Sugar and Spice

Today was Bring-Your-Child-to-Work Day at my place o' employment and the building was littered with children at every turn, halls echoing with their ‘outside’ voices. My particular department, though most are childless or with older children, went all out and supplied pop and candy and snacks that we don’t usually see around our office tables.

We were lucky to have three of the more well behaved bunch among us, all of them from the same mother. As they stood in the doorway to my cube, myself seconds away from commending their mother on rearing such fine young men, the ten year old spoke up, “So this is all you do?”
Ten year olds are tough audiences, I’ll give ‘em that. Try explaining HMOs or insurance benefits to a nine year old and see if you get a different response. But he reminded me of a younger time -- before our wonderfully complicated adult world -- in which we dreamed of becoming firefighters or doctors or racecar drivers. Somewhere between five and fifteen our path gets skewed and those dreams either fade or become different ones. Doctors become insurance agents. Firefighters become financial analysts and racecar drivers become mechanics. I can’t remember what my dreams of a career were as a child, but I certainly could tell you that I had ever dreamed of becoming what I am today.

We’ve been watching a lot of the Tour de France lately and tonight, as I watched the highlights I wondered if Lance Armstrong wanted to become a cyclist when he was a kid. Or did Lance Armstrong just want to become a realtor?

posted by paula 12:27 AM

The Lovely Norah Jones

This weekend, I was fortunate enough to have a good friend invite to me fill the extra seat to the Norah Jones concert at the Northrop on the U of M campus. A fan of her music, I of course accepted with school-girl giddy excitement.
In this day and age when pop stars rise just as quickly as they fall and music and vocal quality is more manufactured than Hostess cupcakes, it’s rare that you find a musician that’s completely worthy of stardom. Most live performances these days are more about lighting and dancing rather than the actual singing. Or if you’re Britney Spears, you don’t sing at all.
Her opener was a Mr. Richard Julian, an equally talented but less polished performer with witty lyrics and notably quick fingers on his guitar. Wary to hear yet another ‘alternative acoustic performance’ from yet another whiney, alternative, solo guitarist, I was pleased to hear that he wasn’t the same old, same old. Julian keeps his music diverse enough so that every song doesn’t sound like the last, but close enough that he still fits in the same genre.
I was a little disturbed through his entire set though, not because of his music, but because the entire audience was a restless sea, chattering and laughing and moving about as if the performer wasn’t even on stage. Despite the lights being down completely, people continued to show up to the concert 45 or 50 minutes past its beginning and then sat talking after being ushered to their seats. The whole thing was a bit distracting, right down to the couple making out in front of us.
Perhaps they were restless for the intended headliner to perform. Perhaps it was the increasing temperature in a hardly climate controlled auditorium. Whatever it was, everything stopped when Norah came out.
Norah is every bit as beautiful as her albums make her look. And every bit as humble. And pleasantly, every bit as talented. I was floored to realize that to the naked ear, very little filtering or digital editing happens on her CDs, giving her concerts a what-you-see-is-what-you-get quality to them. Her smoky voice is the same, crooning her way from one song to the next, lulling the audience out of their restlessness and into a tranquil calm. Her music -- slightly embellished in concert with the addition of a few guitars -- is still that undecipherable category between pop and jazz, rock and folk. Whatever it is, it attracts nearly everyone; all ages, all social types all socioeconomic classes. And whether her warm, soft tone is uttering a small giggle at a shouted “I love you Norah!” or a sincerely flattered and humble thank you to applause, she is still the same simple, lovely young lady that you’d like to take home to sweetly sing you to sleep.

posted by paula 12:30 PM