and oomph, just oozing off the brightly painted canvas, screaming silently for attention, radiating energy into the room, but it’s all alone on the wall, companioned by nothing but a small plaque stating no more than the obvious.  

Red, Orange, Yellow by Mark Rothko.

 

No story. No translation. No explanation about its meaning or purpose or value. Just the facts. So we know what it is. But not why it is…

“So we know what it is. But not why it is...”

There’s a doorway on either side of the canvas, and sometimes people walk by in the hallway, but they don’t come in. They don’t walk by the angry, happy, bold canvas.  It’s just there, hanging, part of wider network of artistry and value, one of many companion works strung throughout the galleries. One of many, and yet still, somehow, alone.

I sat and looked at this painting for awhile today, two parallel black boot toes pointing straight at its intensity, separated only by a beautiful dirty and aged and worn wooden floor.

There’s a Mark Rothko painting hanging in the Contemporary wing of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. And I think it is my heart.

For You Are Mine At Last

Just posted the Whiskey and Nightgowns cover of At Last over on my Song page.

The recording is from two years ago. But now I'm feelin' a little itchy and achy, like some great ambition is brewing in my blood, but I haven't quite figured out what it is yet.

“...some great ambition is brewing in my blood, but I haven’t quite figured out what it is yet.”

Ever get like that? Just waiting for something to come along - a feeling, a desire, an interest a need - that'll make  you look up and say, "At last..."?

Recalcitrant Winter, or: A Mother's Love

This post is going to be tangential and its argument will meander.

You have been warned.

Proceed.

Winter has really got to let go.

Spotlight hog. Take a hint from Elsa and go back to the mountains where you belong, at least until you can get yourself under control. Your constant reprisals are becoming less and less a natural denouement and more and more a cry of hysterical self-centeredness.

Pretty, Elsa. Very pretty. And also outrageously selfish. Get it together, woman.

We get to this point in Philly every year during March, when the unmitigating cruelty of winter begins to cramp our style (sartorial and otherwise). This should be the time of year that stores hearken to our American Cult of Consumerism and offer mad sales, beckoning us out of our wintertime dens to find SOMETHING ELSE TO WEAR besides the same 6 sweaters that have been on rotation since October, when we were so naive and delighted to cuddle up in wool.

I hate wool. I hate sweaters. I hate socks. I hate coats. I hate gloves. I hate you, winter. Go away.

Don't be fooled

by the comfy sweaters

because they're probably itchy and pilled. #honest

I walked to the coffeeshop today (I'm delighted that this habit I picked up in the foothills of the Rockies years ago has stuck with me. File this under "things I couldn't do if I had children.") through the barren and post-apocalyptic-like atmosphere of Philadelphian March: no green, no sun, bundled up anti-social people, and potholes sprinkling the street like island nations, the aftermath of natural phenomenon (in this case: of snowstorms instead of volcanos).

Hades must have plied Persephone with an inordinate amount of pomegranate wine this year, because she has clearly passed out on some chaise lounge in the corner of the halls of the Underworld Palace. She has utterly overstayed her visit and has neither called nor texted her mother with any check-in of well being, much less an ETA. Because Demeter is beside herself over the absence of her daughter and has COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN to kick the Spring Season into gear. I checked the all-knowing iPhone weather app and warmth - real, genuine, you-don't-need-a-parka warmth is not even on the week-long horizon. Abandon hope!

Mom! Take me back aboveground! This winter has been hell!

So, I say to myself, mistress of spin. How do you look on the bright side here?

Well, it's easy.

I thought about my own mom.

If I went away for six months without letting her know how I was, she probably really would initiate the apocalypse. I know not everyone is blessed enough to have the type of unconditional-love-but-let-you-live-your-own-life-but-call-and-tell-me-about-it kind of mother that I have, but if you do, you're lucky. I inadvertently pulled up an old email from mom, back from my unemployed-bohemian-in-Boulder days, where a very old Blogspot post made her smile.

I was in the throes of job-search-futility-despair (which means, so was she), but it would appear I was still hopeful and merry.

And not much has changed, really, with me. I haven't really changed since then.

Occasionally resting on the road of life: all horizon; no destination. Yet.

