Tuesday, January 06, 2004
Thursday, January 01, 2004
Ah, the crisp winter air. The snow. The cold. We've just had two snowfalls in a row, which I suppose is not typical of every Oregon winter. It reminds me that I haven't been truly snowed on since I lived in Philadelphia. The other night before it snowed, when it was just 28 degrees and dry, I took the dog for a walk, thinking that the local dog park/mud bowl would have frozen over. It had, and thankfully there was very little on the way of dog-cleaning that I needed to take care of.
As we were walking to the frozen mud bowl I heard a sound that distinctly reminded me of my winters back east. Below a certain temperature, the nylon shell of my coat freezes enough to lose some of its suppleness and begins to crinkle instead of rustle. The change in the quality of sound coupled with the near-silence of the street at midnight brought back memories of being thousands of miles from home. I remember the kind of winter that's so cold you know it'll take at least two years to get used to it. I remember thinking that I had a good warm winter jacket, freezing my ass off in it, and I remember making my friends take me out to the store to buy a new one that would fit the bill for a Philadelphia winter, not a Willamette valley winter.
There was a storm the winter of 1996 that laid feet of snow over the Philadelphia area, closing the airport and delaying my return from Christmas break for five glorious days. The city was wonderfully quiet during this time; even the manically active city dwellers knew when to stay in. Coming back to my apartment on Green Street, I had to climb a bank of snow just to get to my stoop. I took a picture a few days later, with the snow still piled high around the cars. I literally had to trudge through that snow to get to school. I think I actually enjoyed it, Philly covered in clean white snow, burying the rubble and the hundreds of years of dirt and grime. City Hall at the center of the city looks like a Gotham masterpiece when it's like this.
The first snow of the season is always so beautiful and pristine that it makes you just stop and gaze at it. Now that it's been around for a day or two, now that I have to get my ass to work in the morning, now that I've shovelled hundreds of pounds of snow off my driveway, I remember the truth about a snowy cold winter: that it's just another season, that it's a hazard and an inconvenience, and like my four years in Philadelphia, it's best enjoyed in retrospect.
As we were walking to the frozen mud bowl I heard a sound that distinctly reminded me of my winters back east. Below a certain temperature, the nylon shell of my coat freezes enough to lose some of its suppleness and begins to crinkle instead of rustle. The change in the quality of sound coupled with the near-silence of the street at midnight brought back memories of being thousands of miles from home. I remember the kind of winter that's so cold you know it'll take at least two years to get used to it. I remember thinking that I had a good warm winter jacket, freezing my ass off in it, and I remember making my friends take me out to the store to buy a new one that would fit the bill for a Philadelphia winter, not a Willamette valley winter.
There was a storm the winter of 1996 that laid feet of snow over the Philadelphia area, closing the airport and delaying my return from Christmas break for five glorious days. The city was wonderfully quiet during this time; even the manically active city dwellers knew when to stay in. Coming back to my apartment on Green Street, I had to climb a bank of snow just to get to my stoop. I took a picture a few days later, with the snow still piled high around the cars. I literally had to trudge through that snow to get to school. I think I actually enjoyed it, Philly covered in clean white snow, burying the rubble and the hundreds of years of dirt and grime. City Hall at the center of the city looks like a Gotham masterpiece when it's like this.
The first snow of the season is always so beautiful and pristine that it makes you just stop and gaze at it. Now that it's been around for a day or two, now that I have to get my ass to work in the morning, now that I've shovelled hundreds of pounds of snow off my driveway, I remember the truth about a snowy cold winter: that it's just another season, that it's a hazard and an inconvenience, and like my four years in Philadelphia, it's best enjoyed in retrospect.
Thursday, November 20, 2003
Last Monday I took T to a concert for her birthday. So the gift was over a month after her actual birthday. Timing was never my strong suit.
Dar Williams, Shawn Colvin, Mary Chapin-Carpenter and Patty Griffin all shared the stage, and it was amazing. If you enjoy female neo-folky-singer-songwriters, there was a whole lot of talent up there on the stage. If you don't enjoy such things then you'd probably better stop reading and go search the internet for hotel-heiress video footage. This was their last of 30-something shows, having been on the road since September.
