Only a Broken Heart

Only a Broken Heart - Tom Petty
Album: Wildflowers

Misty and I are beginning an extremely long journey through music history (being taught by her beloved Luke and Easton, whom I have a feeling will quickly become my beloveds as well). In preparation, I was given a list of musicians/bands that I needed to begin brushing up on. I decided to start with the already familiars that I haven't listened to in awhile or know that I enjoy, but maybe don't know as well. The truth is, I didn't really grow up in a house of music. We listened to musicals, but my dad never liked the radio on when we were driving and we never used the record player we had forever. It's not like my parents don't like music, they just weren't music people (I think I get it from my aunt, though our tastes can vastly differ). So, I've felt like most of the past 10 years that I've known music outside of Top 40 exists, I've been playing catch up. I do a pretty good job of staying current, but anything before 2000/2001 I just don't really know.

So, where Petty is concerned, I know his greatest hits. But now, I'm digging a little deeper.

"Only a Broken Heart" fits my mood today. One of my friends lost her mom last night, one of my friends is moving into her first house that she will own with her husband and daughter this weekend, and another friend gets married tomorrow. How is it possible to be so happy for one person and so sad for another at the same time? It doesn't even feel split down the middle, it's more that the emotions are swirling together, almost combining into one brand new emotion that doesn't have a name. The more times I listen to this song, the more points of view I see it from. Sometimes I'm the person he's singing about, sometimes the person singing, and sometimes I see God as the subject and "Life" as the singer. It's not a sad song, it's an honest one.

"But don't be afraid anymore, it's only a broken heart." The ironic part is, I don't feel that the line is being sarcastic, nor diminishing the pain of a broken heart. It's more of "This is part of life" it's going to happen, and you're going to get through it. And that's how this feeling inside of me is best labeled. Yes, the pain hurts, but it's also mixed with this extreme happiness, and knowing that both exist make the pain not so bad, but it also makes the light brighter. I know there's an end to pain, maybe not in this life, but at least in the one after. And knowing that there is pain, makes the great moments mean...everything. The fact that people I'm close to, even if far away they at least share my thought space, can affect me so completely in such vastly different ways only proves that pure happiness and pure sadness can exist together. Neither can rule, and if you try too much to let one have power over the other, then you'll be left powerless.

Instead, I let both come and go as they must, I feel each to the fullest, and I love through them and alongside them. I think that's survival, and in an odd way, it's peace.

XOXO-
EBG

Enchanted

Enchanted - Taylor Swift
Speak Now

No judging! This was really the only album release I could get excited about this week, and have now listened to it...a couple of times. I'm going to compile a playlist for October (I think that'll be my next strategy) of new music for the whole month...15-17 songs. But for now, this song will not leave my head.

And I kind of like it.

I'm single, that's no big surprise to anyone. Any of one my friends can give you their theory on why that is, but the truth being, I just don't very often find people that 1) Intrigue me, 2) Make me smile, and 3) I'm attracted to. I feel like in order to start a relationship, those 3 things have to be present. There is another list of "requirements" and "deal breakers" but those things come later. These 3 have to be there from the first meeting. And recently, in the past 2 months really, I have met 3 people that do all of the above. I wouldn't call them crushes per se, but I do find my mind drifting to them, and the thoughts that come make me both smile and become a little more curious about who these people really are.

And then came "Enchanted." It's basically the story of a girl (Taylor) who meets a boy, and for all intensive purposes, nothing happens. Except she spends the rest of the night wondering about him, small day dreams, simple hopes that maybe there could be something more than a slight spark.

"I was enchanted to meet you." I love how that phrase sounds. It's a more beautiful version of intrigue, but it's curiousity with fire. And that's how I feel, curiousity with fire...not just questions, but feelings that go with the questions. I don't know what those feelings are, but it might be nice to find out. Or not, and the simple act of just meeting in passing, nice conversations, and lasting smiles that leave me warm is all it was meant to be. It's a nice change of pace.

XOXO-
EBG

Dog Days Are Over...Again

Dog Days Are Over - Florence + the Machine

Album: Lungs

I know, I know. This song is pretty much the theme for my life. But it always just appears when I need it. Sometimes twice.

It's been a big few weeks, hence the no posting. My sister got married last Saturday and though I have compiled a list of my favorite moments of that day and the week prior, I probably won't post it until tomorrow. Since her wedding (which was the most perfect day God could have created), I've been on a constant swing of ups and downs. For 8 days I was surrounded by family and friends and laughing and celebrating, and it's a little jolting to all of the sudden find myself alone. So, while I have filled up my social calendar, I also have my next big deadline quickly approaching...a writer's conference I'm attending at the end of January. It's nose to the grindstone, but it also means a lot of sitting by myself writing. Not good for someone who hates being lonely. And it's also a lot of fighting with myself, and anyone who does any sort of art (and maybe other professions, I don't know) knows what that feels like. So, that brings us to today.

