mon amie la rose

While driving home today I heard a horrible voice on the radio singing, "Batter my heart, three-personed God!" tenor style. It was bizarre. And creepy. Especially cuz he kept repeating that one line. Anyway, it's a line from one of John Donne's most famous sonnets. "What? Is someone trying to sing a 17th century poem?" Yea that's what I thought too. And if they were, they should have made it sound better. And less creeper.

Anyway I was thinking, besides that one song from today, singers who can't write their own lyrics should just sing poems. If they can create a melody that matches the essence of a poem, not only would their songs have catchy beats, but their lyrics would actually mean something.

And then Beyonce wouldn't have to keep repeating "all the single ladies" a bajillion times and create a chorus solely based on Oh-oh-oh.

There's a song I heard in my French class that's from a poem by French writers Cécile Caulier and Jacques Lacombe. It's a hauntingly gorgeous (maybe cuz it's in French) poem and the song captures its wistfulness. It's about how fleeting our beauty and liveliness are, and that the tragedy of life isn't death, but aging and passing time. It's about the difficulty of finding hope in our ephemeral lives, before we can even begin to think about having faith in the next one. At least that's my take

Mon amie la rose - Francoise Hardy

Translation:
We are truly insignificant
That's what my friend the rose
Told me this morning:

I was born at dawn
Baptised in dew
I blossomed
In the rays of the sun
Happy and in love
I closed my petals at night
And when I awoke I was old.
Yet I had been beautiful
Yes, I was the most beautiful
Of all the flowers in your garden

See, the God that made me
Now makes me bow my head
And I feel I'm falling
And I feel I'm falling
My heart is almost bare
I have a foot in my grave
Already I am nothing
You admired me only yesterday
And I shall be dust
Forever, tomorrow

We are truly insignificant
And my friend the rose
Died this morning

Last night the moon
Kept vigil over my friend
And in a dream I saw
Her soul, dancing
Dazzling and naked,
Above the heavens,
Smiling on me.
Let those who can, believe
But I need Hope
Or else I am nothing

We are truly insignificant
My friend the rose
Said to me yesterday morning

DiggNation!

Today was a loooooong day. (makes you want to read all about it, doesn't it?!?) I went to a pretty uneventful French class, almost fell asleep in my Romantic Lit class. Then, things got interesting. Besides being stuck in traffic for a total of 2 hrs, I wrote my first low-quality "article" if you can call it that, for the LA times today! It was exciting and scary for me, but insignificant for the universe. And thennnnn I got to go to a Digg party (for all you techies out there that actually know what it is and probably lived for this day, ADMIT IT) at the Knitting Factory. The two guys, Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht, who founded Digg have a podcast that is apparently the "most listened to" podcasts in the US. So my fellow intern and I slid past the long winding lines filled with computer nerds that had been patiently waiting outside for hours, simply by flashing our LA Times badges and Digg wristbands.

The podcast was interesting, to say the least, and was definitely directed towards a male audience. It had more of a "ARG Imma guy so CHUG that beer down" frat boy feel. The testosterone was way over the radar. And let's just say there are many things I'd rather be doing than listening to two guys in their mid 20s discuss multi-platforms vs. single platforms, apple or PC, and then ending the topics conversing about masterbation. Hmmmm. Yea, definitely. But the alcohol helps a liiiiittle. So anyway, after the Digg party I went to... Palominos (big shocker) to meet up with some friends! That settled me down and now I'm all hygiened up and about to scribble some hwk before I sleep. So there. All content and no analysis, day 1. G'night fellas! See ya next time 'round!

THE NEW YEAR OF 2009!

New Years are really just a creative way of counting our days, but such a great invention. It's all in perspective. New Years are necessary for us to feel a sense of renewal, a sort-of starting over point. So we can erase all the mistakes we've made in the previous years, all the loose ends and maybes and could-haves and things-we-never-got-tos, and do it this time around. This year, it's going to happen. But if you think about it, the New Year isn't really different from any other day. Life is just a string of consecutive days, and today is day 659,371. But what's the fun in that?

The new year is about POSSIBILITIES and potential. And that's why I love all the New Years, new quarters, new friends, new places, new stories, new experiences, and all the new things to come.

Especially 2009 because it will be a SPECTACULARLY WONDERFUL year. But I say that about every year. And yet it's always true.