Living In Rhythm

Okay, so I was asked about the five pieces of art that changed my world, and I copped out on Tumblr and gave just titles. Here are the explanations.

Monet’s Impression Sunrise

I know, I know. Monet is the cliché, right? The artist everyone claims to know all about when really they know nothing. I don't claim to be an expert. I don't claim to know much about him at all, really, other than he's impressionist and dug using pastels in his day.

I've been to the National Gallery of Canada more times than I can count on two hands, and I remember, when I got old enough to appreciate what I was looking at, standing in front of this painting and studying brushstrokes and colours. I love that, up close, it looks like nothing. It looks like...blue. Take a step back, and it looks like something more. Take two more and you see it for what it is. It's, in my opinion, the most gorgeous thing Monet ever painted. This painting opened my eyes to how intricate art (visual or otherwise) could be.

James Taylor’s Sweet Baby James album

It's not a secret that I love James Taylor. Fire and Rain was the first song of his I heard. It was on vinyl, and I was probably all of 7 years old, and my dad was singing along. He asked if I liked the song, and I said yes. That became the only music my dad and I would listen to together for probably close to a year when we were home alone. He'd put on this record and I'd listen to James' lullabies and words. As I got older, I realized James Taylor wasn't exactly 'current', and I didn't care. I needed to hear more. Now I own every record he's ever made. Between my dad and I, we have some albums on vinyl, cassette, and CD.

To be perfectly honest, I can't remember exactly why this changed everything, just that it did. Maybe it was the hiss of the vinyl, or the lyrics, or the guitar, or the line 'But I always thought that I'd see you again' which I remember listening to as a kid and thinking was beautiful and sad all at the same time (I didn't know that was possible before Fire and Rain). Whatever it was, I still listen to this record at least (at least) once a month.

Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie-Woogie

This is a weird story. A very weird story. As a kid, I took piano lessons. I also hated classical piano music at the time, so when it came time to choose whether or not to take Conservatory piano, I politely declined (okay, there may have been foot-stomping) and said I just wanted to play piano and learn theory and not have to take all the tests and everything. (I'd later regret this decision, to a degree, but I digress.) One of the piano books I bought which contained popular American standards for me to learn had this crazy cover. It was yellow and blue and red and cool. I loved it. At 10 years old, I thought it was just a crazy design and left it at that.

Cut to me at 17 standing in MoMA in front of this huge canvas with my piano book painted on it. I felt like such a moron. Seriously, this huge, famous piece of art was under my nose the whole time and I thought it was just a bunch of cool random squares. It was so much more amazing in 'real life', too. The colours were brighter, and the art itself seemed to be moving. I realize that doesn't really make any sense, but it did when I was standing there.

The point was, and it hit me very quickly, is that a piece of art (again, visual or otherwise) can have a huge impact on your life without you even realizing. The connection between music and visual art kind of tripped me out, too, how I'd learned to play songs on piano after literally judging a book by its cover.

Ella’s Sophisticated Lady

When I started getting serious as a jazz singer, everyone and their dog gave me suggestions of songs to listen to. Strange Fruit, Mack The Knife, How High The Moon, The Way You Look Tonight. Yeah. Great. Throw out all those clichés. I didn't want to sing like Billie or Ella. I wanted to hear what they were doing and learn from it and use bits and pieces of that in my own voice.

The first time I heard Ella's version of Sophisticated Lady, I cried. I legitimately cried. Not only because she's so damn good that it's hard to even fathom, but because this arrangement, this performance is so well-rounded and complete that it makes me feel full when I listen to it. The sound fills your body and it's completely overwhelming. It feels like you're inside the music as much as the music's inside you. You can hear the reverb of the violin on the solo. You can hear the saxophonist's saliva between his reed and his mouthpiece. It's fucking beautiful.

This is one of the only songs I ever wanted to copy someone else singing just for the sake of sounding like them. Nearly 10 years later, I'm still probably not that close. When I hear this song, I just have to close my eyes and let it do to me whatever it wants.

John Green's Looking For Alaska

I still don't know how I could read this book and feel simultaneously hopeful and inadequate, but that's what happened.

