An Evening with Josh Groban

The arena is filling up, we're all giving our watches or phone clocks glimpses in between two second intervals, we look to the stage, find nothing there and then exhale the anticipation.

For a split second I let my thoughts wander, so when the lights drew dim and the crowd in some parts of the Superbowl started cheering and chanting, I was still lost to another place - then I saw him stroll across the stage, passing his band and orchestra and taking a seat at the piano.  He didn't even give me a chance to gain my composure, and he began to sing his heart away.

Josh Groban has engraved his mark, I will probably for a long time coming associate the 27th November with his concert.  It was spectacular in a way that exceeded all my expectations.  I really don't want to use superfluous adjectives and expressions to describe it.  But I will say that when he mentioned that it wouldn't take him another five years to come to South Africa to perform for us again, I instantly knew that I would do it all over again.

The thing about him that made everything all the more endearing and sentimental was how well he incorporated us, the audience, into his show.  He appeared nothing less than natural and almost had us fooled that we all knew each other on a personal level.  He is witty and has a charming sense of humour about him, when he wasn't singing we were laughing.  Yeah, he had the ladies wrapped firmly around his little finger.  We didn't mind that position either.

The songs that stood out for me through the late afternoon/early evening, what-have-you hours, were You Are Loved (Don't Give Up) from the Awake album and Higher Window from the Illuminations compilation.  Oh, and Alejate, it had the room reverberating.  Now, that is not to say his other offerings fell short - the show was thoroughly amazing and every song he performed stood stellar in its own right.  Lullaby and Weeping performed with the Soweto Gospel Choir impressed the South African audience, naturally.  February Song and Mi Mancherai were standouts too, and I have to add You Raise Me Up - it was the sing-a-long song, after all.

The short narrations in between his songs are really something you had to be there for to have experienced and to have established that connection he has with his music and to live it with him.  I had many overwhelming goosebumps moments,  and I tried videotaping bits and pieces, here and there, of poor quality via my smartphone (which I'm afraid to post here without any rights).  So those are the crumbs of memories I'd have taken with me from the concert.

According to him, a fan from the previous night's concert was a little "angry with him" for not performing Vincent, so thanks to her, we were the lucky bunch graced with that performance, which was b-e-a-u-tiful.  Broken Vow grabbed hold of everyone's breath too, and you could hear the collective sighs at the end of that last note.  It was sublime.  A surprise for me was how much I enjoyed Machine, a song I almost never listen to.  He did a solo drum set piece, accompanied by his percussionist, now that was hot!  You could almost hear the droplets of sexy hitting the stage floor as he oozed such appeal, it was that palpable. It was an enticing variation from his sitting at the piano, that's for sure.

He ended the evening with two encore pieces (Yay! again for us,) Smile was the finisher - we bid our farewells, exchanged some love and Josh's time with us was over.  Bittersweet.  Sweet, that I would never forget the experience, bitter because it felt like it ended too soon - but how could I hold on to that feeling, when his parting lyrics soothed me with, 'Light up your face with gladness/ Hide every trace of sadness.'

Well, xthank you (that's how he said 'thank you' to us in Xhosa.... Oh, the laughs!) Josh Groban, for an amazing show.

Writing poetry

I write poetry, I've mentioned this before.  I have been writing since that moment when it dawned upon me that certain words put together form structures that sound lyrical.  I also learned, that by putting into the words the feelings I felt and I held onto that.  I must have been a decade old or so when I first started, I'd write to my family, put them in letters to my friends - those are the ways I continued to nurture this art.  Some years I'd write less than others, but anyways this is not about then.  I'd like to share with you what I did this morning.  It's roughly written, but that's what I want to show to you, my unpolished thoughts.