The only two of the four that I really knew about were Dar and Shawn. I'd heard of, and been recommended to the others, but had never gotten around to them, thinking that Patty was too country, or that Mary Chapin-Carpenter had too many syllables for me to refer to her on any kind of regular basis. Dar of course was adorable and incidentally, knocked up, which was a surprise to me. I truly enjoyed her performance, mostly because it seemed she was pressured to sing, instead of doing her breathy, cute voice that carries her through most shows targeted at her fan base. Shawn was perfect. It turns out that listening to her live is a little like hearing a studio recording, in a good way. Every intonation, every note, every word was spot-on perfect. She is a polished performer, and I personally love her guitar style. Mary, or as the others referred to her, "Chapin," was genuine and confident and put up some of the most intricate finger picking of the evening. The only problem I have now is that she has too many albums for me to go out and comfortably buy at once. I'll likely need advice before starting on that venture. Patty was a surprise to me. She's a tiny red headed woman, plays a huge guitar, and has the sweetest voice imaginable, when she's holding back. On some songs, however, her voice is a weapon, filling the theatre with a power you wouldn't have thought possible.
They played requests from each other mostly. The sequence went: Chapin, Patty, Shawn and finally Dar. They played each other's songs, their own songs, harmonized with each other, and spent a whole lot of time talking about each song before playing it, which is one of the things I love most about folk music. Chapin called it a "guitar pull," but I mostly thought it was three hours of amazing music.
Since it was the last show, they were relaxed and in good spirits. Dar was actually putting on makeup for some period of time, and Shawn kept using some "Mr. T" keychain to tell us things like,"Quit yo' jibba-jabber!" Of course there was some hugging and gooey girl-love at the end, but it was well worth it, if only for the encore. They came back out, and sat down with a vaguely familiar and very catchy guitar riff. The song went like this:
You are my fire
My one desire
And they went on to sing the whole I Want It That Way masterpiece, which must have been a little difficult with all of us laughing our heads off. It was beautiful.
Dar Williams, Shawn Colvin, Mary Chapin-Carpenter and Patty Griffin all shared the stage, and it was amazing. If you enjoy female neo-folky-singer-songwriters, there was a whole lot of talent up there on the stage. If you don't enjoy such things then you'd probably better stop reading and go search the internet for hotel-heiress video footage. This was their last of 30-something shows, having been on the road since September.
The only two of the four that I really knew about were Dar and Shawn. I'd heard of, and been recommended to the others, but had never gotten around to them, thinking that Patty was too country, or that Mary Chapin-Carpenter had too many syllables for me to refer to her on any kind of regular basis. Dar of course was adorable and incidentally, knocked up, which was a surprise to me. I truly enjoyed her performance, mostly because it seemed she was pressured to sing, instead of doing her breathy, cute voice that carries her through most shows targeted at her fan base. Shawn was perfect. It turns out that listening to her live is a little like hearing a studio recording, in a good way. Every intonation, every note, every word was spot-on perfect. She is a polished performer, and I personally love her guitar style. Mary, or as the others referred to her, "Chapin," was genuine and confident and put up some of the most intricate finger picking of the evening. The only problem I have now is that she has too many albums for me to go out and comfortably buy at once. I'll likely need advice before starting on that venture. Patty was a surprise to me. She's a tiny red headed woman, plays a huge guitar, and has the sweetest voice imaginable, when she's holding back. On some songs, however, her voice is a weapon, filling the theatre with a power you wouldn't have thought possible.
They played requests from each other mostly. The sequence went: Chapin, Patty, Shawn and finally Dar. They played each other's songs, their own songs, harmonized with each other, and spent a whole lot of time talking about each song before playing it, which is one of the things I love most about folk music. Chapin called it a "guitar pull," but I mostly thought it was three hours of amazing music.
Since it was the last show, they were relaxed and in good spirits. Dar was actually putting on makeup for some period of time, and Shawn kept using some "Mr. T" keychain to tell us things like,"Quit yo' jibba-jabber!" Of course there was some hugging and gooey girl-love at the end, but it was well worth it, if only for the encore. They came back out, and sat down with a vaguely familiar and very catchy guitar riff. The song went like this:
You are my fire
My one desire
And they went on to sing the whole I Want It That Way masterpiece, which must have been a little difficult with all of us laughing our heads off. It was beautiful.
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