This is probably the most legit mustache I've ever seen. I would be terribly upset if I were to find out its a fake. Something that beautiful has to be real though, right?.
It annoys me that my computer won't let me have space between each paragraph unless I put a period there. Sigh.
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Tuesday morning I woke up at five in the morning to go running. For a normal teenager, the act of getting out of bed that early would be quite a feat. For me, however, it’s not really anything to brag about. There has to be something installed in my head that makes it incapable for me to sleep past nine. What can I say? I’m a morning person. This isn’t to say that I wasn’t a little groggy when I rolled out of the warmth of my comforter, though. (Yes, I was sleeping with a comforter during summer. My mom keeps the house an ice box. Thank you, menopause.)
I decided that since it was early morning, this called for inspiration music. I chose to kick it off with Generator 1st Floor. It provided this ultimate sense of clarity for me. I was able to clear my mind and think about what is going on in my life. The topic of the day was “Simplicity”. That’s for another day though. What I wanted to say is that I love the way music can be a great catalyst for insightful thoughts. The words and thoughts of other’s can spark your own individual ones which you can there share with someone else. It’s a great cycle.
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I was talking yesterday with someone about creativity and “geniusness” so to say (I just invented a word). He told me about a video he watched of a woman giving a speech on the same topic. Is brilliance in the person or in the world? So often I heard people say about a writer or musician “Wow, they are just so amazingly creative.” But is it really the person themselves who is creative? Or is the brilliance out in the world, waiting to be found. I would argue the latter. Creativity and brilliance comes for inspiration. It is impossible to be a naturally inspire individual. You can be an insightful individual and you can be an individual with moments of inspiration, but you can’t just have brilliance instilled within your core. It is extremely egotistical of us to believe that we are just naturally brilliant human beings. Brilliance and inspiration comes from the world that is all around us. It comes from combining your thoughts with others. It comes from living the life that we have been graciously given.
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The woman giving the aforementioned speech, Elizabeth Gilbert, said that creativity its your randomly in a wave. I couldn’t agree more. You never know when brilliance will strike you. But when it does, it is just this wave of unbelievable clarity. You know exactly what you’re supposed to write/draw/paint/whatever. You are so overwhelmed with this sudden stroke of inspiration that it is of the utmost importance that you get it down on paper immediately before it is lost forever.
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Brilliance is a gift to us that comes in small moments, sporadically. We are not born with it. It isn’t something we can pay for.
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She can probably explain better:
http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html
Mood: Annoyed
Listening to: “I’m Me” – Lil Wayne and a variety of oldies
Eating Drinking: Waffle Pretzels and Diet Snapple Peach Tea
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Basically, I’m in love with oldies so I’d like to give a list of my favorites. I’ve never really understood why people wouldn’t like them. If you’re in love with an artist, doesn’t it make sense to be in love with the band or singer who was their inspiration? The music of today comes from the music of the past. There’s no getting around that. To me, oldies are classics for a reason; they’re great, to put in quite simply.
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Pardon this tangent I’m about to go off on; I’ve got to get this off my chest.
Recently, I was with a group of people and we were talking about artists who have “sold out". One girl's example was Sufjan, which kind of bugged me because I still love him. So I got kind of defensive but I tried to tell myself to just chill out and listen to what she had to say. She argued that his music wasn’t as special as it had once been. That’s when I started to get annoyed. So popularity immediately turns something bad? It’s always annoyed the shit out of me when people are overly focused on being different. Maybe another example will help.
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Let’s say you like this sick indie band. Everything about them is great; their lyrics kick ass, their melodies are unique and they seem like really nice people. Cool. Then you share them with a friend and that friend shares it with another friend and before you know it, they're everywhere. Suddenly their lyrics become so cliché to you...even though it's the exact same song you were obsessed with two months ago. I just don't get it. What I do get is getting upset with a band if they sell out from the popularity; they change to a more poppy sound, suddenly every single song becomes about love and they never leave home without their hipster glasses. I get why there's a reason to be upset with that, but I think it's important to give the band the benefit of the doubt, don't you? Have a little faith.
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People can be so busy making sure they’re nothing like anyone else that they aren’t even themselves. News flash: it doesn’t impress anyone that you’re so unique, it’s just obnoxious. In my opinion, if something is popular, it’s for a good reason—a lot of people agree that it’s good. So here’s what I have to say: like what you like, whether you’re the only one or one of many. As Lil Wayne would say, “I’m Me”. (How ironic is it that this song came up on shuffle as I was writing this?)
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To bring this all back to oldies, those songs were popular for a reason and it’s lame not to like them simply because a lot of other people do. Have a legitimate reason.
Thanks for stickin’ that out with me. Here’s my aforementioned list (in no order with various release dates). Not all are oldies exactly, but they're still classics to me.
There are SOOOO many more I would've put but I don't want this post to become completely rediculous. I basically just went through my itunes and selected some random good ones.
