Lily and Damian sporting their chest tattoos.
11 November 2011

I think everyone has their favorite “amateur” singer on YouTube. I hate to use the word amateur because some of these folks are very talented and it feels disrespectful to downgrade their talent with a single word. But anyways, my favorite YouTube artist is, by far, katethegreat19 or Erutan (she goes by two names). I’ve downloaded most of her video game songs to my iPod and I’ve bought her self-produced and created CD. I love her music, her voice, and her will to produce and distribute her music.

I was recently listening to her arrangement of the Final Fantasy IX song “You’re Not Alone.” She didn’t write the tune, but she wrote the lyrics and the arrangement, plays all the instruments and sings. I am very romantic as I think many women are, and the lyrics she wrote are so romantic. I’m not linking the YouTube video because I think the FF IX footage set to the song distracts too much from the beauty of the song. If you’re curious, click on the play button below to listen:

[audio:http://www.angelsdesk.com/angel/audio/Youre_Not_Alone_katethegreat19.mp3]

My brother and I were discussing the power of lyrics just the other day. We were talking about Nirvana. Nirvana’s musical composition is powerful and Kurt Cobain’s voice is powerful. Both of these things carry an emotional depth that causes an emotional reaction in the listener. But the lyrics are crap. Even Kurt Cobain admitted that his lyrics were nonsense and he wrote them without thought. So Nirvana’s music lacks the depth, strength and power it could have achieved if they had taken that final step.

Matt and his brother Sam listen primarily to the melody whereas my brother, my cousin Justin and I all listen primarily to the lyrics. To us, the lyrics give the song meaning whereas the melody sets the mood. A perfect example would be “I Remain,” the song from The Prince of Persia by Alannis Morissette. The instruments and melody were obviously chosen to set the mood of a romanticized Middle East as Westerners have always painted it, and then the lyrics describe the relationship between Dastan and Tamina.

[audio:http://www.angelsdesk.com/angel/audio/I_Remain.mp3]

In my life, I’ve written one poem, but I’m pretty proud of it. It was written in a moment of deep pain and shame. Matt and I were both dating other people right before we got together, and we both got dumped (thankfully, or we wouldn’t have ended up together). Both of the people we were dating were crazy and, after we got over the pain and humiliation of getting dumped, we were grateful that they dumped us. But this is the poem I wrote just after getting dumped when I really wanted him back but I knew he was bad news:

Sugar-Coated Poisoned Candy

I feel his breath; I touch his skin.
There’s no one here but me.
We move together imitating
synchronicity.
I’m alone and he’s alone,
deep inside of me.
How I crave the saccharine taste
of dripping poisoned candy.

Lying in the dying promise
of the cold wet sheets.
Choking on the ashes
of false light and heat.
I’m alone and he’s alone,
sleeping next to me.
A cadaver breathes; the hole is filled
with salty poisoned candy.

It could be touched up a bit here and there (the cadence is off in the second verse, and the word “cadaver” is too cliche in a tortured love poem), but overall I’m pleased with my moment of pain creating art.

I didn’t upload anymore Halloween photos because they really are crap and Matt said the ones I posted did a good enough job getting the point across. Hopefully I’ll be a better flash photographer by next Halloween and can do the holiday more justice. Now I need to get decent photos of all the Christmas lights to post. They are things that the Brits do better than us, and there are things that we do better than the Brits. And our Christmas lights are quite impressive.