I want my characters to be this flawed, this perfect. I want my dialogue to be this powerful, this simple. I want my story to be this heartbreaking, this funny. I want my historical references to be this strange, this relevant.

I know this is classified as 'teen' literature, but I think that's a bullshit label. This book is brilliant, and I've recommended it to everyone I know who still reads books these days. The details are incredible, from bufriedos to COFFEE TABLE to the fox hat. It's a story about friendship and love and death and religion and yearning and grief and acceptance and just about a million other things I wish I was talented enough to spin together into a novel like Green has.

I read this book just as I was really starting to feel like a writer. I don't want to write like John Green. I want to write like me. In a really strange way, this book told me to do that. Maybe it was the idea of a 'Great Perhaps'.

This post is archived under ella fitzgerald, james taylor, john green, money, piet mondrian

I once read an article written by John Mayer in Rolling Stone where he was asked to write about Jimi Hendrix in 'The Immortals' issue (one of the best issues ever, FYI). And not surprisingly, he said something that is not only poignant in regards to Hendrix's influence on the music industry, but also in regards to just music and artists in general.

Mayer said; "Who I am as a guitarist is defined by my failure to become Jimi Hendrix."

And so as I go through some old albums, ones that I listened to as a 'kid', really, I realize that I have done the same thing. Who I am as a vocalist is defined by my failure to become Wanye Morris or Justin Timberlake. Who I am as a musician is largely defined by my almost obsessive need to learn the harmony lines in each and every *NSync song. It was a compulsion. I'd listen to the albums, certain songs, even, for hours on end, headphones over my ears, laying on my bedroom floor at 15 years old, trying to emulate Justin's phrasing and runs and musicality.

It's an interesting thing, too, because I listen to these songs now, headphones over my ears as I sit in my office, and I can still sing those runs. I can still pick Joey's voice out of the five part harmony and sing his line if I want to, then switch over to JC's part the next line. It's a little crazy, because at 25, I have both no business listening to *NSync (but I will not stop, because I maintain that they are brilliant), and I have no business remembering such musical intricacies from an album released in 1998. But my best friend and I loved them, and we were/are both singers. At 15 and 17 respectively, we decided that I sounded more like Justin and she sounded more like JC, so we'd sing those songs, each guys' parts claimed as our own, until we got them perfect.

And it was a perfect learning experience that I didn't even realize I was part of. As part of the audition process to get into the vocal jazz program I was eventually accepted to, I was required to prepare a 'lift'. What that means is that you listen to a song by another artist, and you emulate their intonation, phrasing, and style as best you can. Well, not to sound conceited, but I aced it. I'd been doing it for years, since I bought Boyz II Men's II album on cassette (the first album I ever bought) and decided that I wanted to be able to sing runs like they could. The first vocal competition I placed first in, I sang Open Arms. I essentially copied Mariah's version.

I can still transform my voice to copy whoever I'm listening to, which freaks out my brother (a semi-professional musician who has toured the globe with an award-winning artist). He laughs when he hears me singing like Justin, that bit of a smokey, sultry rasp. He thinks it's hilarious that the next second, I can sing with all the swing of Ella. I can bust out a Miranda Lambert song and have a Texan accent singing Famous in a Small Town. Granted, this is usually after a few drinks, when everything is a little funnier. And it's even weirder, because when I sing my own songs, that's when my true voice comes out. Sometimes I hear myself on recordings of my own songs and it startles me a little, because I spend so much time singing like other people, that it's strange to hear myself.

There is no doubt that I'm an auditory learner. I'm not sure if that's innate or learned, or maybe a little bit of both.

And in one of those evenings, after quite a bit of Mount Guay rum, my brother and I, both of us saxophone players, got to talking about *NSync and how good this song is, and we decided it'd be awesome to work out a 5-part saxophone arrangement (one baritone, one tenor, two alto, and one soprano).

We never did it. I still want to. I may just have to talk to him about that...

This post is archived under Boyz II Men, ella fitzgerald, jimi hendrix, john mayer, miranda lambert, music, nsync