I read a St. Augustine quote today, while still cobbling together the new website for St. Augustine Parish (you know...one of my never-ending stream of side-gigs that I fill my life with in order to feel relevant and avoid things I don't want to face).  It really hit home:

“Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are Anger and Courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.”

— St. Augustine

And yet again, I think that St. Augustine could have been my soul mate. Except for that whole celibate (eventually) priest thing. (note: I also think Oscar Wilde could have been my soul mate, except for that he didn't like girls. And Benedick could have been my soul mate, except for that whole fictional-character thing.)

Hope has two beautiful daughters. Anger and Courage. I'd say, in general, I'm pretty choc full of hope, and anger. My courage has always been a bit of a shy bird, but sometimes I manage to coax her out of the nest. Or, more truthfully, I manage to ask my mother or friends to push her out. I can't often do it all on my own.

But you know what?

She flies, every time.

The Repeat Epiphany.

This one's for all the single ladies.

...put your hands up.

But more than that, this one's for the single ladies who refuse to settle.

Okay, I'm not talking about those of you (us) with impossibly high standards, walkin' around in a dream world, waiting for Prince Charming to ride up on his white stallion and sing us a John Mayer ballad while he sweeps us off our feet, quite literally, and we ride off into a perfect-climate sunset.

I'm talking about the witty, the accomplished, the remarkable women who are sparkling, whirling cyclones powering their own lives with their own vivid wind power. I'm talking about the women who run their own wild course of self-set and grittingly met challenges and constantly seek to learn more, know more, be more, love more. 

Miss Fisher is my spirit animal.

Because some of us aren't looking for Mr. Right Now, and nor do we believe that Mr. Right is all he's cracked up to be. Some of us would be pleased to patch together a 1+1=infinity life of stitched compromises and sacrifices and teamwork with someone who's got the same mettle that we do. Give me a love that makes me livid. Give me a love who challenges and supports me. Give me a love that is deeper than the wishing well. Give me a man as complicated as I am.

“Give me a man as complicated as I am.”

Because, world, there will always be women who settle, and there will always be women who take every comer. But some of us have been around awhile, leaning against the wall in the middle school dance, watching the other girls get picked and paired, one by one. And while we've been waiting we've been growing on our own, sharpening our insight, honing up our cache of life experiences, compounding our complication into a miracle of complex individuality. And we do not interest the players, and we cannot streamline ourselves for the simple, and we are not interested in being taken at face value, and we will not lose ourselves in any man, and we dare not surrender to anything other than the most authentic and interested of overtures.

#truth

We are independent, and yet we need, greatly.

I'm not waiting for Mr. Right, or Prince Charming. I'm waiting for someone who who can handle me. I'm waiting for a my match. I'm waiting for my Benedick.

If he can sing, well, that's just a bonus.

The Moves Universe (part1)

Yesterday, I finished one of the most difficult interview articles I've written yet.

Let me say, I've had the highly unexpected good fortune to interview celebrities who, almost 100% of the time, say things worth writing about. I can name only one interview that was tantamount to pulling teeth (she refused to give me anything authentic or interesting) and one that was utterly ridiculous (he was utterly ridiculous). Other than those two anomalies, I am repeatedly refreshed by a simple fact:

Celebrities are just very popular humans.

“I am repeatedly refreshed by a simple fact:
Celebrities are just very popular humans.”

The Moves Universe, this ever-expanding network of remarkable people who do amazing things, does feature a fair amount of stars. Even a supernova or two. And the occasional black hole (who shall remain nameless). More often than not, I'm forced to saw beautifully flowing quotes into parts, or to cut entire paragraphs of really interesting fodder, because those glossy, perfect-bound issues just can't take a 6-page interview. And what a wonderful dilemma to have.

The article I just wrapped was particularly challenging, because the insight and experience of this woman was remarkable. It flowed for 30 minutes of transcript and I was hard-pressed to scythe anything away.

And that's why I love this little side-gig. I get to ask celebrities about what really matters, about how they make a difference, about how the world needs to change. Many of them are associated with causes, but more than being a pretty poster child, they put their hearts and souls into it.