It was a long day at work. I was driving home, stuck in traffic that was not getting any better, and my mom (who usually distracts me) was out to dinner with my father and friends. The CD of Wuthering Heights that I'm on is all scratchy so I can barely understand it, KCRW was talking about something I didn't care about, and Radio Disney was just not playing good music. And for some stupid reason, I don't usually carry my iPod with me. All of this combined led me to do something I never do...I started flipping through radio stations. I landed on KROQ on a great guitar solo, though I can't for the life of me remember what song right now, and it soothed me immediately. I wanted it to last forever, but it didn't. And then, what should appear...Florence! But I was just so down that it did nothing for me. My go-to song for a guaranteed pick-up fell flat on its face. It played and I didn't even sing along. It's important to point out here that I never listen to stations that play this song so this might have been the first, maybe the second, that I've heard it on the radio. And I got nothing out of it. That in itself scared me more than anything.

So, the drive continued. I finally reach my neighborhood and it's not that there's no parking spots, just not one I like. I start circling the block flipping through more stations and land on Star 98.7 just as...Florence comes on again! And this time, it clicked. I started humming, then I started beating on my steering wheel, then I started singing. By the time it got to the clapping part towards the end, I was hitting my steering wheel so hard, I accidentally honked at the car in front of me. By the time the song was over, I was parked, smiling, and again ready to conquer the world. Someone (I'm going to say God) knew that I needed that song. And someone (God, again) also knew once wasn't going to be enough.

There's a lot of new music to catch up on. And this week, I'm taking a friend's suggestion (thank you, Micah) and going to conclude the week with my top picks narrowed down to 5-7 of my favorite songs that were released this week. It's like a mini-playlist. I should warn, however, that I'm super excited about the new T. Swifty album, so they might all be hers. Just putting that out there.

But for now...

XOXO-

EBG

A Great Cover One of My Favorite Songs

This just made me happy...so I wanted to share.

XO-

EBG

The Social Network

I saw The Social Network last night. And it's taken me about 12 hours of processing to be able to put my thoughts into words. First off, I thought it was done brilliantly. Aaron Sorkin's writing, David Fincher's directing, Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross' score, and especially Jesse Eisenberg's acting (along with Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake).

But I knew it would be a good movie. That's not what has had my brain turning all night, that's not what infiltrated my dreams, or what I've been struggling to understand. What The Social Network has done is take something so defining of my generation, and really now the world, and lifted the veil only to reveal a solid black curtain with a few holes we can sort of peek through.

Facebook has changed the world. The concept of social networking may have started slightly before with things like LiveJournal which launched in 1999 (and funny enough Zuckerberg used in the movie) and MySpace in August 2003 (which I thought had actually been before that). But Facebook is what has defined social networking. It took these vague ideas from MySpace and LiveJournal and Friendster or whatever other websites, and made something that 500 million people (more than 1 in 14 people in the world) are part of.

The part that I can't quite grasp has nothing to do with how this now 26 year old kid is now worth 6.9 billion dollars because of a website. It's how that in his Harvard dorm room at 19 years old, Mark Zuckerberg came up with an idea that has connected 500 million people in merely 6 years. The concept to me is unfathomable.

Since the world wide web launched in 1990 and Google in 1998, the world has become so much smaller while at the same time expanding the lives of individuals exponentially. We can now virtually see any place on earth from the comfort of our own homes. But Facebook created this forum for actually becoming "friends" with a person from any place on earth from the comfort of our own home. But, honestly, none of this is the point, it's more just my amazement. You either understand the impact of online social networking or you don't, that's another blog.

The point of this is Zuckerberg himself.

He refused to have anything to do with the writing of the book, Accidental Billionaire, and the making of the movie. So here is this man, still pretty much a kid, that is being portrayed on millions of screens throughout the country and probably soon the world with absolutely no certainty that any of it is truth. Jesse Eisenberg was fantastic in this David Fincher/Aaron Sorkin movie. From what I can tell he did an incredible imitation of Zuckerberg's speech and mannerisms. But how can he truly play the man if he has no idea what was going through the man's head through all of this? He can make up reasons for the dialogue and justifications for his actions, but how can he really know? His eyes show so much emotion, but what truth is there to that emotion? I don't have an answer, just posing the question.

And that leads me to this: I want Mark Zuckerberg to be a good person. I pretty much want everyone to be a good person, but that's beside the point. What happened to Eduardo Saverin is heartbreaking and horrible, and I'm glad that the movie captured so much of his story from a firsthand account. I "get" his side. But I don't want to believe a person that has united the world in such a defining and prolific way is a bad person. I want to clarify that I don't think the movie shows him as a villain at all. I think the movie shows him as a genius that did some really crappy things. But is that true? Is he a decent human being that, while maybe originally acting out of spite, has gone on to create something he truly believes makes the world better? I want to believe that. I want to come up with a million reasons for him screwing over his best friend. (I don't even think I need to draw attention to the twins because they basically just got brilliantly played and need to accept that they lost...with $65 million in their pockets.) But, honestly, I don't know what's inside Zuckerberg's soul. And it's taken me 12 hours of processing to be ok with not knowing, to quit trying to find reasons that what he did was somehow justifiable or not his fault, or that he even feels major remorse for it. And, most importantly, why it even matters to me.