Here goes, it is quite long so I'll only be posting bits and pieces of it, the ellipses indicates the omitted parts.  I'll post the whole things once I've cleaned it up:

There comes a time

When you dust away the old for the novel

The old truths

In your back pocket

You sit upon them in deserted places

Where in dark alleys aged men greet you

They were never married

( ... )

And the wisdom you've picked up along the road

Cradled them in your arms

Like gathering leaves after autumn’s fall

You place them in between pages and close the book

For the next generation to find the golden promise

There comes a time

When everything you imagined important

Has slowly dissipated and dispersed into nothingness

You’re searching for it but your memory holds no recollection

( ... )

There comes a time

When you want to sweep across the horizons

And breathe in the goodness of the river’s mist

And to catch the fragrance of the rotten flowers in your throat

Where you speak of blossoming into whatever life purposed you to

You want to swing in the open air where rain travels

 And the winds dance their way to and fro

( ... )

You have taken the decision to cease the trite

And pursue the more urgent and the apt

You take scripts from the predecessor’s mistakes

And note them down to remind yourself –

And to push yourself relentlessly because you are capable

There comes a time

( ... )

 There comes a time

When your feet are sore and they are bruised

From worthless heartaches and meaningless lessons in love

You’re tired from being out of breath

Chasing him to assure you

That tomorrow he’ll come by again

To validate to you about a love that will sustain you

You’ve pushed through the pebbled roads

And dusty fields as he keeps moving ahead

You’ve chased him down and he still wouldn’t stand for you

You make lists out of excuses that excuses him of his mistreating you

Trying to convince everybody else that he’s not that bad a guy

Even though you’re tired of telling yourself the same silly lie

( ... )

the rock at your gate

Put there by a kid, innocent and explorative, destined to one day too

Reach the wisdom you’re at now

He will learn too that happiness cannot be planted in somebody else’s garden

That the seed is within and only he can nurture its potential

There will come a time ...

© Lucinda de Leeuw 2011

"What if nothing exists and we’re all in somebody’s dream?"
—
Woody Allen

Strange.  I always think this -- we are insignificant manifestations in a vast universe.  A universe that could easily belong to a dream of some person somewhere far and away.  We are dust, we are ash, but we are also the greatest determinants of energy.  Energies that go on infinitely and energies that sustains, and creates life.
I am always seeking the answers or at the very least plausible explanations, nothing really ever suffices but to know a little more keeps my belly, temporarily, warm.

I am November's child

And even though I’m not for getting over-excited for my birthday, I do hold the month and day very dear.  I feel that November children are a different kind of special and that sentimentality runs deep, therefore, I will pen a piece of poetry in honour of us all.  Hopefully, I won’t procrastinate it until November’s over.

And, for more splendour in November, I’ll be seeing Josh Groban live the 27th, I can hardly breathe from all the anticipation.

Read reflections

Love in the Time of Cholera and White Oleander, the former by G.G Márquez and the latter by Janet Fitch – are the two novels I read recently, I read Commencement too I’ve already made mention of that on this blog.

Even if you aren’t one for having your nose in books, the aforementioned novels are really literary luxuries and I would wager that you’d enjoy them as much as any book lover would. 

When I was nearing the end of Love in the Time of Cholera there were events in my own family that were unravelling and very identical to the story narrated in the novel, so I found that much more pleasure in it.  Márquez writes easily making use of a descriptive language that had me lusting for the same ability; vivid and visual, like you had been invited on a road trip down the lanes of the character’s lives.  I swear there were times when I’d smell the almond tree from which yellow leaves were falling and the kitchen aromas he would write about. 

It’s a love story, yes, but a love story like no other – nothing expected and nothing too sweet, almost too real, autobiographically real, only that it’s not.  And it is quite humorous too, serious when he makes mention of the local wars and the Cholera epidemic that struck – there’s poetry too and that is always a welcomed accessory.

To give you a glimpse into the two main characters’ attributes in Gabriel Márquez’ own words via the novel: Florentino Ariza, he replaces his illusory love with earthly passions, a writer of love letters and the only convincing document he is capable of writing are love documents, whenever he finds himself on the edge of catastrophe he’d need the help of a woman but what matters most throughout the story is that he is a patient man, naїve at times but unrelenting nonetheless – fifty-one years, nine months and four days to be exact.

Now, Fermina Daza, well, she knew the dark side of the moon, a woman enchanted by grief, morally qualified, stubborn and paralysed with the fear to love.

White Oleander, oh... a story of beauty, a story about a poet imprisoned and her daughter who journeys self-discovery through a series of foster homes.  It is beautifully written, you are practically pulled into Ingrid, the poetic mom, and Astrid, the artistically talented daughter’s characters.  An intriguing mother-daughter duo, one I’ve yet to come across. 

I have not finished reading it yet, but I’ve already decided that it would list as a favourite.  It deems an intelligent and an enthralling read.  There is also nothing cliché about Fitch’s writing, so the phrases are mostly refreshing and impressive.

