From Olesha’s “Speech to the First Congress of Soviet Writers” delivered on August 22, 1934:

Every man may suddenly feel in himself the appearance of some double. This phenomenon is particularly acute in an artist; one of the most amazing things about him is his capacity to experience other people’s passions.

In every artist the seeds of an entire range of passions, bright and dark, are implanted; he knows how to make them grow and turn them into trees…

… I step through the archway, look at myself and see that my youth has returned to me.

Youth has suddenly and for some unknown reason come back to me…

I have come to the conclusion that my greatest wish is the right to preserve the colors of my youth, the freshness of my vision, to defend that vision from assertions that it is not needed, from accusations that it is vulgar and worthless.

It is not my fault that when I was young the world around me was horrible. But it would be absurd for me not to make use of the colors on the palette of my youth for that reason…

… In this country the first new generation, the first Soviet man, is now emerging.  Being an artist, I pounce upon him.

“Who are you? What colors do you see? Do you ever have dreams? What sort of things do you long for? What do you think of yourself? How do you love? How do you feel about the world? What do you accept and what do you reject? Which is stronger in you, reason or emotion? Can you cry? Do you know what tenderness is? Have you understood all those things that used to frighten me so, that I couldn’t comprehend, that bewildered me? Tell me, what kind of a person are you, young man of the socialist society?”

Perhaps these are the questions we, ultimately, ask of everyone in our lives.

What sort of things do you long for?

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Matty Charles & The Valentines’ “Where They’ll Bury Me” — fabulous track about getting older and wiser

I am a sucker for a cappella.  The first a cappella concert I attended was during college, at Yale, and hearing my friend Franky nail a solo brought tears to my eyes.  So when I saw a blurb about a current Yalie crooning his way to YouTube sensation status, I had to check it out:

From the November/December 2009 Yale Alumni Magazine:

Tsui and five clones sing a Michael Jackson medley on the stage of the Sudler Lecture Hall.  Tsui, who also sings with the Duke’s Men, performs all the vocal parts, which were arranged and produced by his high school friend Kurt Schneider ‘10… Not bad for a classics major (Tsui) and a math major (Schneider).

It seems that Tsui’s (’1Y1) recently released a single on iTunes to boot.  The most popular Sam Tsui tracks on iTunes?

1. Don’t Want An Ending
2. Lady Gaga Medley
3. Don’t Stop Believin’

I totally just bought the last one.

Okay, so I didn’t actually steal my best friend’s CDs eight years ago.  However, she was crashing at my apartment that summer in between her first and second years of law school.  And I did, that Memorial Day weekend (I’m guessing), rifle through her CD collection and make a MiniDisc mix that I found this weekend while unpacking.  And, I am visiting her this weekend back in Indiana.

So, in honor of my very best friend in the whole wide world, and the people we were eight years ago (!), here’s the tracks:

1. In The End – Linkin Park
2. Everything In Its Right Place – Radiohead (apropos track to play while unpacking)
3. Gulf Coast League – Aden
4. 1979 – Smashing Pumpkins
5. Think & Act – Curve
6. Perfect Life – Liz Phair
7. Little Lies – Fleetwood Mac
8. Fear – Sarah McLachlan
9. Everlong – Foo Fighters
10. Poly Sci – John Forte
11. White Men in Black Suits – Everclear
12. And So I Know – Stone Temple Pilots
13. Mexico – Cake
14. Low – Cracker
15. Immature – Bjork
16. Haunted – Poe
17. I Knew You Would Go – Aden
18. Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box – Radiohead
19. Cry – The Sundays
20. Wish You Dead – Curve
21. Cupid De Locke – Smashing Pumpkins
22. Instrumental – Beastie Boys

Factoid you’d never know from this mix: my best friend’s the person who introduced me to rap!

When I was in middle school, my older sister and I pooled our babysitting money and joined a music club.  Both Columbia House and BMG Music Club had addresses in Indiana, and as dutiful small-town Hoosiers, we were excited to be members of a club headquartered (or so we thought) in our home state.

One of the cassette tapes that I selected was by UK band The Sundays.  I’d read a gushing review in seventeen magazine and looked forward to being the cool kid at math camp the next summer, what with big-kid music blasting from my tape deck.

Unfortunately, I hated the album upon first listen.  But as a girl raised by parents who apparently personally knew lots of starving kids in China, I didn’t want to waste this music!  So, I kept it on my walkman, playing it over and over until, one day, it clicked.  I heard the beauty, the magic, my ears let go of the rules that Top 40 pop music had written onto my brain — I was forever changed.

The Sundays’ second album contained “Wild Horses” which I would later learn was a cover (I would also later learn what a “cover” was).  But to me, this song belonged to the bright, often incomprehensible voice of The Sundays’ Harriet Wheeler.

You know I can’t let you slide through my hands
Wild horses, couldn’t drag me away
Wild wild horses, couldn’t drag me away

Lovely female phenom Susan Boyle, also from the UK, covers “Wild Horses” in her debut album I Dreamed A Dream.  For me, hers is a cover of The Sundays’ version.  And it — perhaps in part because of Ms. Boyle’s beautiful, delicate background story — moves me just as much as the “original”.  Perhaps she and Harriet can share.

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Looking for music to put you in a thoughtful, quiet space for the new year?  Et voila:

• Susan Boyle’s “Wild Horses”
• The Sundays’ “Wild Horses”
• The 5 Browns’ “Carnival of the Animals – Aquarium”
• The 5 Browns’ “18th Variation from Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini”
• Brad Mehldau’s “Elegy For William Burroughs And Allen Ginsberg”

Here’s hoping that these quiet tunes can drag you away — without the use of wild horses — from that which you would like to leave behind as 2009 turns into 2010.

Photograph (c) 2008 Anna.Andres