From how the movie portrays him, and that's what this is based on, I think that he did feel pain for how things ended with his best friend. Eisenberg's eyes alone scream that at the end of the movie. But who knows? Mark Zuckerberg...and maybe anyone he has confided in. The story of how Facebook came to be is genius, it's powerful, and it's hard to watch. We, the world, reacted exactly how this 19 year old kid thought we would. One of my friends feels like we were just pawns in his game and it makes her angry, but I don't think that. I think he felt this great need for social connection, to belong, so in filling that void for himself he filled it for 500 million people across the world. But he knew just launching a website like MySpace was not going to make it happen. We're not dumb or stupid, we're desperate to feel like we belong. And sometimes that desperate desire takes over all rational thought.

The problem that has happened with Facebook is that it has given individual's power, over their lives, their friends, their portrayal of themselves. On Facebook you can make yourself be whoever you want to be, you give your opinions, you almost design your life. Zuckerberg gave people that power, and now people have started abusing it, as we humans do. Look at what we do to each other? I know I've definitely used Facebook to make statements about how great my life is, to vent about what makes me angry, and to even passive aggressively try making someone else feel bad or jealous (even if it's by doing something as stupid as posting "I miss you" on someone else's wall that I know they'll read). I feel like the past few months I've begun to watch myself more closely and what I do use Facebook for, but how can we judge this kid for his doings when we do the same thing? It might not be on a billion dollar scale, but when the intent is the same is there really a difference? Maybe. I don't really know the answer to that.

I don't know if Mark Zuckerberg is a good person or not. I do know that he created something that did "define a generation" and "change the world." And I have come to peace with knowing that. I do believe Facebook was his idea and is his baby. Just like him, it wouldn't be whole, wouldn't be what it is without all of the good and bad swirled together. Am I still fascinated by him? Definitely. Am I still curious about what was going on in his head through all of this? How could I not be? Do I hope that he is a good person who is just trying to do what he believes will make the world better? Yes, I desperately do.

But the looming question is why should it really matter to me whether or not he's the hero or the villain? I know why I want to know. I am a part of something that he created and possibly something that he created by using people, deceiving people, and betraying people that cared the most about him. And I don't know if I want to be part of something that was created in that way. But do I really need these answers? No. Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook and he gave it to the world. Now, it's ours. What we do with it is what matters. Mark may have created something that defined a generation, but what's important is what we allow that definition to say. Is the world better because of Facebook? Only if we're better with Facebook. I can't dictate how others use The Social Network, but I get to choose how I use it. And that, I can come to peace with.

XO-

EBG

PS. Just to relate this to music, I did think the score was PERFECT for the movie. Do I want to listen to it by myself in the dark with a bottle of wine? Not really. But if I did, then it wouldn't be the same, and if it was any different, it wouldn't have been as good. I hope that makes sense.

Also: GO SEE THE MOVIE. Bottom line, the story is fascinating, it did define our generation and everyone that was part of it is at the top of their game. Only complaint is that the rowing sequence was a little long, but that I can deal with.

Songs that make me Sing, Dance, and simply Smile

I could also refer to them as "Strength Songs" because when I do feel the itch to sing, dance, laugh out loud and I let myself freely do these things, I feel stronger. One of my friends is going through a hard time right now, so I felt she needed a good Mix Tape. Nothing too heavy, nothing too difficult to listen to. And especially nothing that makes you think too hard. There's a time and purpose for those songs, put this playlist was just about letting go of tension and enjoying a good day.

1. Dog Days Are Over - Florence + the Machine (no eye rolling. it goes on every mix tape from here to eternity)
2. Fearless - Taylor Swift
3. Be OK - Ingrid Michaelson
4. I Love Rock & Roll - Joan Jett & the Blackhearts
5. I Believe In a Thing Called Love - The Darkness
6. Let It Go - Mitchell Musso & Tiffany Thornton (yes, it's from a Disney Channel Movie)
7. You Can't Stop the Beat - Cast of Hairspray
8. Teenage Dream - Katy Perry
9. I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked - Ida Maria
10. Don't Stop Believin' - Glee Cast (it makes me happier than the Journey version)
11. The Way You Make Me Feel - Michael Jackson
12. Welcome to the Black Parade - My Chemical Romance
13. Toxic - Britney Spears
14. It's Gonna Be Me - 'NSYNC
15. Love Today - Mika
16. Livin' On a Prayer - Bon Jovi
17. Fall Into Love - Rabbit!
18. Son of a Preacher Man - Dusty Springfield
19. I Gotta Feeling - Black Eyed Peas
20. Defying Gravity - Idina Menzel & Kristen Chenowith

Remember: no judgments. These songs make ME happy. And hopefully my friend.

XO-
EBG