In the words of a reviewer “...a tale of poisonous beauty, dangerous, heady scents, an unforgettable story... Its narrator is part poet, part seductress, part Scheherazade, part street punk...” she ends saying how the novel will be scorched in your memory, and lingering in your heart.  Whilst reading it, I’d recall parts of Janet Fitch’s interview with Oprah, and how in awe she was with Janet’s writing, she really was not exaggerating.  It’s that good.

Let me entice you with little excerpts, the story is first-person narrated, pg 183: 

"I took it away from her (a gift of perfume) and sprayed it over my head so the mist fell like light rain.  Wash my sins away.  Make me a girl who’d never seen the firestorms of September, who’d never been shot, who’d never gone down on a boy behind a bathroom in a park.  A nursery-rhyme girl in a blue dress holding a pet lamb in a cottage garden.  It was me, after all.  I didn’t know quite whether to laugh or to cry, so I poured some more brandy in my glass.” 

This is a favourite line from what I have read so far, 

“I’d spent the last three years trying to build up some kind of a skin, so I wouldn't drip with blood every time I brushed up against something.”

I am five chapters away from the end, so bittersweet, this is one novel I know I will read many times over, there’s just so much to take from it.  I’ve read three novels back-to-back, so the next book I pick up will be something other than fiction, I know that for sure.

Images are my own © Lucinda de Leeuw 2011

When last have you watched... The Great Dictator? (speech only)

Commencement, by Steve Jobs - 2005

The text below is the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, on June 12, 2005.


The wisdom narrated in this address is invaluable,  success founded on a path less travelled, an alternate route, outside of the norm and those are the stories, and the people I hold in esteem.  Chronological order is so ho-hum.  And that can only be seen in hindsight, in moments where you're reflective of past events when at the time you felt miserable, and they all piece together and finally sense can be made.  That's what I live for.  "You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards."  May he rest, peacefully.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

  If you have never said "Excuse me" to a parking meter or bashed your shins on a fireplug, you are probably wasting too much valuable reading time. 

 ~Sherri Chasin Calvo 

--- Love this, reminds me of all the moments I've been startled dizzy upon hearing an unexpected voice or sound entering the realm I lose myself to when I'm entirely engrossed in a book.  I am reading White Oleander by Janet Fitch at the moment, an Oprah Book Club selection - it is dripping with literary enticement.  I'm only six, or is it seven chapters in and already it has reached 'a favourite' status.

Love

Even if I should never know it, for what it means, for all that it represents, for all the symbolism it spells out, the infinite etchings across millions and millions of hearts, for all it takes and never returns.  Even if it would turn inside out from its abstractness and show me sitting in my hands what it means to me, tangible and soft, and tender to touch - or maybe it won't, maybe it would drench the lines on my palms in blood that will seep and it pains and runs through the veins in my arms to settle in the cusp of my heart.  Even if all that happens - I would still take.  And hold on to that promise that is a sole purpose to many.
A promise.  A hope.  A truth.  A feeling. Love.

quaintlynoted

Living my life in a form of uncertainty, but that's okay!

"...Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how.  The moment you know how, you begin to die a little."  I read this and I actually had to sit back as it forced something inside of me to take note and grasp it for all its worth.  Reading it over, again and again, as if it was a note written out, personally, just for me.  "The moment you know you begin to die a little" echoed in the back of mind as I was making sense of all the turbulence I've been experiencing life-wise lately.  It encompassed my entire existence, at that instant.  Me, looking and searching for the answers to so many of life's vagueness and incompleteness, the incomprehension of the daily struggles and the glimpses of joy that do, as much as I sometimes want to turn a blind eye to, appear every so often.


We are meant to go about this not knowing, because if you do know, then why live anymore.  You would die a little more each day because there'd be little to live for, little left to strive for, little to understand.  What keeps most of us waking up to each day, hopeful, as the rising sun, new and untainted, is to discover just a little more, to unveil a little more of that lingering riddle, the unquestioned and the unanswered.  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, is so correct, the happenings in my life are just fine, they are more than alright - it means that I am in fact, living, it would mean nothing to me if I had it all figured out and laid out bare.


I love when I stumble upon meaningful quotes, prose, poetry or images, music or whatever at a point or time that I most needed some assurance or understanding.  I'm sharing this, because, who knows, maybe you needed to hear it too.