Lines composed upon seeing Ted Leo / Pharmacists

Rather than discuss tonight’s Ted Leo show, I’ve revisited a piece I wrote for my fiction writing class senior year of college after seeing TL/Rx at URI on a whim (kudos again to Mike King for talking me into it!) I cleaned up the language tonight but the general sentiment goes back to 12/04.

Catharsis

The protest singer takes the stage and immediately signals us in. “We’re in this together,” he says, “and we need each other.” The crashing cymbals and faint blue lights blend to cover the audience like a relieving salve. We dance along with the music and let the anger and frustration escape from our bodies. Some stamp it out as they pogo-ed to the beat while other forced it through their fingertips by clapping. We take all this rage and pressed it towards the stage, imploring the protest singer to relieve us from our grief. He sweats as he takes on our fury, strumming faster and singing louder. As the notes escaped the amplifier, our feet moved under the command of his six-stringed decree.

“This next one is for everyone who needs it.” We were all frustrated, angry, and vulnerable; we gave him our innermost feelings and let his music fill us in its place. The sweet melody of the guitar entered our scars and began to heal our sores. It doesn’t burn like peroxide – it’s a mild, soothing feeling that puts us at ease. As the music enters with our consent, our temperament improves.

“All and all, we cannot stop singing, we cannot stop sinking, we swim until it ends.
They may kill and we may be parted, but we will ne’er be broken-hearted”

Roger once sang, “It’s the singer not the song that makes the music move along.” When he finishes his set, the protest singer puts his guitar down, wipes his brow, and walks off the stage. The house lights fade in and the air is heavy with liberation and perspiration. His words echo through our heads – “Take me back to prouder days, but please don’t take my anger away.” We enter into the cool fall night feeling a little lighter, knowing that the protest singer and his music help us bear our burdens.

Welcome Back to Me!

It’s been a while since I’ve updated this thing, so I decided that the best way to inspire such activity would be to upgrade this beast!

As you’ve noticed by now, this blog is now hosted by WordPress, whose system I like more so far (a better interface, easier to insert links, etc). Most importantly, they offer the coveted “categories” feature that I really wanted. Now, if you want to find all of my posts that have Youtube links, or ones that are about certain topics you can easily browse them through the sidebar (or by clicking on the links at the bottom of a post.)

WordPress also moved all of the old posts over as well as the old comments, so everything is here. I have to figure out how to get the “archives” feature to accurately categorize the dates of all the old entries but you can use that calendar thing to check out all of the old posts.

New rants coming soon, I promise.