I remember catching my breath when Robin Wright's masterfully portrayed character in House of Cards, the cunning Claire Underwood, opened Season 3 talking to a fake Congress about the very real issues faced in the DRC. I felt like I was part of some inside club, because how many people know that Robin's passion for the Enough Project is invigorating? She's had boots on the ground in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and she is richly involved in the issues it faces—socioeconomic, cultural, commercial, and equity issues alike. 

Not just a fairy tale princess, this one.

And Robin is just one example that comes to the top of mind. Susan Sarandon is a remarkable (and fun!) human being. Forest Whitaker sneaked off the set during the filming of The Last King of Scotland to visit a home for rescued child soldiers. Malin Ackerman worked on Nicholas Kristoff and Cheryl Wudunn's A Path Appears. 

No, not every celebrity is a standard-bearing humanitarian, but you'd be surprised what these amazing people have up their sleeves. 

So don't take them at face value. Ask the deeper questions, and you might be pleasantly surprised by what they come back with.

I know I am.

Happy Friday, Music Lovers (ed.1)

So, there was a time when I had fallen off the blog. 

See what I did there, dance lovers and musical theatre mavens?

For a brief while, instead of dreaming up whimsical artsy posts, I spammed my friends.

Seriously. 

I sent emails every Friday with a cheerful subject line, usually something like:

Subject: Happy Friday, Music Lovers!

and proceeded to share my latest musical finds with a list of about 40 people. None of whom, it should be mentioned, ever asked me to stop spamming them with unsolicited music. Some of them actually even listened. And I can thus take credit for spreading Carly Rae Jepson's seminal classic, Call Me, Maybe, to a few people who had never heard it before.

(That's my closet hipster speaking.)

But now that I'm back in Blogland, I'll forego the weekly email and instead deposit my unschooled and uninhibited musical genius here.

You are welcome, Blogland.

So, enough dilly-dallying. 

Song 1) Mumford & Son's Newest single, Believe

In no uncertain terms, let me make it clear to you: I believe in this song. The minute I heard Michaela Mejune of WXPN tell me over those 6AM radio waves that Mumsy was inspired by Fleetwood Mac and Led Zeppelin I was SOLD. But then she played the song, and I had to resist the urge to close my eyes and be subsumed by musical deliciousness because I was driving in the middle of the Route 1 interchange on 76, and that would have been dangerous.

Please. Listen. The song starts all Mumfordish, all mellow and haunting with grand attenuated timing. Then comes the drop. Sliding in out of left field comes this plaintively wailing guitar, and it's like they've channelled Page or Buckingham. Ode to Jimi Hendrix, as played by a band of hairy Brits.

“Sliding in out of left field comes this plaintively wailing guitar, and it’s like they’ve channelled Page or Buckingham.”

It's stellar. I adore it. I cannot wait for the album because I COVET it.

Click the image to pop to YouTube and listen.

Song 2) Torpedo by Jillette Johnson

A masterful little thumper of a tune, perfect for kicking your running mix up a notch. Jillette Johnson (no, I had never heard of her before, either) has got that chick voice that I love - that remnant-of-heavy-drink-and-social-smoke-with-a-side-of-heartache thing that turns a song into an anthem. I haven't memorized all the words yet, and I may not be quite convinced that she does, as she sings, know how to take a right hook. But I DO find myself singing, "So come on, torpedo. Do your worst!" when I'm anxious or nervous or tired of running or just by myself in my apartment and can belt it out at the top of my lungs.

Because, you know. Singer.

Click the image to pop to YouTube and listen.

Song 3) Canyon Moon by Andrew McMahon In the Wilderness

I can hear this sucker in my brain when it's silent in the room. (Okay. That may be because I have listened to it too many times.) You may know (or you will learn) that I am easily swayed by any song with certain elements: madly inconsistent thirds harmonies, clapping, and oooohs. Extra points for the acapella refrain to drive the melody home. 

So... Canyon Moon is a jackpot.  

The added bonus is: you can pull this album up on your Spotify account and just let the whole damn thing play, because it is all simply lovely.

Click the image to pop to YouTube and listen.

So go find your music sources and dig these tunes up. And if you like them, stay tuned for a Happy Friday in the future, because you know I can't post an ed.1 without promising more....