Kayla’s Noon Walk

Saturday, December 14, 2013

Kayla and I went to the front yard this noon, after I had my really late breakfast with cheese sandwich and a cup of my favorite homemade milk tea. I used to accompany her for a walk in the front yard after dinner, but in the last few months, mainly because of the cold and rainy weather, we barely do that anymore. So today as it was warm and sunny (not anymore – there goes the rumble of distant thunder as I’m typing these words), I visited the front yard again and it was lovely as dry leaves and flowers scattered beautifully on the ground.  For almost an hour we had great fun there – Kayla with her walking and sniffing and me with taking some pictures.

Kayla didn’t find any lizard today as she sometimes does when lucky. She finally went into the house for some water after getting tired.

Celebrating the Spirit of Nelson Mandela

Saturday, December 7, 2013

I was saddened to learn about Nelson Mandela's death last night. The planet has lost an inspirational figure, an exemplary leader who devoted his life to equality and human rights, and one of the few peacemakers I have always admired for his lack of bitterness. It amazes me how a person could spend nearly three decades in prison and still have faith in man's goodness, and even come out ready to forgive the people who put him there. That is the man this planet has lost. That is the man this planet will miss. But death is something inevitable, the hero himself said. "When a man has done what he considers to be his duty to his people and his country, he can rest in peace." So, rest in peace, Nelson Mandela.

The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."
- 1994. Excerpts from an interview for the documentary 'Mandela'

"Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farmworkers can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another."
- 1995. His autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom

"Man's goodness is a flame that can be hidden but never extinguished."
- 1995. Long Walk to Freedom

"As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison. "

It seems incomplete to quote Mandela without including the poem that he had famously recited:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

- “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley

In December 2009, a biographical sports drama film was made based on a book by John Carlin, Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation, about the events in South Africa before and during the 1995 Rugby World Cup, which was hosted in that country following the dismantling of apartheid. The film was entitled Invictus, taken from the above poem, and featured this song “Colorblind” by Overtone as one of its soundtracks: (Click here to see the lyric)

To the man whose body may have left our world, but whose spirit will be forever celebrated,

This World Won't Last Forever And All That's Left Is You

Sunday, December 1, 2013

Since "Signal in the Sky" was featured on Grey’s Anatomy last year, I’ve been waiting for Matt Hires to release his next full-length album. The EP was a collection any pop music fan would enjoy, with Forever deserving to be chosen as the album title, but I couldn’t get enough with only four songs. And after almost a year, the sophomore album, entitled This World Won’t Last Forever, But Tonight We Can Pretend, was finally released on August 13, 2013. I just found that out this week and immediately downloaded the rest of the album.

Having listened to the eleven songs, I am with those critics saying that This World… sounds jauntier and more mature than Take Us to the Start. Simply as a matter of personal taste, though, I prefer the first album’s simpler arrangements to This World…’s fuller ones. But as always, Hires’ idiosyncratic singing voice is an engaging feature in the album, on top of the hooky melodies and his typical poetic honesty.

As it was with his first album, I find some of the songs in this album highly likeable, like the cryptic "I Am Not Here" and his autobiographical writer's block-themed "When I Was Young", or a more cheerful track like "Miles Past Midnight". And just as with any album, it doesn't take me long to find one I simply fall in love with. Excluding "A to B" and "Signal in the Sky", both of which had appeared in his previous EPs, the winner goes to the somewhat hopeful and tender "All That’s Left Is You". I was intoxicated the first time I heard it and have been addicted since the second. For the last four days I’ve been playing the song over and over again – if not on the music player, in my head! I can't stop listening to the guitar strumming and the mild but influential drumbeats, and I love the fact that he put the words “sunshine state” and “the golden gate”, making the song sound more personal – as he is a Tampa native, and I’ve always loved San Francisco. The sweetest part of the lyric, though, is probably that sentence at the end of the chorus: “Out of all the dreams that could come true, maybe one of them could be you” – beautifully expressed, in a genuine way he always does.

Click here to listen to the album, or click play below to listen to "All That's Left Is You".

Or, watch his music video: