Music. Whether it's making music or listening to it, music has always been a huge part of my life. In elementary and high school, I was involved in pretty much every band we had. It was such an amazing experience, and I met such great people through it. I can't even explain what an awesome feeling it was to be with a big group of people, playing their own parts completely separate from mine but working together towards making something beautiful. I still listen to some songs we did in HS and can remember my parts, and remember playing them, and remember what parts I loved listening to and how my part intertwined with others. I get goosebumps sometime, especially listening to "October." The technically difficult songs, the songs that really made you be patient and pay attention to the feeling of the piece. It taught me a lot about hard work and perseverance, and how much that can pay off. It taught me to find a way of learning and practicing something that worked for me, which was kind of difficult. It taught me I didn't have to be the star, and how much teamwork and being the part of a larger whole is important and how good that can feel when you come together to accomplish something. It taught me to support my "teammates," too.
Now, even though I'm not in band anymore, and I can't remember the last time I opened my saxophone case, music still plays a huge role in my life. I love listening to music and going to see live music. I can't even fathom the number of shows I've been to since college. For me, I connect to a lot of music through the lyrics, and I think that's a huge reason I love of Montreal so much. His lyrics sometimes are so crazy and out there, but there's SO much that I can listen to and think, "yeah, that's EXACTLY how I feel." Sometimes, when you feel like no one understands you, music can just make sense of what you're going through. You know other people have those feelings and you can relate to that. Songs can get so personal that sometimes I don't want to share my favorite songs because I feel like that person will somehow know too much about me and what that song means to me. Then, there's also the nonsense fun music that just makes you smile and bop your head (of Montreal makes plenty of that, too, and often their emotional songs and their fun dancey songs are the same).
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| Man Man at MFNW |
Then there are concerts! Concerts are SO FUN! You're in a room full of other people who love the same band and their music. You get to actually see these people that you've been singing along with for months, and sing and dance along with them in person. The energy of live shows is pretty amazing, and a lot of the bands I like a lot just have great live acts (confetti, stuffed animals, pig costumes, masks, band members crowd surfing, beach balls, confessions, etc etc). I try to get there early and be up front if I really like the band, and have been sung to and headbutted and handed setlists by lead singers and it's such a high. You basically forget everything else going on in the world and your life and just let go and enjoy the moments you have with these people who have made your life better and who you feel a real connection to through their music.
Art. Honestly, this one shocks me. If you could tell 7th grade me that I'd actually ENJOY art some day, I would have laughed so hard. I think I illegally got out of a year of junior high art because I hated it so much. It made no sense to me, I saw no purpose for it, and I wanted nothing to do with it. I'd look at "famous expensive art" and think "what the heck are you serious someone gets PAID to paint a canvas red?!" Now, I still don't understand a lot of art, but I appreciate having it in my life. I think I already told the story about how I got into arting (yeah I love that made up word so what), so I won't rehash it all here. Basically my brothers and I decided that we could make art as good as some of this famous stuff, and we didn't want to spend money on that decorating our walls when we could make it ourselves. So we did. I never thought I could enjoy creating art, and I was convinced I was just no good at it. I think that's the biggest hurdle I, and most people introduced to the Oswego County Art Collective, have to get over. I always tell myself - the worst that happens, I throw the painting away. Big deal. And I feel like that's a really good life lesson about trying things you're not sure you're gonna be great at. But now I love it and have been painting for a few years, and am so grateful I have found this kind of creative outlet.
A lot of the paintings I do are quotes or lyrics that mean something special to me from a band I really like. For me it's kind of been a way to tangibly have music that means a lot to me. The above painting is one I did of an of Montreal quote. (I showed it to Kevin Barnes, and he was like "Whoa, cool, really going back for that one huh?"Another reason music and live shows ROCK) I've tried the abstract "paint whatever" that Andy has mastered, and I've never felt all that good at it. I'd look at Andy's paintings and be like "I love that. I want to paint that." I wanted to do something of Montreal related, so I took a pile of their quotes and painted them on a canvas in different fonts. It came out great, and I really really enjoyed doing it. So I did it again. I enjoyed the planned creativeness of it moreso than the spontaneous creativeness. I could mull it over and come up with a cool design and quote and font, and make it come to life just how I pictured it. There's a lot of fine detail work, and I find that when I do that, my mind blocks everything else out except for what I'm painting and it's so refreshing. I am completely focused on the task at hand and can totally shut out the person who yelled at me for no reason at work earlier, or that I'm a little bit homesick, or that I have to deal with a broken window. It's a great stress reliever and allows me to try new things creatively. I think I was missing that for a lot of my life (one of my professors in college told me to stop being so creative once actually which kind of blows my mind because I'm not a naturally creative person - or at least I never thought I was!) and it's allowed me to think in different ways, really step out of my comfort zone, and explore something I never thought I'd want to explore. It's become something I really enjoy and look forward to, and I'm grateful I have that in my life now.
I know the list was supposed to be 3 things every day for 5 days. I feel like this got pretty long winded, and I have to be back at work in 8 hours, so I'll pause here and add a few more things throughout the next week or so!
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