The Studio

The other night, I attended my first ever house concert. The artist performing that night was none other than Kyler England. For those of you who don't know, Kyler has been my favorite indie artist ever since Vienna Teng made it "big". Some of the song lyrics you might come across in my blogs may be Kyler songs. Anyhow, even though the house concert was a short drive away in Fremont, I felt as though I had been transported to a different world.

Had you been at that house concert, you would have never guessed that you were in the Bay Area....Let me back up and describe the setting for you. The house concert was held in Tom and Donna's backyard. The yard was lovely, but a bit ecclectic. There was a beautiful porch, a bar, a jaccuzi, two small houses/sheds (not sure what was stored in them, and a white picket fence in the yard that actually didn't fence off anything. The stage was a platform and the on-stage light was something akin to an antique lamp.

None of these disjoint items in and of themselves gave you the feeling of being in a different place, but they added to the illusion. What really made me feel like I was somewhere else was the fact that I was the youngest person there, everyone else being significantly older -- they were all roughly middle aged or older. The other surprising thing was that I was one of two asian people there, in a crowd of about fifty to sixty people. That was very unlike the bay area.

To add to the overall feeling of being somewhere else, everyone in the audience was dressed pretty simply, in a somewhat dated fashion. The cherry on top was that we were listening to folk music. Kyler's opener, Michael N-something, was an accomplished folk singer/song writer, singing about old country towns, his dog, and about making music. Kyler, though she has more contemporary themes, is from North Carolina. You can kind of feel the country soul in her.

The entire evening, I couldn't help but feel that this is what a Saturday night might feel like if I were living in the midwest. Some folks in town, music appreciators, get together and invite some up and coming artists to perform at small shows, and then afterwards everyone sits around and jam. They do this because this is the only music talent that happens in this town -- most of the big artists don't stop by such towns on their huge whirl-wind tours.

Feeling like I was chilling in the mid-west wasn't necessarily a bad thing, just different. There was some amount of charm to feeling like you were living a simpler life, just hanging out among friends and neighbors. Gathered together not to further our social agendas or grow our "networks", but simply to enjoy the music.

stuck in my apartment all day long
it’s been raining since the dawn
i miss the heat and the sunshine of back home
but home isn’t where you are
moved to the city at twenty-two
and it’s a far cry from where i was born
that’s one thing you seem to forget
cause you can take a girl to the city
and you can love her with all your heart and soul
but you can’t make up for what she’s missing
she needs more than you to be whole
but you’re my big city boy
you’ve never known anything more
you got radio waves and skyscrapers swimmin‘ in your head
but what about the blue sky?
my big city boy
come let me show you the world out there
you might be surprised at how much you like it
i wish i could make you understand
i need a little green just to get by
in this dirt poor place i’ve found no roots
so won’t you take this girl from the city
and we can drive all day down the country roads
this is the life i’m used to living
where empty space can make you whole
but you’re my big city boy
you’ve never known anything more
you got subway lines and concrete highways runnin‘ under your feet
but what about the cool grass?
my big city boy
come let me show you the world out there
you might be surprised at how much you like it
for all of my life north carolina
you’ll always be my home even though i left you
cause when the city gets me down
all i gotta do is just close my eyes
but there’s just one thing you’re missing
where’s my big city boy
you’ve never known anything more
you got convenient stores on every corner and not a moment to spare
but what about the simple life?
my big city boy
come let me show you the world out there
you might be surprised at how much you like it

We are smarter than we think; we are smarter than we give ourselves credit for. Or perhaps we are smarter than we'd like to believe. We are certainly smarter than we trust ourselves to be.

The other day, I was typing up some notes in notepad, as I am wont to do. As I went to save it, it showed me other text documents in the file, and I was curious to find a document called "too hard.txt". I knew right away that this document had once captured some raw emotion of mine, but I wasn't sure which it was.

The document turned out to be a letter, written but not sent, to someone for whom I was crazy. Re-reading the letter, I wasn't immediately sure who the other person mentioned was. The letter worried aloud about the imbalance in my relationship, pleaded with my love to open up and let me into his life, but much more, this letter foretold of my broken heart.

When I had reached the end and reflected on how everything had played out, it was un-nerving to see how much about my relationship was captured in this letter. I looked at the file properties and found out that I had written this letter a mere few weeks into dating my would-be ex, long before he became my ex.

It's amazing how much we already know about ourselves, if we would just stop and listen. Most of the time, we get in our own way of understanding who we are. We let ourselves rationalize away emotions that are trying to tell us things. We let our circumstances dictate our actions instead of listening to our hearts. We let our past and our experiences rule supreme, turning us into cynics and skeptics. Sometimes though, we let hope lead us down dead end paths.

It's fortunate then that good things still happen to people everyday, in spite of our greatest efforts to foil the plans. I just hope I know what a good thing looks like when it happens to me.

Some say love, it is a river
that drowns the tender reed.
Some say love, it is a razor
that leaves your soul to bleed.
Some say love, it is a hunger,
an endless aching need.
I say love, it is a flower,
and you its only seed.

It's the heart afraid of breaking
that never learns to dance.
It's the dream afraid of waking
that never takes the chance.
It's the one who won't be taken,
who cannot seem to give,
and the soul afraid of dyin'
that never learns to live.

When the night has been too lonely
and the road has been to long,
and you think that love is only
for the lucky and the strong,
just remember in the winter
far beneath the bitter snows
lies the seed that with the sun's love
in the spring becomes the rose.